[iDC] The Ethics of Participation

[John Hopkins]

A desperate ramble here, to try and get some thoughts injected to the 
frenzy of texts.  impossible to keep up with flesh-space life 
im-pressing attention nodes...

>>The call for revenue-sharing, as mechanism for reciprocity, can 
>>therefore be misguided. Better solution is to keep the 
>>non-reciprocal logic of peer production, and to reserve the 
>>revenue-sharing aspects for the derivate scarce services, and to 
>>use part of that revenue, to create an ecology of support for the 
>>non-reciprocal sharing, as is done by the free software community.

a focus on monetary instruments as a 'medium' of human connection is 
always bound to fail in the long run, as it cannot carry any embodied 
energy between the Other and the Self -- it is a abstracted proxy for 
the energy of human relation.  if the ecology is not built on a 
comprehensive understanding of the dynamics and the problematics of 
human relation AS AFFECTED by social systems, and the resulting 
wisdom used to expand (or remove) socially mediated pathways for 
expression and reception of embodied human energies.  The degrees of 
freedom necessary for inspiring, energizing, and creative 
interaction are necessarily more than are 'allowed' in any social 
system.

>This point made by Michel is the quintessence of a lot of collective 
>thought, and could be the foundation of a whole new form of 
>redistribution, which tries to support the infrastructure of value 
>production rather than just give away money so that people can buy 
>products made in the competitive-authoritarian market fashion. The 
>subtle point lies in the notion of ecology; how to foster and not 
>hamper or twist or destroy all the interrelations and degrees of 
>autonomy that help bring

the larger and larger scale of 'community' development begins to 
dictate the pathways of human connection that exist at a one-to-one 
scale -- through many levels of coercion, peer-pressure, and other 
socially engineered mechanisms.  One of those mechanisms is the 
deployment of any technology -- which then stands between the 
Self/Other relation as a socially mandated pathway for connection. 
The slow and inevitable elimination of idiosyncratic difference is 
one result of this process.  Creativity drains away.  The 
attentiveness of focused and open exchange is drained into the social 
infrastructure where it concentrates in the wrong places and is 
subsequently used by others who are adept in gathering scattered 
attentions...

>into existence "participation" or "reciprocity" or "emulation" or 
>"commons-based peer production"? When John says that YouTube or 
>MySpace provides a distribution mechanism that doesn't expropriate 
>one's creations, I think he is right, for now. Which is already 
>important and interesting.

it may not expropriate the material evidence of expressive energies, 
but it definitely forms a specific pathway for those energies, 
attenuating the energies as the technological infrastructure dictates 
-- you can do some things but not others...  and that attenuation of 
energy definitely affects the potential for a creative/inspired 
outcome...

>However, one can be almost sure on the basis of past experience (Fox 
>News anyone? The Sun? The Weekly Standard?) that the likes of Rupert 
>Murdoch will not only want to make money off us (in which case I 
>would agree: so what?) but also to institute forms of social 
>relationships that tend more

any participation in a social infrastructure by a constellation of 
individuals causes relative concentrations and scarcities of energy 
across a system -- the larger the system, the greater the scarcities 
and concentrations.

>and more toward the traditionally commodified ones, with the 
>submission and violence they ultimately entail. The structure of the 
>platforms, the advertising and the for-pay opportunities offered, 
>the kinds of fashions promoted, will tend not to encourage a 
>productive, critical and generous quest for the shared development 
>of personal and collective autonomy. In other words, the ecological

it's not just the market aspects of these deployed systems that is 
the problem, it relates to what I mentioned above -- the degrees of 
freedom of relation that these platforms offer to the dynamic of 
human relation are simply less than what is necessary!  Because of 
the collective nature of the social system -- it eliminates the odd 
backchannels of relation that are the most creative (i.e., out of the 
box)...  etc.

>  conditions will not be respected, this is the way it goes with 
>commodity culture. The question of how to foster both the 
>infrastructure and the relational patterns that are already moving 
>people out of the commodity straitjacket is a question worth asking 
>imho. It is the question of how to move towards a more 
>cooperation-based society.

IMO it is a question of how to facilitate more human-to-human 
connection with less interference by large and collectively-mandated 
technological infrastructures.

I have not been able to deal with the flood of texts on iDC in the 
last week, but want to address many issues!  what to do!  but about 
to go full nomadic once again after a 18 month hiatus is taking all 
my energies in the moment.  I would love to have some dialogues f2f 
with any of you who might be on my pathway in the next 5 months -- 
California, UK, NL, DE, FI, EE, AU, and NZ -- doing some workshops, 
lectures, and simply connecting with folks...  drop me a line, eh?

Cheers
John