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Re: introduction

Gabriel Pickard

Sep 22, 2003 07:21 PDT 


Brian Holmes wrote:
 I also work with artists on cooperative projects
like those you can find at the Université Tangente website, and I'm
totally interested in how free association can help in smashing the
state and totally undermining the capitalist system! Wow, wouldn't it
be great if we could just invent new kinds of money, for example?

yes, we can - and alternative currencies are a great idea. something
definately seems like it should be integrated into efforts for more
autonomous cooperation.

 Say, free money, for starters? New spaces for art production that
wouldn't be up on some kind of holy pedestal? New formats for
intellectual exchange that wouldn't require walking around in
sheepskins? New political systems where the mass media wouldn't elect
oil-cartel owners and warlords? Really, free cooperation is a small
start, but apparently the only way to go in the early twenty-first
century.

whoo-hA! yess! ;-}

 I'm also quite interested in subjects like the management of
collective creativity. This is a hot topic for about the last twenty
years: you create a temporary autonomous zone, we'll use it to train
our advertising execs! But then where does the "free" go? I recently
read a great article about how the US Army, or is it the Navy Seals?
wants to create a kind of wifi network among predator drones so that
you will have full network capabilities in an air war even if your C3
center in Florida is blown to smithereens by a suicide bomber! This
too is cooperation, encouraged by the reticular form of both
contemporary society and computer media. "If you can't beat 'em, join
'em" seems to be the philosophy of the post-Al Quaeda network-busters
(Rand Corp is full of 'em), and that would be a great subject for
cooperative research, if anyone's interested.

so of course, _they_ can then also research and intelligentely target
the basis of our struggle and knowledge. but the question here would
be: who is afraid of the open, who is setting up the smoke-screens
behind which we try to analyze? if we're doing the same, we'd better
stop. so they cannot really use the tools, they can only corrupt, or be
transformed. because the tools, in their neutrality as well as their
ambiguity build new worlds; regulation always is imperfect.

 Actually it's the
ambiguities that tweak my greatest curiosity, like why is an
anarchist any different from a neoliberal? I once tried to write a
kind of complicated essay on Marcel Mauss, free information exchange,
collaborative production and the gift economy to say why the
counterglobalization demonstrators were really different from the
globalizers themselves, but since that was a more-or-less failure I
guess maybe there are new horizons in wait, like I hope this list.
Seriously, I was an ordinary guy as little as ten or even five years
ago, something about all this freewheeling association plays tricks
on the head, kind of interesting. Looking forward to hear from
everyone else on their subjects, we'll get something going here I'm
sure.

[what follows is a rant which i tiped up in a pause at work, after
reading brian's post - it's loosely connected.]

in post such as these, i recognize a certain program. as i see it,
the program often is tangibly present among many. yes, what is to be
done, the momentary model of inspiration: it would mean technology
offers us a new chance, new means of production and mediation bring to
light the importance of the virtual behind social (re)production. but
not only that, society itself is changed. the computer, which was built
with the model (be it correct or not) of our mind in mind, now offers
society new models for formating itself. of course, anarchism was
possible anytime. but what is anarchism anyway, at most utopia.. this
is not anarchism, though it contains the potential for less hierarchy,
for sure.
it is a principle of well-defined, interacting cells. these cells are
informed and informative. each autonomously settles, charters and steers
its inner workings as well as its interfaces, channels, associations
with other cells. however, in this case autonomy need not end up in
arbitrarity. standardization and association on an informational level
are part of the scheme.
this is a principle just as well to be found behind "lean production"
(a capitalist paradigm for interdependent, small-celled industrial
production). even though it may have developed dependant on capital-
intensive infrastructure - as with other technology, this newly
discovered social technology also carries a neutrality of its own, so
this new form of efficiency possibly even offers us a chance to sweep
away old power-plays of self-destruction. that the elites have realized
this may also lie behind the new anti-futuristic, confrontational piece
being staged on the theatre of global politics, starring the
administration of the United States of America, featuring some
villains. These tactics are aimed at building Angst - a de-structive
force. But if it is one thing that we need, then it is structure. To
my mind, chaos can not breed anarchy. Only in an environment without
eroding fear, free (not only) social structure can stand. Next to fear,
there are also other eroding forces, poverty could be one (or perhaps
better characterized as need,the encroaching feeling of want.. hunger).
The paradigm of the network has inspired us to think anew about social
possibilites which we could have thought of before. We can now become
the (sole) advocates of an age of abundance, as others are settling for
fear.

what does ye all think?
greetings, g*

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