Re: Top Loaded? Networks

wade tillett on Fri, 21 Nov 2003 08:32:07 +0100 (CET)

[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: <nettime> Top Loaded? Networks

>Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 19:02:50 +0200 >From: Martin Hardie <auskadi AT tvcabo.co.mz> >Subject: Re: <nettime> Music Labels Tap Downloading Networks > >>Sad to see it implemented like this. the industry ‘horror’ at mp3 downloading is a ruse to make one believe they are actually getting something – i.e. they must keep up the belief that the song/data is the product, when in fact it is the production potential which is the product. very well shown by using mp3 download data as a gauge of production potential. mit offers opencourseware. ibm is (still) betting on increase in infrastructure.(1) >Yes Felix you are right, but it strikes me that this is another reason why we >must be more measured with all our excitement of things p2p. Within “things >p2p” I lump FLOSS in along with the whole “new mode of >production/organisation = automatic liberation theology”, that is boostered >amongst us each day. how about automated liberation theology: i.e. in place of the magical marxist industrial production machine enabling utopia insert magical marxist *technological* production machine enabling utopia. >When Felix posted this I thought of the article I recently read (an oldie but >a goodie) by James Boyle, Foucault in Cyberspace, >www.law.duke.edu/boylesite/foucault.htm > >In that paper Boyle takes on what he calls the “digerati’s” view of law. The >underlying suggestion in this paper to me is that what libertarians or his >digerati presume to be progressive about the net (and I think by implication >things p2p) can easily be turned back into mechanisms of discipline in the >Foucauldian sense or control in the late Foucauldian or Deleuzian sense – >note Alex Galloway’s “Protocol, or, How Control Exists After >Decentralization” in this respect. (http://www.nd.edu/~remarx/rm/vol13.html) even the medium itself is a diversion always of the present to the past in the guise of the future. that is channeled energies to the media-ted infoworld. it is not only that surveillance and discipline exists within information worlds, but that information worlds are a form of discipline – their very substance/medium. i am not suggesting that there is singular real world to be discovered, rather that deterrance and/or assimilation of action are inherent features of information mediums/planes.(2) >And the article posted by Felix rang another bell for me – one of the themes >of Hardt and Negri’s Empire is of course that what is the terrain of control, >the rhizomatic manner in which Empire operates, is in their view also the >terrain of resistance to that control. Here maybe the tables are turned with >what we saw as a thing p2p and thus inherently a form of resistance, to the >overcoding of the music biz and through the expression of the notion of >sharing we seemingly hold dear, is also at the same time the terrain of >control – gathering market research from sharing patterns in order to shove >commodities into the right market – or to use the Hardt and Negrism: “the >flexible managment of difference”. agreed, as i mentioned above. protesting becomes an experience economy. how many books did hardt/negri sell about escaping capitalism. capitalism is a phantom vampire, a blood-sucking convex (or concave depending on the situation) mirage. as empire notes – the ngo’s are the ones actually facilitating the global takeover under the guise of moral legitimacy – just as it always has been, manifest destiny.(3) that being said, i disagree with hardt/negri that a singular globalized endspace is somehow a boon to inevitable freedom. i agree with boyle: the construction of such a global endspace is not necessarily the end of the state, in fact it is a formula for a subjection of depth and breadth as yet unknown, and perhaps when manifest, will remain unknown (i.e. ‘transparency’ of discipline, control through the limitations of identity, etc.). hardt/negri seem to think that all of the connections made cannot help but end with freedom, when in fact the actual medium on which the connections are made is structured in a certain way. just eliminating the state actor will not change the mode of operation of the infrastructure. a mere appropriation of the endspace will not result in freedom. hardt/negri seem intoxicated with the same obscuring false positivism that boyle warns of – i.e. the problem of all revolutionary theory where a sudden limit is reached and all the negative connections are turned into positive ones. that the bourgeois can be taken out of the bourgeois revolution, etc. that globalization is simply the precursor to global society. such a horrible lie legitimates horrific acts and the furthering a technical structure of oppression for future revolutionary re-appropriation. beware the virtual revolution! whereby the infrastructure is changed from oppression to empowerment. this is mere semantics. >Now I start to get paranoid and worry as so many FLOSSers get excited about >the US DoD adopting Linux what they have in plan for us down the line … :-) > >But before I forget and while we are on the p2p thing topic, the hard cruel >face is well documented here – 18 months suspended jail sentence in (“my city >of …”) Sydney for sharing music over the net: >http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s991935.htm i suppose it will go the way of all criminalizations: only the real criminals will know what they are doing and get away with it, while the rest of us will suffer within the mediation of our mediocrity, within the public space carved out for us. laws are meant to corral the general public in a direction, to structure possibility, not stop the act. power is an action upon action as foucault says. —— other related posts i wrote: 1. http://home.covad.net/~super89/txt/20010409_nettime_open_source_leveraging_capital.htm http://home.covad.net/~super89/txt/20000511_nettime_napster.htm http://home.covad.net/~super89/txt/20010409_nettime_ibm_bites.htm 2. http://home.covad.net/~super89/txt/20020306_nettime_electromech.htm 3. http://home.covad.net/~super89/txt/19991229_nettime_amoral.htm # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo AT bbs.thing.net and “info nettime-l” in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime AT bbs.thing.net