Hacking the Networked Society.

Abstract: The dynamic between free-software and open-source is often misunderstood by social and political theorists. As a consequence it is also under-theorised within socio-political theory. In this paper, I show how philosophies of free/libre, open-source and commons regimes have engendered new forms of socio-political consumption and new political economies of meaning. My emphasis on the interplay between the local and the global/structure and agency, shows new ways of ‘thinking’ the cosmopolitan, sedimented in the interconnected networks of the technical age. My thesis is concerned with our present moment of opportunity. I believe that positive possibilities for politics and political economy are presented in the philosophies of free/libre, open-source and commons regimes. In this paper I will demonstrate the contribution of these new socio-political categories and the new politics that is being ‘made public’ because of free/libre hacking.

Available online as web/HTML, as PDF (6×9 format, sorry, A4 coming) and as printed book from lulu.com. I also plan to put this up on my wiki.

I am going to continue my research and writing in this area over the coming year. I’m particularly interested in exploring free/libre and peer production, Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful economics and Benkler and Nissenbaum’s notion of virtue in free/libre (see Commons-Based Peer Production and Virtue).

I’ve been busy reviewing and replanning my dissertation project - only five weeks to go until hand-in! I’ve cut a lot out since my proposal last year, tightening my focus and shortening my reading lists. My four papers now look something like this…

• Who Governs in a Networked Society (final draft complete) - My first chapter is concerned with the depoliticisation of government and the politicisation of the social world in a global networked society. In this chapter I explore the networked society thesis (Giddens, Castells) contra globalisation. I draw on Virilio’s real/virtual city dichotomy in order to move towards Hardt & Negri Empire. I am interested in the post-material politics of NSM/NGO and the relationship between these organisations and the de/politicisation in networked society. I conclude with a discussion about the imagination and the affective dimension of the political.
• Free, Libre and Radically Open Communities (in draft) - This paper will consider the hacker identity and hacker social and cultural relations. In exploring this subjects ontology and its relationships with others I will also question the understanding of purpose, of telos, by this subjectivity. Freedom and openness are two central concepts in hackerism and the contemporary social movements it has influenced. My research will lead me to examine critically the political philosophy of hackerism in order to reveal the meaning in these emerging redefinitions of freedom and openness and the challenge they present to the corresponding dominant liberal notions of the same terms.
• Communicative Capitalism and F/los - In my third paper I will explore the political economy of contemporary communicative capitalism and f/los. Here I will draw on the networked society ideas from my first chapter and the hacker work ethic from my second. I am conscious of a dynamic between pragmatism and idealism and how this conditions political economy. I am searching for the `positive possibility’ of f/los and how this, in transmission, may effect our contemporary order.
• A New Politics of Openness? - I am not quite sure how this chapter will fit together yet. I am interested in how the hacker idea of freedom, `what kind of rules make possible a good society that is good for the people in it’ (Stallman) is be realised. McKenzie Wark, author of `A Hacker Manifesto’, in his paper `Escape from the Dual Empire’ wrote “020. The search for a counter strategy to ‘globalization’, if it does not look backwards to the reinstatement of the topographic boundaries of a lost age, looks forward instead to a new topography, in which the topical might hold the power of the digital, rather than being held within its thrall.” I think that the hacker ethic and the open political models of f/los are no longer emergent, existing at the frontiers of our networked society. I contend that they already among us and are radically altering established politics.

I’ve just sent the draft of my first paper to my supervisor and I’ve yet to run it past my Chief Editor (thanks B). I’ll post a PDF when its been reviewed and edited.

Goodbye to del.icio.us and simpy: I don’t get anything out of these social bookmarking services so I’m leaving them. The reason I joined was to share my bookmarks quickly and simply with others, in the case of del.icio.us, with a view to collaborating with others on creating a resource, in the case of simpy and the smithspolitics group.

Yet as I still have a need for quick bookmarking and the global access a website provides me I’ve adopted a clone of the social bookmarking model, scuttle, and installed it here on robdyke.com.

@smiths now has wiki space at a cost of around £2000 for the software licenses (1).

Wiki’s, along with blogs, are a prominent feature of the contemporary easy to read, easy to edit web. The term wiki is derived from the Hawaiian word for quick. Wiki’s are websites that are quick and easy to contribute to and to edit. The software purchased, Confluence, is merely an implementation of the wiki idea, corporatised, privatised and packaged up as an ‘enterprise level collaboration tool’.

Apparently the free software Media Wiki (it’s open source, don’t you know), the software that built wikipedia the software that spawned a thousand clones, isn’t good enough for Goldsmiths. I don’t understand the rational behind the purchasing a proprietary implementation of generic software, when one of the original and best pieces of software out there, the code behind the biggest wiki on the planet, is available for free.

Has the success of Moodle, the free software code that powers the VLE, not sufficiently demonstrated the strengths of open source to Goldsmiths IT purchasers? A couple thousand pounds have been spent on software that could have been obtained for free. The savings made by adopting a free software alternative could have been spent on developing the skills of the IT services team so that they could support and maintain the software.

1. Assuming a New Academic Unlimited User License. Costs estimated from Atlassian website.

This year I get to write a dissertation for my degree course. I’m going to blog the development of my focus of study and my argument here and use my wiki and other tools to share resources I’ve found useful. I can’t wiki my work though - it needs to be all my own effort! But I will be publishing here it after its been submitted - another 10,000 words to add to the global text pool that is the internet.

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