tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4245279442880338057.post6249071222903432198..comments2023-11-26T01:12:05.167-08:00Comments on Materials for Two Theories: TIMN and STA:C: Bauwens’ “partner state” (part 1 of 3) . . . vis à vis TIMNDavid Ronfeldthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06488855410947866567noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4245279442880338057.post-92123191440394206452011-07-26T11:24:31.829-07:002011-07-26T11:24:31.829-07:00many thanks to michel bauwens for taking an intere...many thanks to michel bauwens for taking an interest in my post and thus raising it at his own blog, beginning here:<br /><br />http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/david-ronfeldt-in-dialogue-with-the-partner-state-concept/2011/07/25David Ronfeldthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06488855410947866567noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4245279442880338057.post-15325057705772222422011-07-26T11:20:31.758-07:002011-07-26T11:20:31.758-07:00i see that joseph fouche has expanded on his comme...i see that joseph fouche has expanded on his comment above, regarding his experiences with open-source projects (and their occasional tendencies toward oligarchy). to take a look, go to his blog here:<br /><br />http://committeeofpublicsafety.wordpress.com/2011/07/24/inverted/<br /><br />one point he makes is about the tendency of open-source projects to result sometimes in “forking” where a schism arises and some participants go off in their own direction — a point, and term, that is in bauwens’ and carson’s writings too. it catches my eye only to add that this is what anthro literature refers to as “fissioning” — and its a classic dynamic of the tribal form, in which tribes and clans alternate between “fusion” and “fission” over time, in part because of their lack of a central command hierarchy.<br /><br />i’ll have to continue pondering joseph’s other points there about timn matters.David Ronfeldthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06488855410947866567noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4245279442880338057.post-2715137686587095182011-07-26T11:18:37.802-07:002011-07-26T11:18:37.802-07:00kevin, those are pertinent points. many thanks. ...kevin, those are pertinent points. many thanks. i still haven’t read scott’s book, i’m sorry to say. i’ve seen posts about keane’s “monitory democracy” notion, and should have included it in my write-up. that said, i’ll insert update-edits in a day or two to do so.<br /><br />frankly, keane’s term keeps bothering me. i keep thinking it means the reverse of what he intends — that it’s another orwellian name for a surveillance state. so i have to keep correcting my view.<br /><br />but it leads me to add another observation: there’s a set — even a kind of sector —of influential folks out there who are doing a lot of ostensibly democratic monitoring in highly networked, even p2p ways, all quite adept at swarming tactics and at a twisted kind of noopolitik. and they’re not the folks that either timn or p2p theory has in mind as harbingers of a new +n or p2p sector. <br /><br />and who are those folks? lobbyists — mainly meaning the lobbying industry in washington dc, notably along k street. are they pieces of a so-called “monstrous hybrid” in our society? are they instead expressions of what timn and p2p theory identify as emerging dynamics? i don’t know, but my hunch is that, assuming timn and/or p2p are correct, then the lobbying sector will turn out to be a major testing/proving ground.David Ronfeldthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06488855410947866567noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4245279442880338057.post-67099917934285877712011-07-21T01:35:54.622-07:002011-07-21T01:35:54.622-07:00Very thought-provoking.
What Michel calls "...Very thought-provoking. <br /><br />What Michel calls "holoptism" has a lot in common with what would be called "horizontal legibility" in James C. Scott's terminology. One of the barriers to replacing the state with self-organized alternatives is a political culture which results from about six hundred years of ideological conditioning of the citizenry to see things vicariously from a state's-eye view.<br /><br />Another concept that would fit in with the general topic is Keane's "monitory democracy."Kevin Carsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07525803609000364993noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4245279442880338057.post-55589255937863387682011-07-19T09:38:14.625-07:002011-07-19T09:38:14.625-07:00COMMENT PASTED ON BEHALF OF MICHEL BAUWENS (SENT V...COMMENT PASTED ON BEHALF OF MICHEL BAUWENS (SENT VIA EMAIL):<br /><br /><br />Regarding Joseph comment.<br /><br />The open source governance ecology refers to 1) the community of contributors its code commons and collaborative infrastructure; 2) foundations and nonprofits which maintain the projects infrastructure 3) an enterpreneurial coalition. Josef's comments pertain to the first aspect, and do not exhaust the wide variety of governance modes that are for example highlighted by the research of George Dafermos. Benevolent dictatorships are but one modality and misnamed as they are not command and control hierarchies and usually involve post-facto control of the permissionless production process. Second, the foundations have a wide variety of democratic mechanisms such as election, rotation, etc ... The real issue is the third aspect, i.e. how far do the businesses influence the community, which may consist of its employees, and the foundation, which it may partly fund ...<br /><br />But, the governance of open source models, now emigrating to physical production through shared design practices, do not have to be in any way 'perfect' in order to exert an influence. The english revolution of 1688 effected institutional change by changing power to the pre-existing manufacturing and financial/commercial networks, creating the conditions for industrial capitalism to emerge. Similary, social movements of the future may effect change by locating power in the emerging p2p civil society networks, a substantial number of them functioning in similar ways to open source projects, or as is now the case in europe, though the popular assembly model.<br /><br />Michel BauwensDavid Ronfeldthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06488855410947866567noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4245279442880338057.post-13525929974623126172011-07-19T09:34:34.258-07:002011-07-19T09:34:34.258-07:00hey joseph, good to hear from you. thanks for sto...hey joseph, good to hear from you. thanks for stopping by, continuing to take an interest in timn.<br /><br />your cautions and caveats about open source practices make sense to me (and i think i've seen similar concerns raised at the p2p blog on occasion).<br /><br />as for your 95 theses: since i read your blog, i saw them a while ago. a fun read. i liked 87-89, but had problems with 72-73. <br /><br />btw, i've just received a comment from michel bauwens regarding your remarks. i'll post it next, on his behalf, since blogger wouldn't cooperate with his own efforts to leave a comment here . . .David Ronfeldthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06488855410947866567noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4245279442880338057.post-71085937770892400692011-07-17T19:35:04.238-07:002011-07-17T19:35:04.238-07:00As an observer and sometime participant in the fre...As an observer and sometime participant in the free/libre/open source software phenomenon over the past 15 years, I doubt that the wide spread adoption of open source organizational principles would change the broader society. Most open source projects still function on the leadership principle: they either have a dictator or an oligarchy that direct them. They're "lumpy" networks instead of true P2P mesh networks. <br /><br />This model is enforced either by software mechanism or convention. The traditional storage repository for an open source project's source code was a centralized version control system, a mix of archive, UNDO button, and software delivery mechanism. A small minority of developers, often only one, could make changes to the code stored in the VCS. The rest could only read the source code: if they wanted to make a change, they had to go through one of the developers with change (or "commit") rights to the VCS.<br /><br />Linus Torvalds, the Finnish creator of the Linux operating system, introduced a "distributed" VCS called "git" which did away with the centralized repository in favor of many repositories distributed across the Internet. In theory, changes can be "pushed" or "pulled" from each P2P repository because each one is equal from a purely technical perspective. However, in practice, the repository of an incumbent dictator like Torvald's is more equal than the others because Linus is a celebrity and the others aren't. Others use Linus' version and pull from his repo because he's Linus. He controls Linux's development even in a P2P environment because he is a dictator by convention.<br /><br />I played around with these and other aspects from a TIMN perspective in 95 theses I compiled earlier this year:<br /><br />http://committeeofpublicsafety.wordpress.com/2011/03/27/95-theses-again/Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com