Dmytri Kleiner writes:

"WOS4: The Creative Anti-Commons and the Poverty of Networks"
Dmytri Kleiner

The Wizard of OS conference is currently underway in Berlin, as is to be expected, the fourth edition of this biannual gathering of proponents of free software, free culture and alternative economics has brought together a fascinating group of presenters and participants.

The dominant themes of this year's conference are centred around the work of Lawrence Lessig and his many collaborators in the Creative Commons family of resources and projects, and Yochai Benkler's ideas relating to "commons-based peer-production" or "Social Production" as expressed in his book "The Wealth of Networks."

In his key-note address Lessig presented a history of culture framed in the idea of a "Read-Write" culture, a culture of free sharing and collaborative authorship, having been the norm for the majority of history and having been, over the course of the last century, thwarted and exterminated by Intellectual Property legislation and converted to "Read-Only" culture dominated by a regime of Producer-Control.

Kim Müller writes

Proletarian Management:
Informal Workplace Organization
Kim Müller

The emancipation of the working class can not only be conquered by the working class themselves but the emancipating practices of the working class are of its own making too. So the question about workers autonomy isn’t primarily a political question but a question about organization, and this article deals with concrete and actual workers autonomy and how it exist in Sweden today in the 21st century.

Our main thesis is that the workplace struggles are not first and foremost happening through the mediation of the unions, but through the informal organization that often tend to take place among fellow workers. However, this organization is not something that creates itself; it has to be produced, and can therefore be developed and extended. Our basic assumption has always been that the potentiality of radical anti-capitalist workers’ struggle exist where it is actually taking place. Today this struggle is not carried out under the regime of the unions, but through informal workplace organization, and it is the independent, informal, and immediate character of this struggle that makes it truly radical and anti-capitalist.

Obituary for Pierre Vidal-Naquet

Maurice Ulrich, >l'Humanité

Original French title: "Pierre Vidal-Naquet n’est plus,"
by Maurice Ulrich, translated by Patrick Bolland

An internationally recognised historian, a rigorous and committed intellectual, Pierre Vidal-Naquet was actively engaged in all the struggles for justice in his incessant and courageous search for “fragments of truth”. He died last week [July 29, 2006] at the age of 76.

“It is human beings, real people, who are killed by torture” he told Jean-Paul Montferran in an interview published in l’Humanité on 3 November 2000.

Pierre Vidal-Naquet, who fell victim to a cerebral hemorrhage last Monday passed away on Friday night. He had decribed himself as “an activist historian, determined to participate in society as a full citizen”. He directed his erudite passion to Ancient Greece where the very idea of democracy was born. He also led the most principled struggles of our own times for justice and truth.

Totems without Taboos: The Exquisite Corpse

By Paul D. Miller aka Dj Spooky that Subliminal Kid

Database aesthetics, collaborative filtering,
musical riddles, and beat sequence philosophy
aren't exactly things that come to mind when you
think of the concept of the "exquiste corpse."
But if there's one thing at I want to you to
think about when you read this anthology, its
that collage based art - whether its sound, film,
multimedia, or computer code, has become the
basic frame of reference for most of the info
generation. We live in a world of relentlessly
expanding networks - cellular, wireless, fiber
optic routed, you name it - but the basic fact is
that the world is becoming more interconnected
than ever before, and it's going to get deeper,
weirder, and a lot more interesting than it
currently is as I write this essay in NYC at the
beginning of the 21st century. Think of the
situation as being like this:

in an increasingly fractured and borderless
world, we have fewer and fewer fixed systems to
actually measure our experiences. This begs the
question: how did we compare experiences before
the internet? How did people simply say "this is
the way I see it?" The basic response, for me, is
that they didn't - there was no one way of seeing
anything, and if there's something the 20th
century taught us, is that we have to give up the
idea of mono-focused media, and enjoy the
mesmerizing flow of fragments we call the
multi-media realm. For the info obsessed, games
are the best shock absorber for the "new" - they
render it in terms that everyone can get. Play a
video game, stroll through a corridor blasting
your opponents. Move to the next level. Repeat.
It could easily be a Western version of a game
that another culture used to teach about morals
and the fact that respect for life begins with an
ability to grasp the flow of information between
people and places. I wonder how many Westerners
would know the term "daspada" - but wait - the
idea that we learn from experience and evolve
different behavioral models to respond to
changing environments is a place where complexity
meets empathy, a place where we learn that giving
information and receiving it, is just part of
what it means to live on this, or probably any
planet in the universe. What makes "Exquisite
Corpse" cool is simple: it was an artists parlour
game to expose people to a dynamic process - one
that made the creative act a symbolic exchange
between players.

Some economists call this style of engagement
"the gift economy" - I like to think of the idea
of creating out of fragments as the basic way we
can think and create in an era of platitudes,
banality, and info overload. Even musicians and
artists - traditionally, the ciphers that
translate experience into something visible for
the rest of us to experience - have for the most
part been happy for their work to be appropriated
by the same contemporary models for material
power that have created problems for their
audiences - power and art happily legitimizing
each other in a merry dance of death, a jig where
some people know the rules of the dance, but most
don't. But this "death," this "dematerialization"
- echoes what Marx and Engles wrote about way
back in the 19th century with their infamous
phrase "all that is solid melts into air." Think
of the exquisite corpse concept as a kind of
transference process on a global scale. When you
look at the sheer volume of information moving
through most of the info networks of the
industrialized world, you're presented with a
tactile relationship with something that can only
be sensed as an exponential effect - an order of
effect that the human frame of reference is
simply not able to process on its own. At the end
of the day, the "exquisite corpse" is just as
much about renewal as it is about memory. It
depends on how you play the game.

"Capitalism Has Only Hurt Latin America"
Evo Morales, Der Spiegel

SPIEGEL: Mr. President, why is such a large part of Latin America moving to the left?

Morales: Injustice, inequality and the poverty of the masses compel us to seek better living conditions. Bolivia's majority Indian population was always excluded, politically oppressed and culturally alienated. Our national wealth, our raw materials, was plundered. Indios were once treated like animals here. In the 1930s and 40s, they were sprayed with DDT to kill the vermin on their skin and in their hair whenever they came into the city. My mother wasn't even allowed to set foot in the capital of her native region, Oruro. Now we're in the government and in parliament. For me, being leftist means fighting against injustice and inequality but, most of all, we want to live well.

SPIEGEL: You called a constitutional convention to establish a new Bolivian republic. What should the new Bolivia look like?

Morales: We don't want to oppress or exclude anyone. The new republic should be based on diversity, respect and equal rights for all. There is a lot to do. Child mortality is frighteningly high. I had six siblings and four of them died. In the countryside, half of all children die before reaching their first birthday.

SPIEGEL: Your socialist party, MAS, does not have the necessary two-thirds majority to amend the constitution. Do you now plan to negotiate with other political factions?

Morales: We are always open to talks. Dialogue is the basis of Indian culture, and we don't want to make any enemies. Political and ideological adversaries, perhaps, but not enemies.

SPIEGEL: Why did you temporarily suspend the nationalization of natural resources, one of your administration's most important projects? Does Bolivia lack the know-how to extract its raw materials?

The Other Campaign in Spanish Harlem

RJ Maccani
From Narco News

Inspired by the Black Panther Party and Chicago’s Young Lords, the New
York Young Lords Party launched a surprising first campaign in the summer
of 1969. Called “The Garbage Offensive,” it was designed to force the New
York City Sanitation Department to make more frequent pick-ups in East
Harlem (often referred to as Spanish Harlem or simply “El Barrio”). The
Garbage Offensive won the trust and respect of their neighbors and
garnered the Young Lords Party local and national visibility. Although
inspired by the Black Panther’s community-based programs, the New York
Young Lords didn’t expect to be picking up garbage when they discussed
forming an organization to improve living conditions in their primarily
Puerto Rican neighborhood. Before launching their first campaign, however,
the Young Lords went to their neighbors to find out what they most wanted
to see changed. The Garbage Offensive was the fruit of this dialogue, the
will of the people. Proudly inclusive of their Latino and Black neighbors,
the New York Young Lords’ center of gravity was Nuyorican (Puerto Rican
New Yorkers), and the independence of their homeland, Puerto Rico, a
central concern.

More than 35 years later, El Barrio is home to more than 100,000 people,
half of whom are Latino. New waves of immigrants from around the world and
white gentrifiers have changed the face of El Barrio. Spanish is still its
most spoken foreign language, followed now by Chinese and other Asian
languages, Arabic, and several African languages. Whereas the Latino face
of El Barrio had been primarily the Nuyorican with citizenship, today it
is increasingly immigrants from Mexico and elsewhere, many of whom lack
U.S. citizenship (or any legal status for that matter), who make up its
Spanish-speaking population. Nearly 40 percent of El Barrio’s residents
live below the poverty line. It is here, in this place and at this time
that the Movement for Justice in El Barrio (MJB) is emerging. The radical
reference point and inspiration is no longer the Black Panther Party but
Mexico’s Zapatistas and the national initiative they form a part of, the
Other Campaign.

On The Barricades In May 1968

Karen Moller

From Swans

France was a champagne bottle ready to
explode. The student riots and the subsequent barricading of
the Latin Quarter started the necessary upheaval that shook
that country into the present.

May 1968 started like any other month but after the first
week, it was obvious that dramatic changes were in the air.
I had just finished presenting my new London fashion show to
the wholesale industry and rather than go to bed, I turned
on the radio and heard the first news of the student riots
taking place in Paris.

According to Le Monde, the trouble had begun earlier at
Nanterre, a suburban university. Since worldwide student
unrest was endemic I naturally expected the French students
to be more politicized. Instead, much of their anger
centered on their personal frustrations with university
deficiencies. When their demands were ignored by the
authorities, the students took over the Sorbonne in the
Latin Quarter (the heart of the student area) and raised
barricades. The universities in France, even more so than in
England or the United States, were sacred institutions,
almost like churches. Technically, the police had a right to
enter them, but if they did, they did so with great
discretion. Roche, the dean of the Sorbonne, had panicked
and called on the chief of police, Grimau, to clear out the
students. Grimau was careful; he knew he was not dealing
with Algerians or the poor and unemployed, where he could
get away with murder. Careful or not, the police forcing
their way into the Sorbonne had angered not only the
students, but everyone.

Unable to contain my curiosity, I telephoned Adrienne who
lived in Paris. "Shit!" she said as soon as she heard my
voice. "Right in the middle of Paris they think they can get
away with beating kids and herding them into the paddy
wagons." She urged me to come over. No need to be asked
twice! I arrived in time for the protest march held on the
tenth anniversary of de Gaulle as President. It should have
been a day of celebration for him. Instead, the city took to
the streets with factory workers, students, and ordinary
people in outrage against his government and the
heavy-handed action of the police.

"Formulary for a New Urbanism"
Ivan Chtcheglov

[Translated from the French by the Bureau of Public Secrets from the Newly Published Complete Version]

SIRE, I AM FROM THE OTHER COUNTRY

We are bored in the city, there is no longer any Temple of the Sun. Between the legs of
the women walking by, the dadaists imagined a monkey wrench and the surrealists a crystal
cup. That’s lost. We know how to read every promise in faces — the latest stage
of morphology. The poetry of the billboards lasted twenty years. We are bored in the city,
we really have to strain to still discover mysteries on the sidewalk billboards, the
latest state of humor and poetry:

Showerbath of the Patriarchs

Meat Cutting Machines

Notre Dame Zoo

Sports Pharmacy

Martyrs Provisions

Translucent Concrete

Golden Touch Sawmill

Center for Functional Recuperation

Saint Anne Ambulance

Café Fifth Avenue

Prolonged Volunteers Street

Family Boarding House in the Garden

Hotel of Strangers

Wild Street

And the swimming pool on the Street of Little Girls. And the police station on
Rendezvous Street. The medical-surgical clinic and the free placement center on the Quai
des Orfèvres. The artificial flowers on Sun Street. The Castle Cellars Hotel, the Ocean
Bar and the Coming and Going Café. The Hotel of the Epoch.⁽¹⁾

And the strange statue of Dr. Philippe Pinel, benefactor of the insane, fading in the last
evenings of summer. Exploring Paris.

Wendy Babcock writes:

"Sex Work vs Construction Work"

Wendy Babcock

If you ask most sex workers why they do what (who?) they do, most would tell you it's because a blow job is better ithan no job. I disagree. After trying out other types of work I have to say that a blowjob ISN'T better than no job, a blowjob is better than MOST jobs.

Take construction for example. After 9 years of sex work I decided to try my handjob at... OOPS! I mean, hand at construction. I figured it wouldn't be too different than sex work, as both involved getting physical with a bunch of men, neither required a formal education and, most importantly, they both worked on erections. And since I already had a lot of experience banging, cocking, and screwing nuts that it'd be an easy transition.

I remember my first day doing construction. It was also a lot like my first time doing sex work as I had just spent almost the entire shift getting dirty on my hands and knee's while banging studs. Plus, just like after my first time doing sex work I had trouble walking the next day.
Those weren't the only similarities either. With construction, just like with sex work, the client has to pay up front for his job. As well, it's often difficult for us to estimate just how long each job will take. You've also got to have a lot of skill handling large tools, as well as knowledge on the multiple functions of industrial lubricant. As well, not wearing protection could be hazardous to your health. Another thing I noticed was that johns are quite a lot like floor tiles, if you lay them right you can walk all over them.

Of course, sex work and construction work have their differences, like how only one of these professions left me feeling tired, degraded and exploited.
Plus, the hardhat really messed with my hair.

Critique of Ranking and Listing

Exchange with Kenneth C. Werbin

Geert Lovink, nettime

Since the early nineties I have been engaged in email-based
mailinglists. In the beginning it was a tool for to communicate and
exchange texts and arguments with a growing group of people. I hesitate
to use the word community as I never saw lists as safe areas for
identity building but as arenas of contestation. To me, email lists
were primarily discursive machines, essential in the making of a
networked digital public domain. As it happens things started to get
complicated. Group psychology kicked in, there was 'symbolic capital'
created and people's time and emotions had to be rewarded. Five or so
years ago the study of list cultures emerged. These were not technical,
even though many complained about the technical limitations of list
software such as Majordomo, Listserv and Mailman. It was the limited
complexity of the dialogues, the lack of overview one gets of threaded
discussions that irritated common users who had no emotional investment
in the project.

Even though I had a particular interest in contemporary studies of
German fascism, I never made the link between electronic mailing lists
and the bureaucratic efforts of Eichmann's assistants to list Jews,
gypsies and others. The computer aspect of listing deportees had been
described by Goetz Aly and Karl-Heinz Roth in their brief but excellent
1984 book Die restlose Erfassung (The Nazi Census), which, at the time,
made a big impact on me. As Michael Kater writes in his review (1),
order is the premise of destruction. We all somehow know that Ordnung
by punchcard prepared the path to Auschwitz. But to read all the
details, and then remember, and implement its consequences in everyday
politics is something else. In particular if you've made computing your
passion and profession, as happened to me. Edwin Black's IBM and the
Holocaust from 2001 provided us with the complete history. Far more
detailed, it fails the analytic clarity of Aly and Roth, and political
engagement, as this booklet was part of a poltical campaign against
organizing a census in West-Germany. The collective memory of why
authorities gather data of entire populations, back then, and a broad
resistance was still alive, back then — and vanished so rapidly,
particularly after 911. The resistance in 1970 against a census in the
Netherlands is one of the first campaigns that I remember. My parents,
and in particular my mother refused categorically and explained the
protest to me. The burning of Amsterdam's population register was one
of the many heroic acts of the Dutch resistance that I grew up with.
However, the attack in March 1943 came too late, and the question why
the deportation of Jews was so systematic, so successful, particularly
in my birth town, so proud of its Nazi resistance, could only be posed
in the nineties, and is still a matter of fierce debate.

Hailing from a long-line of Marxist thinkers and activists, as well as
Shoah descendants, Montreal-based Kenneth C. Werbin works as a PhD
student in the Department of Communication Studies at Concordia
University. His nearly finished dissertation, "The List Serves: Bare
Life in Cybernetic Order," probes questions of list culture; arguing
that the Third Reich's engagement of a conjunction of early IBM
computing technology, listing practices, and discourses of
surveillance, identification and control, was the first cybernetic
feedback system for maintaining social order around bare life; and
investigating how the resonance of this conjunction reverberates today.
Also a part-time lecturer, Kenneth participates as a moderator/event
coordinator for the University of the Streets Public Dialogue Series,
and is a student researcher with the Canadian Research Alliance for
Community Innovation and Networking. I got into contact with Kenneth
Werbin in 2005. The context of this exchange was the June 2006 debates
on the nettime list concerning moderation and the growing limits of
email lists in an era in which most users hang out on the Web, play
games on their mobile phones and no longer care about their
over-spammed email inboxes.