What I didn’t quite say in my first open source related public talk…

Well, I walked into the conference room at CRIM for my little talk about OpenJournaL last night and immediately began deciding to ditch my written presentation and just have a talk with these folks. The guys that straggled in were all different degrees of polite and friendly, bi-lingual geeks; and after a few minutes of programming-speak and acronyms it was clear that my communications theory about how open source interacts with monopolies of knowledge was the wrong place to start.

I left my notes in my bag on the seat next to Elran and stood in front of our very own Open projected huge and high quality on a giant screen embedded behind me in the wall, and faced the room of linux users and local leaders with only a few laptops and a small mic between us. I started out just trying to introduce the idea of the site: our intention to open up the act of writing, and to open up boundaries between disciplines, and to draw open source into the communication discourse in some different ways.

(communication discourse: all those people and texts that talk about communication. The field of Communication Studies)

At Open we’re trying to make a space that bridges huge communication gaps between geeks of different kinds (theory, literature, health, law, or code geeks), and between geeks and non-geeks. And the deep need for this kind of space was made all the more evident by the few gaps and snags we met, and collectively surpassed, last night.

The most interesting moment for me was in a back and forth with Brad from Ubuntu and Hubert, an independent software consultant, about how personal ego and programmer-brain can get in the way of the expansive potential of open source. We talked about how the design of a graphic user interface- the face of the software being made, or of the bug-reporting site for the software- can fail to communicate with Others who aren’t already part of the in-club. And this echoed the comments I’d already made about my intentions with the evolving design of Open- of trying to keep some white space, and of trying speak in a language that’s not too theory-y and alienating.

The interesting thing to realize is that we all have this potential to speak in domain-specific or peer-specific language. We all know specialized terms, and we can all get so used to them we forget how they sound to an equally-intelligent outsider. It is even possible to assume that we understand each other, because we translate their phrases through our own assumptions and biases. (Never assume, my grade 8 teacher told the class, or you’ll make an ass out of u and me.)

For example, have you ever watched a television show with other people and realized by the way they are making fun of it that they are missing some information about how it works, or what its intention is, or what the real character relationships are? Or have you ever realized in the middle of a fight (with your mom, say) that the other person isn’t accusing you of the thing you are angrily defending yourself against? We have no means of ‘perfect’ communication between humans, we’re all alone in these bodies of ours, we make mistakes all the time.

The two examples I just described are situations where the gap between the message sent and the message being received becomes apparent, but what happens when it doesn’t? And how do media – the systems we build to enable and extend this flawed communication of ours – interact with our messages? Harold Innis, my favorite communication theorist, says that media distort knowledge when they are structured by monopolies. He suggests we think about how personalities are distorted by power, and how they then support the formation and expansion of monopolies of knowledge (PE in the MS, intro.). A monopoly of knowledge is a fixed version of reality determined by the communicative choices made by an elite (regulations, protocols, etc.) A monopoly of knowledge is formed by the means of communication becoming un-accessible: one-sided. And eventually it is brought down by force.

My suggestion, based on Innis’ theories about public opinion and crisis, is that the open source process offers us the best means of deflating that tendency. Open source software will be continuously improved by surprising perspectives, and so will produce layered media for open source communication- beyond the desktop, or the browser, or the website, other means and metaphors for the network will emerge. This communication will have the potential to bridge gaps in communication (like Unicode already does) but will build layered ways for this to happen over time: gradually and in fits and starts opening up communication between math and other kinds of languages, and between cultures, and between genders.

I hope some of this came across last night, but every failure makes the usefulness of the evolving space/metaphor that is OpenJournaL more apparent.

for Ms. Bertolotti
English Language Arts- secondary 3
Villa Maria High School
May 17, 2005

Services need to be adapted toward the needs of the people. All people with mental illnesses are worthy of quality services to improve their quality of life and health. More of these services can be provided and improved with more financial assistance. In order for people with mental illnesses to progress in society, the government of Canada needs to provide more financial aid to improve the services for the mentally ill.

Firstly, more financial aid is needed for services because there are increasing cases of people with mental illnesses. According to the Minister of Health and Social Services, “For many years one out of five Canadians would develop a mental illness in their lifetime but today, statistics have risen to one out of three Canadians” (Genest, Leroux 5). The number of cases of people with mental illnesses is on the rise. Also, people are living longer and therefore need services for a longer time frame. Statistics Canada identifies that, “In 1920 the average life expectancy was about 60 years old but today, the average life expectancy is at an all time high of 78 years and rising” (Stats Canada). With increasing cases of mental illness and longer life expectancies, more financial aid is needed to increase service availability.

Secondly, more financial aid is needed for services because in addition to the rising number of new cases, many patients have been deinstitutionalized and, therefore need more services and support. Those who would have been institutionalized are in need of different kinds of services. The people who were hospitalized have different conditions than other mentally ill people. Sheryl Bruce, community worker, believes that, “New services are needed to treat these cases of severe and persistent mental illnesses” (Bruce). Although the government was trying to be cost efficient by deinstitutionalizing, it still needs to provide financial aid for the people who had been institutionalized. Because people have been deinstitutionalized, there are more mentally ill in the community who need social services like day centers, family support groups, and vocational rehab. The government still needs to provide financial aid for this group of people in some form or another. Financial aid for services has not increased proportionally since deinstitutionalization. The government should be prepared to provide adequate services since they have deinstitutionalized many patients.

Thirdly, more financial aid is needed for services to allow them to become more accessible. To begin with, people with mental illnesses generally can’t afford to pay service fees because they live well below the poverty level. Welfare does not provide an adequate allowance, as those on welfare are given a maximum of $750 per month for food, rent, and expenses. Although there are free services there are still not enough to meet the demands in their neighbourhoods. The patients can’t resort to other services like private therapy and private lab tests because they are too costly. With more financial aid, the government can improve the free services and provide more of them, making them more accessible.

Finally, more financial aid is needed for services because if people do not receive the needed services, from lack of financial assistance, they will be lead to do things that will harm themselves and society. With low income and the high cost of services and medications, many mentally ill are confronted with poverty and homelessness. Birgit Ritzhaupt, the coordinator of Ensemble, a community service for the mentally ill, explains that, “60% of the homeless are mentally ill” (Bruce). Perhaps the strongest proof comes from The Welfare Information Network, who assert that “1/4 to 1/3 of welfare recipients have serious mental illnesses” (Mental Health). With lack of services many mentally ill are not able to continue working. The Public Health Agency of Canada states that, “In developed countries mental illness is one of the ten leading causes of disabilities.” (Stats Canada). Ironically, if the mentally ill had better services it is possible that they could find fulfilling employment that would help them pay for their needed services. Because people with mental illnesses are not receiving the needed services to be integrated into the workforce, Canada is losing valuable employees. Thirdly, people with mental illnesses often experience drug and alcohol problems. Many mentally ill resort to drug and alcohol abuse because they are not being treated sufficiently. According to Friends for Mental Health, “20 to 50% of people with mental illnesses have drug and or alcohol problems. These problems can cause patients to regress in their condition or cause the illness.” (Friends for Mental Health 9). Lastly, the mentally ill often resort to suicide or other harmful actions. According to B. A. Robinson:

People with mental illnesses are 10 to 20% more likely to kill themselves. 3% of people with severe depression will commit suicide. 25 to 50% of people with bipolar disease will attempt at least once to kill themselves; 19% will actually do it. 10% of those with schizophrenia will kill themselves; 40% have tried to kill themselves. 10% of people with borderline personalities will commit suicide and 80% will be involved with some sort of self mutilation (Robinson).

More services are needed to prevent these harmful actions. By providing financial aid to improve services, people with mental illnesses would not suffer in these ways and in turn, their health would strengthen our society.

With more financial aid from the government, the services for the mentally ill can be improved. These services can be improved with financial assistance. Many of these services are not as good as they could be. The mentally ill deserve to be treated equally and provided adequate services.

Bibliography:

Genest, Sonia and Johanne Leroux. Surmonter un problème de santé mentale au travail. Québec: The Minister of Health and Social Services, 2000.

Statistics Canada. Life expectancy at birth, by sex, by provinces. [Online] Available “http://www40.statcan.ca/l01/cst01/health26.htm” February 2005.

The Welfare Information Network. Mental Health. [Online] Available “http://www.financeprojectinfo.org/win/hard-mental.asp” 2002.

Statistics Canada. Chapter 1 Mental Illnesses in Canada: An Overview. [Online] Available “http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/publicat/miic-mmac/chap_1_e.html” October 2002.

Employees of Friends for Mental Health. Coping with Mental Illness Dorval: Friends for Mental Health, 2003.

B.A. Robinson. Suicide among Persons with Mental Illness. [Online] Available “http://www.religioustolerance.org/sui_ment.htm” February 2001.

McIntosh, Diane. Your Health Matters. (6) vols. City unavailable: GlaxoSmithKline, vol. 1-6, year unavailable.

Interview with: Sheryl Bruce, community worker with the mentally ill.

Some of you might remember the episode of Seinfeld in which George and Jerry are pitching an idea for a T.V. pilot. When asked by T.V. executives what the show is about, George replies, proudly, “It’s about nothing!” Not exactly the answer they were looking for, but it might be an appropriate response to the question of what the Alexander Technique is about.

The Alexander Technique is about learning to do nothing, so that the self is in an available state, one that is not committed to any particular action through unnecessary stability. A state that is free and alive, and from which all actions are possible.

When Alexander described his process of discovery in “The Use of the Self”, he wrote at length of how he had to spend considerable time deciding to do nothing, in order develop the ability to send directions that he could sustain when confronted with the decision to carry out an action. Most of us who have taught the technique for a few years have recognized that patterns of fixity or misuse do not simply appear in preparation for an action. They just become more evident as muscle tone is increased preparatory to movement. In other words, the misuse is evident to the trained eye (hand!) in the student’s postural tone when they are doing nothing. Then, when the postural set occurs, when the unconscious response to a stimulus manifests, we see it obviously demonstrated in the head being pulled back and down.

So if we look at a definition of the Alexander Technique such as that of F.P. Jones: “A method for changing stereotyped response patterns through the inhibition of certain postural sets,” we see that it is incomplete. If this were all there were to it, then we would all be doing the application approach. As the practitioner participant in Fernande Girard’s Master’s Thesis study on the experience of Contemporary Modern dancers studying the Alexander Technique, I recorded in my journal the following:

When one inhibits the immediate response to a stimulus, one stops the postural set preparing one for a particular act, and returns to a kind of neutral or habitual resting state. Generally speaking, the postural set reflects the habitual resting state, in that the tendency to pull the head back and down while at rest becomes more evident with increased effort. Therefore, someone who pulls his head back and down when moving is usually simply adding effort to a poorly organized resting state. The value of working on an activity is that, in the preparatory set, one can recognize oneself. If one can learn to recognize muscle hardening in preparation for an act, one is halfway to recognizing muscle hardening that is present always. So, after inhibiting the immediate response to the stimulus, in the classical Alexander model, the next step is to decide to do nothing, but to work on sending the directions that will not only prevent the postural set, but will also improve the habitual resting state. So, in the classical model, one spends a fair amount of time, as did Alexander, not trying to do anything, using directions to undo learned imbalance in postural tonus, and only when this is clearly accomplished does one go on to apply the new use in very simple actions, such as moving forward and backwards in the chair. However, it is also possible to learn to prevent the habitual increase in effort preparatory to movement, and then to go ahead and do the movement with the old organization supporting it. One will wind up with a less effortful movement, but one will not change, in any profound way, the underlying organization of the self. This is what I believe is happening in the application approach to the Alexander Technique, in which students are encouraged to immediately apply the technique to an activity. They do in fact see improvement in the activity, but it is simply a diminution of effort, and not the deeper change in global posture that is possible with the classical work in non-doing.

This is not to say that there are not possible actions associated with specific acts that can create problems. The beginning violinist, who lifts his shoulder and stabilizes the violin by contracting his neck, may create a pattern of misuse that will eventually be apparent in his resting state. It is the job of the violin teacher to discourage this as poor violin technique. But once poor technique has become poor use, the way out of the maze is through working on the total pattern that supports violin playing, and only when this is satisfactory, going on to work on the specifics of the act. Total pattern is George Coghill’s term for the organization of the whole which is solicited in support of particular actions; it is the total pattern that we seek to organize through the primary control. This is where our work lies, not in teaching how to do any particular thing, but in teaching the use of the self which supports action. When Alexander said that if you don’t do the wrong thing, the right thing will do itself (or something like that), he could only have been referring to this total pattern, as an act such as playing the violin will certainly not “do itself”.

Of course there comes a time when the improved use of the self is sufficiently developed that it is used to support most quotidian activity. But even then, occasionally at least, certain challenging or stressful activities will still solicit the old use. In this case, it seems to me, the postural set that signals the misuse is still an indication that habitual global misuse has been called forth. It is still not the “how” that needs to be looked at, but organizing the whole through the primary control so that better use can support the challenging situation.

One of my close friends, also a teacher of the Alexander Technique, once related to me how her Zen meditation teacher, a leading authority in the world of Zen, had once intimated to her that, of course, Zen is all about the body. That the open state of the self sought in Zen practice is about learning to be alert, alive and unfixed, so that, eventually, one can move through the world without responding unconsciously to stimuli. One can be more conscious.

In Zen practice, one spends an enormous amount of time in “non-doing”. What is unique to the Alexander Technique is its method for learning to grapple with specific stimuli, through an understanding of the hierarchy of response – the primary control. But after we inhibit the immediate response to a stimulus, we must be careful not to end-gain and leap into doing. We must work on the use of the self in a non-doing manner to improve the resting state, the total pattern. We might not, as Zen practitioners do, sit for hours at a time just sending directions, but we should spend some time in non-doing. And if we want to continue to practice the Alexander Technique, and not simply settle into a new, improved habitual condition, we must continue to do this non-doing work.

It never ends. There is always some previously unrecognized misuse waiting to be discovered as we continue to peel away the layers of the onion.

“I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”.

[And later]:

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”

Both from Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot

To read some more thoughts on the Alexander technique and how its theory and mechanisms relate to the Meisner acting technique, check out Meisner, Alexander and Open Source: Comparing techniques for interaction.

Open source protects the rights of the user of information, (versus proprietary software, which protects the rights of the inventor or, more accurately, the rights of the company which finances the development and distribution of the software,) in a digital environment where that information is effectively endlessly reproducible. Though there are many different types of contracts used by developers committed to open source, the Debian social contract was rewritten by Bruce Perens and Debian Linux developers in a month long email conference in 1997 to serve as the basis for the Open Source Definition.

The Open Source definition consists of ten specific guidelines, which I have included in their complete form here:

1.Free Redistribution: The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.
2. Source Code: The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in source code as well as compiled form. Where some form of a product is not distributed with source code, there must be a well-publicized means of obtaining the source code for no more than a reasonable reproduction cost preferably, downloading via the Internet without charge. The source code must be the preferred form in which a programmer would modify the program. Deliberately obfuscated source code is not allowed. Intermediate forms such as the output of a preprocessor or translator are not allowed.
Derived Works: The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software.
Integrity of The Author’s Source Code: The license may restrict source-code from being distributed in modified form if the license allows the distribution of “patch files” with the source code for the purpose of modifying the program at build time. The license must explicitly permit distribution of software built from modified source code. The license may require derived works to carry a different name or version number from the original software.
5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups: The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons.
6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor: The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.
7. Distribution of License: The rights attached to the program must apply to all to whom the program is redistributed without the need for execution of an additional license by those parties.
8. License Must Not Be Specific to a Product: The rights attached to the program must not depend on the program’s being part of a particular software distribution. If the program is extracted from that distribution and used or distributed within the terms of the program’s license, all parties to whom the program is redistributed should have the same rights as those that are granted in conjunction with the original software distribution.
9. License Must Not Restrict Other Software: The license must not place restrictions on other software that is distributed along with the licensed software. For example, the license must not insist that all other programs distributed on the same medium must be open-source software.
*10. License Must Be Technology-Neutral: No provision of the license may be predicated on any individual technology or style of interface.

“The Debian social contract clearly prioritizes the rights of users, to the point at which it recognizes that many Debian users will choose to work with commercial software in addition to free software. Debian promises not to object or to place legal or other roadblocks in the way of this practice. The basic principle is nondiscrimination against any person, group of people, or field of endeavor, including commercial use.” (Weber 86)

The user can install for free then make changes to the software that make sense to them, and then, so long as they keep the original developers names in place, they are also free to sell it as their own.

The license Richard Stallman wrote for the Free Software Foundation includes another clause which takes the open source logic further, or perhaps just in a slightly different direction.
It does not allow the use of GPL’d code in any proprietary implementation at all. It is not permitted under the GPL to combine a free program with a nonfree program unless the entire combination is then released as free software under the GPL. This last point is sometimes referred to as the “viral clause” of the GPL.(Weber 49, and http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html).
This element of open source’s struggle has garnered much attention and debate. The decision to not include the viral clause in the Open Source Definition was a major point of controversy between open source developers. This choice represents a pragmatic decision to allow different communities with different values to interact with the process.

These are two major branches of this process, but there are many others, each one premised on a group or individual’s idea of the right or best way of doing things.

An ecology of options has flourished around this swelling resource of source code, changing the environment within which companies compete and individuals communicate. Software was always being written by other people than those employed by Microsoft or Apple. Open source lets loose a floodgate of knowledge by offering up their architectures for others to learn from or begin to build with. And not just the source code, but the documentation of most open source projects is opened and collaboratively expanded as well, so what they can show is a way of coordinating contributions, and of using the Internet to ride and survive and even prosper from the formations of our connectivity.

Open source makes the best meaning of all the possible connectedness of the Internet, I think.

In his paper on information society studies, Alistair Duff quotes from Eugene Garfield’s 1979 definition of the term information society. An information society, wrote Garfield, is one in which “the rapid and convenient delivery of information is the ordinary state of affairs” (Duff 139). We commonly speak today of information societies, recognising that there is no one global information society: rather, a few privileged information societies exist mostly in the West, while much of the rest of the world exists in a state of information poverty. Attempts made in scholarly articles to explain the reasons for this digital divide, and suggestions made for overcoming the divide, are influenced by how we in the West define and construct a modern information society in our own world. Our writings on information societies are often concerned with the conditions necessary for the development of an information society, as well as the ethical dilemmas surrounding information societies in terms of both access to information and the protection of the integrity of this information.

Articles on information societies can thus be divided into three broad subject areas: in-depth definitions and redefinitions of what constitutes an information society, the impact of political involvement and national policies on the development of information societies, and the ethical issues stemming from the activities of an information society, including the extension of resources to developing and third world countries. A review of some of the recent literature on these topics follows, placing particular emphasis on how the four themes outlined above are treated by various experts in the field of information society studies.

Definitions and redefinitions of an information society

Definitions of the term information society can be found as early as Garfield’s writings in the 1970’s and are in almost every article written on the subject today. This literature review began with Garfield’s rather open definition, which still remains fairly accurate. In her paper, “Navigating the information society”, presented at the IATUL 2000 conference, Joyce Kirk proposes a definition of the information society that encompasses the work of a few writers in the field of information studies; her inclusive approach is perhaps representative of recent attempts to include multiple ideas and perspectives in the evolving concept of an information society. Kirk begins with Michael Buckland’s definition of the word information. As Kirk summarises, information is categorised by Buckland as a thing, as a process, and as knowledge itself (8). Kirk combines these categories with Frank Webster’s five perspectives on an information society. A full information society thus offers access to all aspects of information, Kirk implies. “Most of [Webster’s] perspectives focus on information-as-thing,” Kirk admits, but “technologies are continually evolving to provide access to information in different forms and to facilitate the sharing of tacit knowledge” (8). Thus, while Kirk concludes that our information societies are largely in the beginning stages, her definition of the terms also allows for, and indeed points towards, expansion beyond these limits into the realm of information-as-process and information-as-knowledge.
Evelyn Kerslake and Margaret Kinnell posit a more simple definition of the information society in their article, “Public libraries, public interest and the information society: theoretical issues in the social impact of public libraries”. They refer to the definition used by the National Working Party on Social Inclusion in Britain, which emphasises heavy use of information by most individuals, the use of compatible technology, transmission of information, and ease of communication across geographical distances (163). According to this definition, current information societies are, as Kirk would agree, in the developmental stages: access to information for most individuals in most places is still largely up for debate.

The effect of national policies on the development of an information society

Nick Moore, in his article entitled “Policies for an information society”, posits two models of the modern information society with respect to national policy. The first model Moore explores is based on the market-led economy. In this model, the state is merely a catalyst for the development of the information society: the private sector directs the development, placing the general public in the position of consumers of privatised sources of information. This inevitably leads to competition; moreover, since the private sector “mobilizes the capital [and] makes the investment decisions,” they also reap the profits by targeting consumers, even “shaping individuals’ consumer preferences” (22). The second model, which Moore endorses, relies on a definition of the information society as an interaction of factors, and as a co-operation between political figures, private industry, and the general population. Moore believes this model is more supportive of true growth and a stable future, reasoning that information has become “a key element in the whole fabric of a society,” and the development of this society should be regulated to include everyone who is a part of it (24). Moore closes his article by referring darkly to the situation in the market-led economy of his home country, Britain. By continuing to follow what he calls the “dogma of de-regulation,” Britain has failed to produce the properly inclusive political and economic infrastructure that supports an information society (24).
Martin Dutch and Dave Muddiman expand on Moore’s criticisms of the British government’s approach to the information society in their article, “The public library, social exclusion and the information society in the United Kingdom”. They propose that the information society, as it currently exists, re-enforces and even exacerbates social exclusion in Britain, and that the only response is government intervention to regulate resources and facilitate both access to information resources and education about the uses of these resources. Evelyn Kerslake and Margaret Kinnell agree that the British information society can exacerbate social exclusion in their article, but add that the solution to this need not be direct government intervention. Rather, they argue that libraries, particularly public libraries, need to fill the gaps of the current information society. In Kerslake and Kinnell’s opinion, the current information society’s focus on economic profit and market operations in general leads the government to ignore the basic right of citizenship providing universal access to information: the development of technology beyond the means of many inhibits them from participating in the world of information resources that Britain and other information societies are developing (164). The library has a responsibility to offer access to and instruction in information technology to all, countering the predominant, and government-endorsed, view that information is largely a commodity (164).
The national policies of the Canadian government are explored in a brief article from a 1997 edition of Feliciter. Canada, according to Michelle J. Schoffro and Samantha Boswell, has a reasonably clear protocol for government involvement in order to ensure that “all Canadians … participate in the emerging information age” (30). National organisations also recognise that this is not necessarily the case: the fact that the Information Highway Advisory Council speaks of the fact that “anyone should be able to access” resources indicates that the exclusion of some is a reality that must be addressed (30). The government responded with state-sponsored, professionally run social and educational programs. These include LibraryNet, a web-based program designed to link Canadian libraries to one another and to the information highway, and to guide the creation of further information resources, and community access programs, which help to connect rural Canadian communities with the Canadian information world affordably, and to teach them the skills they need to become a part of Canada’s information society. Agreeing with Kerslake and Kinnell, Schoffro and Boswell believe that librarians, with the aid of governments, “are information navigators, creators of content, allies of the local community, and, above all, teachers” (31).
Sung-Gwan Park’s article on Korea offers another perspective from Moore’s, with respect to the theory that government regulation is a necessary part of information society development. Park posits a threefold approach to the development of a healthy information society, encompassing human, social, and political factors. He then explains how over-regulation by the authoritarian Korean government has thwarted the development of a healthy information society despite technological advancement and access to the Internet. “The problem of information society,” Park explains, “does not solely exist in the matter of technological provision” (191). Often, a particular government’s preoccupation with prestige leads, as it has in Korea, to an inordinate amount of money and resources being put towards technological expansion, resulting in inadequate development of other areas of an information society. As Ben Patrazzini and Mugo Kibati further argue in their article, “The Internet in developing countries”, some countries that have accessibility to the Internet in capital cities do not even extend phone lines into rural areas, perhaps believing that the appearance of connectivity in major areas is adequate (36). The fact that in some places local phone service, if it exists, is under monopoly conditions, does little to further advance Internet access and lower prices (33).
Park, Petrazzini and Kibati’s views are echoed, somewhat strangely it might seem, by Seamus Grimes in his article about Ireland, “Rural areas in the information society: diminishing distance or increasing learning capacity?” Grimes blames what he calls “technological determinism” for Ireland’s sluggish information resource development, which is similar to Park’s criticism of Korea’s focus on technology at the expense of adequate social infrastructure and education (11). Grimes also argues that the country’s citizens receive little or no support on their path down the information highway, citing the predominance of competition rather than collaboration between companies as an example of how the information society, unsupervised, can divide people perhaps more than it brings them together (8)
In his article, “UNESCO and human resource development for the ‘Information Society’” Ian Johnson reviews the situations in a number of developing countries with respect to information access and technological advancement. Specifically, Johnson focuses on the aid provided by UNESCO, which helps to provide some countries with both money to invest in education and technology, and an educated workforce to guide their country’s development. UNESCO and affiliated organisations help set up academic information science programs, maintain curriculum guidelines for these, as well as meetings of professionals in the field to compare research, study, teaching, advances in the field. UNESCO, then, can step in where individual national governments fail, or fall short, of the guidance necessary to develop a country’s information resources.

Ethics: Implications of life in the information society and international development

From the literature thus far, equal access to resources in the information society is closely related to national policies regarding information technology. Those who are prevented access, both in the developed and in the developing world, are those in rural areas, those from lower income brackets, and those who do not have the literacy or education tools to participate in the information society. Considering that the information society and information technologies have the most to offer these areas with respect to communication and education tools, most articles that address this issue agree that this is a problem that must be resolved.
Rafael Capurro writes, “the freedom of information, at the core of every free human society, is an important ethical, legal and political question with a worldwide impact” (258). His involvement with UNESCO’s forum on information ethics and the International Center for Information Ethics leads him to conclude that there are grave problems with information societies, as they currently exist. These include language barriers (information resources being predominantly in English), lack of availability and affordability of technology, abuse of information for criminal purposes, lack of information literacy, and abuse of privacy (263). He also proposes, however, that information resources such as the Internet, when they are accessible to all through the work of some of the international organisations Capurro himself supports, offer possibilities for the expansion of information societies to include all citizens. “Due to its interactive and decentralised nature,” writes Capurro, “the Internet can provide the framework for a new kind of world society” (275).
Ben Petrazzini and Mugo Kibati briefly allude to information society ethics in their article, expanding on one of Capurro’s stated problems with the development of a global information society. They attribute lack of access to information resources to, most importantly, the high cost of Internet service providers. The high costs of both setup and operation, coupled with the reality that some countries must connect through a leased line based in the United States, mean that, in countries where a lack of government regulation prevents market competition, access to the Internet comes at a price many cannot afford (36). The question of government intervention thus becomes more nuanced: some regulation is necessary to protect access to information resources (this can backfire in places like Korea, Park reminds us), but so is some free-market competition, both locally and internationally, to ensure that the price of information access is reasonable. Ethical issues in information society studies thus also include not only an evaluation of government support and funding, but also an evaluation of how particular governments or types of governments may exacerbate the digital divide.
Grimes’ article on the information society in Ireland offers a final, valuable perspective on ethical issues in information society studies. He offers user resistance as another obstacle to be overcome in order for the information society to advance and expand. Not only are many people in many places reticent to trust something that relies so heavily on lack of face-to-face contact, but many people in smaller societies fear assimilation into a global society. They further fear that inclusion in the information society will mean embracing technology without social and economic context (7). Any information society will have to address these issues before they hope to reach all people and engage them in a new information environment.
To conclude, current debate about life within, and without, information societies centers around three broad subject areas: the problem of defining the term information society, the national and political concerns about supporting a developing information society, and the ethical dilemmas that even a fledgling information society uncovers, the most glaring of which is the digital divide. There is much yet to be written on the conditions necessary to build an information society, and on how the emerging information societies can be used to facilitate information exchange, education, literacy, and some measure of global information equality.

Works Cited

Capurro, Rafael. “ Ethical challenges of the information society.” International Information and Library Review 32 (2000): 257-276.

Duff, A. S. “The status of information society studies in the information science curriculum.” Library Review 51.3/4 (2002): 139-148.

Grimes, Seamus. “Rural areas in the information society: diminishing distance or increasing learning capacity?” Journal of Rural Studies 16.1 (2000): 13-21.

Johnson, Ian M. “UNESCO and human resource development for the ‘Information Society’.” Education for Information 16.3 (1998): 237-242.

Kerslake, Evelyn and Margaret Kinnell. “Public libraries, public interest and the information society: theoretical issues in the social impact of public libraries.” Journal of Librarianship and Information Science 30.3 (1998): 159-167.

Kirk, Joyce. “Navigating the information society.” Virtual Libraries; Virtual Communities: IATUL Conference, Queensland University of Technology, 3-7 July 2000. Ed. J. F. Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 2000. 1-15
http://educate.lib.chalmers.se/iatul/proceedcontents/qutpap/kirk_full.html

Moore, Nick. “Policies for an information society.” ASLIB proceedings 50.1 (1998): 20-24.

Norris, Pippa. “Information poverty and the wired world.” The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 5.3 (2000): 1-6.

Park, Sung-Gwan. “Disarticulations in the information society: barriers to the universal access to information highways in developing countries.” International Information and Library Review 29.2 (1997): 189-199.

Petrazzini, Ben and Mugo Kibati. “The internet in developing countries.” Communications of the ACM 42.6 (1999): 31-36

Schofford, Michelle J. and Samantha Boswell. “The library: the heart of the information society.” Feliciter 43.6 (1997): 30-33.

In Chapter 7 of her book, From Gutenberg to the Global Information Infrastructure: Access to Information in the Networked World, Christine Borgman writes that libraries often “risk being victims of their own success” (194). When libraries function optimally, they offer services that can easily go unnoticed by the general public. Processes such as cataloguing, acquisition of materials, and document and archive preservation are frequently taken for granted when they are done properly. Writes Marcia J. Bates, “the average person […] never notices the structure that organizes their information, because they are so caught up in absorbing and relating to the content” (1045). At the dawn of the 21st century, libraries increasingly also risk being victims of the success of the information society, which has bred a “Google generation” of users who believe themselves equipped to navigate the choppy waters of a sea of information. Libraries are left on the shore, their librarians wondering how to serve a society that believes them to be superfluous. At the same time, however, the information society clearly needs the values and skills of the library profession and its institutions. The information society may appear adequately organized to serve the people, but as Jose-Marie Griffiths points out in her article, “Back to the Future: Information Science for the New Millennium”, information sources such as the World Wide Web are analogous to “the Library of Congress with all its materials shelved randomly, or […] with all the materials in large unorganized piles on the floor, with pages torn out!” (26). Clearly, the information society presents librarians and the library with occasions to define themselves in new ways. It is affecting how they view themselves, their mission and values, their processes of training professionals, and their ideas about information access, preservation and organization. How they are responding to these changes are as complex as the changes themselves, and are but briefly treated below.

In her paper presented at the fifth Australian Library and Information Association Biennial Conference, Mairéad Browne proposed that shared values, and not professional qualifications, should unite members of the ALIA. She affirms the reality of the information society’s impact on libraries and the historical role of the librarian as mediator, observing that “the shift in the nature of information resource and the means of access now available makes it clear that for much of the use of resources our mediation role is not needed – or perceived to be needed” (23-24). Perception is key: even librarians themselves sometimes do not see how their skills are relevant in the information society. Browne suggests that librarians need to adopt an amended set of values that recognizes both the historic value of the library as an institution and the new role of the institution and the profession in the information society. These values should include a commitment to ensure “access, security and freedom of information, […] the preservation of personal rights, […] the protection of the public’s right to know, […] the preservation of worthy information” (29-30). We should also value the protection of the public in view of commercial interests in information, the security and secrecy of certain types of information, and the concept of intellectual property. According to Browne, “all information workers take a position on these values” and they can thus unite “people with common interests […] as we move further into the information society” (30).

Browne’s proposal may seem, as she herself describes it, “radical,” but it is not dissimilar to aspects of the library’s historical mission as described by Richard Rubin (31). Rubin writes that the mission of a library traditionally has included the preservation of materials of a certain type, the public use of information resources (although the definition of “public” has changed periodically), as well as outreach programs to promote the growth and development of a certain community (this community may be the general public itself or a particular group of scholars in a particular field of research and debate). The core concepts of document preservation, public access to resources, and contribution to community development remain the same: only the ways in which libraries and librarians apply these concepts are changing, just as Browne maintains that values remain and only applications of these values evolve. Whereas once librarians may have had to protect countless physical manuscripts from destruction, they may now try to protect the intellectual content of works, and access to these works; where they once strove to serve a particular group of people in a geographic area, they are now adapting to larger “groups” not necessarily bound by geographical limits. Perhaps most importantly, where concern was once for libraries to contain as many physical items (and therefore as much information) as possible, the sheer volume of available information (not always in print sources in a physical location) in modern society calls for librarians to be the ones to discern what kinds of information are valuable and where such information can be found.

The core values of the librarian and of the library itself have not changed as much as it may seem, then; rather, the changes are in the way these values are adapted to daily life in modern society. In this changing environment, the training needed to prepare library and information professionals must also necessarily adapt. As Nancy Van House and Stuart A. Sutton explain in their article, “The Panda Syndrome: An Ecology of LIS Education”, the field of Library and Information Studies education “is operating in an extremely dynamic and highly competitive environment” (140). As the professional opportunities for librarians develop, LIS education must similarly develop to prepare its graduates for the fields in which they might find themselves. If it does not, if it fails to adapt to a changing world, Van House and Sutton predict it will become essentially extinct, no longer relevant in a world in which information professionals are needed to perform a variety of jobs for which traditional library education cannot prepare them.

Many scholars and experts are proposing various changes to adapt the library and information studies field to the reality of the world for which it prepares its graduates. Numerous LIS schools across North America are exploring different options for LIS programs, including streams of specialized study, information technology courses, and management, business, and education applications. As these changes proliferate, they raise the larger question of where the LIS discipline belongs in the academic world. One option is to move towards identifying LIS schools as professional programs and away from identifying them as part of an academic discipline. C. D. Hurt argues that LIS schools and business schools could ally themselves for mutual benefit; alternatively, he also maintains “library science has a bright future in academia, but only if the opportunity to articulate its place in the university or college is not squandered” (180). In my opinion, there is no harm in exploring these and other options: individual schools can define themselves as they feel appropriate. At McGill, for instance, LIS falls under the Faculty of Education. This is one option, and it is an option that works for us. Increasingly, “the distinction between the library and the classroom may […] become obstructive, and may need finally to be minimized or even removed”, as Ross Atkinson points out (11). Different focuses may work for different library schools in different cities and countries. The most important change for LIS education, then, is to focus on teaching skills for a more diverse professional experience. Where LIS education belongs in the academic world is possibly a moot point: what is important is that each LIS school focuses on subjects and applications that will help it serve the community of which it is a part.

The information society is also affecting how libraries are responding to their users’ information needs. Specifically, it is affecting librarians’ ideas about such things as information access, control, organization, preservation, and usefulness. Writes Christine Borgman, “the present challenge is to support the social goals of democratic societies in a new technological environment for communication” (170). Libraries are far from immaterial in modern society; rather, they have a unique ability to protect the public’s access to information resources, to retrieve specific kinds for specific needs, and preserve valuable historical information for future generations. North America may seem to be the ultimate democratic environment where everyone has equal access to resources, but this is not always an accurate description of the world as a whole, or even of North America itself. During our group discussions for this class, for instance, I learned that users of a public library in Shanghai might be charged upwards of 200 Canadian dollars for the answer to a reference question, or for the use of a reference book. Borgman points out how “as knowledge becomes a form of capital, principles of open access to information in democratic societies also are being challenged” (207). This is one of the areas in which modern libraries can distinguish themselves: in a world where wealth is distributed unfairly, and even the most “advanced” societies disallow or restrict access to certain types of information, libraries, especially public libraries, can help ensure access to information. Libraries therefore continue their historical role as educators and preservationists of culture. While access to library resources may once have been a privilege restricted to scholars, Roman citizens, religious clerics, whites, or any other dominant group in society, libraries are now uniquely able to extend their resources to all cultures and nations. Moreover, in the free, universal, but disorganized environment of the World Wide Web, librarians are needed more than ever to sift through millions of pages of information (clogged by big-business alliances and paid advertising) and retrieve that which is relevant. A library’s role may thus be less that of an information provider and more of, as José-Marie Griffiths terms it, an “information interpreter” (27).

As we have seen, the role of the library in the information society is complex. Libraries will always, in my opinion, continue to function in ways that reflect the core values of the library profession: as librarians, we will continue to educate, inform, instruct and nurture the societies that our libraries are a part of. As these societies develop in the information age, the ways in which we pursue our values will develop as well. Librarians – and libraries – will remain important as long as we try, as we are now trying, to incorporate the benefits of life in the information society into our long history of service to civilization. Tefko Saracevic suggests to information science professionals that their greatest success will be if they can “integrate systems and user research and applications” (1062). Libraries are in a perfect position in the twenty-first century to guide and facilitate this integration; in doing so, we can begin to remind the world how important library and information services are in all their forms, regardless, and sometimes precisely because of, the changing times.

Works Cited

Atkinson, Ross. “Contingency and contradiction: the place(s) of the library at the dawn of
the new millennium.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and
Technology 52.1 (2001): 3-11.
Borgman, Christine L. “Whither, or Wither, Libraries?” From Gutenberg to the Global
Information Infrastructure: Access to Information in the Networked World. Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press, 2000. 169-208.
Browne, Mairéad. “Threat or promise? The information society and the information
professions.” Australian Library Journal 48.1 (1999): 17-32.
Griffiths, José-Marie. “Back to the future: information science for the new millennium.”
Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science 26.4 (2000): 24-27.
Hurt, C. D. “The future of library science in higher education: a crossroads for library
science and librarianship.” Advances in Librarianship 16 (1992): 153-181.
Rubin, Richard E. “From Past to Present: The Library’s Mission and its Values.”
Foundations of Library and Information Science. New York: Neal-Schuman, 1998.
207-264.
Saracevic, Tefko. “Information Science.” Journal of the American Society for
Information Science. 50.12 (1999): 1051-1063.
Van House, Nancy and Stuart A. Sutton. “The panda syndrome: an ecology of LIS
education.” Journal of Education for Library and Information Science 37.2 (1996):
131-147.

today Professor Rae Staseson sent me a link to this website, Kidd of Speed, about long rides into the ghost town at Chernobyl. ‘Elena’ lives in Kiev, and rides her motorcycle, and tells histories with photos and her own sweetsad wit. I read her chapters about Chernobyl, and digging at WWII battlegrounds , and the Orange Revolution, and I thought this is what the Internet is for.

I also thought about a paper I had written last year about a Pedestrian methodology- about ways of moving up to and around a subject that build on the methods described by Meaghan Morris in Things to Do With Shopping Centers and Doreen Massey in A Global Sense of Place.

Methods of moving through and of attempting to grasp mediated spaces are explored in both “Things to do With Shopping Centers” by Megan Morris and “Power-Geometry and a Progressive Sense of Space” by Doreen Massey. In “Things to do with Shopping Centers,” Morris’s narrator is a pedestrian feminist encountering Australian suburban commercial space. Her method is a kind of leisurely, and sometimes fretful, motion. In Massey’s “Power Geometry,” she adds a next dimension to “easy and excited notions of generalized and undifferentiated time-space compression” (63) by suggesting that this experience exists relative to a power structure. Although Massey is clearly drawing on some conceptual principles from general relativity and complexity theory, in a way, her methodology is also derived from the mental movement of a modern pedestrian. Massey and Morris are feminist geographers- they chart the spaces unaccounted for by modern and postmodern theory, and they map the same spaces again from new perspectives.

In “Power-Geometry and a Progressive Sense of Place” Doreen Massey examines the postmodern concept of time-space compression. She does this with a methodological mode that can expand and retract its focus. Several times throughout the text Massey asks the reader to slide their imaginative gaze out into space, and then to sweep back in, close enough to consider time moving at a pedestrian’s pace.

Imagine for a moment that you are on a satellite, further out and beyond all actual satellites: you can see planet earth from a distance and, rare for someone with only peaceful intentions, you are equipped with the kind of technology that allows you to see the colors of peoples eyes and the number on their license plates. …) Furthest out are the satellites, then aeroplanes, the long haul between London and Tokyo and the hop from San Salvador to Guatemala City. (…) Look in closer and there are ships and trains, steam trains slogging laboriously up hills somewhere in Asia. Look in closer still and there are lorries and cars and buses and on down further and somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa there’s a woman on foot who still spends hours a day collecting water” (61).

The narrator of “Power-Geometry” has places to go, things- gaps, flaws, omissions- she wants us to see. She identifies a lack of content, especially social content, in the concept of time-space compression. She deconstructs notions of time-space compression that propose the inequalities of capital as the sole determinant of the subject’s experience of time by introducing the obvious other factors – gender and ethnicity. Massey is clear on this point- she is introducing complexity (60) into postmodern theories of space-time, refracting their logic by drawing in the great chaos of transnational social networks.

This movement guides the reader to a conceptual understanding of the local that looks like a Mandelbrot set of linking networks converging at a locus- never frozen in the Heidiggerian moment of Being, but instead always Becoming. What Massey wants to emphasize about the complexity of time-space compression is, as she puts it, “the power-geometry of it all” (61). This principle allows for a shifting of focus, a kind of scaling analysis that slides along lines of force to examine an object, a location, even an individual perhaps, from different perspectives. It is in the specificity of these geometric connections that Massey identifies the origin of uniqueness:

“The uniqueness of a place, or a locality, in other words is constructed out of particular interactions and mutual articulations of social relations, social processes, experiences and understandings, in a situation of co-presence, but where a large proportion of those relations, experiences and understandings are actually constructed on a far larger scale than what we happen to define for that moment as the place itself (…) Instead, then, of thinking of places as areas with boundaries around, they can be imagined as articulated moments in networks of social relations and understandings.”

Massey makes good on the promise of her sweeping Hubble vision when she pulls her gaze all the way down to the heart of her own local- walking, just like Morris, through a multiple and much loved commercial space. From this setting she sketches “the links between Kilburn and the world” (65), and even stops to look back at the space from which she, as author, held our gaze a moment earlier:

“Overhead there is always at least one airplane- we seem to be on a flight path to Heathrow and by the time they’re over Kilburn you can see them clearly enough to discern the airline and wonder as you struggle with your shopping where they’re coming from.” (65)

Massey walks and wonders, and we get a sense that it is the fruits of those meandering thoughts we are reading now. Perhaps because both reading and writing are like walking in some ways when the narrative eye swoops into the sky and around the globe it still keeps the rhythm of the woman walking and imagining.

Massey refers to principles from biology and from modern poetry to counteract unprogressive notions of pace (67)- to argue that space, like capital, is not a thing but a process. This idea puts space back into time and into multiple, subjective times and “facilitates the conceptualization of the relation between the center and the periphery” (67). Space, when understood in terms of the social networks that traverse and produce it, can retain its specificity without becoming static. In order for an author to represent this idea she must keep moving and keep looking around and back and forth while she goes. To develop what we need according to Massey, “a global sense of the local, a global sense of place,” we have to piece together histories, like Carrington’s history of Corsica, that reflect the endless movements of people, ideas and powers.

In “Things to do With Shopping Centers” Morris sketches the outlines of a history of this kind while thinking about women and shopping. The narrator of “Things to do With Shopping Centers” moves slowly to allow questions, doubts and alternatives to work their way into her considerations. A few paces into “Things to do with Shopping Centers” the narrator realizes that if this chapter could have a subtitle it would be “pedestrian notes on modernity.” Rather than spiraling off into space to map the power geometry of modernity, Morris walks up to, into, and around her object of inquiry. Connected by the act of walking to other bodies, she looks at the space from unexpected, difficult, even exhausted, angles. She builds an understanding of women’s experiences of these spaces, and of the subjective nature of History as her body, step by step, builds an understanding of other bodies in time.

The pedestrian mode allows Morris, like Massey, to see the complexity and contradictions of the shopping centers and of the institution’s conception of their ideal user. Of the anxious or pleasurable experiences of actual users, and of the theories that have tried to contain it and them:

Just like studying women modernists, thinking about shopping centers should be a way to (…) ask not “why does this fall short of modernism” but, “how do classical theories of modernism fall short of women’s modernity?”

This is, I think, the most outstanding question in this chapter, at least for me and my research on open source, and on the Countess Castiglione. Morris begins the endless journey of exploring the gaps in classical modernism by walking beyond the limits of the spaces included in modernist theories. By taking the ambivalence of certain activities- the anxieties of certain pleasures- into consideration: “if walking around for a long time creates absorption in the spectacle, then one sure way to begin from a sharply defined sense of critical estrangement is to arrive at a drive-in center on foot and have to find a way to walk in.” The commodity spectacle of the suburban drive-in center behaves differently and, by doing so, suggests that typical narratives about structures, access, and identities might be limited in their scope.

Morris pauses her progress to question the images produced by any attempt to know Ordinary Woman, or Shopping Woman, or Academic Woman (and we might add Historical Woman, Beautiful Woman, Open Source Woman.) She offers an artifact for our consideration: a photograph, a piece of surveillance, that has been decontextualized and reframed by a marketing discourse about women, consumption and pleasure. This object yokes together the problematic notions that characterize discourses about the relationship between the means of production, the commodity spectacle and women’s identity. At this point the narrator nearly gets stuck in the theory loop. She frets about her role in the production of object-images of women and about her ability to access any woman’s experience by way of feminist theory. She sees herself writing over other bodies, mapping theories onto places where they don’t quite fit. The escape from this eddy of self-doubt- this theory about theory loop- is made possible by a different kind of motion. Morris realizes that “a feminist study ought to be able to occupy this user-designer, consumption-production gap, not to “close” or “bridge” it but to move outside the repetitive terms of the disciplinary polemics it imposes.”

So maybe we should think some more about a pedestrian methodology and about how it might relate to motorcycle methodology or a search and surf and clicking kind of Internet methodology. About the way your mind travels while walking, triangulating your position in space and time. This mental method, when interpreted from inside a body that understands fretting as well as leisure; anxiety, irritation and confusion as well as pleasure; exhaustion as well as curiosity can, I think, find a path beyond repetitive terms. This method is fundamentally related to Massey’s emphasis on the gaze that places a space within a network of social relations.

Morris moves with her subject away from the city, out towards the country town, up to the image of the shopping mall and of Shopping Woman. There follows a shopping mall triad, in which three spaces are yoked together by the author’s subjective experience as well as by systems of production and consumption. Then the analysis focuses on the history of one space: Green Hills Shopping Center. Using the history of the space provided by a local newspaper Morris reconstructs a story about the corporate creation of a collective identity and the destabilization and re-narrativization of a unique community.

By the end of her long walk in and around these shopping centers Morris can suggest that there are stories here that do not obey the transitory, fragmented, insubstantial logic of the swirling commodity spectacle: of the flaneur’s experience of modernity:

I would argue that the proclaimed dissolution of public and private on the botanized asphalt of shoppingtown makes possible, not a flaneuse, since that term is anachronistic, but an experience of “modernity” for women in which it is vital not to begin by identifying heroines and victims (even of conflicts with male paranoia) but rather a profound ambivalence about shifting roles. (88)

Morris sees a female experience of desire in suburban shopping centers that is ambivalent- articulated in terms of sufficiency and confinement, role play and repetition. And so she suggests that a pedestrian narrative about women and consumerism might figure the shopping experience as moving in ways that are more like S&M and less like phantasmagorias and strip-shows.

Meagan Morris and Doreen Massey want to intercede in the loops of theory active in certain realms of cultural studies. Both authors disrupt essentializing ideas about place and, by extension, about people, by employing methods in motion. Whether it is the telescopic and then geometric gaze of “Power-geometry” or the ambivalent gaze of the wide-eyed but critically distant pedestrian, both narrators manage to incorporate the multiplicity of identity and of perspective into their spaces and texts. By moving around their subjects with their bodies and minds they reveal gaps and patterns and blockages and alternate routes and rhythms.

For my final project I would like to think more about pedestrian methodology, about the kinds of information that become apparent when you take your theory on the road, when you walk with it and allow the ideas and images you encounter to intersect with your desire to know and to possess your subject. I would like to walk through the private rooms and public spaces that structured the Countess de Castiglione’s life- to imagine her in her cities and spaces and in her time. To map the networks of narratives of power and desire that combined to make her photography and her life exceptional. I would like to think about the ways cameras and shopping centers are discursively linked in modernity to women and femininity. There is a power geometry that determines Castiglione’s relationship to photography and history’s relationship to her, and I myself am twisted up within it, wanting something from her, and in a position of authority in relation to her- fretting about my own objectifying theories.

In another essay I might like to think more about the relationship between S&M and women’s experience of modernity, but for now I will just suggest, based on my own experience recently rassling with the objectifying desire that dominates the discourse around the Countess’s body and her body of work, that Morris’s idea about S&M might reflect her own experience as a historian.

My questions, then, for the end of this, are: Where do methodologies come from? What kinds of experiences structure them, how do they become reified, and how can we analyze our own methods without ending up “confined by the very terms we are contesting?” (Morris) How is our method related to our desire and what kinds of desire are prominent or possible here, in this time and place?

This paper examines the theory, practice, and policy behind open publishing, beginning with the historical and political context of its development. Open publishing is explored as a philosophy put into practice within Indymedia that allows activists to participate in a discursive realm outside of hegemonic institutions. Yet because inequality and domination have manifested within this space, Indymedia collectives have had to establish editorial policies that require them to negotiate their role as mediators and to answer difficult questions about how values of openness, reciprocity, and horizontal decision-making can be enacted within the construction and management of mediated spaces. Despite the difficulties in dealing with these challenges, the development of editorial policies has no doubt strengthened the Indymedia network in pushing the limits of the Temporary Autonomous Zone, in stimulating the development of new open publishing tools within the open source software, and in creating an opportunity for collectives to better define their purpose and their vision of Indymedia.

Open publishing is a concept, a philosophy, and, in some ways, an ideal that media creators and activists have sought to put into practice. Within discussions about the Internet and its potentials for increasing democracy and equality, open publishing is a concept that is often defined with value-laden language, such as
‘participation,’ ‘free speech,’ and ‘openness.’ Similar to debates around ‘access’ to technology, those around open publishing focus on answering questions as to how these values can be enacted within the construction and management of mediated spaces. This paper will thus begin with a discussion of the principles and values behind open publishing as well as the historical and political context from which it arose. Although there are many contexts and histories behind aspects of open publishing, this paper will speak primarily of its creation and development within the Indymedia network (www.indymedia.org). Whereas the first section of this paper will examine the principles behind open publishing as well as the political motivations and consequences attached to them, the second part will consist of a type of policy analysis of the various policies that have been developed in order to support open publishing. Within the Indymedia network, there have been many debates on what types of policies and practices can help in the realization of a mediated space that reflects the values behind open publishing and the pro-justice (or anti-capitalism) movement. In order to examine open publishing in relation to policy, it will be necessary to explore the role that technology plays, as well as the roles of the various stakeholders, such as Indymedia collectives, audience/collaborators, and the global Indymedia network.

The Source of Open Publishing

Open publishing is the same as free software. They’re both ®evolutionary responses to the privatization of information by multinational monopolies. For software it’s Microsoft. For publishing it’s CNN. For both software and publishing it’s AOL Time Warner. (Arnison 2001: 329)

The concept of open publishing has its roots in the tech world of open source software. Broadly, “open source software” is software where the source code, which is the language that programmers write when creating software, is freely available for consultation, alteration, and distribution. “Freely” here means that it is available at no cost and that it is easily accessible through the Internet. Proprietary software, such as that which Microsoft distributes, is not open source, meaning that it is owned and copyrighted by Microsoft and is not available for those wanting to see how it works or to improve or change it.⁽¹⁾ Beyond this notion of openness with regards to the functioning of the software are the other notions behind open source that are more often linked to its developers and users. Within the open source movement or community, which is how some people refer to it, there is also an emphasis on collaboration. Open source software is built, tested, and updated through the collaboration of many programmers and users, and via the Internet and its decentralized structure. This collaboration is influenced by the value of reciprocity in that if someone uses the source code to create something new, or if they improve on it in some way, they are expected to funnel their work back into the community. This process is sometimes referred to as a “gift economy,” in that there is a cycle of giving and taking that is based on passion for the project, not profit. The creation and growth of the Internet has also been linked to the concept of the gift economy in that many of the Internet’s engineers were not remunerated financially for their work, but instead participated in an economy where many people voluntarily gave time and resources to the project.

This process of creation and management, along with those who participate in it, is often referred to as a social movement because those who are involved in it are also engaged in an ideological struggle (whether or not they see themselves in this way). The early open source movement arose in the 1990s as the information imbedded in technologies that was once open and accessible, or “common” as Dorothy Kidd (2003) refers to it, started being enclosed within the capitalist principle of intellectual property. Those who had worked for years within a system of sharing and collaboration saw this move as one that threatened this open system of innovation and the belief that “technology is a means to liberate information” (Kidd 2003: 57). The ideological struggle is between the open source belief that information is free and the corporate view that information is property. As others have documented, commodification and digitization of information are threatening “the right to communicate openly and democratically” (Mosco 2003: 288). The open source movement, among others, has therefore become one which is engaged in the struggle to maintain the Internet as a decentralized commons in the face of corporate enclosure.

Open Source Meets the Global Justice Movement

It is a common belief among activists that the corporate-run mass media present obstacles to social justice
movements. Although some groups have found ways to get their messages through to the mainstream media, whether through the staging of media spectacles or the funneling of resources into media relations, many groups experience media coverage that shows their actions through a distorted lens. As documented in Dorothy Kidd’s article “Media Meet the WTO Protests,” a group of activists decided that for the 1999 protests against the WTO, they would flip this dynamic. “Don’t hate the media, be the media” is one of the major slogans behind Indymedia, otherwise known as the IMC—the Independent Media Center. Although what is usually thought of now as Indymedia is the www.indymedia.org network of websites, IMC started as a physical center for alternative and independent media-makers to gather during the protests in Seattle, out of which flowed a daily print bulletin, radio broadcasts, and video.⁽²⁾

The IMC website initially started as a newswire for protesters and independent journalists, accessible through the computers at the centre. The network of websites that it has become can trace its beginning to a chance encounter between an Australian media activist and one of the Seattle IMC organizers a month prior to the Seattle anti-World Trade Organization demonstrations. The activist from Australia convinced the web designers to adopt open source software designed by Community Activist Technology (www.cat.org.au) that would allow the public to upload content to the site (Uzelman 2002). The software fit with the activists’ vision of the project because it allowed decentralized media production and content sharing. Whereas traditional Website creation and maintenance required a centralized webmaster or webmistress to upload and organize information, the open publishing software allowed users from any computer to upload, organize, and download the multimedia content. On a practical level, open publishing software permitted the decentralization of work among many media activists and independent journalists, and on an ideological level, it allowed activists to move away from the centralized mass media model, where a few people decide what content is important, to a horizontal, decentralized model that is based on collaboration and reciprocity. As Gal Beckerman says in a Columbia Journalism Review article: “Indymedia organizers had found a technology that fit philosophically with their ideas about how to transform the media. Everyone was now empowered to contribute to the creation of news.” Open publishing⁽³⁾ means that the process of creating the content is transparent to the readers and that they too can get involved, either by writing articles, or by setting up their own site. All content is governed by copyleft, meaning that anyone is free to take and use it for non-profit purposes as long as they give credit to the original author. According to the open publishing philosophy, anyone can be a media manipulator. Also implicit is the open-source-related principle of reciprocity, a concept which cyber-theorist Pierre Lévy sees as integral to virtual communities in that if “we learn something by reading the messages exchanged, we are also expected to provide information whenever it could be of use to someone else” (2001: 103). The historical divide between producer and consumer is narrowed, although, it must be acknowledged, never eliminated completely because of the infamous problematic of the digital divide.⁽⁴⁾

Open Publishing as Praxis

The philosophy of open publishing is central to the work of Indymedia collectives because they seek to create a free information network that is based on a democratic model of production and distribution, in which the plethora of content available is exchanged horizontally. The technology that facilitates open publishing was created within the open source movement, a movement based on the value of equal access to free information— a value much reflected in the media democratization movement. Once this technology was officially in the hands of media activists located in the global justice movement, it was then moulded and further developed to fit the needs and the movement’s philosophies. The point here is that although it may seem as though the software technology influenced the structure of the IMC, it is not the technology which was determinant in this situation, but rather the activists which formed and developed technology in order to fit their needs and values. It is thus important to conceptualize open publishing as a theory, or philosophy, which is put into practice, or praxis, rather than as a technology that determined how the network would develop. As illustrated by the above discussion, the praxis of open publishing reflects the values of the movement—of democracy, reciprocity, free access to information, and collective action. IMC has become what Pierre Lévy calls a “knowledge space.” It is “as much a space within which something happens, as it is a space for something to happen” (discussed in Bach & Stark 2002: 4, emphasis theirs).

Indymedia as a Temporary Autonomous Zone

When speaking of social movements and the Internet, some theorists invoke Habermas’ concept of the public sphere to describe the Internet as a place where groups and networks can create alternative spaces in which to ‘meet,’ discuss and debate, and to carve out visions of alternatives. The attraction to the concept of the public sphere may be connected to its vision of democratic communication, based in notions of access, the narrowing of social inequalities, the focus on common issues, and the privileging of dialogue. A functional public sphere is seen as a “social space wherein public citizens gather as a public body with the rights of assembly, association, and expression in order to form public opinion” (Deluca & Peeples 2002: 128). Yet there are a few limitations in using Habermas’ public sphere theory to describe on-line communities such as Indymedia. Firstly, Habermas’s public sphere is a bourgeois public sphere, which necessarily excludes marginalized groups, women, and those who do not own property. Secondly, it is singular, as in the public sphere. Thirdly, it privileges “rational” speech, a privileging often linked to the marginalization of women’s voices which historically were considered more “emotional” than “rational.” Theorists, such as Nancy Fraser, have engaged with Habermas’s theory, re-vamping it to be of more use in describing the existence of publics and counterpublics (subaltern groups). “Fraser’s conception reverses the terms of Habermas’ analysis so that the object becomes the activity of participants in counterpublics rather than that of participants in an official public sphere” (McLaughlin 1993: 609). This conception of the public sphere is useful here in that it explains how multiple spheres interact in forming and influencing public opinion and in that it acknowledges the importance of subaltern counterpublics.

Also useful in understanding the position of Indymedia within our society is the concept of the Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ).⁽⁵⁾ The TAZ is defined as a place or activity “in which for awhile people may live and work as though many of capitalism’s priorities and the state’s restrictions do not apply” (Downing 2003: 249). This concept, which is used by Downing in his exploration of Independent Media Centers’ links to the socialist anarchist tradition, differs from public (and counterpublic) sphere theories in that it does not focus on how subaltern groups inform public opinion or seek to reform hegemonic structures. Instead, it presents the possibility of revolution through the creation of spaces in which to propose, develop, and live out alternatives. The Internet thus offers the possibility of developing TAZs where people can participate in a discursive realm outside of hegemonic institutions, such as the state, schools and universities, and the mainstream media. Within these carved out alternative spaces, activists can use “computer networks to construct discursive resistance to dominant forces—to build alternative paths, hiding places, impromptu monuments, and unauthorized meeting places online”(Wood & Smith 2001:170). The Indymedia network provides a space online in which open publishing can be used to promote dialogue and communication instead of one-way dissemination. Every time someone publishes something on an Indymedia site they are engaging in the active production of media and are also opening themselves up to feedback on their observations and analysis through the commentary function. They are engaging in a space that eliminates some of the barriers to access with regards to media production, one which challenges the politics of speech found in mainstream society, the commodification of information, and state control of communication networks.

There are many benefits to these types of TAZs that strive to live out the alternatives that they propose (a living out that can be defined as activism in that they seek to not only criticize the dominant social order or to engage with the dominant public sphere, but also try to create something new). However, despite the accomplishments possible within the TAZ there can come a time when the problems associated with the structures of capitalism and patriarchy find their way into the TAZ.

When it comes to Indymedia, because it is a media space where people discuss global social justice issues, sexism, racism, and homophobia are addressed in discussions of social issues and solutions. The intentions of the global justice movements linked with Indymedia are specifically to not ignore that inequality and oppressions exist. What Indymedia activists have sought to do is to create a TAZ where these issues can be discussed, uncovered, and where strategies and solutions can be presented. Open publishing seeks to give people equal access to a space for dialogue and information sharing. Yet as the network mushroomed into an expansive global network made up of close to 100 autonomous collectives, it became clear that inequality, homophobia, sexism, racism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of discrimination, as well as disrespect for the principles behind the project, had found their way into the TAZ. Within the Indymedia collectives, which practice direct democracy and non-hierarchy, one way which this manifests itself is as power imbalances relating to gender, race, sexual orientation, class, and knowledge about technology, which have presented challenges on an organizational level. Another way that this manifests, which the following section will explore, is the occurrence of postings to the newswire that reproduce discourses and systems of oppression.

The Development of Open Publishing Policies

The ideal of creating a media source that would be totally inclusive has had to endure tremendous tests. Open publishing, the purest form of the idea, has become, in some instances, Indymedia’s greatest liability. (Beckerman 2003)

Many Indymedia collectives, after experiencing abuses such as postings to their open publishing websites ranging from spam, pornography, and hate-mongering, subsequently decided to invoke editorial policies for their sites. For most collectives this took the form of a policy statement that gave the collective the “right” to filter the newswire’s content and in which their guidelines and action were made transparent. Some collectives, such as Quebec Indymedia, have gone beyond the editorial policy and developed software that supports a validation process, where, once submitted, all articles go to a waiting place (which is accessible to all users) until they are “validated” by a member of the validation committee, after which they are published in the newswire. This section of the paper will outline the policies that Indymedia collectives have put into place in order to deal with some of the challenges of open publishing, from the occurrence of problematic content to the attempt to make content accessible and organized within the site. Tied up with questions of how to deal with problematic content are also questions relating to rights, responsibility, and accountability.

Many Indymedia collectives started out without editorial policies, meaning that there was complete openness with regards to content. Because most of these collectives were started with a particular event in mind, such as covering the summits of the WTO or G8, their initial content revolved around coverage of these events. As well, the Indymedia Global “Principles of Unity”⁽⁶⁾ positions IMCs within social struggles and within movements struggling for the right to communicate and to share information. IMCs are also organized around the principle of human equality, and their principles of unity state that they shall not discriminate on the basis of sex, race, class, or sexual orientation and that they are committed to building diversity within their localities. These strong statements, along with those associated within the philosophy of open publishing outlined above, situate Indymedia as a network and autonomous media project that operates with the goal of actively addressing inequality. The value of freedom of speech is also central to Indymedia. Yet the commitment to addressing inequality and diverse oppressions as well as promoting the right to communicate has presented some challenges to Indymedia collectives.

New York Indymedia developed editorial policies after their site was “deluged with posts that had nothing to do with the people’s struggle – anti-Semitic rants, racist caricatures, and pornography all competed, democratically, for space on the wire. Although an editorial board of volunteers decided what stories to highlight in the centre column, the wire itself became almost unusable” (Beckerman 2003). This is a story common to many IMCs. Many collectives do not develop editorial policies until a situation arises that threatens collective members’ (or sometimes non-collective members’) vision of what is acceptable on the newswire. In interviews conducted with 18 Indymedia participants in Australia, Jenny Pickerill discovered that the editorial policy debate was a key issue for many within collectives. Pickerill writes:

For most of the collectives the extent of any editorial practice remains under debates even where policy has been agreed upon. There is a concern that any interference can be construed as a form of censorship. By excluding those postings that are fascist or employ another form of discrimination the collectives are delineating Indymedia as intolerant of far right views and as an explicitly left project. For many interviewees this exclusion was not problematic as long as the decision-making structure was transparent (and open to newcomers’ contributions). A visible editorial structure was deemed more egalitarian than mainstream media’ hidden editorial process. (Pickerill 2003: 12)

This quote identifies many of the fears behind developing policies that could be construed as legitimating censure. Pickerill’s research also identifies collectives’ belief that an editorial policy is not necessarily contrary to Indymedia’s principles of unity as long as it is developed within the usual democratic and transparent decision-making structures.

The editorial policies⁽⁷⁾ developed by Indymedia collectives are for the most part quite similar to one another in their inclusion of a section outlining the guiding principles of the policy. An example from Seattle Indymedia reads:

1. To provide an unmoderated, open-publishing newswire in accordance with established IMC policies and
philosophy.

2. To maintain the newswire and website as a community space, and a safe environment for users, especially members of disempowered or marginalized groups.

3. To acknowledge that speech has the power to cause injury, but that instances of injurious speech should also be seen as opportunities for insurrectionary response.

4. To preserve the quality of the website as a useful media resource.

With these guiding principles in mind, the second half of the policy outlines that collectives reserve the right to “reclassify” material on the website, which may mean choosing to highlight it in the center column, to bundle it together with several postings on the same topic, or to place it in a “hidden” folder. Posts that are hidden without debate are those which are duplicates of articles on the site, advertisements for jobs or consumer items, or posts that have no content to them. Some collectives interpret the last of these more broadly than others. For some no content means literally a blank posting or only links to another site, whereas other collectives hide material that is devoid of comprehensible material (a bad resolution photo or a rant that has no obvious point). Most collectives agree that there shall be no editing whatsoever of a post, unless requested by the author. Quebec Indymedia has a policy regarding content in that they will occasionally edit obvious spelling mistakes, especially if they are found in the headline. As well, Quebec Indymedia’s policy states that the content must have some relation to social justice issues.⁽⁸⁾

These policies were all developed with much discussion and debate, as mentioned above, and are still placed under scrutiny. Central to the editorial policies of each collective is the principle of transparency. Measures that guarantee that the process of moderating the site is transparent are central to Indymedia collectives because they are based on a critique of the news selection traditions of mainstream media. Transparency takes the form of written statements as to why a post was hidden as well as extensive discussions on editorial list serves and in collective meetings as to whether a post should be hidden, and, if possible, the sending of an email to the person who submitted the post explaining why it was moved or hidden. The editorial policy and all decisions made through it are always open to debate within collectives and from those not involved within the collective. For many collectives this process is one that involves personal reflection as well. The following question is often asked: do I want to hide this post because I do not agree with its content or because it violates the editorial policy?

Many of the posts that Indymedia collectives decide to moderate are “hidden” because they contain racist, sexist, homophobic, libellous content or use language that encourages hate or violence. Although this may seem straightforward in terms of what content should not be on the site, in many cases it is not. I will outline three of these. Firstly, the Indymedia websites are supposed to be a space for dialogue on social problems. Racism and other inequalities exist in our society and some people believe that suppressing them will not make them disappear. Instead, why not use the “add comment” function on the site to spark a debate on the offensive posting as opposed to removing the posting from the newswire? Some collectives choose to leave this material on the main part of the site in order to allow discussions to happen. This tactic seems to work if this type of content is only submitted occasionally, but in the cases of New York, Quebec, and Paris Indymedia sites, among others, the amount of racist and/or sexist (in these cases) postings became so pervasive on their newswires that more vigilant filtering was required. Furthermore, the principles of unity, as mentioned above, state that Indymedia collectives seek to address inequalities. If the newswire propagates sexist and racist points of view can Indymedia be seen as promoting diversity and equality? This is a question that collectives have had to answer when determining whether it is necessary or desirous to narrow the content of the site.

Secondly, it is not always extremely clear whether a posting is, for example, sexist. With the case of Quebec
Indymedia, which involved an extensive flooding of their site with anti-feminist, sexist, and defamatory postings,⁽⁹⁾ the sexism found within the articles was at times subtle, yet present. This made editorial decisions difficult for the collective, partially because of the time consuming process of moderating so many offensive postings. As well, the collective had to decide whether to block all postings from the offending individuals (who after countless requests would not stop posting many messages daily to the newswire and as comments). They decided instead that it was important to judge the posting as to whether it was unacceptable, regardless of who submitted it. The offending individual kept posting sexist and defamatory remarks, to the point that he was symbolically banned from Quebec Indymedia’s site (Quebec Indymedia, 2002); a step that was taken along with other strict editorial policy changes. The metaphor of the “slippery slope” often comes up with Indymedia collectives with regards to moderating their sites (Beckerman 2003); it is a metaphor that envelops the fear involved in making decisions as to what constitutes valid content. It also begs the question of the political orientation of the website—is it only a site for global justice activists and their points of view, or is it a
democratic public sphere where all points of view are welcome? Is Indymedia responsible for promoting free speech at all costs? To whom are they accountable – those wishing to express hate-filled views or those who suffer the consequences of such views?

Lastly, in some cases there can be no debate as to whether a post is made completely inaccessible to the general public because of legal issues. In countries like Canada, it is illegal to publish hate speech, child pornography, or libellous material (Sections 318 and 319 of the Criminal Code). Therefore collectives within Canada need to be vigilant about content on their site, for the sake of their member’s legal protection. As well, the abundance of copyright laws and the many cases being waged for the protection of “intellectual property” (Perelman 2003; Bollier 2002) make it necessary for collectives to screen content to the best of their abilities to ensure that the content is not copyrighted. Even though Indymedia sites have a disclaimer that says that they are not responsible for the content on the site and that it does not necessarily represent the views of the collective, collectives (in Canada at least) could be held legally responsible for illegal content. When it comes to content that could be perceived as “inciting violence,” collectives also must protect their members. Even before the events of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent increased policing of dissent, collectives were made aware of the dangers of surveillance and police repression that come with being associated with social movements. In Genoa in August of 2001, the Independent Media Centre was raided by Italian police who proceeded to beat activists in their sleep.⁽¹⁰⁾ During the Summit of the Americas in Quebec in 2001, Indymedia Seattle was raided by the FBI, because of a post on Montreal Indymedia (a site hosted on Seattle’s server) that supposedly threatened George W. Bush. These are two documented surveillance cases for Indymedia, and there are many more rumours of surveillance within the network. Although Indymedia operates across national borders and as a TAZ (philosophically outside the state’s reach), this is obviously not the case. There is thus some responsibility that needs to be taken to protect those working within Indymedia collectives and the physical IMCs themselves.

Rights, responsibility, and accountability

With the exercise of power, comes responsibility. For Indymedia collectives, the adoption of editorial policies also meant that they were creating a system where they would have the power to judge what is and what is not appropriate content for the site. Their discomfort in developing these policies is therefore understandable, in that Indymedia’s purpose was to advocate the right to communicate and to provide a space for views that are otherwise not published. With the introduction of policies defining what type of view is acceptable to communicate also come new levels of responsibility. Those screening the content on the site are now responsible for reading all postings, identifying problematic material, and engaging in a discussion with their editorial committees as to what to do with that material. There is also the need to make this process transparent, as discussed above.

The editorial policies have also brought the issue of accountability to light. Collective members become even more accountable to their collaborators (those who read and post to the site) after establishing editorial policies. On the one hand, those who post to the site have a right to know why their post was “hidden” and why. On the other hand, readers may want the right to see this rejected content (which is usually linked to the editorial policy) and may hold collective members accountable if “inappropriate” content makes it onto the site. The second of these has occurred with Quebec Indymedia and Paris Indymedia, both of which have been chastised and pressured from social justice groups regarding the content of their site. In the case of the large amount of sexist material being posted to the Quebec site, there were not only the “masculinists” (the word used to describe the pro-men’s rights/ anti-feminist group doing the posting) to relate with, but also a small group of feminists who were putting extreme pressures on the collective. These individual feminists were upset by the publishing of masculinist material on Quebec Indymedia and used pressure tactics (such as a call for a boycott of the site) in order to push Indymedia members to block all offending users from their site, make all “hidden” posts inaccessible to the public, and to shut down the comment function completely.⁽¹¹⁾ Similarly, Paris Indymedia has recently been declared “irresponsible” in a public letter written by an anarchist group (Alternative libertaire) because of some racist content on their site.⁽¹²⁾ This anarchist group suggests that open
publishing is irresponsible because it allows racist and colonialist discourses space on the site; they also make suggestions on how Paris Indymedia should deal with this issue.

There seems to be a transposition of the notion of responsibility with regards to content found in traditional media onto that found on Indymedia. When readers are upset about content found on the sites, they tend to blame the collectives behind the Indymedia and write a type of “letter to the editor” which includes a threat to end their “subscription,” so to speak. The involvement of collaborators in suggesting improvements to the site is not unwanted by Indymedia collectives, as their principles of unity state that they are open to anyone and that the editorial process is open to scrutiny. And just as some people criticize Indymedia for the content that remains in the newswire, there are also many critiques waged by those who feel that they have experienced censorship.

Evaluation of open publishing policies

With the above discussion in light, it is necessary to point out that even with editorial policies in place, the
process of open publishing is never straightforward, but is instead a constant process of negotiation, development, challenges, and successes. As illustrated above, the most significant obstacle faced by Indymedia collectives in developing policies around open publishing is the balancing of strong values, such as openness, and responsibility. The development of editorial policies, such as those outlined above, has placed Indymedia collectives in the role of mediator—a role that can be confining and limiting. The strong point of this is that it forces collectives take on this role actively, accountably. Whereas before the development of formal policy some collectives engaged in editing of the site in ways that may not have been so transparent, the editorial policies place these activities front and centre in a public document. It is therefore clear how each collective defines open publishing and what their vision is on hate-filled material. On the down side, editorial policies have also loaded work onto the backs of already burdened volunteers. With accountability comes work. If an editorial policy states what types of material are not permitted on the site, it is up to the collectives to ensure that these policies are enacted. In some cases this extra workload has limited collectives’ abilities to take on more projects. The website that supports a movement thus becomes a
liability in terms of resources (people’s un-paid time).

Despite the difficulties in dealing with these challenges, the development of editorial policies has no doubt strengthened the Indymedia network in pushing the limits of the TAZ, in stimulating the development of new open publishing tools within the open source software, and in creating an opportunity for collectives to better define their purpose and their vision of Indymedia. Robert McChesney, media theorist and political economist, says he has always believed that:

… the Indymedia movement is not obliged to be a movement for every point of view under the sun. They need to make tough editorial decisions, and that’s not something to be despondent about. The problem is not that you have to make decisions. The important thing is that you make them based on principles that are transparent. (Quoted in Beckerman)

Indymedia has been placed under scrutiny, as the Quebec and Paris examples show, which has pushed its members to answer difficult questions about the practice of open publishing, which in some cases this has led to the development of new software tools that make the process more transparent and that allow the collaborators to get involved and that decentralize the editorial process. In an article entitled “Three Proposals for Open Publishing” Dru Oja Jay outlines some possibilities, from “filters” to “rating systems” which allow users to rate content and thus take part in deciding which content should be highlighted on the site. These are just a few of the possibilities in the future of open publishing. What is important at this point is that Indymedia collectives examine the effects of the policies that have been enacted, some of which have been outlined here, as well as to continue to evaluate their functionality and to develop new ways of maintaining the balance between philosophy and practice.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the exploration of open publishing as praxis not only provides some clarity with relation to the work of various Indymedia collectives, but also adds to other debates around the “information society.” Tied up in this area of discussion are questions of access, the divide between producers and consumers, media convergence, copyright and intellectual property, participatory media, and the right to communicate, among others. As well, this discussion is essential in the growth of Indymedia. This paper has sought to explore the concept of open publishing, which has rarely been addressed in academic texts, to evaluate the policies that have been enacted to support it, thus illustrating some of the difficulties involved in open publishing. As many collectives who have faced these challenges realize, it is time to move beyond the unquestioning celebration of Indymedia as a revolutionary example, and into public debates about some of the issues that threaten its foundations. It is through these discussions that open publishing theory and practice will continue to provide insights as to what a democratic and participatory media environment looks like.

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(1) This definition of open source software was influenced by the definition provided in the Encyclopedia of New Media (Shade 2002).

(2) For more information on the history and rise of the Indymedia phenomenon, read: Kidd (2002; 2003); Downing (2002; 2003); Boido (2003); Atton (2003); or Uzelman (2002).

(3) Matthew Arnison, one of the developers of IMC software, suggests a working definition of open publishing: “Open publishing means that the process of creating news is transparent to the readers. They can contribute a story and see it appear instantly in the pool of stories publicly available. Those stories are filtered as little as possible to help the readers find the stories they want. Readers can see editorial decisions being made by others. They can see how to get involved and help make editorial decisions. If they can think of a better way for the software to help shape editorial decisions, they can copy the software because it is free and change it and start their own site. If they want to redistribute the news, they can, preferably on an open publishing site.”

(4) Due to space restrictions, this paper cannot engage in a significant discussion of the digital divide. For more on this debate see: Light (2002); Norris (2001); Garnham (2002). Yet it must be noted that Indymedia can be seen to be addressing the digital divide in their commitment to sharing skills and knowledge, and in their advocating that everyone can be a media producer.

(5) This term was coined and developed by Hakim Bey (1991). See also Jamming the Media by Gareth Branwyn (1997).

(6) See:
http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Global/PrinciplesOfUnity.

(7) For examples of editorial policies see: Seattle Indymedia ( http://seattle.indymedia.org/policy.php3 ); New Zealand Indymedia ( http://indymedia.org.nz/edpolicy.php3 ) or, Quebec Indymedia ( http://cmaq.net/fr/node.php?title=La+politique+%E9ditoriale+du+CMAQ ).

(8) Quebec Indymedia uses a vivid example to delineate what they mean by this. They say:

“First, the document is evaluated in regard to its conformity to CMAQ’s objectives and orientations, that is, mainly, the promotion of social justice. Specifically, it is evaluated according to its relevance to the themes that the CMAQ develops and promotes in its own mission: globalization and its multiple impacts, free trade, grassroots mobilization, the environment, social justice and any pertinent criticism of the actual political and economic system. In other words, a submitted document about the colour of bears in the North Pole would not be considered relevant. On the other hand, a document that addresses (sic) the politics of the IMF and its repercussions on the environment AND, incidentally, the colour of the (sic) bears, would be published.”

(9) See the collectives’ press release about the situation: http://cmaq.net/fr/node.php?id=12689.

(10) See Italy Indymedia [
http://italy.indymedia.org/news/2001/08/5539.php ] for an account of the raid.

(11) See the call for boycott at:
http://sisyphe.org/article.php3?id_article=540

(12) The letter, as well as Paris Indymedia’s response can be found at: http://paris.indymedia.org/article.php3?id_article=11947 .

“Me and the Major could become close friends cause we get on the same train and he wants to talk me, […] me an the Major don’t see eye to eye on a number of things, […] he doesn’t understand and he doesn’t try, he knows there’s something missing and he knows it’s you and I.” Belle Sebastian “Me and the Major” If You’re Feeling Sinister.

The terrain of independent music, just as with cultural industries in general, is an environment punctuated by vicissitudes, contingencies and struggle. Thus, Stuart Hall is right to point out that a “danger arises […] [when] we tend to think of cultural forms as whole and coherent,”1 because the terrain is much more complex than those adjectives might intimate. Therefore, just as Bernard Miège does in his article The Logic at work in the New Cultural Industries, it is important to identify the social logics2 at work amid these terrains. He urges us to take up such examinations even though in doing so, “one runs the risk in proposing such a reading of confusing temporary, contingent shifts with long-term trends.”3 One theorist who has certainly stepped up to the challenge is David Hesmondhalgh. In his article Flexibility, Post-Fordism and the Music Industries, Hesmondhalgh seeks to limn the dynamics of how independent/small record companies operate within the music industry. As he focuses primarily on British markets, one is left wondering whether or not the same conclusions can be drawn about American markets.

Therefore, by charting the development of Subpop and Epitaph Records, this analysis will first take up some of Hesmondhalgh’s arguments and reveal how they might fit within an American context. Both of these labels—because of their distinctive trajectories, lend themselves particularly well to a ‘compare and contrast’ type of analysis. This examination certainly does not claim to provide an explication of the American independent music industry in general, however, careful consideration of these labels might be useful in establishing a starting point.

Identifying the Terrain

The experience of being an independent record company in either an international or domestic milieu might be likened to the experience of having been a soldier involved in the D-day landing in Normandy. In such instances, one is generally called upon to enter a zone where far more powerful forces are ensconced. To survive within such unwelcoming loci, one is often called upon to make their moves based on circumstance—based on aleatory opportunities as they present themselves. The fiscal demands associated with both the international and domestic music industry are such that it is not uncommon for independents to fold or be forced to make a deal with a major label. The pressure of having to make a deal with the devil, so to speak, is a tension that has loomed over independents, for various reasons, over a number of decades; some of these issues span from questions of access to costly technology in the 1950s, (4) to those of the licensing, funding and distribution needs experienced by independents today.

In his article, Hesmondhalgh’s goal is to call into question the appropriateness of using the terms
flexibility and post-Fordism to describe the new dynamics of contemporary cultural industries. Moreover, he also wants to reveal that many of the debates regarding flexibility do not sufficiently consider the complexity of change and—as a result, many such analyses neglect the continuity that exists within the cultural industries. This in turn, requires us to carefully consider what assumptions we have about market fragmentation and the relationships between independent and major record companies.5 By examining some of the criticisms of flexibility writing, Hesmondhalgh demonstrates that it is not always entirely accurate to use these terms when explicating the recent developments in the music industry.

According to Hesmondhalgh, one of the problems that is symptomatic of most flexibility analyses of cultural industries, is that they focus far too narrowly on the aspect of production. In Christopherson and Storper’s examination of the film industry, flexibility—as they describe it—was a practice whereby large film corporations, in a response to market forces, began outsourcing production work to sub-contractors—who were themselves agglomerated near these corporations.(6) The problem with Christopherson and Storper’s production-oriented analysis, is that their use of flexibility connotes the idea that there is a “collaborative and consensual”(7) relationship between the corporation and the sub-contractors—almost to the extent that the sub-contractors gain a certain power in the industry. But Christopherson and Storper’s argument is compelling only because it focuses solely on the production element. Once considerations of distribution, exhibition and finance are broached, Christopherson and Storper’s study then seems to be incomplete and misleading. Further analysis of the distribution, exhibition and finance spheres tends to shatter this quixotic perception of the corporation and sub-contractor relationship, because it reveals how corporations—despite delegating production responsibilities, ultimately retain the power inherent to these spheres. Invoking Aksoy and Robins’ insights, Hesmondhalgh underlines how “the logic of transformation in the entertainment industries is centred around processes of reintegration and globalisation.”8 This reorganization applies equally to the music industry insofar as large corporations adopt the very same processes and have the effect of precluding independent record companies from ever really posing a challenge to their dominance.

Who can control the Wife of Bath? In the portrait presented in the General Prologue, the Wife of Bath seems larger-than-life. We read of her “ten pound” kerchiefs (l. 454), her red stockings (l. 456), her five
husbands (l. 460), and her hat that is as broad as a shield (l. 470-71). The Wife laughs in the face of convention, and lives her life according to what pleases her best. She knows how to get what she wants and is not ashamed of using any method to get here desire. If you hit her over the head, she will come back for more. She is always willing to give advice, but hardly ever willing to receive it. She is an old husband’s nightmare and every lecherous man’s dream. She is entropy in a world that strives toward a divine order and balance. No doubt, she is one of Chaucer’s most indelible, unique and dynamic characters.

Her description seems to be a dense catalogue of all her excesses. And indeed it is, for in excesses we see the presence of ‘givens’. Perhaps this is why she is of so much interest to scholars. For years, they have tried to pin her down: some view the Wife and her speeches as a response to the dominant misogynist discourse of the time; others see her as a spokesperson for the new and prosperous merchant class, making a claim for a new economic reality. Yet, no matter how she is ‘glossed’, the Wife of Bath always manages to wriggle free. In fact, it seems that she breaks loose from any text that attempts to encompass her. What sort of character has Chaucer created that seems to defy text itself?

Perhaps one of the issues explored in The Canterbury Tales is the Chaucerian concern about the production and dissemination of texts. Written in a time before copyright laws and mass-production, The Canterbury Tales serves also as a record of medieval scribal practices. Such practices did not demand the ‘accuracy’ that is so prevalent in modern editions. These ‘inaccuracies’ are addressed in the poem entitled, “Chaucers Wordes Unto Adam, His Owne Scriveyn”. In this work, Geoffrey warns his scribe, Adam, not “…to wryten newe,” otherwise “under thy long lokkes thou most have the scalle” (ll. 2-3). Geoffrey urges Adam to keep his writing “trewe” (l. 4). Does Chaucer make this poetic threat because he wishes to maintain some form of authorial authority? From our own historical point of view, we can speculate that if Chaucer feared that his works would not transmit clearly to posterity, his concern was verified three centuries later when Alexander Pope wrote: “Our sons their fathers’ failing language see,/ And such as Chaucer is shall Dryden be” (214).

Likewise, Chaucer scholars today have, of late, observed that the received editions of the Chaucerian corpus should not be treated as authoritative texts. Recently, a team of Cambridge scholars “[c]oncentrating on ‘The Wife of Bath’s Prologue’… produced a computer generated family tree showing the relationships between 58 different fifteenth-century versions of this tale. The results show that a number of manuscripts mostly neglected by Chaucer scholars are in fact likely to be close descendant of the original” (1998082601.html). This suggests that, even today, Chaucer’s anxiety about the integrity of his texts is a legitimate concern. It is interesting to note that it is the Wife of Bath’s Prologue that yields these new genealogies and variant readings. It seems that the character of the Wife of Bath is employed to express Chaucerian concerns about the instability of language. It may seem dubious to claim that Chaucer purposely planned this; however, as we have quite clearly seen, this ‘instability’ is an inherent feature of the very text itself.