Opposition with other systems: Wikitreatya by risa
neil- this in response to your response.
everyone else- we’re talking about open source, politics, and oppositionality.
It makes me happy that you bring up the impotance of opposition, versus resistance. I yammer about oppositionality in my thesis (no one knows everything) because Innis talks about the importance of sustaining a diverse opposition in governement with freedom for oppositionality in the press. this is where i see open source as tool undergirding politics, sustaining independent, uncensorable communications, and offering routes into “expert” spheres with free tools. with no way to control how a bit of code or a huge code tool gets used, open source always sits on the fearful edge of choices, exactly where you don’t want governments or corporations causing “strategic distortions”.
but i see what you’re saying- unless we’re actively opposing, we can find ourselves quietly feeding the systems that we think we are resisting.
except i wonder, if os opposes in a more foundational way then you expect. maybe politics, when not distracted by theories, personalities, aesthetics, is about finding ways to do things.
Political conversations that aren’t stupid and useless (ok, i’m grumpy) are about how to get things done. when we vote, we give a group the power to try the systems they think will be best. sometimes this means we get governments in power that approach centuries of system work humbly, and make changes from within, when they become pragmatically clear. and sometimes we get governments who come at current systems as though they’re possible to understand without having worked on them from the inside before, as though those systems were flawed because they hadn’t had the benefit of this new governments brilliance, and not because the work is monstrously complex, and these will often make deep structural changes without really knowing how far reaching the effects will be. (not pointing fingers or anything, but man we’ve seen some doozies in the past year.)
open source opposes the precarious position this puts us in, by working directly on the ‘ways’ themselves. the more they get things right, the more the circle widens around the code with people talking about it’s ethics and aesthetics. but no matter what those talky talkers (like me) get right or wrong, the code is protected by exactly the fact of that uncontrolability. so military and corporations can absorb pieces of it and think they’ll just be able to profit, but the layered effects will be, i think, more complicated.
but of course- it’s infuriating that our rich government’s money goes into defense and security research and not into the open source for education projects, or open source for health care associations. Of course that’s infuriating. But it doesn’t change that fact that that work goes on, connecting people all around the world with shared purpose no matter what their gov’s are up to. There is so much we haven’t begun to try and open source yet, but it’s happening so fast, in part because some of the communication involved happens online where new eyes can see and connect with ideas all the time. For example- one year ago I might not have spoken out loud about open sourcing diplomacy, 6 months ago I’d write about it semi-jokingly, and today I can link to somebody who has worked in international diplomacy and in open source development who not only suggests the same thing, but comes up with a witty name and pragmatic location for it: Wikitreatya! In 6 months, will we be trying it? How many users will a project like that attract? and how long will it take for them, working together, arguing debating, politicing, to construct some fascinating new contexts, suggestions, frames?
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