>
>What other occupation has the possiblity of capitalising on those
>sentiments? I know it is too much to reduce it to technology, but there is
>something about the product which allows open source to exist like it
>does. In other fields (e.g. scientific paper publishing), different laws
>of production apply, and a different ethic applies with them. For example,
>in scientific paper publishing, the knowledge product is basically a
>only produced once - you don't get any kudos for re-doing or tweaking
>someone's paper post-publication. Maybe this is too base /
>superstructure-ish way to see things, but I think there is something
no, i think you need to look at the evolution of the norms of paper publishing. i know in my discipline you get kudos for tweaking. replicating experiments is a built in part of scientific knowledge production b/c replication is about improving our capacity to make generalizable knowledge claims (and now, the fine art of 'correcting' a predecessors work in order to publish a paper showing how it can be done better)
>Same kind of oohing and aahing goes on there, in my experience. Part of
>the 'dick slinging' behaviour might just be related to the fact that geeks
>are a profession in formation - they're young people, from a sub-field of
>the computing spectrum which has historically not gotten much appreciation
>(i.e. the 'cultural capital' has been rather valueless).
part. but i AM and have been arguing that it is wholly predictable, normal and been there, done that, got the tee shirt b/c you can see the same thing elsewhere!
that's my point. i could do the same analysis (and why i was talking abt *other* professions and the sociological analysis of those professions) on any other occupation--including my own. there is a built in tension here, one that is not inexplicable, about the need to create relatively artificial monopolies on knowledge and yet also be freely giving of that knowledge in some capacity. professions, peter, have norms in which part of the ethos of being in that profession is to freely give and share that knowledge with others: pro bono legal work, for example. it is a noble gesture, it has its roots in an older notion of a calling, but it has been secularized, yes? and the very secularization of the ideal of a calling is the basis for prestige rankings of occupations which are rated highly precisely on the degree to which the occ is seen as contributing to the greater good. except it is *very* gendered.
and it all has to be voluntary and informal. why? because you "can't" tell a profession what to do if you're a lay person. and there is A source of the power of a profession. by virtue of its monopoly on knowledge, by virtue of its ritually sharing its knowledge for the greater good and by continually promulgating that claim early in its rise/development, professions manage to be independent of oversite on the part of those who aren't credentialed professionals.
this is why one of the distinguishing features of a profession is that it has its own norms of internal review. it is a source of a professions' best and its worse since here is where corruption also errupts (malpractice, etc)
but, as marxist and more bourgeois conflict analyses of professions have shown, we can also see how the very ethos of noble calling embedded in the practice of freely sharing knowledge is part of the process whereby those professions come to have legitimacy in the public eye.
they have to do this, for otherwise, their monopoly on that knowledge is suspect and always open to delegitimation. yes, a crude analysis but there is something to it and better said in analyses of the rise of professions such as randall collins on physicians.
part of the socialization process instills in us the notion that we have an ethic to live up to and uphold to be a sociologist or psychologist or lawyer or physician. we have professional associations in which we ritually gather to uphold and debate these. yadda yadda yadda.
see Charles Bosk's _Forgive and Remember_ for how surgeons learn to internalize these norms and what criteria they come to think of as important in judging their and others' deeds/misdeeds.
so, you can go back and look at how docs and lawyers and engineers negotiated these cultural tensions and political-economic territory in very similar ways (hence my ref to _American by Design_). part of the monopolization of knowledge is about continually promulgating the claim that there is a greater good that is being served. i'm not saying, peter, that one cannot be sincere and that people aren't. physicians certainly were. as were pscyhologists and lawyers and sociologists and engineers. they thought they had something, some knowledge that could change the world and help people.
should we think hackers escaped the same kind of structural forces, tensions, contradictions?
i'm providing a rather marxist/conflict analysis to all of this. and that means that individual intentions don't necessarily matter because...well you know that as well as anyone else, given your knowledge of marxist analysis. i'm not saying ind. intentions aren't important, i'm saying that we cannot look only at them. we can, however, look at both and at the mediating field between them. (see my rant at carrol last week)
given that other professions do and have gone through the same thing, then i find it pretty funny that no one bothers to draw on that body of research.
i am fully cognizant of how my discipline does this. we must maintain a monopoly on knowledge of "the sociological imagination". but in order to have any legitimacy, we have to be able to show that people can learn what sociology is and, in fact, maybe b.c one. but not too many, b/c if everyone could be one, then it wouldn't be as scarce (and so not as valuable). and the knowledge can't be that obscure but it can't be that accessbile. you know the rave.
then, there is a distinction b/t hose who pursue knowledge for the sake of knowlege, those who do so with an agenda, and those who engage in "practice" (see the history of the rise and fall of the social sciences and the split between sociology and social work
humble dick slinging by the way, ritualistically engaged in (awww shucks i'm not that big, just another average dick), is a built in feature of academia.
am i the only person who learned that during their first year of grad school??? man, i musta had some wacked out and/or enlightened mentors because we used to have convos about it -- when i hunt down one of my fave mentors in order to unpack the latest fac meeting i'd been involved in. my god. it's obvious to me.
and
>Personally, I wish there were more people working on situating the
>emergence of geekdom with its freely exchanged knowledge products within
>the debate on 'immaterial labour' (ala. Negri, Lazzarato, etc.)
need more info on that one. yes, i suspect there's something different materially that matters, but the hostility to a sociological analysis of it all is rather interesting and, in of itself, as far as i'm concerned--evidence of just what i'm talking abt.
if someone walked off wall st and hollered at doug for getting it all wrong and that's because doug just ain't a stock broker, well y'all would be laughing your butt off, ne?
and from reading you, peter, i'll bet you laugh when some men get peeved with feminists and say, "how can you know what we think. it's just me, an individual, and you can't make no generalizations"
so.
there is not reason to presume that a marxist/conflict analysis means that there is nothing here that's real in terms of something new. i happen to be a disciple of sociology and love spreading the word.
but i am not foolish enough to believe that we escape unscathed from the same social processes that affect stock brokers, chefs, engineers, journalists, physicist, economist, maids and "hackers".
kelley