i'll repost what i wrote les offlist, so maybe those who think i'm slamming geeks will get it. i added/clarified/corrected the original
>have you written more about this? i'd like to read it.
>
>les
best i had of late is what i posted under "geek agonistes" and "overtime" (an addendum). i laid it all out one by one and made the connections b/t the common discourse among geeks (some of which has been heard here) and then the discourse among earlier professions. i asserted prediction claims in 5a-c.
it's not anything i'm formally working on, just stuff that comes to mind as i read you geeks! see things that my background in the soc of work/professions/inequality enables me to see. iow, what i'm saying isn't really unique, just applied to a new area. kendall jackson might actually know if someone has done stuff recently. <snip> -----------------
> than what appears than if you study us
>through the esr lens. and you do know there is a split in the
>community between open source and just plain FSF? (yes, btw, les, i've
>made that pretty clear by using stallman's expression "the other open
>source"!!!)
i would never dispute any of this and haven't actually been trying to characterize geeks as a group. never did. i responded to someone who did, however. at least i thought he did, kendall jackson.
sociologists don't study individuals (in the way that is commonly thought) (well some do, but that's b/c we're so diverse and we're just as prone to "you're a real sociologist/you're not" (like you're geek or hacker/you're not) discourse as anyone else. HA!!)
sociologists study processes and practices. we talk to, observe, etc individuals, but only because they give us insight into social process --like an archaeological artefact might tell us something about a civilization. yes, there's a big gap there to be sure. but you can't see an electro magnetic field either, right? you see it's effects. people's attitudes,etc are the effects of not always obvious social dynamics that lie beneath the surface. action, attitudes, behavior, opinions--these are *indicators* of something else that sociologists want to get at.
so when ppl thought i was referring to motivations, i wasn't. (the vocabulary of motivations are something we can look at, something that is an indicator of deeper social processes.)
i don't take esr as the representative voice of all of geekdom. what counts is that various factors have turned him into a powerful force: *in part*, because he says what they want to hear. that matters. that means something. if there is a cacophony of voices and plenty of others trying to get heard who are saying something else, that powerful forces hear some and not others is a clue in the mystery a sociologist will try to unravel.
despite the revulsion toward him, he is articulating something that isn't *entirely* disconnected from the grounded cacophony of individual geekvoices. he represents a significant and powerful faction, powerful because the views he and they articulate sync nicely with the powers that be. i'm saying, no brainer, we should be wary of this and we should be wary of the ways in which the discursive practices engaged in defense of geeks, even on the part of the left, can be used to re-create the very problems associated with professionalization: a fomalized monopoly on knowledge.
the resends of debate on dc-stuff reveals that at least some folks do, in fact, see themselves as trying to monopolize knowledge. it also reveals that they think infotech has a unique monopoly that can't be held by other professionals, like, say, professors. profs spin bullshit, but coders don't, they claim. hmmm. peter v. could speak to that issue perhaps.
an analogy as to why one might want to look at certain forces that gain public recognition: feminism. one would want to look at the major feminists writings on what feminism is and who "women" are and what "feminism" is supposed to do and be for those women (however "women" has been defined). we have lots of diff. views of what feminists, women, and feminism is about. so many it's hard to say even that there are certain kinds. <snip>
looking at these representative feminists tells us something. what they say is then an insight into the multitudinous variety of feminists. the major reason why, typically, is because those feminists have a lot of influence. heck, some are even media whores like esr :)
but what studying the major feminists could tell you is about the social processes that meant that those feminists (rather than the multitudes of others who spoke out) became voices for feminism and for women. that tells us something about our world. why did bell hooks only become recognized in the 80s when there were tons of black women saying all the same things as she said in the 70s? why were working class women's critiques of white middle class feminists never heard even tho a really powerful woman union leader was articulating all the things that working class feminists finally started articulating in the early 90s.
>all that said, am not sure actually what the point of the geeks thread
>is... were some of the geeks claiming imminent revolution or
>something?
can't recall anymore myself. started with kendall's post and my response, rejecting the claim that geeks were selfless. i jumped to that because it's a key piece of rhetoric marshalled on behalf of professionalizing occupations. i hadn't actually been thinking of any of it in terms of the process of professionalization, til it started clicking as i typed along.
I HAD been dwelling on the "who's a real geek/hacker" debates for almost a year now. i've also been just fascinated by the demonization of hackers/geeks in the press, as well as their hot hot sizzle hot personification by the same press. how and why is that happening? why the debate over who belongs and who doesn't? what's the connection, how to theorize it. and many more thoughts that passed through the brain but i never sat down and tried to answer in systematic way.
those three things were my focus originally but the link wasn't made til kendall's post <snip>
kelley