On Thu, 21 Sep 2000 16:31:53 -0400, kelley wrote: > > ac, you ... have not actually attended to one thing i've written, > not one. indeed, i have, just not in the manner in which you apparently expected or desired. i would suggest that i have addressed everything you have written within the narrow context of what i know. as i said to you offlist, there *is* a counterargument, but there doesn't really seem to be the interest. but since you've asked, and i have given this considerable thought... (now, as we continue, i do remember your admonition that this is a list of sociologists and "we discuss soc here." i don't pretend to know shit about sociology (couldn't even define it), so no doubt my comments reflect my ignorance of your discipline. your comments reflect your ignorance of mine. the difference is, you are talking about *my* area...) On Thu, 21 Sep 2000 13:23:41 -0400, kelley wrote: > >>> it's a friggin wacked out addendum to the 1974 copyright act. >> >> i can only assume that you already visited /.. if you are still >> looking into this, let me know. i may know some other arenas... > > nah, just what people at lob had to say. i'm just putting > together a bunch of crap for winn, summarizing and then main links > to it all. in the meantime, i like to hear from the crowd if they > have thoughts on it, even if i don't use it in any particular way. > below is something i sent to les schafer, it might help you > understand what i was saying: > > At 02:43 PM 9/19/00 -0400, Les Schaffer wrote: >>> and i say that this will happen (it's a prediction.) that it >>> will happen and that's because the rise of credentializing >>> processes ARE political and not really about proving knowledge >>> but about intra class warfare >> >> ahhh, now we're getting somewhere. i am gonna return to this later, but i want my comments to be understood within the proper context. so context first. >> kelley, i found myself generally agreeing with your opponents in >> much of this debate (taht part which i followed, anyway), but >> this starts to ring ture. >> >> 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). the date was screwed up so you might have > missed it. but i laid it all out one by one and made the > connections b/t the common discourse among geeks and then the > discourse among earlier professions much of which i critiqued earlier -- and which went unchallenged. > and laid out the prediction claims in 5a-c. predictions! as predicted, you have adopted the newtonian methodology, which leads inevitably to predictions of the future. again, i feel no need to attack the methodology because the facts do not support the conclusions that you have drawn. > 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. but isn't it important to understand the area first? you and i discussed this earlier this year, and i have been nothing but supportive of your exploring this, but facts matter. conclusions based on insufficient (or niche) facts and prejudiced analysis should be questioned. (damn scientist in me makes me try to be objective!) > sociologists don't study individuals (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!!) we study processes and > practices. so why focus on open source? why not pay attention to the longer, larger, more mature processes of the ietf or the history of free software -- and judge the hacker ethos from *them* (and not raymond's ego)? > 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: he has himself and powerful forces have taken him > seriously, *in part*, because he says what they want to hear. > that matters. that means something. so then your argument can be reduced to: we are (or are becoming) our commercials? (*shudder*) > if there is a cacophony of voices and plenty of others trying to > get heard, that powerful forces hear some and not others is a clue > in the mystery a sociologist will try to unravel. again and again, i come back to: why raymond? why a media whore? why the latest fad? is there something you see here that will overwhelm the forces at hand? you focus on a small part of a small (although not inconsequential) group upon which to draw your conclusions, while ignoring the larger forces at work as well as the more mature legacies in the area. why is that? certainly the government doesn't ignore these legacy trads. my first association with the ietf came as a government liaison in 1985. corporations don't ignore it. aol and microsoft competed to have the largest group of lobbyists in pittsburgh. why choose the controversial voices instead of the mature *influential* one? > despite the revulsion toward him, he is articulating something > that isn't *entirely* disconnected from the grounded cacophony of > individual geekvoices. agreed. > he represents a significant and powerful faction, powerful because > the views he and they articulate sync nicely with the powers that > be. agreed. > i'm saying, no brainer, we should be wary of this agreed. > and we should be wary of the ways in which the discursive practices > gaged in defense of geeks, on the part of the left, can be used to > re-create the very problems associated with professionalization: a > monopoly on knowledge. and it is this claim, this assertion, and the very method by which you have come to it that i contest. *this* is contrary to the hacker ethos. (access to computers should be unlimited, meaning for everyone. information should be free. authority should be mistrusted and decentralization promoted.) this is contrary to the underlying forces that are manifested in the net. (power is diffusing, not centralizing. *knowledge* is diffusing. secrets are no longer inaccessible to the average person.) this is contrary to the thinking of everyone i know involved in building the net. ("Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather." "We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth. We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity." "Information Is Experienced, Not Possessed." -- john perry barlow [cf http://www.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html and http://www.eff.org/~barlow/EconomyOfIdeas.html]) your prediction that the net will professionalize, that distributed work can be credentialized, that free software will go the way of microsoft, is just so contrary to everything we know and think about the net that it *must* be challenged. and if you are right and raymond's crackpot ideas (it is amazing to me that you gave credience to raymond, but not bill joy) will lead to this kind of thing, then he needs to be opposed at every drop as well. the net is the stirup. it must be shared... > the resends of debate on dc-stuff reveals that at least some folks > do, in fact, see themselves as trying to monopolize knowledge. hehehe. we both know i have been victiminzed by this. it doesn't make it right... > so, iow, the people who step forth with the pretense of > articulating who "geeks" are, are imp to attend to. and about this you get no argument from me... >> 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? NO! in fact, just the opposite. > can't recall anymore myself. started with kendall's post and my > response, rejecting the claim that geeks were selfless. to which i made the point that it wasn't ultimately about being selfless or selfish. it is about building tools. it is about building the net. it is about building something bigger than yourself. in many ways, it is a fucking religious experience! On Mon, 18 Sep 2000 04:15:33 -0400, kelley wrote: > > so tying this togetherL kelley's points, which she suggests that i haven't addressed: > 1. they claim to empower people but also claim they "see" or "do" > something ordinary people can't or won't see or do. at this point, it becomes *very* important to clearly define the subject about which these predictions are being made. the first "they" in this sentence seems to be about geeks in general, or, more specifically, people discussing the virtues of the networked computer. the various claims about increasing returns and the internet revolution etc have always been about the power of connections and how they have altered our lives. but this is *not* the claim of the open source or the free software movement. people make this claim in terms of the networked computer, not the software you run. whenever people have made these claims, it has always been within the context of the internet. the second "they" is also about geeks, but really a subgroup of them: hackers, coders, early adopters. kelley has offered me up as proof that this part of her claim is true, and i have undoubtedly said things of this nature. but this is where kelley, instead of being objective, exposes her pre-conditioning. she sees what she wants to see, what she expects to see, ignoring other possibilities. to wit, my lonely voice in the wilderness. because for many of us, this is really an extreme source of frustration. instead of characterizing our "exceptionality," it points to our impatience. "i learned this, why can't you?" and it is here where you can see whatever common ground kel and i might have shared divurge. and it is here where the docs simply don't help you. because the most important point to understanding this attitude is that computing and navigating the net (and ultimately coding and hacking) tend to be the result of *self* education. there are no special skills, no secret rituals. no one taught us (the hackers, coders, early adopters) how to do this. so why aren't you non hackers/coders/early adopters getting this? the easy conclusion: they can't or won't. it's easy, it's fun, it will change your life. JOIN US! you can... see the difference in nuance here? kelley sees exceptionalism because that is what she is trained to identify. i see frustration, because that is what i have experienced. it is not a hurdle that we expect others to jump. it is just a matter of practise and experience. now we move on... > it is all informal now, but the song of Hacker Agonistes will, no > doubt, play a part in the development of formalizing, > credentializing processes that will mark official boundaries of who > doesn't and doesn't belong in a similar way. it will also involve > other intraclass struggles, below. and, of course, you can see how they inevitably result in different conclusions. because of kelley's observation of exceptionalism -- something of which americans seem genuinely arrogant about, although not unique in feeling -- she of course drew the conclusion of our impending professionalization. what i see is totally different. i see, not the effort to limit the participation in geekdom, but the impetus to universalize it. how many of you have sat in on meetings about networking africa? i have. i have seen schematics for building network resources in places that don't even have tiolets. whether this is appropriate is not the point; *we* seek to universalize the networked environment -- access for all!!! kelley's prediction is also at extreme odds to the central organizing principles of the net (some of which are referenced above). > 2. they claim to provide something for people that no one else > has provided, or special insight into a new technology, or that > the older elite roots of the profession provided only to the > well-to-do. part of that process was an attack on the > established elites, a tearing down of the aristocratic roots of > the profession, claiming that they were self-serving and helping > only the elite, not all of humanity. (the parallel: the attack > on microsoft and closed code) i have addressed this ad nausem. personally, i think that kelley's perspective here is the result of her only recently coming into contact with these people, these issues. i have tried to provide some historical context in order to ameliorate her background here: the initial tradition that you *paid* for hardware, not software (which was often customized); the free exchange of code by early academic users of mainframes (grad labor was *almost* free); the legacy of bell labs wrt unix and c; the 1976 letter to altair users claiming that "this is not a networked environment, so you can't give it (code) away!" it is in this context that this point is basically absurd. but kelley claims i did not attend to her points, so let's parse it further: "they claim to provide something for people that no one else has provided, or special insight into a new technology:" yes, we were the first, no one had been here before. we *did* have special insight. but unlike the astrologists of phaoric egypt, we are willing to share our skills and knowledge. hell, we post it all over the place! "part of that process was an attack on the established elites, a tearing down of the aristocratic roots of the profession, claiming that they were self-serving and helping only the elite, not all of humanity:" abso-fucking-lutely! red tape? cut it. secrets? expose them. establishment? oppose them. kelley hit a home run here. this dovetails nicely with the hacker ethos... and here is where our conflict is most obvious: > 5. what is going on with geeks/etc is that they are and will > continue to be for various reasons under pressure to > professionalize and establish formalized gatekeeping methods to > demarcate who can and cannot do that work. all those high ideals, all those principles, all those people who refuse microsoft's or aol's money are all just gonna fold. it is inevitable! it is here where kelley's lack of experience and understanding of the subject matter really stands out. because, ultimately, kelley just doesn't "get it." he newtonianism is blinding her. you see, work has not always been so specialized. the division of labor is rather a *new* thing. humans were originally hunter/ gatherers, a form of economic survival that required cooperation among a group. perhaps that is why we are social creatures, i dunno. even as the domestization of grain and animal made settling down to fresh water outlets possible, work was still more cooperative than specialized. obviously, some specialization occured, since that is how we developed ruling classes, who could live off the work of others. but the division of labor, the kind of specialization that we now think of, really awaited the newtonian age. i have hinted before that newton is dead, and so is that epoch. carrol asked whether or not einstein would be surprised at having launched the "revolution" (or paradigm shift), of having overthrown newton. indeed, he would, because einstein always viewed himself in terms of extending classical mechanics. but einstein did not understand his legacy -- people rarely do. einstein was uniquely at the center of the end of just about everything that newton stood for: newton's absolutes were found to be not absolute. newton's simple, intuitive, linear, euclidean world was found to be much more diverse, with not one, but three possible ways of viewing it (euclidean, hyperbolic and parabolic). einstein laid the initial framework for quantum mechanics, further minimizing the size of the newtonian space. now, it will be argued, that einstein -- and those who followed -- did want to find a new GUT which could unify all these things, but the world seems to resist this reconcentration into a few elegant universal equations/principles. it is from *this* perspective that my critique of kelley's claims and predictions stem. where kelley seeks to follow in the newtonian tradition of conceptualize and reduce, her own kind of grand unified theory, i rely on the forces of this century and see diversity. and find it good. where kelley sees the tendency to specialize and professionalize, i see the divergent force to generalize and enfranchise. where kelley sees the demarcation of computer work between those who can and those who don't, i see the frustration expressed by every geek i know, "why don't you get this???" "i learned it, why can't you?" and i offer again my prediction that everyone will become a hacker. those who don't will be relegated to obscurity. power is being diffused; knowledge is being diffused -- the age of specialty is dead. > 6. the concerns about users getting down and dirty with code is > about marshalling consumers in the struggle against the powerful > forces that stand in the way of the full flourishing of the > occupation. if users can just be shown how they need open source > code and how they've benefited, and that they can utilize it just > like geeks do, then they make good pawns in the war against > microsoft. they are also more than that since there is a > legitimate claim: people really want to empower users. no doubt. > at the same time, the effort to instill the idea that users need > to be educated abt their true needs is a process which > infantalizes users, as you point out carrol. or fosters sales. are we really just a commercial? > "Professions are a distinctive feature of industrial capitalism" > > from, _The Rise of Professionalism_ Magali Sarfetti Larsen so the question becomes: will they (professions) survive capitalism? what happens as we evolve into something distinct from capitalism, a post-capitalist economy as it were? and this comes back to what i said in an earlier post: either we fight about whether there is a new paradigm or we fight about how the new technology fits into the old one. you choose the battlefield... > "Professions emerge as occupational communities, organized > explicitly within the realm of work itself rather than in the > sphere of consumption." so is the suggestion here that the net is merely for work? or does it transcend work and play, fitting seemlessly into all faucets of our lives? > "Many of these techniques by which the professions became organized > originally and achieved their status were based on mystification > and secrecy regarding their real skills and use of the status > rather than their technique per se." but *we* are *not* mystifying the network/free software/open source/ distributed work. we want it to be used. we want it to be universal. universal service and application is a hallmark of every single ietf meeting... On Mon, 18 Sep 2000 22:02:13 -0400, kelley wrote: > > read what i wrote: whether hackers take him seriously or not is > NOT the point. manifestos like raymond's will operate like those > of adam smith, locke, say, marx and so forth because they are > duking it out at another level and they ARE being taken seriously > in terms of policiy debates. kelley assumes because i disagree with her, and won't conform to her methodology (plus i am rude), that i don't read what she writes. well, i just disagree. i am that sort of fella. we look at things from completely different perspectives. there is one difference, though: i have experience in this area, including 15 years with the ietf. i have been involved in free software projects, as well as two open source projects and numerous efforts of distributed work. so my own conclusion here is, this is just crap. argue if you must that eric wrote a great sales brochure. argue that he continues to sell his wares. but if you want to suggest that he is taken seriously in policy circles, then back it up. tell me who takes him seriously. (we've already determined that he isn't taken seriously among geeks, or among internet policy setters). so who? i am rather dubious. > media whore? sure. but, by those standards, so were academics > like marx, locke, smith, say etc who took the inchoate claims of > the bourgeoisie and turned them into social and political theories > which they used in their debates with other academics and people > who make policies and engage in political struggles. those > political and social theories then be/c clarion cries around > which social and political movements were waged. you and yours can fight him in the media -- and perhaps you will be more influential. but he is *not* a factor among the geeks who code for free... > please pay attention. not a damn thing condescending in that, is there???? On Thu, 14 Sep 2000 14:57:16 -0400, kelley wrote: > > First, ...being a professional usually requires a college > education and the acquisition of knowledge that entails working w/ > symbols and concepts. now, i dismissed this at first because it denies the move towards perpetual education and self-education that is required in the digital era. those who succeed will be those -- like you -- who can train themselves, who know how to think. i did not ignore this, i simply don't find it relevant. > Second,...most (professionals) exercise considerable day to day > work autonomy. ... Non-professionals, otoh, lack autonomy, and in > both their working and consumer/client lives often stand under the > authority of professionals. this would be another change in the new era. because hackers/coders/ early adopters do possess a "magic" that is not necessarily understood by their superiors, they *do* possess a relative autonomy in the workplace. this is confirmed to me day in and day out. but it is not a secret. there is no conspiracy to keep people out. we share our experience with anyone who wants to learn (and can take the ribbing)! > Third, the privileges of the professional extend beyond the > workplace to a whole way of life. again, this point applies, but not in the manner in which it was written. the world has changed. principles have to adapt as well... > from justice and the Politics of Difference, Iris Marion young. On Fri, 15 Sep 2000 11:31:24 -0400, kelley wrote: > > my argument was in response to stuff said here recently and over > the past year or so, ever since redhat IPO'd. it's an argument > made by some lefties (here and elsewhere). they make the claim > that geekdom (just for ease on the carpal) is the fulcrum of the > coming revolution. kel is right; it will never happen. and it has nothing to do with contrasting ideologies. >> A lot of it comes from outside, especially the media. > > well, you see, i'm a sociologist. i believe things can be said > about people and groups of people without being them. not > unproblematically, however. and i think it's important to really > get down in the trenches and listen to people tell it as they see > it. yet you have quickly latched on to raymond and ignored the people who actually make a difference, who are building this digital space. why? this is the part i do not understand... >> Yes there are media-whores in hackerdom >> (and media whores in the scene whores, the vilist of the vile). > > well ahem, i work for someone some hackers call a media whore. which is why i am so aghast at your argument. you exemplify the things i have mentioned. *you* add value to his biz -- not because of your education or your creds, but because of your skillset, ever increasing as they are -- and your ability to think for yourself. and i told you when we discussed your salary, you add more value to him than you realize and more than he adds to you. you -- like the hacker -- are self-taught in the required skillset. to wrap it up, as kelley puts it: kelley and i clearly look at things differently, and this is not only because of our different political perspectives. i said before that we could argue that the things under discussion are the result of a *cough**cough* "paradigm shift," rendering the old forms of analysis meaningless. this pretty clearly is my own position. but what kelley has done is argue that computing networks, geeks, free code and distributed work can be retrofitted to the traditional analyses. (this, btw, is the position of algore.) she wants to take this discussion to turf familiar to her (who blames her): "ok, these are my facts, now let's see how they fit into the lit." i will not debate on these terms. i am not a sociologist. my objections are with kel's presentations of the *facts.* if analysis follows from the facts, let's get the facts straight first. in science, we have an ideal: careful and rigorous analysis. either this tradition is lacking in your field or your own attention to it is absent... On Thu, 21 Sep 2000 16:31:53 -0400, kelley continued: > > now, there's a problem there if you cannot see how the attitudes > expressed at dc stuff are attitudes that are not uncommon regarding > the incredible specialness of IT folks, at least some factions of > them. here is an argument that technological knowledge is somehow > different, harder, and so when you master it you have control. not > so, as studies of other occupations making smae claimes have shown. this is, quite frankly, a myth. now, i find it sorta quaint that people pass it along and i don't doubt that geeks tell it to themselves to make themselves feel special (all that rejection takes its toll, doncha know), but it is still a myth. the problem i have is that *you* *legitimize* the myth with your talk of professionalization and credentials. >i have heard from a number of geeky lefties offlist. kendall seems > to get it. joe noonan seems to get it. les seems to get it. peter > v seems to get it, tho perhaps he's had no time to refute. yoshie > and carrol, not geeks, seem to get it. in the end, your defense is that, well, no one else objects. *yawn* i don't know these people, so i can't speak about them. but, you know, there are other possibilities as to why no one else has objected. time constraints. lack of interest. ignorance of the subject at hand. *i* object because i do care. > so maybe the problem is not my analysis eh? a flaw in lefty > analysis perhaps, you established the parameters of this debate. i would be more than willing to offer the counter-argument, as i indicated off list. but i am equally comfortable with answering this on the facts... > but that's a bigger problem than your sense that somehow i'm an > ignoramous who should be called, "dear". well, *dear,* i don't argue with "ignoramous." i don't suffer fools. i don't have that kind of time to waste. if you don't see that, then perhaps we should address your analytical skills. this is *not* about "fun in debate" club, this is about truth... ultimately, nothing is going to change. i will still believe in the seismic shift and you will still believe in your retrofit. people are like that. but while ou continue your clarion call against raymond, i will continue to point to you. because you prove my point. you characterize the digital era: working outside your discipline, a product of self-education, via a distributed work mode. you can continue to pump up eric's ego, he likes that. i'm gonna go pump up the volume... cheers. ac (appropriate apologies if i have misrepresented you or you opinions.) 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