“GNU serves as an example to inspire and a banner to rally others to join us in sharing. This can give us a feeling of harmony which is impossible if we use software that is not free. For about half the programmers I talk to, this is an important happiness that money cannot replace.”
Reading Richard Stallman’s “Gnu Manifesto,” the naiveté of the man is the first thing to strike me. Although not an ardent capitalist myself, I cannot help but think that Stallman is a rash idealist, one first discovering the wonders of a theoretical Marxist system. He is either unaware or willfully ignorant of the debate that has already raged over some of the Marxist claims implied in his writing. “Openness” and the miracle of open source evolution are merely disguised applications of Marxism, with the respective (and oft debated) benefits and consequences implicit in their model. An exploration of the implied socialist claims underneath the “Gnu Manifesto” is as follows.
Theoretically, open source programs, such as those created under the GNU project, are “just like air;” that is, they are plentiful and require no payment or labor to use. However, whereas air is a renewable source, and plants require no investment capital to replenish our oxygen supply, a human must devote his labor to renewing, distributing, or rewriting programs. This is a fundamental problem that Stallman thinks he addresses, but does not. To the question, “Don’t programmers deserve a reward for their creativity?” Stallman responds, “If anything deserves a reward, it is social contribution.” However, the programmers in GNU are making a social contribution, supplying the need like good socialists are supposed to do. And, they are not being rewarded for their labor, even though they deserve one. To counter this, Stallman proposes ideas about an overhead tax that would make programming a subsidized vocation; this is yet another reference to a communist state, where all vocations are subsidized.
He continues shortly afterward with a critique of modern capitalism, in response to the comment, “Competition makes things get done better.” He begins by saying yes, this is true. However, he adds that “the paradigm of competition is a race […] if the runners get into a fist fight, they will all finish late.” This oversimplification is a weak argument against capitalism and has been made many times before, although it is nonetheless inviting. Much has been written on the subject; whether or not Stallman is right in this regard is still up for debate. But it is still an argument in favor of socialism.
Stallman’s critiques of capitalism segue into copyright law. He brings up books and the issue of plagiarism, but then explains the differences:
“The fact that the easiest way to copy a program is from one neighbor to another, the fact that a program has both source code and object code which are distinct, and the fact that a program is used rather than read and enjoyed, combine to create a situation in which a person who enforces a copyright is harming society as a whole both materially and spiritually; in which a person should not do so regardless of whether the law enables him to.”
This is a strange argument concerning the transcendence of law towards an agreed-upon “natural law,” a post-conventional moral system that also is open to debate. Because the democratic social contract has come up with copyright laws, and Stallman is contesting the use of copyright laws, he is implicitly advocating against the democratic (read: capitalist-based) social contract. It is evident that Stallman is on the cusp of advocating social change, a Marxian revolution grounded in post-conventional morality against the destructive process of copyright law.
But here’s where it starts getting really hairy:
“In the long run, making programs free is a step toward the post-scarcity world, where nobody will have to work very hard just to make a living. People will be free to devote themselves to activities that are fun, such as programming, after spending the necessary ten hours a week on required tasks […] We have already greatly reduced the amount of work that the whole society must do for its actual productivity, but only a little of this has translated itself into leisure for workers because much nonproductive activity is required to accompany productive activity. The main causes of this are bureaucracy and isometric struggles against competition. Free software will greatly reduce these drains in the area of software production.”
Stallman’s term, the post-scarcity world, is a Utopian vision that first requires a revolution to a different, non-capitalist system (which would remove the “bureaucracy” and “isometric struggles against competition”), where the “pursuit of happiness” no longer means the vocation of choice but literally the chase after that which ensures happiness. Ah… if only!
Here is a good time to introduce that wonderful buzzkill, Fredric Jameson (not this guy). At one point in his essay “Cognitive Mapping,” Jameson digresses to the problem of generalizing a Marxist vision which currently only works in a specific spatial plane. Jameson uses the example presented in the book Detroit: I Do Mind Dying by Marvin Surkin and Dan Georgakis. In Detroit, the League of Black Revolutionary Workers is able to accomplish a startling feat: it “came within a hair’s breadth of […] taking over the city power apparatus” (Jameson 351). Once it began to expand, however, it encountered a spatial problem: “how to develop a national political movement on the basis of a city strategy and politics” (Jameson 352). Once the leaders of the League began working on the larger spatial plane, the base vanished under them. They became alienated from their own constituencies, for, in a socialistic society that stresses equality, there cannot be flashy media stars who don’t stay home to “mind the store” (Jameson 352). As the movement begun by the League collapsed underneath itself, its lone success—a riveting documentary of its achievement—also lost some of its flavor, because “in the process of becoming an image and a spectacle, the referent seems to have disappeared, as so many people from Debord to Baudrillard always warned us it would” (Jameson 352).
So, despite the vast possibilities given to humanity in the possibilities of open source software, it seems sadly limited by the Marxist philosophy lying ever so exposed beneath it. Open source works in some cases: many students I know at Brown use Open Office and are fervent supporters of free software (although perhaps for more selfish reasons—let’s just say I don’t know too many programmers and we’re all strapped for cash). But Jameson, with his example, explains how the grand image of a post-scarcity world, a generalization of the philosophy of openness, is much too high a goal for such a specific model, and it will inevitably fail. The spatial difference between the farsighted goals of open source—the implicit overthrow of capitalism for a socialist politic that Jameson (that buzzkill) says is impossible (Jameson 355)—and its present realities are too great for the model to overcome them. Indeed, the only result of such elegant posturing is the emergence of a narrative of defeat, a postmodern agony that creates nothing but longing.
So what lies in the future for open source? Perhaps the greatest potential lies not in the radical left-leaning words of Stallman, but in the centrist views described by Coleman in “How Free Became Open and Everything Else Under the Sun.” The metaphor of a “Commons,” a protected pool of resources and knowledge for common use by all, but non-threatening to the capitalist system, is an effective tool for combating the “runner’s fistfight” problem to which Stallman refers. Instead of being a radical step towards a (largely impossible) post-scarcity world, openness is instead “one example of a larger ‘liberal’ critique of the neoliberal face of ‘socially destructive unfettered capitalism’ [the runner’s fistfight], which is seen as a threat to democracy” (Coleman 15). This is a much more achievable goal for the open source model, one that even Jameson would not write off. That buzzkill.
As Stallman’s stepping-stone to a Marxist revolution, open source is crippled by the weight of that which it is trying to overthrow. As Jameson explains, it simply cannot bridge the spatial gap. As a sharp critique in the back-and-forth between neoliberalism and liberal thought, however, open source can truly shine.
Thanks for a great semester, Josh--enjoy your summer!
--Dan Ricker
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Friday, March 21, 2008
The Future and the Now: Navigable Space in Snow Crash
Two hackers—one a samurai-swordsman-genius, the other a mutant-psychotic-juggernaut, race on virtual motorcycles in cyberspace at speeds measuring in the hundreds of thousands of miles per hour while simultaneously slashing at each other with virtual swords and avoiding large concrete poles holding up a monorail overhead. Meanwhile, the samurai hacker, named Hiro Protagonist, tells the other the shared history of their fathers’ escape from a Japanese POW camp during WWII. The pair soon discover a curious circumstance: if either’s father had not existed, both would have died, and neither son would have been born. Through the course of this melodramatic epiphany, each hacker is still trying to calculatedly kill the other while speeding at velocities not possible in reality, but completely possible in the futuristic world of cyberspace.
Despite the humorous juvenility of the circumstances, this event in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel Snow Crash is only one of many that have deep significance for several theoretical frameworks discussed in class. One of the most significant items in the plot, the existence of the Metaverse, relies especially on Manovich’s thoughts on navigable space, the ability for users to process data by means of a movable, camera-like perspective through data as represented by three-dimensional objects. The qualities of Stephenson’s Metaverse follow Manovich’s basic premises; however, Stephenson introduces problematics which question some of Manovich’s arguments about the nature of navigable space.
Manovich first argues that, in the course of the development of navigable space in computer use, space itself has become a media type. The use of space is a new aesthetic, no different from video, audio, or textual art, and one entirely unique to new media. Stephenson agrees entirely with this basic premise of Manovich’s essay. The Metaverse, the operative internet-like navigable space in Snow Crash, is a medium of art, where the artist is the hacker. For example, Hiro Protagonist prides himself on being able to create an entirely unique avatar, fully capable of portraying any expression his human face might make and finely detailed to match his every characteristic. He similarly looks down on the users who resort to standard shelf-avatars, the “Brandys” and “Clints,” Metaverse philistines who merely take up room in the crowded main Street in the Metaverse. Similarly, Juanita, a fellow hacker, wrote the codes for faces in the Metaverse to be so precise that an attentive observer could pick up the “vapors of nuance” of emotion, much like real physical interaction. Though other hackers, including Hiro, scoffed at such minor attention to detail, Hiro later admits that this beautiful depiction of facial expression is what makes business in the Metaverse so popular.
Manovich also argues that the basic way to handle data in navigable space is in representations of data as three-dimensional objects with which the user can interact. Stephenson corresponds with the hypercard, a virtual representation of a small card that, when transferred between hands in the Metaverse, transfers all of the data contained within it to the other’s computer. Also, inside L. Bob Rife’s huge Metaverse complex, color-coded glowing webs represent his huge international cable network. This image gives eerie life to the concept of the World Wide Web, but instead of a network free for all, the magnate (or the spider) L. Bob Rife controls it. Still, it is evident that Stephenson’s Metaverse brings Manovich’s idea of data in navigable space to life.
However, one of Stephenson’s basic theses is completely counter to Manovich. The virus Snow Crash, the bitmap that destroys the brain of Da5id Meier, is data in code, its most raw form. The strength of the Snow Crash virus is that it refuses to be represented three-dimensionally; this way, it is able to circumvent the rational aspects of the brain to reach the most primal centers of language and destroy Da5id without him ever knowing what is going on. The virus of Asherah is a similar code whose power is its ability to skate around the rational language centers of the brain to promote irrationality. Like a virus both in cyberspace and reality, the cult of Asherah spreads from human to human, wrapping itself around the brainstem like a serpent, and the careful safeties of the rational brain—its abilities to interpret ingoing and outgoing information and manipulate it much like an object in three-dimensional space—are powerless to stop it.
Also, Manovich argues that, instead of optic and systematic, cyberspace is haptic and aggregate. Basically, this means that, instead of being a gestalt medium weighing all space within it equally, cyberspace is really the interaction of important objects on a static—and thus unimportant—background. Manovich explains this as the result of the difficulties in processing second-by-second 3-D rendering; it is much simpler for a computer to process the actions of a static background that does not “know” that the user is there, then to constantly process the minor interactions between user and background. Stephenson, again, looks like he agrees with this premise. The vast majority of the Metaverse is a gigantic, static ball on which real estate can be built. Avatars see each other, but there is no medium between them, affecting their actions against each other; indeed, avatars can just pass right through each other if they so desire. This is one of Manovich’s arguments against the systematic concept of cyberspace—no medium, or air (which necessitates the constant interaction between background and user, as well as between user and user), is programmed, so cyberspace must be aggregate. Stephenson’s Metaverse likewise has no air, and thus follows Manovich’s arguments against an aggregate cyberspace.
Yet Stephenson simultaneously challenges this argument, though in a way Manovich might expect. Though the majority of the Metaverse operates in the way Manovich might expect, the Black Sun, a haven for hackers and true operators of the system, operates much more like reality, where interaction between avatars is governed by physical rules, such as the inability for people to pass through each other. Indeed, the goal of the hackers designing the Metaverse was to eventually perfectly simulate reality, which is optic and systematic. For example, when Hiro wrote the rules governing swordplay, he put a loophole in the coding of the Metaverse that allows the sword to cut through walls. Normally, Hiro admits, this would be impossible, because walls in the Metaverse aren’t governed by physical rules; they’re representations of impenetrability to protect information inside virtual houses of data. However, the interaction between the supposed static background and the active user of the sword can actually grant the user entry, because the hacker who wrote the rules intended it to.
This, like mentioned above, is a hole in Manovich’s argument that he foresees. Manovich writes, “the users can modify the default settings and use the tools to create the opposite of what the default values suggest […] a reaction against the anticommunal and discrete nature of American society, an attempt to compensate for the much discussed disappearance of traditional community by creating virtual ones.” Stephenson interprets this as saying that, though the default of the Metaverse suggests an aggregate universe, in order to form a traditional, lifelike community—such as in the Black Sun—the hackers rebel and strive to create an optic and systematic cyberspace, one disparate from the anticommunal anarchical government system currently in place in the world in Snow Crash.
It is important, however, to remember that Snow Crash is fictional. Stephenson’s engagements of the arguments presented by Manovich do not have any empirical evidence behind them; he merely believes that, in a future world, this type of Metaverse may exist. He’s engaging with Manovich on a theoretical level. Because of this, neither author can be said to be the “right” one, so each author’s theories complicate the understanding of the other’s, introducing problematic and questioning each other’s arguments. Another important distinction is that Manovich is describing what is, and Stephenson is describing what may be. Manovich’s arguments describe how cyberspace is functioning now, in such games as Doom and Myst, as well as in 3-D art such as The Forest and Legible City; Stephenson lets his imagination loose and charts out how humans may change the state of cyberspace in the future, still with some of the limitations Manovich proposes but simultaneously striving against them. It is important, as we go onto the future of cyberspace, that we work with Manovich’s ideas but also keep Stephenson’s ideas in mind, so we can further explore the huge potential of navigable space.
Thanks for reading!
--Dan Ricker
Despite the humorous juvenility of the circumstances, this event in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel Snow Crash is only one of many that have deep significance for several theoretical frameworks discussed in class. One of the most significant items in the plot, the existence of the Metaverse, relies especially on Manovich’s thoughts on navigable space, the ability for users to process data by means of a movable, camera-like perspective through data as represented by three-dimensional objects. The qualities of Stephenson’s Metaverse follow Manovich’s basic premises; however, Stephenson introduces problematics which question some of Manovich’s arguments about the nature of navigable space.
Manovich first argues that, in the course of the development of navigable space in computer use, space itself has become a media type. The use of space is a new aesthetic, no different from video, audio, or textual art, and one entirely unique to new media. Stephenson agrees entirely with this basic premise of Manovich’s essay. The Metaverse, the operative internet-like navigable space in Snow Crash, is a medium of art, where the artist is the hacker. For example, Hiro Protagonist prides himself on being able to create an entirely unique avatar, fully capable of portraying any expression his human face might make and finely detailed to match his every characteristic. He similarly looks down on the users who resort to standard shelf-avatars, the “Brandys” and “Clints,” Metaverse philistines who merely take up room in the crowded main Street in the Metaverse. Similarly, Juanita, a fellow hacker, wrote the codes for faces in the Metaverse to be so precise that an attentive observer could pick up the “vapors of nuance” of emotion, much like real physical interaction. Though other hackers, including Hiro, scoffed at such minor attention to detail, Hiro later admits that this beautiful depiction of facial expression is what makes business in the Metaverse so popular.
Manovich also argues that the basic way to handle data in navigable space is in representations of data as three-dimensional objects with which the user can interact. Stephenson corresponds with the hypercard, a virtual representation of a small card that, when transferred between hands in the Metaverse, transfers all of the data contained within it to the other’s computer. Also, inside L. Bob Rife’s huge Metaverse complex, color-coded glowing webs represent his huge international cable network. This image gives eerie life to the concept of the World Wide Web, but instead of a network free for all, the magnate (or the spider) L. Bob Rife controls it. Still, it is evident that Stephenson’s Metaverse brings Manovich’s idea of data in navigable space to life.
However, one of Stephenson’s basic theses is completely counter to Manovich. The virus Snow Crash, the bitmap that destroys the brain of Da5id Meier, is data in code, its most raw form. The strength of the Snow Crash virus is that it refuses to be represented three-dimensionally; this way, it is able to circumvent the rational aspects of the brain to reach the most primal centers of language and destroy Da5id without him ever knowing what is going on. The virus of Asherah is a similar code whose power is its ability to skate around the rational language centers of the brain to promote irrationality. Like a virus both in cyberspace and reality, the cult of Asherah spreads from human to human, wrapping itself around the brainstem like a serpent, and the careful safeties of the rational brain—its abilities to interpret ingoing and outgoing information and manipulate it much like an object in three-dimensional space—are powerless to stop it.
Also, Manovich argues that, instead of optic and systematic, cyberspace is haptic and aggregate. Basically, this means that, instead of being a gestalt medium weighing all space within it equally, cyberspace is really the interaction of important objects on a static—and thus unimportant—background. Manovich explains this as the result of the difficulties in processing second-by-second 3-D rendering; it is much simpler for a computer to process the actions of a static background that does not “know” that the user is there, then to constantly process the minor interactions between user and background. Stephenson, again, looks like he agrees with this premise. The vast majority of the Metaverse is a gigantic, static ball on which real estate can be built. Avatars see each other, but there is no medium between them, affecting their actions against each other; indeed, avatars can just pass right through each other if they so desire. This is one of Manovich’s arguments against the systematic concept of cyberspace—no medium, or air (which necessitates the constant interaction between background and user, as well as between user and user), is programmed, so cyberspace must be aggregate. Stephenson’s Metaverse likewise has no air, and thus follows Manovich’s arguments against an aggregate cyberspace.
Yet Stephenson simultaneously challenges this argument, though in a way Manovich might expect. Though the majority of the Metaverse operates in the way Manovich might expect, the Black Sun, a haven for hackers and true operators of the system, operates much more like reality, where interaction between avatars is governed by physical rules, such as the inability for people to pass through each other. Indeed, the goal of the hackers designing the Metaverse was to eventually perfectly simulate reality, which is optic and systematic. For example, when Hiro wrote the rules governing swordplay, he put a loophole in the coding of the Metaverse that allows the sword to cut through walls. Normally, Hiro admits, this would be impossible, because walls in the Metaverse aren’t governed by physical rules; they’re representations of impenetrability to protect information inside virtual houses of data. However, the interaction between the supposed static background and the active user of the sword can actually grant the user entry, because the hacker who wrote the rules intended it to.
This, like mentioned above, is a hole in Manovich’s argument that he foresees. Manovich writes, “the users can modify the default settings and use the tools to create the opposite of what the default values suggest […] a reaction against the anticommunal and discrete nature of American society, an attempt to compensate for the much discussed disappearance of traditional community by creating virtual ones.” Stephenson interprets this as saying that, though the default of the Metaverse suggests an aggregate universe, in order to form a traditional, lifelike community—such as in the Black Sun—the hackers rebel and strive to create an optic and systematic cyberspace, one disparate from the anticommunal anarchical government system currently in place in the world in Snow Crash.
It is important, however, to remember that Snow Crash is fictional. Stephenson’s engagements of the arguments presented by Manovich do not have any empirical evidence behind them; he merely believes that, in a future world, this type of Metaverse may exist. He’s engaging with Manovich on a theoretical level. Because of this, neither author can be said to be the “right” one, so each author’s theories complicate the understanding of the other’s, introducing problematic and questioning each other’s arguments. Another important distinction is that Manovich is describing what is, and Stephenson is describing what may be. Manovich’s arguments describe how cyberspace is functioning now, in such games as Doom and Myst, as well as in 3-D art such as The Forest and Legible City; Stephenson lets his imagination loose and charts out how humans may change the state of cyberspace in the future, still with some of the limitations Manovich proposes but simultaneously striving against them. It is important, as we go onto the future of cyberspace, that we work with Manovich’s ideas but also keep Stephenson’s ideas in mind, so we can further explore the huge potential of navigable space.
Thanks for reading!
--Dan Ricker
Monday, February 25, 2008
I shall call them, by way of contrast to utopias, heterotopias.
The enigma is solved. The heterotopia was defined long before we got to this point. Foucault reaffirms his antithesis and continues in his explanation of the heterotopia, giving examples and outlying principles. But in between the text, in the streographic space of writing, Foucault has already told us what we needed to know about heterotopias.
There's only one more thing left to do.
Thank you.
There's only one more thing left to do.
Thank you.
Because these places are absolutely different from all the sites that they reflect and speak about
Not only are heterotopias defined as the Other, but they are defined by their Otherness. They are negatives. Negatives of utopias, for not being unreal. Negatives of the real, for being outside all that is in the real space of Society.
Yet so much is possible for the heterotopia. An "effectively enacted" utopia, or at least "kind of," has so many possibilities for the imagination.
Imagine visiting the world in Plato's Republic. Now actually do it. Impossible.
But in a heterotopia...
A real space, outside all other spaces, where society is inverted. A place for reflection, for improvement. The cinema, a ship, a cemetary, a colony, a brothel, a prison, the grave. Heterotopias are where revolutions are planned, where your voice is the only one speaking, where history is made.
Oh, and also where you can see Demi Moore topless.
Yet so much is possible for the heterotopia. An "effectively enacted" utopia, or at least "kind of," has so many possibilities for the imagination.
Imagine visiting the world in Plato's Republic. Now actually do it. Impossible.
But in a heterotopia...
A real space, outside all other spaces, where society is inverted. A place for reflection, for improvement. The cinema, a ship, a cemetary, a colony, a brothel, a prison, the grave. Heterotopias are where revolutions are planned, where your voice is the only one speaking, where history is made.
Oh, and also where you can see Demi Moore topless.
Places of this kind are outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality
Again comes the concept of place, as it relates to space. Earlier Foucault mentioned “real spaces,” outside of which utopias lay. Place, however, implies real space. A heterotopia is thus a real place, reaffirming the antithesis Foucault had established before. Yet even though the heterotopia is part of the domain of the real, it still remains outside reality. So whereas the opposite of heterotopia may be utopia, the opposite of both heterotopia and utopia is reality. This seeming contradiction is due to the sameness of both elements of the antithesis.
So what does it mean for a place to be outside of all places? An enigma has been established, once again. The heterotopia is real, but outside all of reality? So what is it, then? A private, isolated space? A cell? The end?
We come back to the notion of the “Other.” The essay is entitled “The Other Spaces:” these are heterotopias. The Other places in our lives which are outside reality but in turn reflect back to us, and affect us, and may be found in reality away from everything else: these are heterotopias. Heterotopias are the other spaces, "real" spaces, but outside of our normal experiences and instead pervade our imaginations.
So what does it mean for a place to be outside of all places? An enigma has been established, once again. The heterotopia is real, but outside all of reality? So what is it, then? A private, isolated space? A cell? The end?
We come back to the notion of the “Other.” The essay is entitled “The Other Spaces:” these are heterotopias. The Other places in our lives which are outside reality but in turn reflect back to us, and affect us, and may be found in reality away from everything else: these are heterotopias. Heterotopias are the other spaces, "real" spaces, but outside of our normal experiences and instead pervade our imaginations.
in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted
Earlier I had a photograph of a lake acting as a mirror, reflecting the upside down landscape residing above it. That was a utopia, the place in the mirror that is turned upside down but reflects that which is real. However, Foucault later explains in the essay that a mirror is actually a real thing. Thus in that picture, there was also a heterotopia, an actual surface that represents, contests, and inverts the real outside of it. So, as Foucault later explains, there is a place where the heterotopia and utopia converge, a Purgatory to their Heaven and Hell, where imagination and reality intersect.
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