from MLW
I talk a lot about peer to peer politics and when I do I am referring to a very deep cultural framework, that is, the framework of an extended sub-culture which helped fire the net to life. The culture does not have a single name but it is one I consider the kernel of the net, it is the original source of the online culture as we know it, the origin of many of its traditions and standards (netiquette? obviously mostly forgotten). The sentiments of this culture explain many of the mysteries of the net. It is part cryptoanarchis, part geeks that matter, and part realization… the realization that distributed networks are needed in place of traditional centralized ones.
Whenever people gather throughout history, you have had human networks, the internet only speeds that up and gives us a venue, virtual community, with which to experiment.
It is my history in this culture which is the source of my fascination with virtual cultures as well as with wherever the edge of the peer to peer fire has rearranged the landscape. This phenomenon of peer to peer networks has struck, stunned, and subtly reformed many public debates. These debates are allowed to extend beyond the experts, many of whom were charlatans in industries whose internal debate needed the reform. When peer to peer networks take on a subject, more than anything else they shine a light on the proceedings.
Hobby by hobby this phenomenon spread, starting with things of interest to early adopters, things like Monty Python, Star Trek, and News for Nerds. It has progressed through a list of hobbies for shut-ins and want to be shut-ins (no offense intended) and subsequently through to politics, politics as a hobby.
For me, if not for you, parts of this basic kernel of a net cultural ethos includes ideas such as “information wants to be free”, and that is “free as in speech, not as in beer”. My attitude toward free speech on the net is not borrowed from real world free speech, in which we demand it in “public” from our “government”, instead it is borrowed from the ideas among this large subculture of private citizens. For example old time, pre-internet era, private computer “bulletin board system” operators used their own machines and own phone bills to provide entirely unfettered use of their systems for this networked, peer to peer, public debate. These private people linked their BBSes (e.g. in FidoNet), prior to the internet, creating a national network carrying messages of any sort cross country. There was no demanding free speech, there was believing in it.
Of course the flaming, trolling and moderation issues with which you are all familiar did appear early. That’s another story, but suffice it to say as early aggregators of these experiences, they gifted us the concept of “troll”, though it has morphed from a fishing metaphor into a billygoat nightmare, and “flame war”.
Chaos on the net is not really chaos, the lamented universal truth of signal to noise entropy does not directly apply… on the net the noise is signal. Every piece of noise on the net has a human being behind it, an actual human being. Nazis can fantasize about a utopia built by eliminating some of this noise (aka “people”), but progressive cannot. We are stuck integrating it.
That person may be hurting, and you may be seeing their pain, and it can be ugly to see… I am not advocating personal sympathy with them so much as a general realization, each on is a peer. You are a peer. We are equals, though thankfully not identical.
In the old days there was a lot of “master”-“slave” language in computer science. Now that’s faded and it’s not just because the terms themselves are offensive but because the DESIGN they name was offensive. The master-slave design is, in short, centralism, and it has a fatal flaw, a flaw offensive to all that believe in the kernel of the net (“information wants to be free”). The flaw is that it doesn’t scale.
ACK! RUN FOR THE HILLS IT WON”T SCALE. When you face network affects, er, effects, you better damn well scale my brother. Centralism doesn’t scale and the net knows this. (My subculture anthropomorphizes the net and information at will, without restriction… because for us the net lives).
The net is designed on the principle that centralism doesn’t always fail, but it always suxors.
Distribution is the way to go. Distributed everything, distributed messaging centers, distributed doritos, distributed information, but… but especially power. Power must be distributed. Distributocracy. The actual distribution of power to actual people… that is the goal, and what an amazing concept. It is amazing to think of, it is amazing to think it’s confusing, confounding, or defies sensibility.
If only something like that were really possible.
I believe information wants to be free.
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reading this essay. From now on I will refer to you as “Peero” It’s much easier to remember how to spell and I find it absolutely appropriate! Hi Peero!
On a more serious note, when you are talking about distribution at the bottom, are you saying that power needs to be reallocated from centralized points to all points? I’m thinking of the historical analogy of land reform in Mexico where centralized hacienda farms were broken up and redistributed to the labor class. Is that what you are suggesting?
will be free
because of what you call a hobby
when someone is involved enough to make it a pastime
they usually seen how far they can take it
I am trying to gather my wits about me sufficiently to build a theory of “knowledge physics” that can attempt to organize some of the emergent phenomena of a networked society, and I’m going to publish it here in budhys’s beautiful new showcase of ideas (without actually helping to elect Democrats!)
One of the interesting implications of the movement toward peer-oriented knowledge resources is the undermining of the power of heroic individualism, and much of the Nietzchean nastiness that comes with it. On any given day, a gaggle of mediocre people, closely linked on the net, can beat the average evil genius or inspired savant.
The more connected we get, the more individually humble we shall become. The great pending question is if the emergence of extropic human networks will occur fast enough to avert catastrophic conflicts fueled by the dying mass propaganda culture. We will know the answer in our lifetimes.
You all who came from the before AOL have a story to tell. This is history from the inside–well a little piece of it. You’ve made your point about distribution and free speech as something to believe in. But I’m very interested in your and your “peers” take on what is going on with the internet, networks today. The noise must be accommodated you say, but . . . oh, nevermind. I just reread what you wrote: “the noise is the signal.” That’s right.
This is a beautiful piece of writing:
“It is my history in this culture which is the source of my fascination with virtual cultures as well as with wherever the edge of the peer to peer fire has rearranged the landscape. This phenomenon of peer to peer networks has struck, stunned, and subtly reformed many public debates. These debates are allowed to extend beyond the experts, many of whom were charlatans in industries whose internal debate needed the reform. When peer to peer networks take on a subject, more than anything else they shine a light on the proceedings.”
I don’t think I get what you mean by scaling–that master/slave doesn’t scale. Because control must always be maintained? Makes me think about Steve Wozniak’s recent book, with all his tales of bad behavior, and wonder about what is going on with the iphone which I was all excited about buying until I went to a cingular store and chatted with the young saleswoman, not more than 21 years old, who spoke by daughter’s language in phone. She did not talk against the iphone, but it was she who first told me about the $100 per month “relationship” that comes with the iphone. I didn’t do it because it would be too disruptive to switch from verizon, and it didnot seem worth it, but it’s been bothering me ever since. I wonder why was the deal set up that way, that to utilize the phone you’d have to pay the monthly fee: in other words, the iphone would not just cost $600 (now $400) but it would really cost $1200 per year. In other words, they’re (who ever “they” are: apple, att?) forcing you into (now you’ve given me the words) a master/slave relationship,no? Seems counter to what the early computer/network geeks were all about. Why would apple be pushing in that direction now. I’m not interested in the iphone now, but might be when I’m ready to give up my comcast cable/internet/phone, which already costs me $100 per month.
so my point is that your distribution model is hopeful, but there seems to be a countervailing force: your master/slave dynamic is just there in the shadows.
I disagree with a good deal of it but I think this may be your finest exposition of your view oo this.
Bravo!
check this site out, it converts any news feed into a pdf file. That makes it easy to print and distribute important articles. You can also email the pdf’s to news contacts etc.
Just one more tool in our arsenal.
http://rss2pdf.com/
1) That depends entirely on what you mean by “signal.”
2) You almost seem to be arguing that the reason everything is “signal” is because humans aren’t capable to creating noise. Meh.
impact on our evolution
or has it already??
The first example that springs to mind is the other kind of power….electrical power.
The future of which is in alternative sources….which are decentralized out of necessity to serve their area.
However the death of the mainframe computer has been greatly exaggerated for years.
When you go to your bank’s ATM machine to get some cash, it’s quite likely there’s some “Big Blue”, “Big Iron” lurking in the bowels of that bank somewhere handling your transaction – and not a cluster of PCs.
Ironically though, many new “supercomputers” are simply a huge pile of PCs, strung together.
But there are still a few advantages left to centralized (as opposed to p2p) computing and the “Big Iron” hasn’t entirely gone the way of the dinosaur yet.
to be found in the p2p paradigm
in that way it more closely reflects its nature as a commons
in a life affirming way
it can either be our tyrant or our free commons
depends on the paradigm
…as you note in passing, I think systems evolve in response to a range of pressures and opprotunities and develop both centralized and parallel processes. Acting as though one or the other is “naturally” predominant seems like a losing proposition. Distributed systems by their nature require more power at the nodes; so things that require processing power distribute well; things that require data in depth, slightly less so, and things that require bandwidth, worst of all. Distributed systems also allow large stochastic processes to develop, so that a complex truth can be understood — or hidden — in more nuanced ways. I’d argue that distributed systems have a profound effect on our ways of knowing and communicating — but this doesn’t get me closer to understanding that, necessarily.
A very good read though in terms of listening to other individuals and general outlook on power.
why do you have to write shit like this when I don’t have time to sit down and digest it!?!?
Thanks though!
Now that is an eye-opening experience, I must say.
If people only know who was ffing whom.
For well written and thought provoking diary.
I’m sure glad you “hobbyists” got beyond the command line interfaces of some of those BBS’s – thanks a lot for that.