Work Undone

WORK UNDONE / NEZAVRŠEN POSAO > Geert Lovink / Richard Barbrook / Brian Holmes / Piratbyrån

1

Impressum / Impresum Publication / Publikacija: Work Undone / Nezavršen posao http://slobodnakultura.org Publisher / Izdavač: biro beograd & slobodnakultura.org On behalf of the publisher / Za izdavača: Vladan Jeremić Biro za kulturu i komunikaciju Omladinskih brigada 186 11 070 Novi Beograd http://birobeograd.info biro@modukit.com Editor of the Publication / Urednik publikacije: Vladimir Jerić Vlidi Texts by / Tekstovi: Geert Lovink, Richard Barbrook, Piratbyrån, Brian Holmes, Vladimir Jerić Vlidi Translation and proof reading / Prevod i lektura: Vladimir Jerić, Marko Mladenović Reviewer / Recenzent: Prof. dr Novica Milić Design and Layout / Dizajn i prelom: Katarina Popović Photo / Fotografije: Vladan Jeremić, Richard Barbrook, Piratbyrån Printed by / Štampa: Štamparija Akademija, Beograd, 2009.

ISBN: 978-86-907379-4-9 Print run / Tiraž: 600 Support / Podrška: Biro za kulturu i komunikaciju Ministarstvo kulture Republike Srbije Fakulteti za medije i komunikacije

Thanks to all of those who contributed with their effort and input and made this publication happen.

Zahvaljujemo svima koji su svojim radom i podrškom pomogli objavljivanje ovog izdanja..

work undone ------nezavršen posao

Work Undone - - Nezavršen posao

006 // Uvodni txt -- Vladimir Jerić Vlidi 009 // Princip notworkinga /Koncepti u kritičkoj kulturi Interneta/ -- Geert Lovink /Hert Lovink/ 039 // Njujorška proročanstva: Zamišljena budućnost veštačke inteligencije -- Richard Barbrook /Ričard Barbruk/

Source Code

063 // The Principle of Notworking (Concepts in Critical Internet Culture) -- Geert Lovink 087 // NEW YORK PROPHECIES: THE IMAGINARY FUTURE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE -- Richard Barbrook 109 // Network Maps, Energy Diagrams / Structure and Agency in the Global System -- Brian Holmes 123 // Piratbyrån presents: Four Shreddings and a Funeral 131 // S23X BELGRADE BUS LECTURE BY PIRATBYRÅN

¶Poštovane čitateljke i čitaoci, ¶naravno - ništa se ne događa bez razloga, a skromna publikacija koju upravo držite u rukama tu ne predstavlja izuzetak. U ovom kratkom uvodu želim da vas upoznam kako sa nekim uočenim potrebama, koje su se pretvorile u određenu motivaciju, tako i sa nekim sasvim namernim susretima koji su odredili sadržaj tekstova koje ovom prilikom objavljujemo. ¶Verovatno bi se svako od vas složio sa tvrdnjom da se ubrzana digitalizacija i umrežavanje “događa” - teško da ćemo naći argumente protiv. Ono što u takvim situacijama predstavlja razlog za uzbunu jeste upravo “normalnost” samog ovog procesa - on nam se svima jednostavno događa, i predstavlja se kao nekakva prirodna nepogoda ili kosmička neminovnost. Kroz jedan već odavno poznat mehanizam, čini se da tehnologija, sa svim svojim društvenim efektima, unapređuje samu sebe. Ona kao da sledi sopstveni i nama teško dokučiv razvojni put, a nama ostaje da “to” volimo ili ne volimo, da u “tome” učestvujemo ili ne učestvujemo. Kao “prirodno” rešenje nameće se poriv da svoje živote jednostavno uklapamo, bilo prihvatanjem ili odbijanjem, u okvire koje nam sada i “to”, između ostalog, postavlja. ¶Radovi koje predstavljamo posmatraju situaciju u kojoj smo se svi zajedno našli na jedan jednostavniji način - ali, nemojte da vas ova izjava zbuni.

“Jednostavnije” ovde stoji za jedan kritičan, direktan i pre svega konkretan i materijalistički pristup, što je, u svakom slučaju, pristup koji je mnogo lakše razumeti od sofisticiranih mehanizama koje smo primorani da upotrebljavamo da bi nam ove i druge situacije postale nevidljive, odnosno “normalne”. ¶Da se vratimo na tekstove koje objavljujemo - za početak, pred vama je prevod uvodnog teksta u mrežnu teoriju, ili teoriju mreža - Princip notworkinga Dr Geert Lovink-a. Ovo je tekst na koji se dugo čekalo - ma koliko da je “normalizacija” uzela maha, rastuća nelagodnost pred sve bržim društvenim i tehnološkim transformacijama je, makar podsvesno, zahtevala mnoge odgovore. Lovink je ispravno sagledao problem: odgovori nam neće značiti mnogo, ako ne znamo sa kojim pitanjima da ih uparimo. Naročito važno u ovom tekstu je to što uspeva da nas, kroz jedan “razuman” broj strana, provede kroz mnoge reference, debate i iskustva, i dovede do inicijalnog skupa pitanja koja “nisu u pitanju”. ¶Ja sam se, svojim prevodilačkim intervencijama, potrudio da ovaj “razuman” broj strana pretvorim u “nerazuman”, dodajući veliki broj fusnota koje razjašnjavaju određenu terminologiju i pojmove za koje sam verovao da u ovoj jezičkoj sredini nisu nešto što je svakome poznata i svakodnevna stvar - i to sa jednom određenom namerom. Ovo je tekst koji je posebno preveden u cilju da se nađe kako u silabusima i riderima institucionalizovanih “fabrika znanja”, svetu akademije kojem je ovaj tekst izuzetno i urgentno potreban, tako i na blogovima i mailing listama svih umreženih, autodidaktičkih i “autonomnih” inicijativa, kojima je možda još potrebniji. Verovatno sam u poletu pokušaja da “objasnim sve” sebi dao previše slobode, ali tu ste vi da to procenite, i, nadamo se, da ispravite ovu i druge greške - zato su oba prevoda objavljena pod pravno-tehničkim uslovima koji vam dozvoljavaju (mada lično ne smatram da su vam bilo kakve dozvole potrebne) da ove tekstove umnožavate, modifikujete, transformišete i analizirate na sve načine na koje vam se učini da je potrebno.

¶Sledeći veoma važan i do sada “nedostajući” tekst koji ovom prilikom prevodimo je “Njujorška proročanstva: zamišljena budućnost veštačke inteligencije” Dr Richard Barbrook-a, koji za geneaologiju i istoriju onoga što doživljavamo kao savremenost ima konstitutivnu funkciju - ali ne i onu “istorizacije”. Bez ovog i sličnih istraživanja ne možemo pravilno razumeti odnos juče-danas-sutra, a istorija društva je u opasnosti da bude prepisana kao “istorizacija” medija. Richard Barbrook na veoma konkretan način upozorava na ovaj problem, ali nam ne nudi nekakvo instant-rešenje, već jasnu i određenu poziciju koja rešenje čini mogućim. Pristup prevođenju ovog teksta je bio drugačiji od prethodnog, i umnogome je određen esejističkom formom izvora na engleskom jeziku. Ponovo - tamo gde mislite da smo pogrešili, vi ispravite i širite dalje. ¶Zbog toga postoji Source Code sekcija, gde možete naći ove tekstove na jeziku na kojem su napisani, i u kojoj je kao sledeći ponuđen tekst Network Maps, Energy Diagrams našeg dragog gosta Brian Holmes-a. Dok dva prethodna teksta ispituju na teorijski, praktičan i istorijski način evoluciju i transformaciju moći, Holmes nam daje mogućnost uvida u to kako se, koristeći upravo savremene proizvode moći, sama moć može učiniti vidljivom. Ta zamišljenja linija se nastavlja u sledećem tekstu - ako nas Lovink provlači kroz gustu teoretsku potku, Barbrook razvejava dimne zavese “istorije” da bi smo uopšte videli put, a Holmes predlaže određene alate da taj put i našu sadašnju poziciju pravilno ocrtamo - ne kao sliku, već kao znanje - onda nas tamo gde smo stigli dočekuju Piratbyrån. Kao najmlađi učesnici u našem malom zborniku, ovi dragi 7 prijatelji su formirani upravo u okruženju koje ceo ovaj zajednički rad proučava, kroz jedno “javno” sazrevanje, od kojeg se Piratbyrån nisu uplašili; ovaj kolektiv sam sebi predstavlja najbolju “studiju slučaja”. Njihov rad je takođe i izuzetan primer principa u kojem, ako pravilno proučimo i promislimo bilo koji njen fragment (na način na koji su Piratbyrån svojevremeno doveli u pitanje ideju o “intelektualnom vlasništvu”), celina i sistem može da nam se pred očima počne da “otvara” u svoj svojoj kompleksnosti. Ako verujemo da princip konstantnog preispitivanja i transformacije onoga što radimo u “realnom vremenu” predstavlja pravilan teoretski odgovor na izazove sadašnjice, za praktičan primer takvog pristupa ne moramo da čekamo - Piratbyrån su sa nama već neko vreme... ¶Želim, na kraju, da vas obavestim i o još jednom “ne-slučajnom” aspektu ove publikacije, za koju se nadamo da će biti prva u nizu u okviru jednog sistematičnijeg pristupa javnoj sferi - ona je proizvod višegodišnjeg istraživanja i saradnje, brojnih diskusija putem raznih medija i razmene iskustava uživo, i, pre svega, jednog zajedničkog rada za koji niko od nas ne smatra da je na bilo koji način završen. U toku prethodnih nekoliko godina, naša mala neformalna grupa slobodnakultura.org je imala čast i zadovoljstvo da se sretne, sarađuje, a u nekim slučajevima i lokalnoj sredini predstavi radove ne samo svih ljudi koji su ovom prilikom zastupljeni u publikaciji, već i aktivnosti mnogih drugih, čije ćemo radove tek obrađivati. Na kraju vas pozdravljamo rečima kojima Richard Barbrook završava svoj tekst: budimo nadahnuti i strastveni u zamišljanju naših sopstvenih vizija boljih vremena koja će uslediti. • Vladimir Jerić Vlidi <vlidi@slobodnakultura.org>, Beograd, decembar 2009.

Princip notworkinga1 /Koncepti u kritickoj kulturi Interneta/ Javno predavanje, 24 februar 2005, Hogeschool van Amsterdam (HvA)2

Geert Lovink (Hert Lovink)

1 Naslov se odosi na izraz “networking je notworking” (igra reči na engleskom jeziku, koja bi otprilike značila “umrežavanje ne radi”, i/ili “umrežavanje je nerad”), i koja implicira da npr. četovanje putem kompjuterskih mreža (chat) odvlači ljude od važnog posla koji ostaje neobavljen. Prvi put sam za ovu izreku čuo ranih devedesetih, kada ju je upotrebio milijarder George Soros, koji je bio skeptičan prema kreiranju mreža u kulturi kao delu programa sopstvene dobrotvorne organizacije (kreiranje “mreža u kulturi” je upravo bila strategija ‘lanca’ CCA - Center for Contemporary Art / Centar za savremenu umetnost, koji je Soros finansirao i koji je imao svoje ‘karike’ u glavnim gradovima ‘tranzicionih’ zemalja, uglavnom na teritoriji Istočne Evrope. prim. prev.).

2 Hogeschool van Amsterdam - Amsterdamska visoka škola je deo Univerziteta za primenjenu nauku (HvA) u Amsterdamu i Almereu (Holandija). Ova obrazovna institucija sa 2300 zaposlenih je orijentisana na profesionalnu i praktičnu obuku, i trenutno nudi 80 kurseva koji opslužuju potrebe oko 30 000 studenata. Više na www.international.hva.nl (prim. prev.).

Pesnici su sišli sa visina, za koje su verovali da su za njih stvorene. Sišli su na ulice, uvredili svoje gospodare, bogove više ne priznaju, i usuđuju se da poljube lepotu i ljubav pravo u usta. (Paul Eluard)

Uvod ¶U ovom eseju ću predstaviti jedan tekući teorijski rad, koji je razvijan od 2004-te, godine kada sam prihvatio poziciju ‘predavača’ na Hogeschool van Amsterdam. Fokusiraću se na tri konceptualna polja: na odnos između multituda, mreža i kulture, na umetnost i veštinu saradnje i ‘slobodnog udruživanja’, i na kraju ću predstaviti elemente teorije ‘organizovanih mreža’. ¶Pošto sam završio sa pisanjem knjige My First Recession3 našao sam se, ponovo, u raznim situacijama i praktičnim projektima, od kojih je najzahtevniji sasvim sigurno bio promena boravišta – iz Brizbejna (Brisbane, Australia) sam se preselio u Amsterdam. Uz podršku Emilie 11 Randoe, direktorke škole za interaktivne medije na HvA, uradio sam nacrt za istraživački program koji se odnosi na ‘digitalni javni domen’ iz kojeg se izrodio The Institute of Network Cultures (Institut za mrežnu kulturu),4 poduhvat koji se u ovom trenutku još uvek razvija. Verovatno bi bilo prerano predstaviti koherentnu i jedinstvenu “Teoriju mrežne kulture”. Umesto toga, delovanje ovog Instituta treba posmatrati kao rad koji se odvija kroz jedan široki spektar intervencija i koji kombinuje elemente istraživanja ‘iznutra’, kao kritičku refleksiju (mrežnih) praksi, i na kraju, ali ne i manje važno - kao jedan koprus spekulativnih predloga.

1. Multutude, mreža i kultura ¶George Yudice, u svojoj studiji The Expediency of Culture (Utilitarnost, odnosno efikasnost kulture)5, tvrdi da smo se odmakli od stava koji je sumničav kada se radi o kulturi, i da smo se, uprkos opasnosti

3 Geert Lovink, My First Recession: Critical Internet Culture in Transition (Moja prva recesija: kritička Internet kultura u tranziciji), Rotterdam; V2/NAi 4 Vidi www.networkcultures.org (web sajt i blog Instituta za mrežne kulture). Pored serije predavanja (na holandskom) o novim medijima u Holandiji i silabusa koji je planiran za teorijski deo akademskog programa koji se bavi interaktivnim medijima, Institut je zakazao pet međunarodnih konferencija: A Decade of Webdesign, German Media Theory, Alternatives in ICT for Development, Curating for Public Screens i Art & Politics of Netporn.

5 George Yudice (2003): The Expediency of Culture, Durham and London: Duke University Press.

od ‘neminovne propasti’, po pitanju kulture okrenuli ka takozvanom ‘produktivnom stavu’. Yudice predlaže da kulturu analiziramo kao resurs, radije nego kao robu. Kultura predstavlja aktivan i potencijalno inovativni sektor, koji ima kapacitet da mobiliše proizvodne snage. Ovo je naročito izražena osobina kulture kakva se razvija na Internetu. ¶Propali dotcom6 modeli razvijeni kasnih devedesetih su pokazali koliko su bili loši - i pogrešni - komercijalni pokušaji koji su imali za cilj da valorizuju online komunikaciju kao ‘vrednost’ (value), koja se meri isključivo po broju ‘pregleda stranica’. Prevođenje društvenih aktivnosti u zamišljenu finansijsku protivrednost ispostavilo se kao težak, ako ne i nemoguć zadatak. Ovde Yudice-ov model kulture-kao-resursa pronalazi svoju ulogu jednog novog epistemološkog okvira. Nasuprot darvinovskom 12 modelu u kojem pobednik dobija sve, zagovaranom od strane libertarijanskih ‘prvoboraca’, model kulture-kao-resursa kao svoju ‘razmensku vrednost’ koristi monetu različitosti. Kultura ne može da se razvija u okruženju u kojem postoji situacija monopola. Mrežna kultura ne nastaje sama od sebe, i kao što je to slučaj sa svim drugim resursima, za njen razvoj je potrebno obezbediti mehanizam održivosti.

Ona zahteva određene distance, autonomne prostore u kojim skupovi (klasteri)7 grupa i individua mogu da razvijaju sopstvene prakse.

Sama infrastruktura i raspoloživost pristupa jednostavno nisu dovoljni. Kultura se ne može izjednačiti sa ‘slobodnim vremenom’ koje ‘konzumira’ lokalno stanovništvo i turisti - kultura je strateški resurs. U tom smislu, Richard Florida je u pravu sa svojom teorijom ‘kreativne klase’.8 Ali, pitanje o tome u kojoj meri principi ‘kreativnih industrija’ predstavljaju jednu “modu”, čiji je cilj da maskira strukturne probleme tržišta rada na Zapadu9, ostaje otvoreno - kultura kao korporacija (Culture Inc.) jednostavno ‘ne radi’. U najboljem slučaju, takav pristup može da proizvede takozvane McPoslove (McJobs10), i uglavnom je zavistan od dobrovoljnog i amaterskog rada.

Uspon kreativnih industrija ne može biti razmatran van šireg konteksta ‘prekariotskog’11 (izrabljivačkog i nesigurnog) rada - rada bez 6 Wikipedia na našem jeziku za sada ovako definiše izraz dotcom, koji nalazimo i u obliku dot-com, dot com ili dot.com: “dot-com su poslovni sistemi koji kompletno poslovanje vrše u virtuelnom svetu Interneta i e-trgovine.” Ova definicija je delimično tačna, a kompletniju definiciju i genealogiju pojma pogledajte na http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_company. Članak o pomenutom ‘dotcom krahu’ (dot-com bubble) pogledajte na ovoj adresi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot.com_bubble (prim. prev.)

7 Reč ‘klaster’ (eng. cluster) može imati različita značenja (pogledajte http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster). Ovde je verovatno najadekvatnije da se razume kao u: “Cluster (kompjuterske nauke) - grupa ‘labavo’ povezanih kompjutera koji tesno sarađuju na određenom zadatku”. Klasteri mogu biti povezani međusobno u veće sisteme (prim. prev.).

8 Richard Florida (2002): The Rise of the Creative Class, New York: Basic Book.

9 U vezi kritike koncepta kreativnih industrija, referišem na rad Ned Rossiter-a i Danny Butt-a, na primer http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0212/msg00057.html. Takođe pogledati i tekst Ned Rossiter (2004): Creative Industries, Comparative Media Theory and the Limits of Critique from Within, u žurnalu Topia, Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, Number Eleven, Spring 2004, Toronto, Canada.

10 McJob je sleng koji označava slabo plaćeni i nisko-prestižni posao koji obično ne zahteva naročita znanja i ne daje priliku za napredovanje u okviru kompanije. Sam termin dolazi od imena lanca za prodaju brze hrane McDonald’s, ali označava bilo koji posao niskog statusa, bez obzira na poslodavca, koji ne zahteva mnogo obuke, u kojem je visok procenat “zamenjivosti” radnika i u kojem su aktivnosti radnika strogo regulisane od strane menadžera. Više na http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McJob (prim. prev.).

11 Prekariotski rad je termin koji se upotrebljava da opiše nestandardno zaposlenje koje je slabo plaćeno,

ugovora, bez ograničenja radnog vremena, rada koji je slabo plaćen, rada bez zdravstvenog osiguranja, i tako dalje.12 Ako koncept ‘kreativnih industrija’ želi da bude smislen i da izbegne situaciju u kojoj postaje zvanična verzija popularne mode ‘nove ekonomije’ onako kako je to postavljeno devedesetih, onda mora da najozbiljnije razmotri problem održivosti. U suprotnom, nema potrebe da govorimo o nekim “novim uslovima” (života, rada, itd - prim. prev.) koji su posledica uvođenja digitalnih tehnologija. Umesto toga, bilo bi preciznije da govorimo o restruktuiranju i rearanžiranju u okviru postojećih institucija, i da napustimo tvrdnju o pojavljivanju jednog sasvim novog sektora.

Internet kultura je u permanentnom stanju protočnosti. Ne postoji linearno kretanje, ni ‘prema gore’ niti ‘prema dole’. Jedino što je tu ‘sigurno’ jeste činjenica da postoji stabilan rast korisnika Interneta izvan područija koje označavamo kao Zapad, kako u apsolutnim tako i u relativnim brojevima.13 Ovo predstavlja ‘kulturni zaokret’ sa kojim većina zapadnih Internet eksperata tek treba da se snađe, naročito u pogledu opadajućeg značaja engleskog jezika u kombinaciji sa rastućim brojem ‘intranetova’14 na japanskom, kineskom i tako dalje.

Nasuprot nostalgičarima, koji opisuju Net kao medij čiji potencijali nužno opadaju sve od trenutka od kada je počela njegova komercijalizacija, i nasuprot večitim optimistima, koji predstavljaju Internet kao jednu “svetu stvar” koja će na kraju povezati sve naše moždane sinapse, radikalni pragmatisti (kao što sam ja) stavljaju akcenat 13 na nove kompromise, moguće zloupotrebe, i naročito na proučavanje 15 razvoja wiki, P2P i weblog aplikacija koje preoblikuju sferu novih nesigurno i u većini slučajeva nedovoljno za izdržavanje domaćinstva. Poslednjih dekada je zabeležen dramatičan porast prekariotskog rada, zbog faktora kao što su razvoj informacionih tehnologija, globalizacija i pomeranje od proizvodne ekonomije ka servisnoj ekonomiji. Ove promene su kreirale novu vrstu ekonomije koja zahteva ‘fleksibilnost’ na radnom mestu, i čiji je rezultat najčešće potpuni izostanak zaštite prava zaposlenih po pitanju definicije radnog vremena, penzija, bolovanja i drugih socijalnih davanja. Prekariotski rad se naročito negativno odrazio na zaposlenje žena. Više na http://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Precarious_work (prim. prev.).

12 Pogledajte www.precairforum.nl.

13 Pogledati www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm.

14 Intranet (unutrašnja mreža) predstavlja korišćenje tehnologija baziranih na Internetu u okviru i od strane određene organizacije, a u cilju interne komunikacije i pristupa informacijama. Može se reći da je Intranet “privatni Internet“. Termin je prvi put upotrebljen 1995. godine u časopisu Digital News & Review u tekstu autora Stephen Lawton-a pod nazivom Intranets Fuel Growth of Internet Access Tools. Intranet nastaje kada se u okviru jedne definisane i institucionalne mreže primene rešenja karakteristična za internet, kao što su TCP/IP protokol, web server, mail server i drugi serveri. (Izvor: http://sr.wikipedia. org/wiki/Intranet, prim.prev.)

15 Wiki je veb sajt (ili kolekcija veb stranica), dizajniran tako da omogući bilo kome ko mu pristupi da doprinese i uređuje sadržaj koji se na njemu nalazi. Koristeći browser (“čitač”, program koji korisniku omogućuje pregledanje, učitavanje web stranica i multimedijalnih sadržaja vezanih uz njih, kao što je, na primer, Firefox) i pojednostavljenu sintaksu, tzv. wiki sintaksu, korisnici vikija mogu da dodaju, menjaju i unapređuju sadržaj bez većih tehničkih znanja.

P2P je model komunikacije putem interneta, alternativa klijent/server (vidi fusnotu 92) modelu, i najčešće se koristi za deljenje fajlova (filesharing). Model karakteriše distribuirana mrežna arhitektura koja se sastoji od učesnika koji dogovorno stavljaju na raspolaganje deo svojih resursa (kao što je procesor, prostor na disku ili mrežni protok (bandwidth) drugim članovima mreže, bez potrebe za nekom instancom centralne koordinacije (kao što su serveri). P2P je skraćenica od engleskog izraza peer to peer, što, grubo prevedeno, znači “jednak prema jednakom”. Peers, odnosno jedinice-članovi ovakve mreže, u isto vreme i proizvode i konzumiraju mrežne resurse.

medija. Najveći neprijatelji ‘net kritike’ su i dalje “navlačeći” PR govori čiji je isključivi cilj postizanje kratkoročnog profita, kao i religiozna priroda većine teorijskog i edukativnog materijala u polju novih medija. ¶Kulturalizacija interneta je pred nama, i na taj spor ali neminovan proces se ne gleda sa odobravanjem i zadovoljstvom, kako od strane offline elita16, tako i od strane tehno-gikova17 i medijskih aktivista. Kulturalizacija nije, na šta Yudice ukazuje, jedan nevini proces - to je proces koji podrazumeva ‘mobilizaciju i menadžment populacija’.18 Ovo se ne može razumeti isključivo kroz značenje termina ‘kontrola’. Za Yudice-a, demokratsko uključivanje ‘zajednica razlike’19 jeste nužna, ali i poželjna težnja - ono što Yudice naziva “utilitarnost, ili efikasnost kulture” zapravo podvlači performativnost kao osnovnu logiku savremenog društvenog života.20

14

Kulturalizacija u okviru šireg konteksta informacionih tehnologija (IT) se takođe može tumačiti kao jedan momenat anticipacije, kao taktička zaobilaznica koja je odgovor na sada već dugotrajan gubitak na značaju zapadne ‘klase inženjera’. Hegemonija koju su osvarili naučnici koji se bave informacionim tehnologijama, kroz svoju ulogu pronalazača, jeste razumljiva - ali nije mogla da traje zauvek. Različita polja znanja, od interakcije između čoveka i kompjutera do studija o korisnosti i proučavanja novih medija su, svaka na svoj način, obznanili ovaj zaokret ka kulturalizaciji. Sa ogromnim outsourcing-om21 IT poslova u zemlje kao što je Indija možda smo do ove

Blog ili weblog (skraćeno blog, od engl. web log, blog) čini niz hronološki organizovanih unosa teksta, koji se prikazuju na web stranicama (uglavnom su unosi sortirani od najnovijih ka starijim). U jednom trenutku razvoja digitalnih mreža najpopularniji način za distribuciju sadržaja na internetu, blog vremenom prerasta koncept “zamene za lični dnevnik” i postaje najuticajnija i u svakom smislu najrasprostranjenija forma elektronskog izdavaštva - servis Technorati je u decembru 2007. indeksirao 112 000 000 blogova.

(Izvori: http://sr.wikipedia.org/sr-el/Viki, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer, http://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Weblog - prim.prev.)

16 Termini online i offline (takođe u obliku on-line i off-line) imaju specifično značenje u okviru oblasti kompjuterskih tehnologija i telekomunikacija. Uopšteno, online označava stanje povezanosti, dok offline indicira “nepovezano” stanje. U svakodnevnoj upotrebi, izraz online često predstavlja zamenu za Internet ili World Wide Web - više detalja na adresi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online. U kontekstu ovog teksta, izraz “offline elite” označava u isto vreme i “staromodne” ali i “nevidljive, netransparentne” strukture moći. (prim. prev.)

17 Reč geek (čita se kao “gik”) dolazi iz slenga, i označava osobe kao “čudne ili na neki način bizarne, posebno u smislu preterane opsednutosti sa jednom ili više stvari, uključujući određene intelektualne probleme, elektonske uređaje, određene aspekte tehno-kulture i slično”. Reč geek, upkos svom inicijalnom poreklu (od reči freak, koja znači “nakaza” i geck, što znači “budala”) se (uglavnom) ne koristi kao derogativ - štaviše, u savremenoj upotrebi može da označava posebnu posvećenost ili stručnost u određenoj oblasti. Označiti nekoga kao geek-a znači postaviti tu osobu u određenu i jasno definisanu kulturološku matricu vezanu za specifične kulturološke ili tehnološke fenomene. Figura geek-a zauzima sve značajnije mesto u savremenom proučavanju kulturoloških fenomene i “novih subjektivnosti” koje se razvijaju u visoko-tehnološkom društvu. Termin je blizak ali ne i identičan sa drugim često korišćenim terminom, “nerd”.

Više na http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geek (prim. prev.).

18 George Yudice (2003): The Expediency of Culture, Durham and London: Duke University Press, strana 20.

19 Primarno značenje termina “communities of difference”, kako ga Yudice uvodi, bi bilo “zajednice različih”, u smislu različitih od onih zajednica kakve se smatraju za “normalizovane”u okviru kulturne hegemonije “zapadnog liberalno-kapitalističkog građanskog demokratskog društva”; sekundarno značenje implicira da su to zajednice koje u okviru sebe okupljaju osobe ili grupe koje se međusobno smatraju različitima (prim. prev.).

20 Ibid, strana 28 21 Outsourcing (izgovara se “autsorsing”) je davanje posla ili servisa, kao što je dizajn ili proizvodnja proizvoda, na izvođenje putem pod-ugovora trećim licima, koja posao često obavljaju van zemlje u kojoj je

tačke konačno i došli. Najzad postoje ekonomski razlozi da se obrati više pažnje na ekonomske mogućnosti tehno kulture. Oseća se rastuća urgentnost, makar u sektoru edukacije, da se počne sa intergracijom ovog ‘soft’ znanja22 u korpus tvrdokorne IT radne snage. Sve do skora, delovalo je kao da su programeri i dizajneri multimedije sa Marsa i Venere. Jedna nametnuta “genderizovana”23 izgradnja identiteta muških programera i ženskih dizajnera i stručnjaka za komunikacije je do skora imala svoju ekonomsku bazu u samoj podeli rada u okviru kompanija (na primer, programeri “protiv” odeljenja za marketing). Kroz IT outsourcing koji ubrzano raste, dominacija muškog ‘geek’24 programera nije više datost, i otvara se prostor za ‘mešanje i kombinovanje kultura’.25 Sve veći broj kurseva iz multimedijalnog dizajna i komunikacija, kao što je Interactive Media program na HvA, formira jedan ključan odgovor na ovu globalnu transformaciju. Sve do sada, edukativni sektor je bio jako spor u usvajanju mrežnih tehnologija. Borbe unutar institucija između već postojećih disciplina su sprečavale da visoko obrazovanje postane zaista inovativno. Univerziteti širom sveta se nalaze u ‘gvozdenom zagrljaju’ korporacije Microsoft. Upotreba slobodnog (free) i open-source26 softvera je marginalizovana, ako na kompanija koja posao ugovara. Na primer, napredak telekomunikacija je omogućio naročito obiman outsourcing takozvane “telefonske podrške” određenim proizvodima i servisima iz SAD i Velike Britanije u Indiju, jer određeni procenat lokalnog stanovništva govori engleski jezik, što je dovelo do “eksplozije” razvoja gradova kao što je Bangalor, ali i dramatičnih novih socijalnih razlika; sa druge strane, sindikati na zapadu se sve više bore protiv ove poslovne prakse, jer veruju da ona “oduzima poslove” tamošnjoj radnoj klasi (2004. je 71% amerikanaca verovao da je outsurcing odgovoran za manjak poslova i smanjivanje cena rada). Osnovna logika outsorcing-a je ta da isti posao koji u SAD košta, na primer, 20 dolara na sat, američka kompanija u Indiji može da plati 20 puta manje - pritom, ne mora da obezbedi ni radno mesto niti da odgovara za bilo koji problem u vezi socijalnog i zdravstvenog statusa zaposlenih, a ni sindikat zaposlenih sa kojima mora da “izlazi na kraj”. Ogroman broj kako manufakturnih, tako i “pešačkih” intelektualnih i servisnih poslova (kao što je pisanje kôda i slično) je sa Zapada outsource-ovan na mesta kao što su Indija i Kina. Izraz outsourcing je ušao u biznis rečnik tokom 1980-tih godina. (prim. prev.)

22 Izraz “soft” ovde dolazi jednako kao prevod istoimene engleske reči koja znači “mekano, nežno, krhko” i kao deo reči “software”. Ali, ponajviše se odnosi na predloženu podelu znanja u dva ‘domena”. Podela znanja na hard (“tvrdo”) i soft (“meko”) znanje je kod, na primer, Emile Durkheim-a ugrubo opisana ovako: soft znanje je inkonzistentno, nešto što se rapidno razvija, karakteriše ga dijalog i stanje “pojavljivanja”, dok je hard znanje opisano kao stabilno, ustanovljeno, “neupitno”, strukturirano, “priznato”, organizovano. Više na http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/wikis/KnowingKnowledge/index.php/Many _Faces_Exploring _Knowledge (prim. prev.).

23 Od engleske reči “gender” (pol), u ovom kontekstu označava donošenje mišljenja i odluka na osnovu pola one/onoga ko donosi odluku i onoga/one na koju se odluka odnosi (prim. prev.).

24 Vidi fusnotu 17.

25 Lovink u originalnom tekstu koristi englesku reč “mingling”, koja može da znači i “mešanje” i “kombinovanje”, ali na jedan specifičan način - kada se, na primer, na taj način pomešaju mirisi, oni su i deo novog mirisa ali su i dalje “pojedinačno prepoznatljivi” (prim. prev.).

26 Free software (slobodni softver), kako ga definiše Free Software Foundation (FSF, Zadužbina za slobodni softver), je softver koji se može koristiti, umnožavati, proučavati, menjati i distribuirati dalje bez ograničenja. Sloboda od takvih ograničenja je u središtu koncepta “slobodnog softvera”, tako da suprotnost slobodnom softveru čini vlasnički softver, a ne softver koji se prodaje radi zarade, kao što je komercijalni softver. Prethodno se često naglašava zato što reč free na engleskom ima dva značenja slobodan i besplatan. Slobodan softver se zbog toga ponekad naziva i libre software i FLOSS, a koristi se i sintagma ‘softver otvorenog izvornog koda’ (open source software), koja ima srodno, ali ne i isto značenje.

Open-source (softver otvorenog koda) je softver čiji je izvorni kod objavljen pod licencom koja korisnicima dozvoljava da proučavaju, prave izmene i unapređuju softver, kao i da ga redistribuiraju u modifikovanom ili nemodifikovanom obliku.

pojedinim mestima nije i eksplicitno zabranjena. Iako je akademija igrala ključnu ulogu u razvoju Interneta, tokom godina je izgubila vezu sa savremenošću, i danas očajnički pokušava da ‘uhvati korak’ sa tu i tamo ponekim kursom koji se bavi kompjuterskim igrama. Iz pozicije 2005, proučavanje mobilnih uređaja i tehnologija je i dalje u svojoj prenatalnoj fazi. Deo procesa kuturalizacije će biti proučavanje, i to što je detaljnije moguće, o tome na koje sve načine korisnici stupaju u interakciju sa aplikacijama, kao i proučavanje mehanizama putem kojih sami korisnici utiču na njihov budući razvoj. Mrežne kulture se pojavljuju kao ‘produktivno trenje’ koje se događa između dinamike međuljudskih odnosa i okvira koji su zadati od strane softvera. Društvena dinamika koja se razvija u okviru mreža nije ‘otpad’ (u smislu nus-proizvod, prim. prev.), već sama suština tih 16 mreža. Cilj i razlog postojanja mreža nije prenošenje podataka, već izazivanje i osporavanje jednog sistema od strane drugog.27 Više nije dovoljno, kao što tvrdi Yudice, dokazati da svačija kultura ima neku svoju vrednost. To takođe važi za istraživače Interneta i njihov trenutno popularan ‘etnografski’ pristup.28 Internet više nije marginalni fenomen koji treba proučavati i predstavljati kao neko ‘neotkriveno pleme’. Proučavanje ‘svakodnevnog života’ u okviru Net kulture jeste svojevremeno bilo korisno, ali danas deluje kao nedovoljno u sagledavanju “velike slike”, odnosno pružanju jednog kompletnijeg uvida. Metodologije koje u centar proučavanja stavljaju korisnika su sklone da previde promene na nivou infrastrukture, softvera, interfejsa i organizacije. Iznenadne promene masovnog tržišta elektronskih uređaja se ne uzimaju u obzir, kao ni globalni konflikti unutar režima intelektualnog vlasništva. Ono što možemo sa sigurnošću da ustanovimo da se zaista događa jeste kolaps razlike između ‘mikro’ nivoa “korisnika” i ‘makro’ nivoa društva. Istraživanje umreženih kultura zahteva više od pukog proučavanja ‘virtualnih zajednica’.

Vreme je da potražimo elemente koji bi mogli da sačinjavaju teoriju mreža izvan post-modernih studija kulture i etnografskih društvenih nauka. Ono što je potrebno studijama novih medija jeste ‘jezik novih medija’, da se pridružim Lev Manovich-u29, a ne naučnocentrična ‘Opšta teorija mreža’. Ideja da se mreže ne formiraju i ne održavaju nasumično, već da ispod sebe imaju jednu strukturnu potku, Postoje suštinske razlike između dva pojma, mada se u popularnom govoru često koriste kao sinonimi. Više informacija o ovom važnom pitanju na http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source i http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Free_software.

Izvor: http://sr.wikipedia.org/sr-el/Slobodni_softver, prim. prev.

27 U originalnom tekstu, Lovink je ovu (veoma važnu i zaključujuću) rečenicu napisao ovako: “The aim of networks is not transportation of data but contestation of systems.” Ostaje određena dilema u vezi izraza “contestation” i reči “systems” u pluralu.

28 Pogledajte veb sajt Udruženja istraživača Interneta (Association of Internet Researchers): www.aoir. org.

29 “The Language of New Media” (Jezik novih medija) je naslov uticajne studije teoretičara mreža i novih medija Lev Manovich-a. Lev Manovich (2001): The Language of New Media, Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press.

može biti revolucionarno otkriće za naučnike, ali ne bi trebalo da predstavlja iznenađenje za kritički nastrojene proučavaoce Interneta. ¶Zanimljivo je posmatrati kako se teoretičari ‘multituda’ nose sa pojmovima “korisnik” i “mreža”. Termin ‘multitude’ se koristi kao alternativa za ‘narod’, a to je, opet, termin koji je čvrsto asociran sa projektima izgradnje nacionalnih država. Veoma nalik na promenu fokusa u okviru studija kulture, sa pasivnih konzumenata i posmatrača na ‘prosumere’30i “korisnike”, multitude izražavaju heterogenosti u okviru korpusa radne snage, odvlačeći pažnju sa homogenizujućeg termina klase i pređašnjeg fokusa na ‘proletere’.

Michael Hardt i Antonio Negri koriste koncept multituda da bi opisali savremene društvene formacije u okviru globalizovanog sveta.31 Dok mreže teško da su igrale bio kakvu ulogu u njihovoj popularnoj knjizi Empire (“Imperija”, 2000), u Multitude (2004) je mrežni način organizacije postavljen na sam centar pozornice. Kako kažu Hardt i Negri, “multitude moraju biti mišljene kao mreža, otvorena i ekspanzivna mreža u kojoj se sve različitosti mogu izraziti na slobodan i ravnopravan način, mreža koja obezbeđuje podlogu za razmenu, kako bi smo živeli slobodno u zajednici”32. Iznad dobra i zla, Hardt i Negri vide mreže gde god da se okrenemo - u vojnim organizacijama, društvenim pokretima, biznis formacijama, matricama različitih migracija, komunikacionim sistemima, fiziološkim strukturama, lingvističkim vezama, neuralnim transmiterima, čak i u intimnim i ličnim međuljudskim odnosima...

17 ¶Posle 11. septembra 2001, “neprijatelj” više nije neka konkretna, jedinstvena i suverena država, već upravo jedna mreža. Drugim rečima, neprijatelj sada ima novi oblik. I, kako tvrde tvorci plana za ‘Rat protiv terorizma’, Internet nije u potpunosti spreman da se suoči sa umreženim neprijateljem.33 Autori ‘multituda’ predstavljaju distribuirane mreže kao jedno ‘opše stanje’. Hardt i Negri: “Ne radi se o tome da mreže ranije nisu postojale, ili da se struktura mozga promenila, već o tome da su mreže postale jedna opšta forma koja definiše naše razumevanje sveta, i naše delovanje u okviru tog sveta. Iz naše perspektive, najvažnije je to da su upravo mreže forme organizacije kooperativnih i komunikacijskih odnosa koje nameću ‘nematerijalni’ 30 Prosumer je kovanica na engleskom jeziku, sastavljena od reči professional (profesionalac) ili producer (proizvođač) i reči consumer (konzument, korisnik). Termin je dobio mnoga, često međusobno konfliktna značenja; poslovni sektor ovaj izraz (profesionalac - potrošač) vidi kao jedan segment tržišta, dok ekonomisti koriste isti izraz (u varijanti proizvođač - potrošač) da označe veći stepen nezavisnosti od mainstream (vodeće, tradicionalne) ekonomije. Izraz takođe može da se vidi i kao suprotan izrazu “konzument”, odnosno “potrošač”, koji ima pasivnu konotaciju, i koristi se da označi aktivnu ulogu individue u ovom procesu. Više na http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosumer (prim. prev.)

31 Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri (2004): War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, New York: The Penguin Press.

32 Ibid, strana 14 33 Bivši direktor CIA George J. Tenet je tražio da se uvedu nove sigurnosne mere koje bi pružale zaštitu od mogućih napada na SAD putem Interneta, koji je nazvao “potencijalnom Ahilovom petom”. “Svestan sam da će ovakve mere biti kontroverzne u doba kada još uvek smatramo da je Internet slobodno i otvoreno društvo, bez kontrole i odgovornosti”, izjavio je na konferenciji o informatičkoj bezbednosti u Vašingtonu. “Ali, na kraju, ovaj ‘divlji Zapad’ mora da ustukne pred principima (centralizovanog) upravljanja i kontrole”.

Iz: “Tenet calls for Internet security”, Shaun Waterman, UPI report, December 2, 2004.

modeli proizvodnje. Tendencija da se ova opšta forma pojavljuje i nameće kao hegemona je ono što definiše (ovaj) period”.34 Mrežne forme se nameću svim aspektima strukture moći iz perspektive efikasnosti vladanja, jer su se velike top-down35 organizacije pokazale kao nefleksibilne, i kao noćna mora za upravljanje. Distribuirani odnosi su otvoreni za promene u daleko većoj meri. ¶“Samo mreža može da se suprotstavi mreži”, pišu Hardt i Negri.36 Ali, mreže mogu da budu i neadekvatan izbor, ako je namera da se u toj borbi pobedi. Hardt i Negri predstavljaju mrežu kao logičan nastavak gerilskog načina borbe. “Mrežna borba se ne oslanja na disciplinu: njene primarne vrednosti su kreativnost, komunikacija i samo-organizovana saradnja.”37 Fokus mreže je prvenstveno usmeren ka sopstvenoj unutrašnjosti, a ne ka neprijatelju. Hardt i Negri ispravno zapažaju da takva organiza18 cija postaje u sve manjoj meri sredstvo, a sve više cilj “po sebi”.

Mreže su najbolja garancija da se neće pojaviti neke izolovane ćelije koje sanjaju o oružanoj borbi, bombaškim napadima i tome slično.

Mrežne borbe pre svega dovode u pitanje sve savremene i dosadašnje forme organizovanja, od ideje političke partije i njenog lenjinističkog modela do ideje o narodnoj armiji, i, po mom mišljenju, one preispituju čak i ‘društvene pokrete’ i njihovu ‘kondenzovanu’ formu NGO-a.38 Mreže podrivaju, ali ne i u potpunosti eliminišu, instituciju autoriteta, i čine donošenje odluka skoro nemogućim zadatkom.

One dekonstruišu institucije moći i reprezentacije, i ne mogu se tek tako jednostavno preuzeti i koristiti kao alatka od strane samoproglašenih avangardnih grupa. Zapravo, mreže deluju kao neka vrsta ‘prevencije’, i sprečavaju da se mnoge stvari uopšte dogode. To ne mora uvek da bude ispravna aktivistička strategija, ali tu smo gde smo: vršimo prevenciju ponavljanja određenih tragičnih matrica istorije. Previše je priča o izgubljenim borbama i organizovanom idealizmu čiji je ishod na kraju genocid. Ali, takođe, mreže ne samo da stavljaju tačku na neke istorije, već, kroz sopstveni skup politika, proizvode nove...

Gde su ‘virtualni intelektualci’39, mislioci koji su inkorporirali nove tehnološke mogućnosti u sopstveni modus operisanja? I koliko će 34 Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri (2004): War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, New York: The Penguin Press, strana 142.

35 Top-down (odozgo na dole) i bottom-up (odozdo na gore) su strategije obrade informacija i uređivanja znanja, koje se često tiču software-a, ali uključuju i druge oblasti u kojima važe humanističke i druge naučne teorije (kao što su discipline koje proučavaju sisteme). U praksi, ovi pojmovi mogu da označavaju određen pristup mišljenju i podučavanju. U mnogim slučajevima, top-down se upotrebljava kao sinonim za analizu ili dekompoziciju, dok se bottom-up upotrebljava kao sinonim za sintezu. Takođe, u popularnom govoru top-down često označava vertikalne, a bottom-up takozvane horizontalne strukture. Više na http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-down (prim. prev.).

36 Ibid, stana 58.

37 Ibid, stana 83.

38 NGO je popularna skraćenica od izraza Non-governmental organization (Nevladina organizacija). U našem jeziku se koristi i skraćenica NVO. Nevladine organizacije su specifična forma organizovanja građana. Termin se masovno koristi u zadnje dve decenije i usko je povezan sa pojmom civilnog društva. Bez shvatanja pojma civilnog društva nije moguće u potpunosti shvatiti ovaj pojam. Pored termina “nevladina organizacija” koristi se i termin “udruženje građana”. Više na http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ngo (prim. prev.).

39 Više o ulozi virtualnih intelektualaca u: Geert Lovink (2002): The Dark Fiber, Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press, strane 30-40.

libertarijanskih vrednosti na taj način usvojiti? Koliko će vremena proći pre nego što se zaista “svare” divlje devedesete, i svi burni događaji, od pada berlinskog zida do propasti dotcom poslovnog modela, u potpunosti razumeju?

U kojoj meri će ovi intelektualci biti otvoreni za debate oko free i opensource softvera? Što kompjuterske mreže budu ulazile dublje u akademiju, to će se odgovori na ova pitanja nametati kao sve urgentniji. Browser-i,40 operativni sistemi i pretraživači nisu nekakve neutralne alatke, one već dolaze sa sopstvenim društvenim, kulturnim i estetskim programima i ciljevima. Naglasiti važnost umrežavanja je jedno; razumeti arhitekturu mreže je sasvim druga stvar. Aktivisti u oblasti novih medija, umetnici i teoretičari imaju zadatak da ne samo predvode i ne samo da kritički preispituju, već i da aktivno vrše medijaciju razvoja ovih istraživanja prema multitudama različitih društvenih grupa. ¶Alex Galloway u knjizi Protocol, How Control Exists after Decentralization odvodi mrežnu teoriju korak dalje. Oslanjajući se na otprilike iste teorijske reference kao i Hardt i Negri, Galloway koristi svoje detaljno poznavanje načina na koji mreža funkcioniše iznutra da bi formulisao ‘teoriju protokola’. On kaže da je vreme da se oslobodimo mita o Internetu kao mestu u kojem vlada haos. Protokol se bazira na dve kontradiktorne mašine: “Jedna mašina vrši radikalnu distribuciju kontrole na brojne autonomne lokale, druga mašina fokusira kontrolu prema rigidno definisanim hijerarhijama”. Mreže možda rastapaju prethodne forme moći, ali one takođe uvode i jedan novi režim, ono što bi Gilles Deleuze nazvao ‘društvom kontrole’. Mreže 19 konstantno podrivaju stabilne granice između onoga što je unutra i onoga što je spolja. Iako mreže izazivaju određeni ‘oslobađajući’ osećaj, one se instaliraju u naš svakodnevni život upravo kao idealne mašine za kontrolu. ¶Treba priznati: kapitalizmu u svojem idealnom obliku ne trebaju mreže. Verovatno mu ne trebaju ni protokoli koje predlaže Galloway.

Sve što mu je potrebno jeste beskonačan prenos podataka (ali samo od klijenta ka serveru, molim vas, nikako P2P). Njegov cilj je distribucija bez mreže. Ono što sačinjava današnje umrežavanje, networking, jeste upravo notworking (skup nepredviđenih događaja i kvarova, disfunkcionalnost, ili jednostavno nerad ili odbijanje da se radi, prim. prev.). Ne bi bilo potrebe za rutiranjem41 da nema “problema na liniji” i “šuma na vezama”. Spam,42 virusi i krađe identiteta nisu 40 Browser (web browser, Internet browser, čita se kao “brauzer”) je program koji korisniku omogućuje učitavanje i pregledanje veb stranica i povezanih multimedijalnih sadržaja, kao što je, na primer, Firefox (prim. prev.).

41 Router, izraz koji je u našem jeziku lokalizovan kao “ruter”, je računarski uređaj (baziran na hardveru i softveru ili isključivo na softveru) koji služi za međusobno povezivanje računarskih mreža. Njegova funkcija je da za svaki paket podataka odredi putanju - rutu kojom taj paket treba da ide, i da taj isti paket prosledi sledećem uređaju u nizu. Više na http://sr.wikipedia.org/sr-el/Ruter (prim. prev.).

42 Bezbrojne poruke koje neki korisnici primaju e-mailom, a koje reklamiraju proizvode za koje nikada nisu izrazili interesovanje, obaveštavaju o temama na koje se nisu pretplatili, lažne privatne poruke koje vode na stranice pornografskog sadržaja, sve su to samo neki od oblika pojave koja se naziva spam.

Kratka definicija spama glasi: spam je svaka poruka koju primalac nije tražio, koju nije želeo da dobije i za koju se izjasni da je smatra netraženom i neželjenom. Ova tri uslova su potrebna i dovoljna da bi neka poruka mogla biti proglašena spamom. Zabrinjavajući podatak koji kaže da je u 2008. godini 90% svih

samo neke slučajne i povremene stvari, i sitni problemi na putu do tehnološkog savršenstva - to su konstitutivni elementi dojučerašnjih arhitektura mreže.

Mreže povećavaju kako nivo neformalnosti tako i nivo “šuma”43 kroz neobavezne razgovore, nesporazume i druge sasvim ljudske ‘greške’. Teorija protokola je retrogradna, u tom smislu da ona pokušava da objasni kako su se mreže ponašale tokom prethodne decenije. Ali, kao i mnoge druge medijske teorije, ona nije uspela da anticipira ‘uzvraćanje udarca’, taj trenutak posle 9/1144 kada su liberalni principi (otvorenosti, samo-regulacije i tako dalje) ustuknuli pred neo-konzervativnim diskursom “bezbednosti”, i kada je ‘Rat protiv terorizma’ potpuno potisnuo ‘protokol’. ¶Ključno pitanje u mom radu u poslednje vreme je ono o tome kako se mreže ponašaju i izlaze na kraj sa ‘frustriranima’, sa onima koji 20 krše pravila kulture konsenzusa. Posle 9/11 i pratećeg instaliranja novog globalnog režima bezbednosti, ovo više nije tako marginalno pitanje. Vreme ‘istinskog vernika’ je završeno, onako kako je ovu dvadesetovekovnu figuru opisao psiholog masa i amater Eric Hoffer u svojoj studiji o masovnim pokretima.45 Mreže, na kraju, predstavljaju prepreku za one koji žele da žrtvuju svoje živote zarad svetih ciljeva. Korišćenje mreže u propagandne svrhe je moguće, ali nije tako efikasno kao u slučaju starovremenskih ‘jednosmernih’46 medija. e-mail poruka na Internetu spam posledica je ekonomije velikih brojki. Naime, poslati nekoliko miliona poruka putem e-maila postaje sve lakše i jeftinije, dok će se među tih nekoliko miliona primalaca gotovo sigurno naći neki koji će proizvod naručiti ili slediti link koji nekome osigurava naplatu reklame. Budući da širenjem spama troškovi održavanja e-mail servera vrtoglavo rastu, a korisnost e-maila zbog količine “šuma” naglo opada, pružaoci internet usluga širom sveta vrlo oštro sankcionišu dokazane distributere spama. Zbog ovog fenomena industrija spama sve manje zazire od ilegalnih metoda distribucije. Spam je dobio ime po istoimenom skeču iz poznate serije Monty Python’s Flying Circus. (Izvor: http://sr.wikipedia. org/sr-el/Spam, prim. prev.).

43 Komunikacija preko određenog kanala - kakav je, na primer, kabl putem kojeg se negde uvodi Internet veza - jeste predmet proučavanje teorije informacija. Kao što svako ko je ikada koristio telefon zna, takvi kanali često ne uspevaju da proizvedu identičnu rekonstrukciju signala koji treba da se prenese, i često zavise od faktora koji degradiraju kvalitet kao što su, pre svega, šum, periodi “tišine” (prekid komunikacije) i drugi oblici tzv. “korupcije” signala. Ovde reč “kvalitet” treba sagledati u jednom “tehničkom”, i, na kraju, kvantitativnom smislu; teoriju informacija ne zanima “kvalitet” u smislu procene vrednosti ili važnosti sadržaja, već u smislu stepena u kojem se signal može preneti sa jednog mesta na drugo bez, ili sa što manje, “gubitaka” (na primer, poruku “Hvala vam, dođite nam ponovo” i poruku “Odmah pozovite ambulantna kola!” ćemo u okviru teorije informacija posmatrati jednako, i zanimaće nas koliko je poruka dugačka, kakvom se putanjom kretala, da li je i na koliko i kojih mesta stigla u “neoštećenom” obliku i slično, iako je druga poruka očigledno neuporedivo važnija; u tom smislu, teorija informacija se bavi kvantitativnim pitanjima). Odnos između “signala” i “šuma” je i dalje jedan od glavnih predmeta proučavanja teorije informacija. Lovink ovde koristi reč “šum” i u još jednom kontekstu i značenju, onom kolokvijalnijem, gde bi “šum” mogli da razumemo kao “opterećivanje određenog odnosa ili konverzacije velikim brojem nepotrebnih, neupotrebljivih ili pogrešnih informacija koje sprečavaju da prepoznamo ili obradimo potrebne, korisne i tačne informacije” (prim. prev.). Više o teoriji informacija na http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theory.

44 9/11 je uobičajena skraćenica za 11. septembar 2001, jedan od najvažnijih datuma u recentnoj istoriji.

Skraćenica se odnosi na seriju koordinisanih terorističkih napada protiv Sjedinjenih Američkih Država koji su se dogodili u utorak, 11. septembra 2001. godine. Posledice ovih napada su nagle i suštinske promene u globalnim političkim odnosima, ekonomiji, međunarodnom pravu, psihologiji masa i tako dalje. Više detalja na adresama: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11, http://sr.wikipedia.org/sr-el/Napadi_11._ septembra_2001. (prim. prev.).

45 Hoffer, E. (1951), The True Believer, New York: Harper and Row. Pogledajte takođe i moje poglavlje u Dark Fiber, koje poziva na analizu “masovne psihologije Neta”.

46 Lovink ovde koristi izraz “broadcast media”, odnosno “mediji bazirani na emitovanju”, da napravi razliku između ‘starog’ modela gde su informacije emitovane iz jednog centra ka pasivnim prijemnicima primalaca, i ‘novog’ modela u kojem primaoci aktivno komentarišu, menjaju i re-distibuiraju informacije u različitim pravcima, i u kojem mogu da imaju ulogu “izvora” informacija (prim. prev.).

Za razliku od pre stotinak godina, oni koji su frustrirani više nisu oni koji prvi podržavaju razne nove društvene pokrete. Današnji frustrirani su nihilisti, opremljeni perfektnim tehničkim znanjem o raspoloživoj mašineriji. Frustracija, kako je to Hoffer opisao, može da generiše karakteristike ‘istinskog vernika’, ali je ‘frustrirani um’ loš partner u online dijalozima. ¶Upravo je žudnja, želja, pre nego nezadovoljstvo, ono što leži u jezgru mreže. Današnje odbacivanje principa mučeništva gura ‘frustrirane’ na margine mreže i isključuje ih, ne dozvoljava im pristup. Ovde se otvara pitanje ‘spoljašnjosti’ mreže. Ako se sva moć raspoređuje kroz mrežu, šta se događa sa ‘izbrisanima’, sa onim odbačenim subjektima umreženog društva? Teško je zamisliti da se takve osobe nadalje međusobno umrežavaju. Opsesija zapadnih elita i njihovih masovnih medija islamskim fundamentalizmom ne objašnjava ni jednu od strasti i tenzija koje okružuju savremeno umreženo društvo. Jedino što ta opsesija postiže jeste kreiranje iluzije o stranom i spoljašnjem, o nečemu što preti globalnoj civilizaciji a opet na neki način uspeva da se inteligentno infiltrira u njenu infrastrukturu. ¶Radikalan moral nije zainteresovan za stavove. Ovo je tačka gde se mrežni diskurs sreće sa sopstvenim mogućim krahom.47 Razlog za to je taj što mrežni diskurs nije u stanju da integriše - čak ni da zamisli - spoljašnju tačku gledišta. Ovo je mesto gde Castells48 sreće svoje marksističke drugare Negri-ja i Hardt-a, a stare jezuitske veze se utapaju u još veću spin-mašinu Trećeg puta.49 Mreže poseduju određeni

21

47 U originalnom tekstu, ovde se koristi izraz “Waterloo”, odnosno “Bitka kod Vaterloa”, poslednja Napoleonova bitka koju je izgubio 1815. godine - izraz se često koristi da na simboličan način označi krah ili poraz određene ‘velike ideje’ ili naočigled ‘dominantnog principa’. (prim. prev.).

48 Manuel Castells (rođen 1942. u Španiji) je sociolog, naročito poznat po svojim istraživanjima informatičkog društva i komunikacije, a u periodu od 2000-2006. je proglašen za petog najviše citiranog autora iz oblasti društvenih nauka na svetu. Autor je brojnih publikacija u kojima se bavio urbanom sociologijom, studijama Interneta, društvenim pokretima, sociologijom kulture i političkom ekonomijom. Razvio je koncept marksističke sociologije urbanog, koji naglašava ulogu društvenih pokreta u konfliktualnim transformacijama savremenih urbanih prostora, koncept protočnih prostora u okviru kojeg je proučavao materijalne i imaterijalne komponente globalnih informatičkih mreža koje se koriste za koordinaciju globalne ekonomije u realnom vremenu, i druge koncepte i teorije koje su od značaja za razumevanje konteksta u kojem ga Lovink pominje. Najpoznatiji i najuticaniji Castells-ov rad je verovatno trilogija The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture (Informatičko doba: Ekonomija, društvo i kultura), koja se sastoji iz The Rise of the Network Society (Uspon umreženog društva, 1996), The Power of Identity (Moć identiteta, 1997) i End of Millennium (Kraj milenijuma, 1998). Više o njegovom radu možete da pronađete na adresi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manuel_Castells (prim. prev.)

49 “Treći put” je termin koji označava političku poziciju koja pokušava da prevaziđe ideju o ‘levoj’ i ‘desnoj’ politici, zagovarajući sintezu nekih ‘levih’ i ‘desnih’ elemenata, naročito po pitanju ekonomije.

Poznat i kao “centrizam” zbog pokušaja da napravi kompromis između kapitalizma i socijalizma, odnosno tržišnog liberalizma i planske ekonomije, ovaj termin se koristi da opiše širok spektar ekonomskih politika i ideologija razvijenih u 20. veku (od kojih se za jedan od primera uzima i unutrašnje i spoljno političko i ekonomsko uređenje nekadašnje Socijalističke federativne republike Jugoslavije). Danas se za vodećeg teoretičara koncepta “trećeg puta” smatra britanski sociolog Anthony Giddens, koji na jednostavan način ovaj koncept objašnjava izjavom da “treći put odbacuje kako državni i centralizovan socijalizam, tako i ‘tradicionalni’ neoliberalizam”. Ovaj koncept je često kritikovan kao “lažni kompromis”, optuživan da javnost dovodi u zabludu po pitanju “istinske” političke orijentacije onih koji ga zagovaraju, i odbačen od strane kako tradicionalnih predstavnika levice kao ‘evolucija neoliberalizma’, tako i od tradicionalnih predstavnika desnice kao ‘prerušeni socijalizam’. Sve veći broj savremenih političara i političkih stranaka se opisuju (i deklarišu) kao proponenti ovakvog pogleda na politički i ekonomski spektar. U ovom kontekstu, Lovink uzima Jezuite (jedan od redova u okviru katoličke crkve) kao istorijski primer vođenja politike putem organizovanja ‘tajnih društava’ i ‘nevidljivih veza’ između moćnih pojedinaca i institucija u cilju zauzimanja i održavanja stuktura moći (čak i u slučajevima kada se učesnici u ovakvoj

post-humanistički kvalitet. ‘Najprirodnije moguće ljudsko ponašanje’ se tamo ne može pronaći. Mreže su kompleksna tehno-društvena okruženja koja odbacuju pojednostavljujuće redukcije. One su veliki mehanizmi za transformaciju moći.

Ako će mreže uspeti da na kraju absorbuju i moć samu i na taj način je učine nepostojećom, prva takva mreža tek treba da bude napravljena. U najboljem slučaju, možemo početi da razumevamo i opisujemo mrežne kulture na način koji seže izvan odrednica “dobro” i “zlo”, u najboljoj tradiciji noveleromana, i na način koji tek treba da dosegne psihološke dubine Marcel Proust-a, društvenu dramu u maniru Victor Hugo-a ili duboko povezivanje majstora hiperteksta50 James Joyce-a.51

22

2. Teorija slobodne saradnje ¶Akademici i novinari često reduciraju Internet na “dodatni” medij za objavljivanje, na nešto što eto danas postoji pored knjiga i žurnala. Ali, Internet se ne koristi isključivo za samo-promociju. Čak, primarno, nije ni dizajniran za takav zadatak. Postoji Net izvan obaveznog bloga i home page-a.52 Za mnoge ljude u Brazilu, na primer, Internet je jednako chat rooms (na dating sajtovima),53 plus

konspiraciji javno deklarišu kao međusobni neprijatelji), i ovaj princip na kritičan način dovodi u vezu sa sve prisutnijim konceptom ‘trećeg puta’ u savremenoj politici (prim. prev.).

50 Hipertekst (eng. hypertext) je način povezivanja određenih reči iz štampanog ili na drugi način prikazanog teksta (na primer, na ekranu kompjutera ili mobilnog telefona) sa drugim rečima iz istog teksta, sa bilo kojom reči iz bilo kojeg drugog teksta, ili sa određenim multimedijalnim sadržajem (slika, zvuk, video). Sam način povezivanja može da bude “ograničen” ili jako jednostavan (kao kada se naslovi poglavlja kroz sadržaj knjige i naveden tačan redni broj strane povezuju sa samim poglavljima), ili u teoriji “neograničen” (kao, na primer, u slučaju World Wide Web -WWW- protokola, koji je postao paradigma savremenog Interneta i predstavlja najpoznatiju i najkorišćeniju primenu hiperteksta). Po principu hiperteksta mogu da se razviju veoma kompleksni i dinamični sistemi povezivanja i međusobnih referenci.

Sam termin “hipertekst” se po prvi put pominje 1965. u radovima Ted Nelson-a. Joyce se u ovom kontekstu pominje kao “majstor hiperteksta” zbog soficistirane i kompleksne primene implicitnih i eksplicitnih veza među određenim rečima i delovima tekstova u svom literarnom radu, za koji se smatra da je “uputstvo za današnju primenu hiperteksta i bogat izvor inspiracije za još neotkrivene hipertekstualne aplikacije” (izvor: 2005 North American James Joyce Conference, June 14-18, Cornell University). Primena hiperteksta u njegovim delima, posebno u “Fineganovom bdenju” (Finnegans Wake), i dalje je predmet “dekodiranja”, diskusije i analize (prim. prev.).

51 Uvod u ‘politiku informacionog doba’ se može naći u Terranova, T. (2004), Network Culture, London/ Ann Arbor: Pluto Press. Razočaravajuća u ovom kontekstu je knjiga Connected, or what it means to live in a networked society, autor Steven Shaviro (2003), Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Shaviro flertuje sa idejama o umreženim kulturama, ali na drugi pogled on zapravo referiše na holivudske naučne fantastike devedesetih. On propušta da napravi vezu između domena stvarnih i postojećih društvenih odnosa na Internetu i cyber imaginacije Holivuda - to predstavlja široko rasprostranjen problem među ljudima koji imaju prethodno obrazovanje iz domena književnosti i popularne kulture, a koji dolaze u ovo polje.

52 Home page (često se piše i kao homepage ili jednostavno home, a čita se “houm pejdž”) ima više značenja - odnosi se na veb stranicu koja se automatski učitava po lansiranju browser-a ili kada se u pretraživaču pritisne dugme “home”, a takođe se često upotrebljava, što je i u ovom tekstu slučaj, da označi glavnu ili početnu stranicu veb sajta određene grupe, kompanije, organizacije ili osobe. U nekim slučajevima (kao, na primer, u Nemačkoj, Japanu i Južnoj Koreji, a do nedavno i u SAD) ovaj termin se koristio kao sinonim za opis sadržaja celokupnog određenog veb sajta. Trenutno se u te svrhe najčešče koristi upravo izraz “web site” (veb sajt), ili jednostavno “site”. (prim. prev.).

53 Termin chat room ili chatroom se često u medijima i praksi koristi da opiše bilo koju formu sinhrone konferencije, ponekad i asinhrone konferencije, između dvoje ili više učesnika, koja se odvija putem Interneta ili drugih mreža za prenos podataka. Termin može da se odnosi na bilo koju tehnologiju, od klasičnog “online chat”-a, preko “instant messaginga” (IM) i online foruma do potpuno integrisanih grafičkih okruženja u društvenim mrežama (kao što je, na primer, Facebook). Više na http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Chat_room.

Dating site, online dating ili Internet dating je sistem za međusobno upoznavanje ljudi koji omogućuje osobama, parovima ili grupama da ostvare kontakt i komuniciraju preko Interneta, obično sa ciljem da

online vodič kroz TV program. Ali, hajde da se ovde ne fokusiramo na takve redukcije medija. U bezbrojnim situacijama ljudi stupaju u interakciju i rade zajedno na specifičnim zadacima ili razmenjuju mišljenja i materijale online.

Ili pomažu jedni drugima oko tehničkih problema i zajedno pišu kodove. Ono što definiše Internet jeste njegova društvena arhitektura - a ono što je u ovom društvenom iskustvu važno jeste upravo određeno životno okruženje i interakcija uživo, ne samo tehničko-administrativne procedure odlaganja i uzimanja iz baze. ¶Zajedno sa Trebor Sholtz-om, umetnikom iz Njujorka, organizovao sam konferenciju o ‘slobodnoj saradnji’ na Buffalo kampusu, koji je deo The State University of New York, 23. i 24. aprila 2004.54 Odlučili smo da detaljnije istražimo umetnost i veštinu slobodne (online) saradnje iz perspektive medijskih aktivista i umetnika. Od mobilnih telefona do e-maila, kao i multiplayer online55 igara, mailing lista, blogova i wiki-ja, naši svakodnevni životi se sve više prepliću sa tehnologijom. Potreba da istražimo šta se zapravo događa kada sarađujemo kroz ove tehnološke kanale koje koristimo za komunikaciju će uskoro postati sve očiglednija. Kako pronalazimo nezavisnost i povećavamo slobode u kontekstu umrežene saradnje? Kako se kolektivno upravlja i poseduje u okviru zajedničkog resursa, kakav je mreža? ¶Na konferenciju smo pozvali kritičara medija Christoph Spehr-a, baziranog u Bremenu, koji je i lansirao izraz “free cooperation” (slobodna saradnja) u svom eseju More Equal Than Others.56 Ja sam sa Spehr-om uradio online intervju 200357 - kako većina njegovih 23 tekstova nije prevedena na engleski, ovaj događaj je bio dobra prilika da se njegove ideje predstave u medijskom diskursu anglofonog jezičkog područja. U promišljanju problematike savremene saradnje, Spehr koristi reference na science-fiction filmove iz perioda 60-ih, insistirajući na mogućnostima odbijanja, nezavisnosti od i konstantnih pregovora sa ‘alijenizovanim’58 čudovištima koje predstavljaju korporativni ili državni sistemi. Stavljajući fokus na ovakve ideje o jednakosti i slobodi, konferencija je došla do pitanja: kako slične

razviju sa prethodno nepoznatim osobama romantični ili seksualni odnos. Online dating servisi obično omogućavaju nemoderirane konverzacije i “uparivanje” između osoba putem Interneta, korišćenjem PC računara ili mobilnih telefona. Više na http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dating _site (prim. prev.).

54 Arhivu mailing liste i diskusiju u vezi ovog događaja možete naći na veb sajtu konferencije, www. freecooperation.org. Tu možete da download-ujete i .pdf fajl sa sadržajem besplatnih novina, koje su pred konferenciju podeljene u tiražu od 10 000 primeraka.

55 Multiplayer video game (video igra sa više simultanih učesnika) je igra u kojoj može da učestvuje više igrača, koji vrše interakciju u istom okruženju i u isto vreme. U modernim kompjuterskim igrama, izraz multiplayer obično implicira da igrači učestvuju zajedno u igri preko više umreženih kompjutera, koji se u igraonicama mogu umrežiti LAN protokolom, ili se može igrati od kuće preko Interneta (moguće su i kombinacije dva ili više sistema). Multiplayer online igre doživljavaju ogromnu popularnost kako se razvija Internet infrastruktura - danas verovatno najpopularnija mrežna igra, World of Warcraft, je u januaru 2008. zabeležila više od 10 miliona korisnika (2 miliona u Evropi, 2,5 u Severnoj Americi i 5,5 u Aziji).

Više na http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplayer (prim. prev.).

56 U originalu: Gleicher als andere (Jednakiji od drugih).

57 Nettime, 6. jun 2003, Science Fiction for the Multutudes - www.nettime.org 58 Alien označava nešto ili nekoga što pripada drugoj planeti, rasi ili grupi, često se koristi da označi “vanzemaljsko” poreklo (u svakom smislu), i često u svrhu da se pojasni da se ono što je označeno tim terminom “ne voli”, da nije deo “normalnog” iskustva ili da izaziva nerazumevanje i strah (prim. prev.).

ideje mogu da se na koristan način upotrebe od stane alternativnih obrazovnih mreža ili univerziteta? Ključni Spehr-ov koncept je taj da bi svako morao da ima slobodu da u bilo kojem trenutku odustane od saradnje. Važno je definisati jezik u okviru kojeg se može otvoreno razgovarati o razlikama i strukturama moći unutar grupa ili timovima. Ili, na kraju, u okviru mreža. Mogućnost da neko može da se povuče iz saradnje (odnosno, mreže) jeste suveren čin svakog korisnika mreže. “Notworking”, odbijanje da se radi, mogućnost da se jednostavno ne desi ništa, jeste njihov a priori - odnosno, osnovni postulat na kojem je izgrađeno samo ustrojstvo mreže. Ako ne znate kako da se izlogujete,59 onda ostajete permanentno “zaključani” unutar mreže.

24

Još jedan aspekt o kojem bih želeo da diskutujem jeste odnos između multituda i ideje o saradnji. U tekstu A Grammar of the Multitude, Paolo Virno pokušava da opiše ‘prirodu savremene produkcije’60.

Pitanja koja se tamo postavljaju su subjektivna, i ona mogu da se postave samo posle samog čina ‘odbijanja’. Šta je to ‘saradnja’, ako smo zaključili da je sam život redukovan na rad? Ja bih rekao da je važno da se u jednom trenutku prevaziđe ta inicijalna i određujuća faza odbijanja, jer u suprotnom završavamo u individualnom anarhizmu ili egoizmu Max Stirner-ovog tipa61, gde ne ostaje ništa na čemu bi uopšte moglo da se sarađuje. ‘Notworking’ mora da ostane kao opcija, kao jedna permanentna mogućnost. Ali to nije cilj po sebi.

Mora da postoji osnovni konsenzus o tome šta je program, šta je to što treba da se uradi. Pitanje o saradnji proizilazi odatle, od te tačke. Takođe, ono se ne može sagledavati u političkom vakuumu, jer u supotnom se to pitanje onda redukuje na stvar menadžmenta, na jednu problematiku upravljanja. Sama saradnja nije generator nečega što se može pretvoriti u (političke) kampanje. Ključno za naš pokušaj da teorijski sagledamo individualna i kolektivna iskustva jeste priznavanje principa po kojem mora postojati sloboda da se saradnja odbije. Konstitutivna ‘strategija izlaza’ mora da postoji. Na prvi pogled ovo može da zvuči kao misteriozna i unekoliko paradoksalna izjava. Zašto bi se ideja o odbijanju promovisala kao sama osnova ideje o saradnji, onako kako je to predložio Christoph Spehr? To zvuči skoro kao neka nova dogma, novo pravilo koje se mora slediti, ‘notworking’ - odbijanje da se radi - kao još jedno ljudsko pravo.

Pitanje ‘slobodne saradnje’ jeste u suštini pitanje organizacije, i

59 U svetu kompjutera, log in, login ili logon (takođe se koristi i logging in, logging on, signing in ili signing on), u domaćoj jezičkoj praksi se često koristi izraz “logovanje”), označava proces kojem osoba pristupa lokalnom kompjuteru ili kompjuterskoj mreži kroz proces identifikacije identiteta korisnika najraširenija praksa trenutno jeste unošenje username-a (korisničkog imena) i password-a (lozinke). Log out, ili “izlogovati se”, označava suprotan proces u kojem se korisnik “ispisuje”, odnosno “odjavljuje”, privremeno ili trajno, iz određenog sistema. Izraz se, osim na sam proces, može odnositi i na odgovarajuće web formulare, kao i na same identifikatore identiteta (npr. password ili username). (prim. prev.)

60 Virno, P. (2004). A Grammar of the Multitude. Cambridge (Mass.): Semiotexte.

61 Pseudonim Johann Kaspar Schmidt-a (1806 - 1856), nemačkog filozofa koji se smatra za jednog od od osnivača nihilizma, egzistencijalizma, post-modernizma i anarhizma, posebno individualističkog anarhizma.

Više na www.nonserviam.com/stirner (prim. prev).

ono se pojavljuje posle krize (fordističkog) modela proizvodne trake,62 i njegovog političkog ogledala - modela političke partije. Ovo može delovati kao očigledno. Opsednutost sa (post-)fordizmom može biti previše fokusirana na specifične ‘italijanske subjektivnosti’ (podrazumeva se da jedna “pobunjenička” kultura obeležena spontanim štrajkovima nije univerzalna kultura). Na nama je da nadogradimo i modifikujemo ove Italo koncepte i da pronađemo i druge specifične “studije slučaja”, da istražimo, na primer, depresivne NGO kancelarijske kulture, odnose moći unutar “društvenog softvera”, raskošne dotcom životne stilove, ‘samoeksploatišuće’ freelance ugovore,63 teskobu rada u call centru64 ili dosadu rada na menadžmentu projekta... ¶Stavljanje fokusa na ‘nove društvene pokrete’ je možda već prevaziđeno, i možda bi trebalo da bude zamenjeno mnogo savremenijim pitanjima.65 Možemo se pridružiti Galloway-ju u pitanju: šta je politika posle njene decentralizacije? Možda nam više nije od neke koristi da i dalje govorimo o ‘pokretima’ (u smislu “pokreta nad pokretima”).

Reč ‘pokret’ možda sugeriše previše zajedništva i kontinuiteta u poređenju sa onim što danas možemo da pronađemo na ulicama, ili na Netu. Ne postoji pokret bez sopstvene pozicije u vremenu, bez kolektivnog sećanja na neke događaje koji su ga obeležili. Iako je ovaj termin dovoljno precizan u slučaju da želimo da izrazimo političke i kulturne različitosti, i dalje u sebi sadrži to (neko) obećanje kontinuiteta - i samim tim sugeriše da pokret može da preživi sopstveni zalazak, ili potpuni nestanak. Jedan pokret nikada ne bi trebalo da stane. Energija Događaja koji pokretu daje karakter i pravac ne bi 25 trebalo da ikada može da se iscrpi.

66 ¶Tu na scenu stupa gestalt ‘istinskog vernika’. Biće izmišljeni novi rituali da se mase izvedu na ulicu, po bilo koju cenu. Kako kaže Paolo Virno, kriza društva rada se reflektuje u multitudi samoj. Možemo da

62 Koncept proizvodne trake (assembly line) je proizvodni proces u kojem se (obično zamenljivi) delovi dodaju proizvodu u unapred planiranoj sekvenci i u optimalnim uslovima da bi se konačni proizvod napravio mnogo brže i po manjoj ceni nego što je to slučaj u ručnoj (manufakturnoj) proizvodnji. Ovaj koncept je u međusobnoj vezi sa industrijskom revolucijom, i standardizacijom i mehanizacijom proizvodnje. Obično se povezuje sa američkom Ford Motor Company u kojoj je razvijan od 1908. do 1915, i smatra se za početak i nužan uslov nastanka fenomena masovne proizvodnje i masovne potrošnje ovako proizvedene robe. Za autora koncepta se smatra Eli Whitney, dok je proces usavršio Henry Ford 1913. u svojoj fabrici, pomerajući automobile u fazi sklapanja od jedne do druge individualne radne stanice koja se bavila ugradnjom samo jednog određenog dela automobila. Više na http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembly _line (prim. prev.).

63 Freelance (tzv. slobodnjak), neko ko prodaje svoje servise i usluge poslodavcima bez dugoročnog ugovora. Ovaj način rada je nekada bio karakterističan za npr. novinarsku profesiju, dok se danas većina servisnih poslova i većina poslova u domenu tzv. “nematerijalnog rada” obavlja pod freelance uslovima (prim. prev.).

64 Call centre ili call center je centralizovana kancelarija koja se koristi u svrhe slanja ili primanja velike količine zahteva i informacija putem telefona. Često call center ustanovljava kompanija da bi pružila podršku određenom proizvodu ili servisu i održavala komunikaciju sa potrošačima. Više na http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_centre (prim. prev.).

65 Ovde Lovink u originalnom tekstu koristi izraz “rupture”, koji može da u kontekstu znači rez, rana, veća posekotina, poderotina, neki put i “prekid”.

66 Die Gestalt je nemačka reč koja označava oblik, figuru ili formu. Kada se koristi u engleskom (i drugim jezicima), odnosi se više-manje isključivo na koncept “celine” ili “sveobuhvatnosti”. Jedna od definicija kaže da ovaj izraz označava “kolekciju fizičkih, bioloških, psiholoških ili simboličkih entiteta koji kreiraju unificirani koncept, konfiguraciju ili matricu koji su veći od prostog zbira uključenih delova (kao što su karakter, ličnost ili biće). Ovaj izraz se često upotrebljava u filozofiji i psihologiji, ali i u prirodnim naukama (prim. prev.).

ovo proširimo, i kažemo da su multitude jako problematična kategorija, ne za kapital ili ‘društvo kontrole’, već za multitude same. Proći će još neko vreme pre nego što se naviknemo na činjenicu da ne postoji svest sama po sebi i sama unutar sebe, da revolucionari mogu da oklevaju - i da može da im dosadi - sopstvena revolucija. Priča se o kolektivnoj ekstazi koja ne mora nužno da bude zasnovana na ‘Velikoj rezoluciji’. Fragmentacija ne predstavlja romantičnu agoniju, već primaran uslov političkog života, i stanje umreženosti samo dalje prenosi ovaj proces u softver, u same strukture baza podataka. ¶Paolo Virno piše: “Društveno bogatstvo je proizvod nauke, proizvod opšte inteligencije, radije nego posledica rada individua. Rad koji ovakav pristup zahteva se može redukovati na bukvalno zanemarljiv 26 deo jednog životnog veka. Nauka, informacija, jedno generalno znanje, saradnja - ovo su sve činioci koji se predstavljaju kao ključni sistemi koji održavaju produkciju, dakle, to su upravo ovi navedeni činioci, a ne broj radnih sati.” Ovo stavlja pojam i ideju o ‘saradnji’ u jedno, da kažemo, ‘vanredno stanje’, jednu izuzetnu poziciju.

To nije neko pravilo, ili uobičajena stvar; u ovom sistemu saradnja je letimična, nesigurna i uvek na ivici da se raspadne. Za Virno-a nema razlike između radnog vremena i slobodnog vremena. To je upravo razlog zbog kojeg toliko nesigurnosti (i radoznalosti) okružuje ideju o saradnji. U kojem činu, gestu, ideji, u kakvom radu ne nalazimo integrisanu ideju o saradnji? Sve je teže napraviti razliku između saradnje i ne-saradnje. Postavljena na ovaj način, opozicija figuri usamljenog genija ili radu multidisciplinarnog tima deluje kao da je zapravo izbor nekog bizarnog životnog stila, i samim tim se ne čini relevantnom. ¶Ono što je ovde zaista važno jeste način na koji se odvijaju pregovori unutar svake partikularne ‘kreditne’67 ekonomije. Kakvi tragovi saradnje ostaju vidljivi? Da li se uslovi vlasništva nad proizvodom rada mogu diskutovati i menjati kako se proces saradnje vremenom odvija, ili moraju da budu fiksirani od samog početka? Koliko ‘propalih saradnji’ može čovek da podnese? Ljudi su možda nekada bili ‘društvene životinje’, ali to ne znači da se ljudi ponašaju kao, na primer, mravi. Postoji sasvim dovoljno ‘mentaliteta stada’ koji čini zadatak promovisanja saradnje kao vrednosti teškim, ako ne i nemogućim zadatkom. Uz to, mudrost i znanje koje smo akumulirali blokiraju mogući povratak nazad u zemlju Zaratustre.68 Nije društvo to što nas odvaja od individualizacije. Najvažnije pitanje jeste me-

67 Vidi fusnotu 69, “ekonomija priznavanja”.

68 Referenca na Zaratustru ili Zaratuštru, odnosno Zoroastera, koji je bio drevni persijski filozof i prorok, osnivač mazdaizma, kulta mudrosti, i centralna figura potonje religije, zoroastrizma. Zoroastrijska etika se sastoji iz dobrih misli, dobrih reči i dobrih dela. Oksfordski rečnik ga postavlja na prvo mesto hronologije filozofa, kao osnivača filozofskog sistema mazda-jasna (avestanski: mazda – mudrost, jasna – obožavanje). Pretpostavlja se da su zaratuštrovci, poštovaoci mudrosti, prenosili znanje persijskim Grcima, koji su kasnije upotrebljavali sličan pojam - filosofija. Posredno, moguća referenca i na delo filozofa Friedrich Nietzsche-a “Tako je govorio Zaratustra” (Also Sprach Zarathustra, Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen) iz 1885. Više na http://sr.wikipedia.org/sr-el/Zoroastrizam (prim.prev.)

tod evaluacije. Da li se sa besom osvrćemo na činjenicu da se grupa kojoj smo pripadali raspala? ¶Nije lako napraviti razliku između potrebe za grupnim radom u, na primer, produkciji velikih i kompleksnih umetničkih radova, konferencija, festivala, protesta ili publikacija, i želje da se nekako prevaziđe osećaj izolacije kada se bavimo individualnim poslom. Za mnoga dela iz oblasti novih medija saradnja je apsolutan uslov, jer individualni umetnik jednostavno nema sve veštine koje se zahtevaju u proizvodnji - poznavanje vizuelnih jezika i alata, 3D animacije, montaže slike i zvuka, poznavanje performansa, kao i menadžmenta, knjigovodstva i celokupnog administrativnog procesa. Ovde se postavlja pitanje ‘ekonomije priznavanja’69 (čemu možemo posvetiti jednu celu zasebnu raspravu...), i o tome da li se rezultirajući radovi predstavljaju kao proizvod rada jednog video umetnika (na primer, Bill Viola), ili, što bi bilo više u skladu sa realnošću, kao proizvod grupnog rada. Sigurno postoji cela istorija u okviru filmske industrije o tome kako se sastavljaju credits (odjavna špica), i borbama oko toga ko će tu na kraju biti uključen. Sama reč ‘saradnja’ me podseća na anonimne rano-renesansne slikarske radionice i na način na koji su se iz tog sistema (umetničkih i zanatskih) studija pojavili ‘individualci’. Danas na ovo gledamo kao na proces ‘prosvetiteljstva’.70 Štaviše, danas ideju da individualci mogu da zajedno rade u grupama smatramo za nešto neobično i posebno.71 Tokom godina sam primetio veliku radoznalost koju ljudi ispoljavaju u vezi interne dinamike grupa. Saradnja izaziva voajerizam, jer se sasvim sigurno očekuju tenzije unutar određene grupe. U skladu sa stereotipom, zajednički rad je težak, i uvek se završava na dramatičan način. Tokom više od 15 godina nekoliko prijatelja je, zajedno sa mnom, proizvodilo jednu ‘teoriju na terenu’72 pod grupnim imenom Adilkno73 (ili Bilwet na holandskom/nemačkom). Adilkno je eksplicitno

27

69 Ovde je upotrebljen izraz “economy of acknowledgement”, koji upućuje kako na kompleksnu problematiku atribucije i “autorizacje” kolektivnih i ‘mrežnih’ radova, tako i na problematiku savremene “ekonomije pažnje” (attention economy) i akumulacije i eksploatacije “društvenog/socijalnog kapitala” (u smislu kako ga definiše npr. Pierre Bourdieu), ali to je, kako Lovink kaže, zaista “tema po sebi” (prim. prev.).

70 Izraz “enlightenment” u engleskom jeziku može da znači “prosvetiteljstvo” u smislu istorijskog perioda koji je između 1650. i 1800. u Evropi doneo “promenu paradigme” i zamenu tradicionalizma i utvrđenih doktrina sa principima rukovođenja razumom i razvoja individualnosti (proces ključan za pojavu “modernosti”, najprecizniji izraz bi bila nemačka reč Aufklarung), ali takođe može da znači i “prosvetljenje” u individualnom smislu. (prim. prev.).

71 Uporedite ovo sa onim što o saradnji pišu Michael Hardt i Antonio Negri u Multitude (2004): “Inteligentniji smo svi zajedno nego svako od nas posebno. Open source kao princip kolaborativnog programiranja ne dovodi do konfuzije i neproduktivnog trošenja energije. Takav sistem zaista funkcioniše. Jedan od pristupa razumevanju demokratije multutuda bi onda bio predlog open-source društva, odnosno društva čiji je izvorni kod otvoren tako da svi zajedno možemo da radimo na rešavanju njegovih bug-ova (računarski “bag“ je popularni naziv za grešku u računarskom programu ili, ređe, samom kompjuteru ili drugom uređaju, a termin dolazi od engleske reči bug - buba, insekt) i kreiramo nove i bolje društvene programe.”

(Multutude, Penguin Press 2004, strana 340).

72 Lovink ovde koristi izraz ‘extramural theory’, koji bi zapravo približno precizno u ovom slučaju bio preveden kao “teorija koja se proizvodi po određenim akademskim premisama, ali na terenu koji je izvan polja delovanja koje pokriva institucija Akademije”.

73 Na engleskom, ime grupe je bilo “Foundation for the Advancement of Illegal Knowledge”, odnosno “Fondacija za unapređivanje ilegalnog znanja”. Arhivu tekstova na holandskom, engleskom i nemačkom jeziku možete da nađete na adresi http://thing.desk.nl/bilwet.

pisao o saradnji u smislu ‘treće svesti’74, što je u potpunoj suprotnosti sa idejom o individualnom sklopu svesti. Iz Adilkno projekta je proizašla intenzivna četvorogodišnja saradnja sa Pit Shultz-om sredinom devedesetih, u zlatno doba ‘net kriticizma’, kada smo gradili Nettime75 projekat. Danas je 99% mojih saradnji virtualno. Rad u ‘stvarnom svetu’ je postao neka vrsta luksuza, i izvor velikog zadovoljstva, skoro kao neka vrsta zabave. Saradnja sa grupom u vašem sopstvenom gradu je i dalje jedinstveno iskustvo. Ali, sa napredovanjem kompjuterskih mreža, sve su manje šanse da ćete pronaći ljude u svojoj (fizičkoj) blizini sa kojima ćete sarađivati. ¶Što se više rada obavlja online, to je važnije da razumemo tehno-društvenu arhitekturu alatki koje u takvom radu koristimo. Razmislite, na primer, o aspektu pol(ne) mašine, odnosno o produktivnim odnosima moći 28 u okviru muško-muške, muško-ženske i žensko-ženske saradnje. O ovom problemu su pisali dvojica nemačkih teoretičara medija, Friedrich Kittler i Klaus Theweleit. Tokom osamdesetih su Theweleit i Kittler radili na istoj katedri u Freiburg-u. Njihovi radovi o pol(nosti), medijima i saradnji su, kako se ispostavilo, sadržavali uočljive podudarnosti. I Theweleit i Kittler su isticali važnost (delezijanskog) argumenta o produktivnom elementu trougla muško-žensko-mašina. Ovo bi takođe mogla biti i veza sa principom muško-medij-muško ili žensko-medij-žensko, ali je očigledno da, u heteroseksualnim društvima u kojima dominira “muškost”, dominira i princip muško-žensko-mašina.

Theweleit se bavio opresivnim aspektom ove situacije, u kojem muškarci ‘žrtvuju’ ženska tela kao medijum u kreiranju ‘visoke kulture’ večnog smisla.

74 The Third Mind (Treći um ili Treća svest) je knjiga koju su 1977/8. objavili pisac William S. Burroughs i pesnik, umetnik i esejista Brion Gysin. The Third Mind je kombinacija književnih eseja i kolekcija tekstova u formi kakvu se Burroughs i Gysin popularizovali 1960-ih, zajedno sa kolegama iz poznate ‘beat generacije’ (Beat Generation) i koja je nazvana “cut-ups” (“isečci”), a sastoji se od uzimanja (obično) međusobno nepovezanih delova tekstova i fotografija ili drugih slika i isecanja pasusa, rečenica, fragmenata ili celih strana i ponovnog kombinovanja delova u nove celine; rezultat su često (delimično) koherentni novi narativi, kao i nadrealni kolaži i slike. Zajedno sa rediteljem Antony Balch-om, Burroughs je 1960tih eksperimentisao sa primenom ovog pristupa u mediju filma. U kontekstu teksta, referenca na ovu knjigu i ovaj metod upućuje na istraživanje, od strane projekta Adilkno, pitanja kolektivnog i fragmentarnog pristupa u stvaranju ‘celine’ kakvom doživljavamo jedan umetnički, naučni ili medijski rad, sagledavanja rezultata rada kao “mreže” različitih elemenata i kontribucija sa različitih strana, “nestabilnosti” ili “privremenosti” ovakvog rezultata rada, kao i drugih pitanja koja su sve relevantnija u savremenom umreženom okruženju (prim. prev.).

75 Nettime je mailing lista osnovana 1995. od strane Geert Lovink-a i Pit Schulz-a, koja je za cilj imala otvaranje prostora za nove forme kritičkog diskursa na i o Internetu, kao i diskusiju o drugim oblicima “umrežene” saradnje. Odmah po osnivanju, Nettime je postalo poznato i priznato mesto za sve vrste net. art-a (digitalne online umetnosti), a naročito za razvijanje kritičke diskusije o Internetu, ‘novim medijima’ i kritike tekuće rapidne evolucije medija generalno; originalno na engleskom, lista je ubrzo dobila različite sub-sekcije na lokalnim jezicima, uključujući i južnoslovenske. Na listi se rapravljalo i o društveno-političko-filosofskim problemima koji nisu vezani isključivo za oblast ‘novih medija’ i net.art - verovatno je vrhunac saobraćaja, a na određen način i “krah” ove liste, dosegnut 1999. za vreme debate o NATO bombardovanju SR Jugoslavije. Lista je i dalje povremeno aktivna. Spisak učesnika dosadašnjih konverzacija je impresivan - pogledajte arhive na adresi www.nettime.org. Danas na “info” sekciji stoji blago “remiksovan” originalni Nettime ‘stejtment’: “<nettime> nije samo mailing lista, već i pokušaj da se formuliše jedan internacionalni umreženi diskurs koji ne promoviše dominantnu euforiju (onu o prodavanju raznih proizvoda) niti nastavlja sa ciničnim pesimizmom koji šire novinari i intelektualci iz ‘starih’ medija, koji generalizuju u debati o ‘novim’ medijima, bez razumevanja njihovih komunikacijskih aspekata. proizvodili smo, i nastavićemo da proizvodimo knjige, ridere i veb sajtove na različitim jezicima, da bi obezbedili cirkulaciju ‘imanentne’ netkritike kako online tako i offline.”

¶Mogli bi da postavimo pitanje o tome da li su takve priče o polovima i dalje relevantne. Ako razmišljam o kompjuterima i Internetu, prva asocijacija mi je ona o jednoj usamljeničkoj mašini, a ne o muškom autoru/geniju koji diktira najnoviji rad svojoj sekretarici/ljubavnici - ali, ovde možda nisam u pravu. Da li je zamena pisaćih mašina PC-baziranom obradom teksta bila toliko značajna u ovom smislu? Možda nam je potrebna kulturna istorija sadašnjice koja bi opisala, iz ugla polnosti, uslove pod kojima se obavlja online proizvodnja teksta/znanja. Uprkos činjenici da su polovina Internet korisnica žene, geek-ovi/programeri ostaju predominantno i dalje muškarci. ¶Kolaboracija, i naročito slobodna saradnja, zvuče nakako idealistički.

Da li je to možda namenjeno onima koji su dosadili sami sebi, onima koji su hendikepirani svojim ‘manjim kapacitetima”? Na kraju, ljudi su društvene životinje. Po ovom pitanju, moramo da ostanemo tehnoidealisti. Hajde da se ne zakopamo preduboko u ciničnom isčitavanju ove teme. Drugačiji pristup bi bio taj da istražimo uspon ekonomije kulture i način na koji kreativne industrije primoravaju ljude da sarađuju u okviru timova. Ekonomska inovacija u okviru mreža je, na kraju, osnovni uslov multituda. Toliko toga je u novim medijima, kompjuterskom inženjeringu, ali takođe i u arhitekturi i dizajnu bazirano na timskom radu, da je zapravo zapanjujuće videti koliko je slabo razvijeno opšte razumevanje ove oblasti. ¶Borba za priznanje grupnog rada u sektorima kao što su literatura, vizuelne umetnosti ili akademija verovatno nikada neće biti dobijena. Institucije ne vole da rade sa amorfnim društvenim strukturama, jer im deluje kao da tamo nema nikoga ko bi mogao da ‘preuzme od29 govornost’. Ovde moramo da napravimo razliku između organizovanih mreža (vidi sledeće poglavlje) i umrežene organizacije. Veoma je lako umrežiti organizacije i započeti saradnju između institucija. Pravi izazov je transformacija modela ‘organizovanih mreža’, u kojem razne virtualne zajednice nemaju direktno sučeljavanje sa ‘stvarnim svetom’. Upravo taj interfejs između virtualnog i stvarnog sveta određuje i tip kolaboracije. Prilično je teško i iscrpljujuće sarađivati online bez sastanaka u ‘stvarnom životu’. Online rad može biti zaista neefikasan i spor. Potrebno je veliko strpljenje da bi se postigao uspeh. Neki i dalje veruju da sada ‘komuniciramo svetlosnom brzinom’, ali to uopšte nije slučaj ako radite na iole komplikovanijem projektu sa učesnicima koji su ‘raspršeni’ širom sveta. Kolaboracija postaje naročito interesantna kada neformalne mreže dosegnu kritičnu masu, prevaziđu inicijalni stadijum uzbuđenja i transformišu se u nešto potpuno drugačije. To je veličenstven i misteriozan momenat u kojem se male i nepovezane grupe pretvore u veći društveni pokret i proizvedu ono što bi Alain Badiou nazvao “događaj” (event).76 Ali, to je izuzetak. Individualne kolaboracije nemaju za cilj da kreiraju istorijske događaje.77 76 Osnovne informacije o (kompleksnom) filozofsko-matematičkom konceptu “događaja” u radu Alain Badiou-a možete da nađete na adresama www.lacan.com/beingandevent.html i http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Badiou, a više u knjizi Being And Event (L’être et L’événement), 1988. (prim. prev).

77 Ovo je klasičan dvadesetovekovni pristup, u kojem je političko-estetsko uokvireno većim, metafizičkim procesom kreiranja istorije.

¶U slučaju World Social Forum-a78, mreže Indymedia79 i anti-ratnih protesta iz 2003. interesantno je videti koliko problema su ti pokreti imali sa ‘skalabilnošću’. Jako je teško za autonomne decentralizovane organizacije, toliko navikle na fragmentarnost, da se podignu na ‘višu skalu’ i izgrade velike i održive strukture. Za hiper-individualiste kao što smo mi, istorijski događaji su postali nešto nalik karnevalu (kako to opisuje Bahktin80). Ono što stvara istoriju se doživljava kao jedan festivalski “prekid” u svakodnevici. Ovo čini sagledavanje takvih velikih događaja kao iskustava koja se mogu preneti naročito teškim zadatkom.

30

3. Rađanje organizovanih mreža

¶Na prvi pogled, koncept ‘organizovanih mreža’ deluje kao oksimoron. U tehničkom smislu, sve su mreže organizovane. Postoje osnivači, administratori, moderatori i aktivni korisnici koji svi imaju svoje uloge. Setimo se ranih radova o kibernetici i koncepta kibernetike ‘drugog reda’ (second-order cybernetics)81 o kojem su pisali Bateson i drugi. Mreže se sastoje od ‘pokretljivih’ odnosa čiji je raspored u svakom datom trenutku oblikovan od strane ‘konstitutivne spoljašnosti’ povratne sprege, ili šuma. Poredak mreže čini kontinuitet odnosa koji su rukovođeni interesima, strastima, afektima i pragmatičnim potrebama različitih aktera. Mreža ovih odnosa nikada nije statična, ali je ne treba zameniti sa nekim stanjem večite fluidnosti.

Efemernost nije pozicija koju pozdravljaju i prihvataju oni koji žele da aktivno deluju u političkom životu.

78 World Social Forum (WSF), odnosno Svetski društveni forum, je naziv godišnjeg skupa koji se održava u Brazilu i koji sebe definiše kao “otvoreni prostor - koji prihvata postulate pluraliteta i raznolikosti, i koji nije pod patronatom bilo koje vlade ili političke stranke - čiji je cilj da stimuliše decentralizovanu debatu, refleksiju, različite predloge i iskustva, kao i savezništva između pokreta i organizacija koje su uključene u direktnu akciju u svrhu stvaranja solidarnijeg, demokratičnijeg i poštenijeg društva”.

Više na adresi www.forumsocialmundial.org.br (prim. prev.).

79 The Independent Media Center (poznat i kao Indymedia ili IMC), odnosno Centar za nezavisne medije, predstavlja globalnu participatornu mrežu novinara i ljudi iz medija koji izveštavaju o političkim i društvenim događajima. Ova mreža vodi poreklo od događaja vezanih za protestne skupove protiv Ministarske konferencije Svetske trgovinske organizacije (WTO) iz 1999, i ostaje i dalje asocirana sa globalnim pokretima koji traže socijalnu pravdu kao i sa kritikom neoliberalizma i pridruženih institucija. Više na adresi www.indymedia.org (prim. prev.).

80 Referenca na delo Mihaila Mihailoviča Bahtina (Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin, 1895 - 1975), ruskog i sovjetskog filozofa i pisca, i njegovo delo Rabelais and His World (Rable i njegov svet), originalno naslovljeno kao Rabelais and Folk Culture of the Middle Ages and Renaissance i predato kao doktorska disertacija za vreme Drugog svetskog rata. Disertacija je odbijena, a delo je pod sadašnjim imenom objavljeno tek 1965. Danas se smatra klasikom renesansnih studija i jednim od najznačajnijih Bahtinovih tekstova. U ovoj kritici dela Gargantua and Pantagruel, serije od 5 novela François Rabelais-a iz 16. veka, Bahtin, između ostalog, u svojoj analizi renesansnog društvenog sistema i naročito tadašnjeg “dozvoljenog” i “nedozvoljenog” jezika, asocira karneval sa kolektivnošću i detaljno obraća pažnju na instituciju karnevala i na mehanizam putem kojeg takva manifestacija privremeno “briše” razlike koje uspostavljaju polovi, kaste, imovinsko stanje ili životno doba. Više na adresi www.shef.ac.uk/bakhtin (prim. prev.).

81 Kibernetika drugog reda (second-order cybernetics), poznata i kao “kibernetika kibernetike”, istražuje konstrukciju modela kibernetičkih sistema. U ovom istraživanju se podrazumeva da su i sami istraživači deo sistema koji proučavaju, i stavlja se akcenat na pitanja samo-referencijalnosti, samo-organizovanja, problem subjekt-objekt i srodnu problematiku. Više na http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-order_cybernetics (prim. prev.).

¶Teoriju organizovanih mreža treba čitati kao jedan predlog, nacrt, koncept u nastajanju kojem je potrebno aktivno upravljanje preko mehanizama neslaganja i kritike, i jedna kolektivna elaboracija.82 Ono što nam u ovom trenutku upravo nije potrebno jeste jedna instant-dekonstrukcija. To svako može da uradi. Naravno, organizovane mreže postoje već vekovima. Njihova istorija se može napisati i biće napisana, ali to nas neće odvesti mnogo dalje od situacije u kojoj smo sada. Mreže o kojima ovde razgovaramo su specifične, u smislu da su one siturane u okviru tehničkih medija. Za njih može biti karakteristična njihova unapređena irelevantnost i ‘nevidljivost’ iz perspektive ‘starih’ medija i moćnih lobija i pojedinaca. Opšta mrežna teorija može biti korisna za edukativne i ‘prosvetiteljske’ namene, ali ne odgovara na pitanja sa kojima se susreću društvene mreže bazirane na novim medijima. Da li je dovoljno zadovoljavajuće saznanje da se molekuli ili DNK matrice takođe umrežavaju? ¶Evo jednog ‘opšteg mesta’ koje danas uzimamo zdravo-za-gotovo: ne postoje mreže izvan društva. Kao i svi ljudsko-tehnički entiteti, i one su inficirane mehanizmima moći. Mreže su idealne Fukoove mašine: one potkopavaju moć samu, dok je u isto vreme proizvode. Njihov dijagram moći može da operiše na različitim skalama, prelazeći preko unutar-društvenih mreža i preklapajući se sa trans-nacionalnim ustancima. Po tom pitanju koliko god one možda delovale nevino, mreže proizvode razlike. Fukoov diktum (izjava, postulat): moć proizvodi.

Prevedite ovaj princip u organizovane mreže, i dobijate silu invencije. Mediologija, onako kako ju je definisao Régis Debray,83 jeste 31 praksa invencije u okviru društveno-tehničkog sistema mreža. Kao kolaborativni metod kojem je imanentna kritika, mediologija spaja mnoštvo komponenti u mrežu odnosa, kako se oni grupišu okolo situiranih problema i oslobođenih strasti. U ovom smislu, mreže konstantno izmiču pokušajima da se nad njima preuzme komanda i kontrola. U tome se ogleda entropička varijabilnost mreža. ¶Korisnici jedne mreže ne vide ‘svoj’ krug, koji se sastoji od drugih korisnika te mreže, kao neku sektu; veze su labave, sve do tačke u kojoj mogu i da ‘puknu’. Tako ontologija korisnika, na mnoge načine, odražava logiku kapitala. I zaista, ‘korisnik’ je identitet par excellence za kapital, koji teži da se izvuče iz rigidnih sistema regulacije i kontrole. ‘Korisnik’ ubrzano postaje termin koji korespondira sa auto-konfiguracijom samo-invencije. Neki bi rekli da je korisnik prosto samo konzument: tih i zadovoljan, dok sve odjednom ne ode dođavola. Korisnik je identitet ‘kontrole drugim sredstvima’.

U tom smislu, ‘korisnik’ je jedna prazna posuda koja čeka neopipljivu dopadljivost raznih kultura digitalnog konformizma i njihova obećanja ‘pokretljivosti’ i ‘otvorenosti’. Hajde da ne gajimo nikakve fantazije: društvenost je intimno ograničena u dinamičnom polju teh82 Pogledati diskusiju na Fibreculture mailing listi o upravljanju, cenzuri i organizovanim mrežama iz novembra/decembra 2004. (www.fibreculture.org, idite na: list archive).

83 Régis Debray (1996). Media Manifestos: on the Technological Transmission of Cultural Forms. London & NY: Verso.

ničkog, koje kreira sila kapitala. Mreže su svuda. Izazov u bliskoj budućnosti će biti da se kreiraju nova otvaranja, nove mogućnosti, nove privremenosti i prostori u okviru kojih život može da ostvari svoje čvrsto insistiranje na etičko-estetskom postojanju. ¶Organizovane mreže treba čitati kao predlog, čiji je cilj da zameni problematični termin ‘virtualna zajednica’.84 Taj predlog treba da osvetli unutrašnje odnose moći u okviru mreža, i napravi raskid sa nevidljivim tokovima moći koji su sačinjavali eru konsenzusa. Organizovane mreže su ‘oblaci’ društvenih odnosa, u kojima je neučestvovanje dovedeno do maksimuma. ‘Zajednica’ je idealistički konstrukt koji sugeriše povezanost i harmoniju, a to su stvari koje često jednostavno ne postoje. Isto se može reći i za post-9/11 poziv za novim ‘poverenjem’. Mreže rastu 32 na različitosti i konfliktu (the notworking), a ne na jedinstvu, i ovo je nešto što teoretičari zajednice do sada nisu bili u stanju da reflektuju. Za njih, neslaganje je jednako prekidu u ‘konstruktivnom’ toku dijaloga. Potreban je napor da se nepoverenje sagleda kao konstruktivan princip. Indiferentnost između mreža predstavlja glavni razlog da se one ne organizuju, tako da ovaj aspekt treba shvatiti ozbiljno. Interakcija i predanost su idealistički konstrukti. Svetom vlada pasivnost. Surfanje, gledanje, čitanje, razmišljanje, brisanje, četovanje i ‘premotavanje’ su zadati uslovi života online. Totalna uključenost, angažovanost ili predanost impliciraju najviši stepen poremećenosti i ludila. Ono što karakteriše mreže jeste zajednički osećaj potencijala koji ne mora da bude realizovan. Milioni odgovora od svih upućeni svima bi uspeli da “skrše” svaku mrežu, bez obzira kakve je arhitekture. U svakoj mreži postoje dugi periodi inter-pasivnosti, koji su prekinuti naletima interaktivnosti. Mreže gaje i reprodukuju labave odnose - i bolje je odmah direktno se suočiti sa ovom činjenicom. To su hedonističke mašine promiskuitetnih kontakata. Umrežene mutitude kreiraju privremene i dobrovoljne forme kolaboracije koje prevazilaze, ali ne nužno i ugrožavaju Doba Nezainteresovanosti. ¶Koncept organizovanih mreža može da bude koristan ako se primeni u strateške svrhe. Posle dekade ‘taktičkih medija’, došlo je vreme da se poveća skala operacija radikalnih medijskih praksi. Svi bi trebalo da smo odavno izašli iz retro-fantazije o dobronamernoj državi blagostanja. Mreže nikada neće biti priznate kao deo sistema i ‘ukorenjene’ u (takve) dobro finansirane strukture. Jednako kao što je nekadašnja modernistička avangarda zatekla sebe kako proizvodi ograničene prekide na marginama društva, i taktički mediji su takođe pronašli svoju utehu u ideji o ciljanim mikro-intervencijama.

Taktički mediji (previše) često pretpostavljaju da reprodukuju čudnu prostorno-vremensku dinamiku i logiku moderne države i industrijskog kapitala: diferenciranje i ‘oporavak’ od periferije. Ali, ovde je na

84 Pogledajte takođe uvod i zaključak u Geert Lovink (2003), My First Recession - Rotterdam: V2/NAi. Teorija organizovanih mreža se treba čitati kao nastavak ove knjige.

delu jedan paradoks - koliko god da su njihove akcije ‘podrivačke’, taktički mediji potvrđuju vremenski modus post-fordijanskog kapitala: kratkoročnost. ¶To što taktički mediji u post-fordijanskoj eri nastavljaju da i dalje operišu kroz efemeralan pristup i ‘taktičku’ logiku predstavlja jednu retrogradnu pojavu. Pošto je “napad na sitno” dominantno stanje, taktički mediji pokazuju afinitet upravo prema tome čemu se suprotstavljaju, i to je razlog zbog kojeg su taktički mediji tretirani sa nekom vrstom benigne tolerancije.

Postoji neurotična tendencija za nestajanjem. Ideal je da se ne kreira ništa više od privremenog ‘kvara’, kratkog primera šuma ili interferencije. Taktički mediji su sami sebe ‘namestili’ da budu eksploatisani na isti način na koji su se modder-i85 postavili prema industriji igara; i jedni i drugi se ‘raspršuju’ zajedno sa svojim znanjem o rupama u sistemu, koje se bez naknade distribuira svima. Oni ukažu na problem, i onda pobegnu. Kapital je oduševljen, i zahvaljuje nekom taktičkom mediju ili nerdu-modderu na, zapravo, poboljšavanju samog sistema. ¶Ali, ne budimo u zabludi - pojava organizovanih mreža je ravna objavljivanju informatičkog rata. Ova bitka se trenutno vrti oko teme o ‘održivosti’; neo-liberalne vlade i institucije žele da se oslobode odgovornosti prema dosadnim i problematičnim ‘biračkim telima’. Organizovane mreže su potrebne da bi se izumeli modeli održivosti koji prevazilaze najnoviju dopunu nekog Akcionog plana, pa da se tek onda sve to zajedno baci na smetlište dokumenata raznih država-članica i ‘mušterija je uvek u pravu’ biznisa. ¶Organizovane mreže se takmiče sa ustanovljenim institucijama u smi33 slu brendinga i ‘građenja identiteta’, ali primarno kao mesta gde se proizvodi znanje i razvijaju koncepti. Danas, većina tradicionanih institucija može samo da uzima određenu vrednost iz mreža. Nije da jednostavno ne žele, već zaista nisu u stanju da uzvrate sa bilo čime. Ovde leži pravi potencijal virtualnih mreža. Ove mreže i dalje nisu reprezentovane u pregovorima oko budžeta, grantova, investicija ili radnih mesta. U najboljem slučaju, one se smatraju za izvor inspiracije među svojim učesnicima. ¶Organizovane mreže su ‘hibridna’ formacija; delimično taktički mediji, a delimično institucionalne formacije. Postoje prednosti koje mogu da se preuzmu iz oba ova nasleđa. Jasna karakteristika organizovanih mreža jeste ta da je njihova institucionalna logika interna za društveno-tehničku dimenziju medija komunikacije. To znači da ne postoji univerzalna formula za to kako jedna organizovana mreža može da osmisli svoje uslove postojanja. Za mreže neće biti ‘internacionalizma’. Dok podcrtavamo pozadinske uslove neo-liberalizma kao integralne za pojavljivanje organizovanih mreža, takođe treba reći da upravo na način na koji nejednake modernosti kreiraju izuzetno razli85 Modder dolazi od izraza modding, što predstavlja sleng izveden iz engleske reči “modify” (modifikacija).

U savremenoj upotrebi, odnosi se na modifikaciju određenog dela hardvera ili softvera ili bio čega drugog, u smislu da je krajnji rezultat procesa modifikovan proizvod sposoban da obavlja funkcije za koje nije originalno dizajniran. Termin se često koristi u žargonu ljubitelja video igara, automobila ili kompjuterskog hardvera i softvera, a modder-i često “poklanjaju” industriji nova i neočekivana rešenja za unapređenje određenih proizvoda. Više informacija na adresi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modding (prim. prev.).

čita društvena i nacionalna iskustva, od istoka ka zapadu i od severa ka jugu, kroz iste mehanizme se kapital, u svojoj neo-liberalnoj fazi, manifestuje na mnoge načine. Razlike u uslovima vazanim za ugovore o slobodnoj trgovinskoj razmeni predstavljaju samo jedan od primera različitih formi kapitala. Iz analitičke tačke gledišta, razumevanje kapitala će se uvek razlikovati u skladu sa tim koliko se informacija uzima kao ‘dovoljno’ za ono što se uzima kao konstitutivno dejstvo kapitala. ¶Na kraju, organizovane mreže će se odraziti u umreženim organizacijama.

Ali, dotle još nismo stigli. To neće biti jedna laka sinteza.

Generalno govoreći, može se uočiti ‘konvergencija’ između informalnosti virtualnih mreža i formalnosti institucija. Međutim, ovaj proces je sve samo ne harmoničan. Pred očima nam se odvijaju sukobi između 34 mreža i organizacija, a ostaci i jednih i drugih lete na sve strane, zavisno od pozicije (lokaliteta) iz koje posmatramo. Umrežene multitude, može se reći, bivaju konstituisane - i smrvljene - u toku ovog procesa. Naivno je verovati da će, u postojećim uslovima, mreže dobiti ovu bitku (ako se već izražavamo u tim ‘ratnim’ terminima). I upravo je to razlog zbog kojeg je mrežama potrebna sopstvena forma organizacije. U ovom procesu postoje tri aspekta sa kojima će mreže morati da se bave, a to su: odgovornost, održivost i skalabilnost. ¶Hajde da počnemo sa pitanjem koga, ako ikoga, mreže predstavljaju, i kakvu formu interne demokratije predviđaju. Formalne mreže imaju članove, što nije slučaj sa većinom online inicijativa. Suočimo se sa tim - mreže dezintegrišu tradicionalne forme reprezentacije. To je ono što čini pitanje “da li su blogovi uticali na američke izbore 2004?” tako irelevantnim. Blogosfera je, u najboljem slučaju, uticala na šačicu TV i novinskih urednika. Umesto da agituje, Net je doveo u pitanje autoritet - bilo koji autoritet - i iz tog razloga nije bio koristan u podizanju rejtinga ovog ili onog kandidata na skali ‘izborne dopadljivosti’. Mreže koje izrastu u nešto više od toga će doživeti neuspeh. Šta god da mislite o Deridi, mreže zaista dekonstruišu društvo. Ono što je zaista važno jesu duboke veze, a ne simbolični ‘državni udari’. Ako uopšte postoji neka namera, to bi bilo postizanje paralelne hegemonije, što se jedino može ostvariti ako se osnovne premise konstantno preispituju od strane inicijatora sledećeg tehno-društvenog talasa inovacija. Uspon ‘informatike zajednice’ (community informatics)86 kao polja za istraživanje i lansiranje projekata može biti primer platforme koja može da izađe na kraj sa pitanjima koja su ovde postavljena. U okviru sveukupnog interesovanja koje je informatika zajednice pokazala u građenju projekata ‘odozdo’, značajna količina istraživanja u ovom polju je uperena ka pitanjima ‘e-demokratije’.87 Vreme je da se napusti iluzija da će mit 86 Jedan od mnogih hibrida (eng. crossover) između kompjuterskih i humanističkih nauka, kako je predloženo od stane Michael Gurstein-a i drugih. Neke njihove tekstove možete naći na www.netzwissenschaft. de/sem/pool.htm, a o samom terminu možete da pogledate više ovde: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community _informatics.

87 E- demokratija (kombinacija reči “elektronska” i “demokratija”) je oblik direktne demokratije u kojem se koriste sredstva informacijskih i komunikacijskih tehnologija za komunikaciju između aktera i donošenje

o reprezantacionoj (predstavničkoj) demokratiji možda nekako biti prenesen i realizovan u okvire mrežnog okruženja. To se neće desiti. Na kraju, ljudi koji imaju koristi od poduhvata kakav je Svetski samit o informacijskom društvu World Summit of the Information Society (WSIS)88 su, u ogromnoj većini, upravo oni ljudi koji su iz krugova koji govore u ime svih ili iz onih krugova koji ‘finansiraju operacije’, ne nužno i ljudi iz društvenih grupa i krugova koji su navodno predstavljeni u ovom procesu. Mreže traže novu logiku politike, logiku koja se ne bazira samo na pažljivo izabranoj kolekciji nevladinih organizacija koje sebe definišu kao ‘globalno civilno društvo’. ¶Mreže nisu institucije reprezantacione (reprezentacijske, predstavničke) demokratije, uprkos rastućim očekivanjima u skladu sa kojima se od njih traži da se modeluju prema jednom tako neupešnom principu, odnosno instituciji. Umesto toga, u mrežama se odvija traganje za ‘post-demokratskim’ modelima donošenja odluka, koji izbegavaju klasične modele reprezentacije i njima srodne politike identiteta.

Tema koja je sve češće u fokusu ne-reprezentacione (ne-predstavničke) demokratije je stavljanje akcenta na proces, radije nego na njegovu moguću posledicu, konsenzus. Naravno, ima nečeg privlačnog u formama upravljanja i vladanja koje su orijentisane na proces. Ali, na kraju, procesualni model je otprilike jednako održiv koliko i zemljana skulptura ukopana u gomilu prašine koju zovemo 1970-te. Proces je u redu, dokle god integriše mnoštvo raznorodnih sila u jednu mrežu.

Ali, osnovna pitanja ostaju: Gde ta moć odlazi? Koliko dugo traje?

Zašto to uopšte raditi? Kao i: Ko govori? I, takođe: Zašto se uopšte 35 smarati? Zbog toga je nužan fokus na vitalne sile koje sačinjavaju društveno-tehnički život. Istrajnost postojanja sporova i neslaganja se može uzeti kao datost. Racionalni konsenzualni modeli demokratije su dokazali, kroz sopstveni neuspeh, da te premise društveno-političkog života ne mogu biti iskorenjene i ignorisane. ¶Organizovane mreže će sve više biti upućene na pitanje sopstvene održivosti. Mreže nisu stvar mode - one možda deluju kao privremene, ali mreže su ovde ‘da ostanu’. Neki individualni klasteri će možda uskoro nestati, ili neće, ali postoji želja za kontekstualizacijom koju je teško suzbiti. Čak i ako neke veze (links) u nekom trenutku budu prekinute, to ne znači i kraj za same podatke (data) koji su bili povezani. U svakom slučaju, mreže su ekstremno krhke. Sve odluka u demokratskom procesu, i gde se pod akterima mogu smatrati sve vrste učesnika, od individua, preko različitih društvenih grupa, do medijskih sistema, državne uprave i političkih organizacija. Jedna od osnovnih pretpostavki koncepta e-demokratije je ta da tehnologije kao što su Internet, mobilni telefoni i druge dovode do većeg i aktivnijeg učestvovanja svih navedenih aktera u razmatranju i odlučivanju o tekućim problemima, i da na taj način mogu da unaprede trenutno aktuelni koncept reprezentacione demokratije i proizvedu potencijalno direktniji demokratski sistem. Više na adresi http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/E-democracy (prim. prev.).

88 World Summit of the Information Society (Svetski samit o informatičkom društvu, popularno WSIS) su, do sada, dve konferencije o informatici, komunikaciji i, široko govoreći, o informatičkom društvu, organizovane u Ženevi (2003.) i Tunisu (2005.) pod pokroviteljstvom Ujedinjenih nacija. Do sada su se ove konferencije završavale bez jasnog konsenzusa po ključnim pitanjima, i obeležene su u javnosti diskusijama o tome koji su akteri i na koji način izabrani i reprezentovani na ovim konferencijama, kao i o tome šta bi bila “ključna pitanja” jedne takve konferencije na globalnom nivou. Više informacija na adresama www.itu.int/ wsis/index.html i http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Summit_on_the_Information_Society (prim. prev.).

ovo možda zvuči očigledno, ali ne treba zaboraviti da je pragmatizam izgrađen upravo na strastima, zadovoljstvima i uzbuđenjima invencije. Nešto će biti izmišjeno da bi se premostilo vreme, i to nešto ćemo možda zvati organizovane mreže. Došlo je vreme za brižljivo planiranje. Postoji jedna samodestruktivna tendencija u mrežama suočenim sa izazovom organizacije. Organizovane mreže treba da steknu samopouzdanje u definisanju svojih sopstvenih sistema vrednosti, na načine koji su smisleni i relevantni za interno operisanje njihovog društveno-tehničkog kompleksa. Ovo, zapravo, i nije toliko teško. Postoji jedna opasnost - a to je getoizacija. Trik je u tome da se napravi kolaborativan sistem vrednosti, koji je sposoban da se nosi sa problemima kakvi su finansiranje, unutrašnje ‘igre moći’ i rastući zahtevi za ‘odgovornošću’ i ‘transparentnošću’ kako mreže podižu svoje 36 operacije na jednu veću skalu. ¶Hajde da pričamo o novcu. Organizovane mreže treba da na prvom mestu održavaju red u sopstvenoj virtualnoj kući. Od strateške je važnosti da se koriste neprofitni provajderi (ISP)89 i da se regularno prave backup-ovi,90 ili da se čak i održavaju mirror-i91 u drugim zemljama. Takođe, mudro je ne koristiti komercijalne servise kakvi su Yahoo!Groups, Hotmail, Geocities ili Google, jer su nepouzdani i pate od redovnih bezbedonosnih propusta. Treba biti svestan cena zakupa imena domena, e-mail adresa, storage and bandwidth troškova,92 čak 89 Internet servis provajder (skraćeno ISP) je kompanija koja svojim korisnicima omogućava uslugu priključivanja na Internet i povezane servise. U kolokvijalnom govoru skraćeno se upotrebljava izraz provajder.

Sam izraz je engleskog porekla (engl. Internet Service Provider), i u prevodu znači dobavljač internet usluge. (http://sr.wikipedia.org/sr-el/Internet_servis_provajder, prim. prev.).

90 Backup (čita se bekap) u informacionim tehnologijama označava proces pravljenja kopija određenih podataka i čuvanja tih kopija na drugoj ‘fizičkoj’ lokaciji (često i drugačijem formatu ili mediju) od originalne, u svrhu mogućnosti da se podaci povrate ako dođe do slučajnog ili namernog brisanja podataka ili druge nesreće, hakerskog napada ili štete izazvane virusom ili dotrajalim medijem za čuvanje podataka.

Backup procedure su u velikim sistemima standardizovane i redovno se obavljaju. Smatra se da je oko 66% korisnika interneta na različite načine iskusilo situaciju u kojoj su “izgubili” neke ili sve od svojih podataka. Više na http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backup (prim. prev.).

91 Mirror, od engleske reči koja znači ogledalo, u ovom kontekstu referiše na praksu “hostovanja”, odnosno fizičkog smeštanja sadržaja veb sajta na više različitih lokacija, često u različitim državama ili na različitim kontinentima, kako u cilju olakšavanja i ubrzavanja pristupa za lokalne korisnike, distribucije opterećenja saobraćaja i čuvanja podataka na više lokacija, tako i u svrhu izbegavanja cenzure ili određene nepovoljne lokalne zakonske regulative i drugih prepreka za distribuciju sadržaja; više na adresi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_(computing) (prim. prev.).

92 Širina frekventnog (frekvencijskog) pojasa, ili frekventni (frekvencijski) opseg (engl. bandwidth) je širina frekventnog intervala komunikacionog kanala koji se koristi u komunikaciji između predajne i prijemne strane. Širina frekvencijskog pojasa u informatici je količina podataka koju su u određenom vremenskom periodu dva računara u mogućnosti da razmene. Jedinica širine frekvencijskog pojasa se izražava kao b/s (bit po sekundi). U popularnom govoru, odnosi se na zakupljenu propusnu moć lične ili organizacijske Internet veze, koja umnogome određuje šta i koliko organizacija ili pojedinac mogu da “rade” sa svojom Internet vezom. “Širina” bandwidth-a, osim od raspoložive lokalne infrastukture, zavisi isključivo od cene za određene “nivoe” usluge, odnosno popularno nazvane “pakete” određenih ISP-ova. Više na http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth_(computing) (prim. prev.).

Storage (skladištenje) se u ovom kontekstu odnosi na zakupljen prostor na određenom Internet serveru, na kojem se čuvaju prezentacije, komunikacije, multimedijalni i drugi sadržaji pojedinca ili organizacije koji se razmenjuju ili na drugi način koriste na Internetu. U oblasti informacionih tehnologija, server je računarski sistem koji pruža usluge drugim računarskim sistemima – klijentima. Komunikacija između servera i klijenta odvija se preko računarske mreže. Naziv server najčešće se odnosi na ceo računarski sistem, ali se ponekada koristi i samo za hardver ili softver takvog sistema. Klijent i server zajedno obrazuju klijent-server mrežnu arhitekturu. Kapacitet za storage, osim od raspoložive lokalne infrastukture, zavisi isključivo od cene za određene “nivoe” usluge, odnosno popularno nazvane “pakete” određenih ISP-ova. Više na http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_storage_device (prim. prev.).

iako su oni relativno skromni. Često problemi nastaju zato što su password-i i registracija imena domena pod kontrolom jedne osobe koja napušta grupu u konfliktnoj situaciji. Ovo bukvalno može da znači kraj projekta. ¶Mreže nisu nikada stopostotno virtualne, i uvek su u nekoj tački povezane sa monetarnom ekonomijom. Ovde zapravo priča o organizovanim mrežama počinje. Možda je potrebna inkorporacija, odnosno udruživanje. Ako ne želite da ‘smarate’ mrežu sa ‘pravnim poslovima’, imajte u vidu koja je cena izbegavanja svega toga. Finansiranje za online aktivnosti, sastanke, uredničke poslove, pisanje koda, dizajn, istraživanje ili publikacije, sve to može naravno da bude preusmereno preko partnerske institucije. Imajte u vidu da što vaše online aktivnosti sve više rastu tako raste i verovatnoća da ćete morati da plaćate i mrežnog administratora.93 Svet free software-a, okrenut samom sebi i sopstvenoj unutrašnjosti, poštuje pravila sopstvenog ‘malog raja’ po pitanju dobrovoljnih poslova jedino u slučaju sopstvenih projekata pisanja koda. Imajte u vidu da kulturni, umetnički i aktivistički projekti ne spadaju u ovu kategoriju, koliko god da su politički korektni. Isto važi za urednike i web dizajnere.

Idealno, online projekti bi trebalo da budu puni duha zajedništva, i da mogu da po potrebi raspolažu znanjima i veštinama svih svojih članova. Ali, kako se mreže razvijaju i udaljavaju od momenta svoje inicijacije, tako postaje izvesnije da će za takvu vrstu rada morati da se plaća. Organizovane mreže moraju da se suoče sa ovom ekonomskom realnošću, ili u protivnom rizikuju da budu marginalizovane, bez obzira na to koliko su napredni i razvijeni njihovi dijalozi i 37 korišćenje mreže. Diskusija o ‘imaterijalnom radu’ i ‘prekariotskom radu’ je korisna, ali može da ostane ‘bez daha’, ako ostane bez odgovora na to kako napraviti skok od spekulativne refleksije do političkog programa koji će zacrtati kako mreže mogu da vremenom obezbede sopstveno finansiranje. ¶Na kraju, hajde da završimo sa verovatno najmanje istraženim aspektom, onim o ‘skalabilnosti’ mreža. Zašto je tako teško za mreže da se uvećaju, da promene svoj ‘red veličine’ na skali? Izgleda da postoji imanentna tendencija da se sve razbija i deli na hiljade mikro-konverzacija. Ovo takođe važi za blogove zasnovane na ‘društvenom softveru’, kao što su Orkut, Friendster ili LinkedIn, u kojima učestvuju milioni korisnika širom planete. Za sada, samo geek-ovski Slashdot uspeva da centralizuje konverzacije među desetinama hiljada svojih online korisnika. Elektronske mailing liste očigledno ne uspevaju da pređu nekoliko hiljada korisnika pre nego što se konverzacija uspori, dodatno opterećena ‘strogom’ moderacijom. Idealna veličina za jednu duboku i otvorenu diskusiju izgleda da se i dalje nalazi negde u rasponu između 50 i 500 učesnika. Šta ovo znači za umrežene multitude? Pitanje bi bilo: do koje mere je ovo uopšte pitanje softvera?

93 Administrator mreže (network administrator, često skraćeno admin) je savremena profesija, u okviru koje se obučena stručna lica staraju za kompjuterski hardver i softver koji čini određenu kompjutersku mrežu. Ovo uobičajeno podrazumeva implementaciju, konfigurisanje, održavanje i nadgledanje pomenute mrežne opreme i softvera. Više na adresi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_administrator (prim. prev.)

Da li bi potrebni protokoli mogli da budu napisani od strane žena? Da li možemo da zamislimo velike, ogromne konverzacije, koje ne samo da imaju smisla, već i neki ‘realni’ uticaj? Kakve mrežne kulture mogu da transformišu velike institucije? • Prevod: Vladimir Jerić

38

Zahvalnica

¶Da podvučemo očigledno, ovaj tekst je proizvod brojnih (online) kolaboracija. Pored mailing lista kao što su Nettime, Fibreculture, Rohrpost, Oekonux, Incommunicado i Spectre, kao i sada nefunkcionišućeg kolaborativnog bloga Discordia, moram da spomenem svoju intenzivnu razmenu sa Trebor Sholz-om (o pitanjima slobodne saradnje) i Ned Rossiter-om, sa kojim sarađujem na pitanju organizovanih mreža.

Soenke Zehle i Florian Schneider su takođe bili vredni partneri u dijalozima. Želim da zahvalim Emilie Randoe na našoj tekućoj konverzaciji i Sabine Niederer iz Instituta za mrežne kulture (Institute of Network Cultures) na komentarima i uredničkoj podršci. Posvećujem rad svojoj voljenoj Lindi Wallace i našem sinu Kazimiru, sa kojima živim ovaj turbulentan i inspirativan život.

Ovaj tekst se ustupa pod licencom Creative Commons Autorstvo 3.0 Srbija. Da bi ste videli kopiju licence, posetite http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0/rs ili pošaljite pismo na Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, SAD.

NJUJORŠKA PROROcANSTVA: ZAMIŠLJENA BUDUcNOST VEŠTAcKE INTELIGENCIJE Richard Barbrook (Ričard Barbruk)

Budućnost je ono što je i bila “Biološka inteligencija je nepromenljiva, zato što je u pitanju stara, zrela paradigma, dok nova paradigma nebiološkog računarstva i inteligencije eksponencijalno raste. Prelaz će se odigrati 2020-ih, a nakon toga, bar sa stanovišta hardvera, dominiraće nebiološko računarstvo...“ (Kurcvejl (Kurzweil), 2004, str. 3.) ¶Na početku 21. veka, san o veštačkoj inteligenciji ukorenjen je duboko u savremenu maštu. Od detinjstva pa nadalje, ljudima u razvijenom svetu se govori da će računari jednog dana moći da rasuđuju – čak i da imaju osećanja – baš kao ljudi. U pričama naučne fantastike, mašine koje misle su odavno omiljeni likovi. Publika je odrastala sa 41 likovima robota drugara, kao što je Dejta iz serije Zvezdane staze: Nova generacija. ili nemilosrdnih robota-čudovišta poput kiborga iz Terminatora. (Startrek.com 2005; Kameron/Cameron 1984). Ove naučnofantastične maštarije su dodatno podstaknute pouzdanim predviđanjima istaknutih informatičara. Neprekidna poboljšanja hardvera i softvera naposletku će dovesti do stvaranja veštačkih inteligencija, moćnijih od “biološke inteligencije” ljudskog mozga... ¶Komercijalni proizvođači već neko vreme sa nestrpljenjem iščekuju dan kada će prodavati svesne mašine koje obavljaju kućne poslove i pomažu starijima (Honda 2004). Neki informatičari čak veruju da je stvaranje “nebioloških inteligencija” jedna duhovna potraga. U Kaliforniji, Rej Kurcvejl, Vernor Vindž (Ray Kurzweil, Vernor Vinge) i njihove kolege s nestrpljenjem očekuju Singularnost: Prvi dolazak silicijumskog mesije (Vindž 1993; Bel/Bell 2004). Bilo da su nadahnuti novcem ili misticizmom, svi ovi zagovornici veštačke inteligencije dele uverenje da se sadašnjost mora shvatiti kao ‘embrion’, kao budućnost u zametku – a upravo iz budućnosti će se rasvetljivati potencijal sadašnjosti. Svaki napredak u računarskoj tehnologiji objavljuje se kao novi korak ka stvaranju potpuno svesne mašine.

Proročanstvo o veštačkoj inteligenciji sve bliže je ispunjenju sa pojavljivanjem svakog novog komada softvera ili hardvera. Nije važno ono što računari mogu sada, već ono što će moći uskoro. Sadašnjica je beta verzija naučnofantastičnog sna: zamišljena budućnost.

¶Uprkos svom istaknutom mestu u kulturi, vera u svesne mašine podložna je teorijskom egzorcizmu. Daleko od toga da bude prazan označitelj, ovo proročanstvo je duboko ukorenjeno u vremenu i prostoru. Očekivano, savremeni propagatori veštačke inteligencije retko priznaju koliko je sâm koncept star. Žele da napreduju, ne da se osvrću. Ipak, prošlo je više od četrdeset godina od kada je san o razumnim mašinama prvi put zaokupio maštu javnosti. Zamišljena budućnost veštačke inteligencije ima dugačku istoriju - analiziranje te prvobitne verzije proročanstva je preduslov za razumevanje njegovog savremenog ponavljanja. Sa tim u vidu, vratimo se u drugu deceniju Hladnog rata, kada je najveća svetska računarska kompanija priredila predstavu o čudesima razumnih mašina, u finansijskoj prestonici najmoćnije i najbogatije zemlje na planeti...

42 Milenijum napretka ¶Na dan 22. aprila 1964. godine, Svetski sajam (World’s Fair) u Njujorku otvoren je za javnost. U naredne dve godine, ta moderna zemlja čuda ugostila je preko 51 milion posetilaca. Na izložbi su bili zastupljeni svi delovi američke elite: savezna vlada, državne uprave, velike korporacije, finansijske ustanove, industrijski lobiji i verske grupe. Svetski sajam je dokazao da SAD prednjači u svemu: u robi široke potrošnje, demokratiji, šou-biznisu, modernističkoj arhitekturi, lepim umetnostima, verskoj toleranciji, kućnom životu i, iznad svega, tehnologiji. Kao što je sugerisao jedan od reklamnih slogana izložbe, “milenijum progresa” doživeo je vrhunac u američkom stoleću (Stenton/Stanton 2004, 2004a; Ljus/Luce 1941). ¶Ta rodoljubiva poruka slavljena je veličanstvenim predstavljanjem novih tehnologija na Svetskom sajmu. Pisci i filmadžije odavno su maštali o putovanju na druge svetove. Sada je u Nasinom (National Aeronautics and Space Administration - Nacionalna agencija za aeronautička i svemirska istraživanja, popularno NASA, prim. prev.)

Svemirskom parku javnost mogla da se divi ogromnim raketama koje su odnele američke astronaute u orbitu (urednici knjiga Tajm-Lajf /Time-Life Books 1964, str. 208; Lorens/Laurence 1964, str. 2-14).

Uprkos svom početnom neuspehu kada su Rusi lansirali prvi satelit 1957, SAD sad tek što nisu pretekle svog takmaca u “svemirskoj trci” (Šefter/Schefter 1999, str. 145-231). A ono što je najbolje od svega, posetiocima Svetskog sajma govorilo se kako će i sami imati priliku da u svom životnom veku postanu astronauti. U paviljonu Futurama Dženeral motorsa (General Motors), Amerikanci iz 1980-ih bili su prikazani kako provode godišnji odmor na Mesecu (urednici knjiga Tajm-Lajf 1964, str. 222). Druge korporacije bile su podjednako sigurne da će dostignuća sadašnjice ubrzo biti prevaziđena trijumfima sutrašnjice. U svom paviljonu Progreslend (Progressland), Dženeral motors je predvideo da će električna energija proizvedena u reaktorima za nuklearnu fuziju biti “isuviše jeftina da bi se naplaćivala” (urednici knjiga Tajm-Lajf 1964, str. 90-92; Lorens 1964, str 40-43).

U zamišljenoj budućnosti Svetskog sajma, Amerikanci neće samo postati svemirski turisti - oni će takođe biti blagosloveni besplatnom električnom energijom... ¶Za mnoge korporacije, najdelotvorniji metod da dokažu svoju tehnološku savremenost bio je taj da izlože računar. Klerolova (Clairol) mašina birala je “najlaskavije boje za kosu” za posetiteljke, a mejnfrejm (eng. mainframe, veliki, često i ogromni centralni kompjuterski sistemi, kakvi su počeli da se razvijaju 40-ih i 50-ih godina, prim. prev.) Parker pena je uparivao američku decu sa “prijateljima za dopisivanje” iz stranih zemalja (urednici knjiga Tajm-Lajf 1964, str. 86, 90). Koliko god možda delovali impresivno svojoj publici, ti eksponati nisu bili ništa drugo do reklamni trikovi. Za razliku od njih, IBM (skraćeno od International Business Machines, jedna od prvih i najvećih informatičkih kompanija, osnovana pod imenom Tabulating Machine Company 1896, danas sa oko 400 000 zaposlenih u 170 zemalja, prim. prev.) je bio u mogućnosti da svoj paviljon posveti isključivo čudima informatike kao zasebne tehnologije. U 1961, jedan jedini proizvod – IBM 1401 – činio je četvrtinu svih računara koji su radili u SAD-u (Pju 1995, str. 265-267). Po poimanju mnogih Amerikanaca, IBM je bio sinonim za ‘kompjuter’. Baš pred otvaranje Svetskog sajma, korporacija je izbacila seriju proizvoda koji će joj obezbediti dominaciju nad industrijom i u iduće dve decenije: System/360 (DeLamarter 1986, str. 54-146). Ugrabivši priliku za promociju koju je Sajam nudio, šefovi IBM-a naručili su paviljon koji će zaseniti sve ostale. Ero Sarinen (Eero Saarinen) – renomirani fin43 ski arhitekta – nadgledao je konstrukciju veličanstvene zgrade: bele dvorane u obliku jajeta sa reljefnim korporativnim logotipom, koja je lebdela visoko u vazduhu uz pomoć 45 metalnih stabala boje rđe. Ispod te upečatljive atrakcije nalazile su se interaktivne izložbe koje su veličale IBM-ov doprinos računarskoj industriji (Stern, Melins i Fišman/Stern, Mellins, Fishman, 1997, str. 1046-1047). ¶Za samu dvoranu, Čarsl i Rej Ims (Charles i Ray Eames) – par koji je bio oličenje američkog modernističkog dizajna – napravili su glavnu zanimljivost u IBM-ovom paviljonu: “Informatičku mašinu” (The Information Machine). Pošto bi zauzeli svoja mesta u “Ljudskom zidu” (People Wall) sa 500 sedišta, posetioci bi bili podignuti u jajoliku građevinu. Kada bi se našli unutra, narator bi najavio “veličanstvenu” multimedijalnu predstavu o tome kako su mašine izložene u IBM-ovom paviljonu preteča svesnih mašina budućnosti. Računari su u procesu sticanja svesti (urednici knjiga Tajm-Lajf 1964, str. 70-74; Lorens 1964, str. 57-58). U bliskoj budućnosti, svaki Amerikanac će biti vlasnik odanog mehaničkog sluge baš kao što je Robot Robi (Robby the Robot) iz Zabranjene planete (Forbidden Planet), popularnog naučnofantastičnog filma iz 1956. godine (Vilkoks/Wilcox, 1999). Na Svetskom sajmu u Njujorku, IBM je ponosno objavio da će taj san o veštačkoj inteligenciji napokon biti ostvaren. Sa izbacivanjem serije System/360, mejnfrejmovi su postali dovoljno moćni da izgrade prototipe jednog potpuno svesnog računara.

¶Ta čudesna mešavina avangardne arhitekture i multimedijalnog performansa u IBM-ovom paviljonu doživela je veliki uspeh i u medijima i u javnosti. Zajedno sa svemirskim raketama i nuklearnim reaktorima, računar je potvrdio svoju poziciju kao jedna od tri ikonične tehnologije moderne Amerike. Ideološka poruka tih mašina bila je nedvosmislena: sadašnjost je budućnost u zametku.

U IBM-ovom paviljonu, računari su postojali istovremeno u dva vremenska okvira. Sa jedne strane, tadašnji modeli su prikazani kao prototipovi svesnih mašina iz budućnosti; sa druge strane, vizija računarske svesti pokazala je istinski potencijal mejnfrejmova izloženih u IBM-ovom paviljonu. Na Svetskom sajmu u Njujorku 1964, izbacivanje serije System/360 se slavilo kao najava zamišljene budućnosti veštačke inteligencije.

“Nije daleko dan kada će sposobnostî [ljudskog] mozga za rešavanje 44 problema i rukovanje informacijama biti prekopirane; iznenadio bih se ako se to ne bi ostvarilo u narednoj deceniji.” (Sajmon/Simon, str. 39.)

Otkrivanje razumne mašine ¶Futurističke fantazije iz IBM-ove multimedijalne predstave bile su nadahnute nepristrasnom logikom akademskog sveta. Alan Tjuring (Turing) – utemeljivač informatike – označio je razvoj veštačke inteligencije kao dugoročni cilj te nove discipline. Sredinom 1930-ih, ovaj matematičar sa Kembridža objavio je uticajan članak koji je opisivao apstrakni model za programabilni računar: “univerzalnu mašinu” (Tjuring 2004). Za vreme Drugog svetskog rata, njegov tim inženjera napravio je prvi električni kalkulator kako bi se ubrzalo dešifrovanje nemačkih vojnih signala. Kada se sukob okončao, Tjuring se preselio na Univerzitet u Mančesteru i pridružio se timu istraživača koji su pravili prvu ovakvu programabilnu mašinu. Kao što je bilo izloženo u njegovom članku iz 1936, koristiće se softver kako bi se hardveru omogućilo da obavlja niz različitih zadataka. Na dan 21. juna 1948, pre no što je Tjuring čak i došao na svoje novo radno mesto, njegove kolege uključile su prvi svetski elektronski računar sa unapred ugrađenim programom: Baby. Taj teoretski koncept, do tada opisan u jednom stručnom časopisu, materijalizovao se u obliku ogromne metalne kutija ispunjene ventilima, prekidačima, žicama i brojčanicima (Tjuring 2004a; Ejgar/Agar, 2001, str. 3-5, 113-124; Hodžis/Hoges, 1992, str. 314-402). ¶Za Tjuringa, Baby je bio daleko više od poboljšane verzije kancelarijskog tabulatora. Kada hardverom upravlja softver, računanje postaje svest. U nizu uticajnih članaka, Tjuring je izneo tezu da je njegova matematička mašina preteča jednog sasvim novog oblika života: mehaničkog matematičara. To predviđanje potkrepio je odredivši ljudsku inteligenciju kao nešto što bi mogli raditi i računari. Budući da je računanje prefinjeni vid razmišljanja, računarske mašine su zasigurno sposobne da misle. Ako deca stiču znanje obrazovanjem, edukativni softver bi mogao da stvori obrazovane računare. Pošto

ljudski mozak radi kao mašina, očigledno je da bi se mašina mogla ponašati kao elektronski mozak (Tjuring 2004a, 2004b, 2004d, 2004e; Šafer/Schaffer, 2000).

Sudeći po Tjuringu, iako prvobitni računari još nisu bili dovoljno moćni da bi dostigli svoj pravi potencijal, pre ili kasnije, kroz neprestano poboljšavanje hardvera i softvera, ta ograničenja bi bila prevaziđena. U drugoj polovini dvadesetog veka, računarska tehnologija brzo se razvijala ka svojoj unapred utvrđenoj sudbini: veštačkoj inteligenciji.

“Memorijski kapacitet ljudskog mozga verovatno je reda deset hiljada miliona binarnih brojeva. Ali najveći deo toga po svoj prilici se koristi za pamćenje vizuelnih utisaka, i na druge relativno rasipničke načine.

Ostvarivanju istinskog napretka [ka veštačkoj inteligenciji] možemo se osnovano nadati sa nekoliko miliona brojeva [računarske memorije].”

(Tjuring 2004a, str. 393) ¶U svom najpoznatijem članku, Tjuring je opisao test za prepoznavanje pobednika u toj ‘trci za budućnost’. Kada posmatrač ne bude mogao da razluči da li razgovara ljudskim bićem ili računarom u onlajn konverzaciji, onda više neće postojati bitna razlika između te dve vrste svesti. Ako se imitacija ne može razlikovati od originala, mašina se onda mora smatrati razumnom - kompjuter je položio ispit (Tjuring 2004c, str. 441-448; Šafer 2000). Od tada pa nadalje, računari su postali mnogo više od pukih praktičnih alatki i robe kojom se trguje.

Kao što je Tjuringov članak objasnio, zamišljena budućnost veštačke inteligencije otkrivala je potencijal ove nove tehnologije da se konstantno menja. Uprkos svojim nedostacima, aktuelni modeli računara 45 predstavljaju preteču svesnih mašina koje će za njima doći... ¶Pred kraj 1940-ih, katihizis veštačke inteligencije je već bio ustoličen. U okviru informatike, ono što je bilo i ono što će biti je postalo jedno te isto. Uprkos tom dostignuću, Tjuring je bio prorok čiji je uticaj slabio u njegovoj sopstvenoj zemlji. Računar je možda izmišljen u Britaniji, ali njena zadužena vlada nije imala sredstva koja bi joj omogućila da dominirala razvojem te nove tehnologije (Ejgar 2003, str. 266-278). Sa druge strane Atlantika, prilike su se umnogome razlikovale. Za vreme Drugog svetskog rata, američka vlada takođe je obezbedila izdašna sredstva za istraživanje elektronskog računarstva. Kada je pobeda izvojevana, presudilo je to što se naučnici koji su radili na tim projektima nisu susreli sa ozbiljnim poteškoćama u daljem obezbeđivanju sredstava. Dok je Britanija oskudevala u novcu, SAD su lako sebi mogle priuštiti da finansiraju najsavremenija istraživanja u oblasti novih tehnologija. Kada je Hladni rat počeo, američkim političarima nije bilo teško da svojim biračima opravdaju te dotacije (Lesli/Leslie, 1993, str. 1-13; Luontin/Lewontin, 1997). ¶U SAD, informatičari su imali još jednu veliku prednost u odnosu na svoje britanske suparnike: meta-teoriju kibernetike. Tokom poznih 1940-ih i ranih 1950-ih, grupa istaknutih američkih intelektualaca sastajala se na Mejsi konferencijama (Macy conferences) kako bi istraživala načine da se sruše granice između različitih naučnih

disciplina: (Hajms/Heims, 1991). Od samog početka, kao guru tog poduhvata izdvojio se Norbert Viner (Norbert Wiener). Dok je radio na MIT (skraćeno od Massachusetts Institute of Technology, privatni istraživački univerzitet i institut lociran u gradu Kejmbridžu, država Masačusets, SAD, prim. prev.), on je izmislio kibernetiku kao novi teorijski okvir za analiziranje ponašanja i ljudi i mašina. Input (unos, ulaz) informacija o okruženju vodi do autputa (output, izlaz, rezultat) delovanja čiji je cilj da to okruženje promeni.

Nazvan “povratna sprega” (feedback loop), taj ciklus nadražaja i rezultirajućih odgovora je širenje entropije u svemiru okrenuo u obrnutom pravcu - red je moguće stvoriti iz haosa (Viner 1948, str. 21, 32-33). U 1948, Viner je izneo svoju novu univerzalnu teoriju u knjizi ispunjenoj stranicama matematičkih dokaza: “Kibernetika – ili komanda i kontrola 46 u životinji i mašini” (Cybernetics – or command and control in the animal and the machine). ¶Na svoje veliko iznenađenje, ovaj naučnik je napisao bestseler.

Prvi put, jedan zajednički skup apstraktnih načela povezivao je i prirodne i društvene nauke. Vinerov tekst pružio je moćne metafore za opisivanje haj-tek (hi-tech, visoko-tehnološkog, prim. prev.) sveta Amerike u periodu Hladnog rata. Čak i ako nisu razumeli njegove matematičke jednačine, čitaoci su lako mogli da prepoznaju kibernetičke sisteme u okviru društvenih institucija i mreža komunikacije koje su dominirale njihovim svakodnevnim životom. Povratna sprega, informacije i sistemi ubrzo su postali deo narodnog govora (Konvej/ Conway i Sigelman/Siegelman 2005, str. 171-194; Hajms 1991, str. 271272). Uprkos javnom odobravanju, Viner je ostao autsajder u krugovima američke inteligencije. Podsmevajući se ideološkom pravoverju Amerike u Hladnom ratu, ovaj guru je bio pacifista i socijalista. ¶Početkom 1940-ih, Viner - kao i skoro svaki američki naučnik - verovao je da će čovečanstvo imati koristi od razvijanja oružja kojima bi se pobedila nacistička Nemačka. Kada je počeo Hladni rat, njegove kolege koje je finansirala vojska tvrdile su kako njihov istraživački rad takođe doprinosi borbi protiv jednog agresivnog totalitarnog neprijatelja (Luontin 1997). Osporavajući taj patriotski konsenzus, Viner je izneo tezu da bi američki naučnici trebalo da zauzmu sasvim drugačiji stav u sukobu sa Rusijom. Upozorio je da bi trka u nuklearnom naoružanju mogla dovesti do uništenja čovečanstva. Suočeni sa ovom opasnom novom situacijom, odgovorni naučnici bi trebalo da odbiju da sprovode vojna istraživanja (Konvej i Sigelman 2005, str.

237-243, 255-271). Tokom 1950-ih i ranih 1960-ih, Vinerovo političko otpadništvo nadahnulo je njegovo socijalističko tumačenje kibernetike. U epohi korporativnih monopola i atomskog oružja, teorija koja objašnjava ponašanje i ljudi i mašina mora se upotrebiti kako bi ljudi uspostavili kontrolu nad svojim mašinama. Napuštajući svoje prvobitno oduševljenje Tjuringovim proročanstvom, Viner je sada naglašavao opasnosti koje mogu da predstavljaju svesni računari (Viner 1966, str. 52-60, 1967, str. 239-254). Pre svega, pokušaj stvaranja veštačke inteligencije predstavljao je skretanje sa neodložnog zadatka uspostavljanja socijalne pravde i globalnog mira.

“Svet budućnosti biće jedna sve zahtevnija borba protiv ograničenja naše sopstvene inteligencije, a ne udobna ležaljka na koju se možemo ispružiti da bi nas služili naši robovi - roboti.” (Viner 1966, str. 69.) ¶Suprotstavljajući se militarizaciji naučnog istraživanja, osnivač kibernetike je svoje pokrovitelje iz redova američke elite doveo u prilično nezgodnu situaciju. Na sreću po vladare Amerike, na Mejsi konferencijama bio je još jedan briljantan matematičar, koji je istovremeno bio i fanatičan borac u Hladnom ratu: Džon fon Nojman (John von Neumann). Budući traumatizovan nacionalizacijom svoje porodične banke za vreme Mađarske revolucije iz 1919, njegovi antikomunistički stavovi su bili toliko ekstremni da je sredinom 1940-ih bio zagovornik preventivnog rata kako bi se Rusija sprečila da napravi nuklearno oružje (Hajms 1980, str. 235-236, 244-251). Dok je igrao glavnu ulogu i u razvoju atomske bombe, Fon Nojman je već primenjivao svoje matematičke i organizacione veštine u tada novoj oblasti informatike. Kada se 1946. održala prva Mejsi konferencija, njegov tim istraživača radio je na izgradnji prototipa mejnfrejm kompjutera za američku mornaricu (Čeruci/Ceruzzi, 2003, str. 21-4). U Fon Nojmanu, američka imperija je pronašla gurua bez i jednog traga krivoverja. ¶Na prvim Mejsi konferencijama, političke razlike među prisutnima nisu bile očigledne. Ujedinjeni u antifašističkoj borbi, Viner i Fon Nojman mogli su da zastupaju isti koncept kibernetike (Konvej i Sigelman 2005, str. 143-149; Hajns 1980, str. 201-207). Međutim, kako su im se politički stavovi razilazili, ove dve zvezde Mejsi konfe47 rencija počele su da zastupaju suparnička tumačenja te meta-teorije.

U svojoj levičarskoj verziji, veštačka inteligencija optužena je kao apoteoza tehnološke dominacije. Kada je formulisao svoj desničarski remiks, Fon Nojman je odveo kibernetiku u dijametralno suprotnom pravcu. Pre svega, njegovo tumačenje podvlačilo je činjenicu da je njegova univerzalna teorija nadahnuta proročanstvom o razumnim mašinama. Sredinom 1930-ih, Tjuring je kratko radio sa Fon Nojmanom na univerzitetu Prinston. Čitavu deceniju pre nego što je i sam počeo da se bavi informatikom, mađarski naučnik znao je sve o zamisli da se napravi univerzalna mašina. Kada su dva čikaška psihologa početkom 1940-ih primenila Tjuringovu teoriju kako bi objasnili procese ljudskog mišljenja, Fon Nojman je bio očaran implikacijama njihovih pretpostavki. ¶Pošto je mehanički računar napravljen po modelu ljudskog mozga, Voren Mekalok (Warren McCulloch) i Volter Pits (Walter Pitts) izneli su tezu da je svest isto što i računanje. Poput električnih veza IBM-ovog tabulatora, neuroni su prekidači koji prenose informacije u binarnom obliku (Mekalok i Pits 1943). Oduševljen ovom inverzijom Tjuringove linije argumenta, Fon Nojman je postao uveren da je teorijski moguće napraviti razumnu mašinu. Ako se neuroni ponašaju kao prekidači u ljudskom mozgu, ventili bi se mogli upotrebiti kako bi se po istom principu napravio elektronski mozak (Fon Nojman 1966, str. 43-46, 1976, str. 308-311). Dok se bavio računarskim istraživa-

njima za američku vojsku, Fon Nojman je koristio ljudski mozak kao model za svoju eponimsku kompjutersku arhitekturu. Slično kao i Tjuring, ovaj prorok je tvrdio da će – kada se broj ventila u računaru bude približio broju neurona u mozgu – mašina moći da misli (Fon Nojman 1966, str. 36-41, 1976, str. 296300, 2000, str. 39-52). U roku od samo jedne decenije, Fon Nojman i njegove kolege opremaće američku vojsku kibernetičkim vojnicima sposobnim da se bore u nuklearnom ratu i izvojuju svaku pobedu...

“Dr Mekalok: Šta mislite o pravljenju računarskih mašina tako da ako budu oštećene u vazdušnim napadima... mogu da zamene delove... i nastave sa radom?

Dr Fon Nojman: To su zaista pre kvantitativna nego kvalitativna pitanja.” (Fon Nojman 1976, str. 324) 48 ¶Do ranih 1950-ih, američki akademski svet i korporativni istraživački timovi preoteli su od svojih britanskih takmaca vodeći položaj u informatici. Od tada pa nadalje, sve najnaprednije mašine pravile su se u Americi (Čeruci 2003, str. 13-46). Ipak, stvorivši kibernetiku bez Vinera, Fon Nojman se postarao da ove američke laboratorije pođu Tjuringovim putem ka zamišljenoj budućnosti: kroz izgradnju veštačke inteligencije. Metafora povratne sprege sada je dokazala da računari funkcionišu kao ljudi. Inputi informacija vode do autputa delovanja.

Ako mozak radi kao mašina, onda mora biti moguće razviti mašinu koja oponaša funkcije mozga. Kompjuteri već računaju brže od ljudi koji su ih izmislili. Ovladavanje složenostima matematičke logike mora biti prvi korak ka opremanju ovih mašina novim odlikama ljudske svesti.

Jezik je skup pravila koji se može kodifikovati u obliku softvera.

Učenje iz novih iskustava može se programirati u hardver (Minski/ Minsky, 2004, 2004a). Tokom 1950-ih i ranih 1960-ih, američki naučnici su naporno radili na izgradnji misleće mašine. Jednom kada bude imao dovoljnu moć obrade podataka, računar će postati svestan (Edvards/ Edwards, 1996, str. 239-273). Kada je IBM izbacio svoj mejnfrejm System/360 na Svetskom sajmu 1964, delovalo je kao da je Tjuringov san blizu svom ostvarenju.

Informatika za vreme Hladnog rata ¶Četvrt veka ranije, jedna od zvezda Svetskog sajma u Njujorku 1939. bio je Elektro (Electro): robot koji je - sudeći po njegovim publicistima - “... umeo da priča, hoda, broji na prste, pućka cigaretu, i razlikuje crvenu i zelenu boju pomoću fotoelektrične ćelije” (Ims i Ims 1973, str. 105). Uprkos svoj svojoj pretvornosti, na ovoj izložbi je prvi put ponovljena zamišljena budućnost veštačke inteligencije.

Pre Svetskog sajma 1939, roboti u knjigama i filmovima gotovo uvek su prikazivani kao frankenštajnovska čudovišta koja imaju nameru da unište svoje ljudske stvoritelje (Šelijeva/Shelley 1969; Lang 2003).

Nadahnut svojim odlascima na izložbu, Isak Asimov (Isaac Asimov) je odlučio da promeni tu negativnu sliku. Baš kao i Elektro, roboti iz njegovih naučnofantastičnih priča su bezbedni i prijateljski

nastrojeni proizvodi jedne velike korporacije (Asimov 1968, 1968a). Kada je 1964. godine otvoren Svetski sajam u Njujorku, ova pozitivna slika veštačke inteligencije već je bila jedna od najpopularnijih zamišljenih budućnosti u Americi. I u naučnoj fantastici i u naučnoj stvarnosti, robot sluga bio je simbol boljih vremena koja će uslediti... ¶Na Svetskom sajmu u Njujorku 1939, Elektro se nadmetao sa aktuelnom tehnološkom ikonom tog trenutka: automobilom. Zanimljivosti koje se nisu smele propustiti bile su Demokrasiti (Democracity) - maketa izložena u zgradi Perisfera Njujork Stejta (New York State Perisphere) - i Futurama - diorama (često “trodimenzionalna” predstava, model ili maketa određenog objekta ili pejzaža, prim. prev.) u paviljonu Dženeral motorsa (General Motors). Obe izložbe promovisale su viziju bogate i haj-tek Amerike 1960-ih. U zamišljenoj budućnosti, najveći deo stanovništva živi u porodičnim domovima u predgrađu i na posao odlazi vlastitim automobilom (publikacije sa izložbe/Exposition Publications 1939, str. 42-45, 207-209). Za najveći broj posetilaca Svetskog sajma u Njujorku 1939, ovo proročanstvo potrošačkog blagostanja zasigurno je delovalo kao utopijski san. Američka ekonomija i dalje se oporavljala od najgore recesije u istoriji zemlje, Evropa je bila na rubu novog razornog građanskog rata, a istočna Azija već u vrtlogu smrtonosnih sukoba. No, kada se otvorio Svetski sajam 1964, najčuvenije predviđanje sa izložbe 1939. već je bilo ostvareno. Koliko god da su posetioci bili podozrivi 1939, dvadeset godina kasnije, diorame Demokrasiti i Futurama delovale su izuzetno dalekovido. Do ranih 1960-ih, Amerika 49 je postala potrošačko društvo koje živi u predgrađu i poseduje kola.

Zamišljena budućnost postala je savremena stvarnost.

“Automobil... upravlja celokupnim [društvenim] ponašanjem, od ekonomije do govora. Protok saobraćaja je jedna od glavnih funkcija društva... Prostor [u gradskim oblastima] osmišljava se u skladu sa automobilističkim potrebama, a saobraćajni problemi imaju veću važnost od smeštaja... činjenica je da je za mnoštvo ljudi auto možda i najvažniji deo njihovih ‘životnih prilika’.” (Lefebr/Lefebvre, 1984, str. 100) ¶Budući da su se predviđanja sa izložbe iz 1939. u velikoj meri ostvarila, posetiocima Svetskog sajma u Njujorku 1964. moglo se oprostiti što su poverovali da će se njegove tri glavne zamišljene budućnosti takođe ostvariti. Ko je mogao sumnjati u to da će - najkasnije do 1990. godine - većina Amerikanaca uživati u blagodetima svemirskog turizma i besplatne električne energije? A ono što je najbolje od svega, živeće u svetu gde će im svesne mašine biti verne sluge. Međutim, vera američke javnosti u te zamišljene budućnosti zasnivala se na pogrešnom osećaju kontinuiteta. Uprkos tome što je održan na istom mestu i što je na njemu učestvovalo mnogo istih izlagača, Svetski sajam iz 1964. bio je usredsređen na nešto sasvim drugo od njegovog prethodnika iz 1939. Dvadeset pet godina ranije, glavni eksponat na izložbi bio je automobil: potrošački proizvod masovne proizvodnje. Za razliku od njega, zvezde izložbe na Svetskom

sajmu 1964. bile su tehnologije subvencionisane od strane države, a za potrebe vođenja Hladnog rata. Kompjuteri su izračunavali putanje kojima će se američke rakete naoružane nuklearnim bombama kretati kako bi uništavale ruske gradove i njihove nesrećne stanovnike (Ajzeks/Isaacs i Dauling/Dowling 1998, str.

230-243). Ako je reprezentativni objekat na njegovom prethodniku iz 1939. bio motorizovani prevoz za mase, zvezde Svetskog sajma 1964. su bile mašine atomskog armagedona. ¶Dok je osmišljavala svoj paviljon, korporacija IBM je morala da se pozabavi sa ovim problemom u odnosima sa javnošću. Nalik nuklearnim reaktorima i svemirskim raketama, i računari su razvijani kao oružja za Hladni rat. ENIAC – prvi prototipski mejnfrejm napravljen u Americi – bio je mašina za izračunavanje tabela kako bi se poboljšala preci50 znost artiljerijskih topova (Čeruci 2003, str. 15). Od ranih 1950-ih pa nadalje, IBM-ov računarski odsek bio je usredsređen na dobijanje narudžbi od Ministarstva odbrane (Pju/Pugh, 1995, str. 167-172). Koristeći mejnfrejmove nabavljene od ove korporacije, američka vojska se spremala za nuklearni rat, pripremala invazije na “neprijateljske” zemlje, upravljala bombardovanjem neprijateljskih meta, isplaćivala plate svojim trupama, vodila složene ratne igre i rukovodila lancem snabdevanja (Berkli/Berkeley 1962, str. 56-7, 59-60, 137-145). Zahvaljujući američkim poreskim obveznicima, IBM je postao tehnološki lider računarske industrije. ¶Kada se 1964. otvorio Svetski sajam u Njujorku, IBM je i dalje bio tesno povezan sa mnogo različitih vojnih projekata. Ipak, paviljon te korporacije je bio posvećen promovisanju naučnofantastične maštarije o razumnim mašinama. Kao i u slučaju predviđanja o besplatnoj energiji i svemirskom turizmu, zamišljena budućnost veštačke inteligencije onemogućavala je posetiocima Svetskog sajma da otkriju pravi motiv za izgradnju IBM-ovih mejnfrejmova: ubijanje miliona ruskih civila. Iako je imperijalna hegemonija supersila zavisila od atomskog oružja, njegovo posedovanje postajalo je sve problematičnije usled pretnje od sveopšteg uništenja. Dve godine ranije, SAD i Rusija umalo nisu greškom ušle u katastrofalan rat oko Kube (Dalek/Dallek, 2003, str. 535-574). Uprkos tome što je propast za dlaku izbegnuta, supersile nisu bile sposobne da prekinu trku u naoružanju. U bizarnoj logici Hladnog rata, predupređivanje totalnog sukoba između dva bloka zavisilo je od neprestanog povećanja broja nuklearnih glava koje obe strane poseduju. Vladajućim elitama SAD i Rusije bilo je teško da priznaju sebi - a kamoli svojim građanima - duboku iracionalnost te nove vrste vojnog nadmetanja. U retkom trenutku lucidnosti, američki analitičari izmislili su ironičnu skraćenicu za tu visokorizičnu strategiju “sigurnog uzajamnog uništenja”: MAD (skraćeno od Mutually Assured Destruction:, na engleskom “mad” znači “lud”, uglavnom u nasilnom ili agresivnom obliku, prim. prev. - Ajzeks i Dauling/Dowling, 1998. str. 230-243; Kan/Kahn 1960, str. 119-189). ¶Očekivano, propagandisti sa obe strane opravdavali su ogromno traćenje sredstava na trku u naoružanju promovisanjem mirnodopske primene

vodećih tehnologija primenjenih u Hladnom ratu. Do otvaranja Svetskog sajma u Njujorku 1964, oružje genocida uspešno je prepakovano u proizvode korisne za ljude. Nuklearna sila uskoro će svima obezbeđivati besplatnu električnu energiju. Svemirske rakete ubrzo će voziti turiste na godišnje odmore na Mesecu.

Nestali su gotovo svi tragovi vojnog porekla tih tehnologija. Slično, u IBMovom paviljonu, mejnfrejm System/360 promovisan je kao preteča veštačke inteligencije. Od posetilaca se očekivalo da se dive tehnološkim dostignućima korporacije i da ne preispituju njenu sumnjivu ulogu u proizvodnji naoružanja. Užasi tekućeg Hladnog rata bili su skriveni čudesima zamišljene budućnosti. IBM-ov ideološki trik umnogome je olakšala jedna od osobenih crta industrijske modernosti: kidanje eksplicitnih veza između proizvoda i njihovih proizvođača. Hiljadama godina, ratnici i sveštenici otvoreno su od seljaštva izvlačili njihove proizvodne viškove radi sopstvene koristi. Međutim, kada su Evropljani počeli da privatizuju vlasništvo nad zemljištem i mehanizuju ručnu proizvodnju, rodio se jedan novi - i napredniji - ekonomski sistem: liberalni kapitalizam. Preduzetnici su dokazali da se, konkurentnošću cena, ljudskim radom posredno može daleko delotvornije upravljati nego neposrednim metodama feudalizma. Pustolovi su otkrili da je prodavanje robe na svetskom tržištu daleko unosnije od nametanja otimačke najamnine zemljoradnicima na jednoj ograničenoj teritoriji. Prvi put u ljudskoj istoriji ostvarivao se proizvodni potencijal kolektivnog rada (Smit/ Smith 1976, str. 1-287; 401-445; Marks/Marx 1976, str. 762-940). ¶U toj novoj ekonomiji od ljudi se zahtevalo da međusobno komuni51 ciraju putem stvari: robe, novca i kapitala. Podela rada u čitavoj ekonomiji regulisala se cenama i platama koje je određivala konkurencija na tržištu. Međutim, kraj aristokratije i sveštenstva nije okončao klasnu vladavinu. Kada se rad kupuje i prodaje u kapitalističkoj ekonomiji, jednakost na tržištu vodi do nejednakosti na radnom mestu (Marks 1976, str. 270-280; Rubin 1972, str. 77-253). Pošto se roba razmenjivala za drugu robu iste vrednosti, ovaj novi oblik klasne vladavine bio je umnogome drugačiji od onoga koji mu je prethodio. Neposredno vladanje zamenjeno je posrednim izrabljivanjem. I, pre svega, sudbinu pojedinaca sada je određivalo bezlično kretanje tržišta. Svetom više nisu vladali ljudi, već stvari.

“To znači da se tajanstvenost robnog oblika sastoji prosto u tome što on ljudima društvene karaktere njihovog sopstvenog rada odražava kao karaktere koji objektivno pripadaju samim proizvodima rada, kao društvena svojstva koja te stvari imaju od prirode, a otuda im (se) i društveni odnos proizvođača prema celokupnom radu odražava kao društveni odnos koji izvan i nezavisno od proizvođača postoji među predmetima.” (Marks 1976, str. 164-165) ¶Razvoj kapitalizma je stvorio mnogo složeniju podelu rada unutar ekonomije. Uporedo sa povećanjem broja radnih mesta u fabrikama i kancelarijama, naučno istraživanje se takođe izdvojilo kao zaseban poziv (Bar/Bahr 1980; Smit 1976, str. 7-16). Uspešna preduzeća rasla su ne samo tako što su zapošljavala još radnika, već i ulažući u

novu mašineriju. U fetišizovanom svetu kapitalizma, rast produktivnosti prouzrokovan sve prefinjenijom saradnjom rada u fabrici i naučnog istraživanja je bio izražen kroz razvoj najsavremenijih tehnologija. Sa ljudskom kreativnošću skrivenom iza robe, proces modernizacije dobio je kao svoj subjekat jedan izuzetno vidljiv objekat: “... automatski sistem mašinerije... pokretačku snagu koja pokreće samu sebe.” (Marks 1973, str. 692) ¶Sredinom dvadesetog veka, fetišizacija tehnologije dostigla je svoju apoteozu u proročanstvu o veštačkoj inteligenciji. Za ljude koji su živeli u društvu u kojem je nova mašinerija naoko bila pokretačka snaga društvene evolucije, Tjuringova i Fon Nojmanova tvrdnja da mašine evoluiraju u živa bića nije delovala neobično. Kada računari vrše svoje operacije, rad uložen u razvoj njihovog hardvera i pisanje njihovih 52 programa nije neposredno vidljiv. Očarani tehnološkim fetišizmom, obožavatelji Tjuringa i Fon Nojmana ubedili su sebe da će elektronski mozak ubrzo moći da misli isto kao i ljudski mozak. U 1964-toj, računarska moć mejnfrejma System/360 je bila toliko velika da se činilo kao da je ta IBM-ova mašina na pragu svesnosti. Tvorevina je trebalo da postane stvoritelj.

Kibernetička nadmoć ¶Na Svetskom sajmu 1964, zamišljene budućnosti privremeno su uspele da od američke javnosti prikriju osnovni cilj svoje tri ikonične tehnologije. Ali, čak ni najbriljantnije opsenarsko umeće nije moglo večno da krije njihove lažne upotrebne vrednosti. Kako su decenije proticale, nijedno od predviđanja o ključnim tehnologijama iz Hladnog rata datih na Svetskom sajmu se nije ostvarilo. Električna energija se i dalje naplaćivala, turisti nisu posećivali Mesec, a računari još uvek nisu postali razumni. Za razliku od dalekovide vizije automobila za mase na Svetskom sajmu iz 1939, proročanstva o čuvenim tehnologijama sa izložbe iz 1964. delovala su gotovo besmisleno dvadeset pet godina kasnije. Hiper-realnost se sudarila sa realnošću - i izgubila bitku. ¶Uprkos neuspehu svog proročanstva, IBM nije pretrpeo nikakvu štetu.

Za razliku od nuklearne energije i putovanja u svemir, informatika je bila hladnoratovska tehnologija koja je uspešno pobegla iz konteksta Hladnog rata. Od samog početka, mašine koje su se pravile za američku vojsku prodavale su se i profesionalnoj klijenteli (Pju 1995, str. 152-155). Kada je IBM izgradio svoj paviljon za Svetski sajam 1964, zamišljena budućnost veštačke inteligencije morala je da čuva u tajnosti više od sumnjive primene informatike u vojne svrhe.

Fetišizam robe takođe je odigrao svoju klasičnu ulogu skrivanja ljudskog rada u procesu proizvodnje. Računari su opisivani kao “razumni” kako bi se zanemario naporan rad uložen u njihovo projektovanje, građenje, programiranje i rukovanje. Iznad svega, proročanstvo o veštačkoj inteligenciji sakrilo je ulogu tehnoloških inovacija u okviru američkih radnih mesta. Pronalazak računara odigrao se u pravi čas za

krupan biznis. Tokom prve polovine dvadesetog veka, velike korporacije postale su dominantne institucije američke ekonomije. Divovska fabrika automobila Henrija Forda (Henry Ford) postala je eponimni simbol nove društvene paradigme: fordizma (Ford i Krouter/Crowther 1922; Aljeta/Aglietta 1979). Kada im je to uvećavalo zaradu, korporacije su zamenjivale posredno regulisanje proizvodnje putem tržišta neposrednim nadzorom preko birokrata. Kako su plate kancelarijskih službenika postojano rasle, preduzećima je bilo potrebno sve više opreme kako bi se podigla produktivnost na radnom mestu.

Mnogo pre pronalaska računara, fordističke korporacije vodile su informatičku ekonomiju uz pomoć tabulatora, pisaćih mašina i drugih vrsta kancelarijske opreme (Benidžer/Beniger, 1986, str. 291-425). Međutim, do početka 1950-ih, mehanizacija u administraciji se zaustavila. Povećanje produktivnosti u kancelariji dobrano je zaostajalo za povećanjem produktivnosti u fabrici. Kada su se na tržištu pojavili prvi računari, upravnici korporacija brzo su uvideli da nova tehnologija nudi rešenje za taj urgentan problem (Sobel 1981, str. 95-184). Posao velikog broja operatera tabulatora sada je mogla obavljati mnogo manja grupa inženjera uz pomoć mejnfrejm kompjutera (Berkli 1962, str. 5). Još i bolje, nove informatičke tehnologije omogućavale su kapitalistima da prodube kontrolu nad svojim organizacijama. Mnogo više informacija o mnogo više tema sada je moglo da se sakuplja i obrađuje na sve složenije načine. Upravnici su bili gospodari svega što su mogli da drže na oku. ¶Maltene od svog prvog pojavljivanja na radnom mestu, mejnfrejm je 53 - sa dobrim razlogom - karikiran kao mehaničko savršenstvo birokratske tiranije. U naučnofantastičnim pričama Isaka Asimova, gospodin i gospođa Prosečni bili su ponosni vlasnici sluge-robota. Ali, kada su prvi računari stigli u američke fabrike i kancelarije, tom novom tehnologijom upravljali su šefovi, a ne radnici. U 1952, Kurt Vonegat (Kurt Vonnegut) je objavio naučnofantastični roman koji je satirizovao autoritarne ambicije korporativne informatike. U njegovoj antiutopijskoj budućnosti, vladajuća elita poverila je upravljanje društvom sveznajućoj veštačkoj inteligenciji.

“EPIKAK XIV... odlučivao je koliko od svega Amerika i njene mušterije mogu dobiti i koliko će ih to stajati. I... odlučivaće koliko će inženjera i upravnika i... državnih službenika, i kakvih veština, biti potrebno da se roba isporuči; i koji će koeficijent inteligencije i nivo sposobnosti deliti korisne muškarce [i žene] od onih beskorisnih, i koliko se zaposlenih... može izdržavati na određenom nivou plate...” (Vonegat, 1969, str. 106) ¶Na Svetskom sajmu 1964, IBM-ov paviljon obećavao je da će razumne mašine biti sluge čitavog čovečanstva. A ipak, u isto vreme, njihove službe za prodaju su objašnjavale šefovima velikih korporacija kako računari uvode birokratsku vlast u savremeno društvo. Herbert Sajmon (Herbert Simon) - jedan od vodećih američkih teoretičara upravljanja i nekadašnji Fon Nojmanov kolega – predvideo je da će sve veća moć mejnfrejmova omogućiti preduzećima da automatizuju sve više i

više administrativnih zadataka. Upravo kao u fabrici, i u kancelariji mašine preuzimaju posao od ljudske radne snage. Sa pojavom veštačke inteligencije, mejnfrejmovi će bezmalo sasvim zameniti birokratsku i tehničku radnu snagu u okviru proizvodnje. Krajnji cilj je stvaranje potpuno automatizovanog radnog mesta. Preduzećima tada više neće biti potrebni ni fizički ni kancelarijski radnici koji bi pravili proizvode ili pružali usluge. Čak će i sami upravnici većinom postati ‘višak’. Umesto njih, američkim fabrikama i kancelarijama upravljaće razumne mašine (Sajmon 1965, str. 26-52). U zamišljenoj budućnosti veštačke inteligencije, korporacija i računar biće jedno isto.

Ovo predviđanje temeljilo se na Fon Nojmanovom konzervativnom tumačenju kibernetike. U svojim tekstovima o teoriji upravljanja, Sajmon je izneo tezu da rad u jednom preduzeću nalikuje operacijama računara. Kao i 54 u psihologiji Mekaloka i Pitsa (McCulloch i Pitts), ovo poistovećivanje bilo je dvosmerno. Upravljanje radnicima izjednačavano je sa programiranjem računara. Pisanje softvera bilo je nalik sastavljanju poslovnog plana. I zaposlenima i mašinerijom upravljalo se naređenjima izdatim odozgo. Radnička antiutopija ‘Veliki Brat’ superkompjutera je mutirala u kapitalističku utopiju kibernetičkog fordizma.

Ironično, verodostojnost Sajmonove ideologije upravljanja zavisila je od toga hoće li njegovi čitaoci zaboraviti žestoke kritike koje je na račun korporativne informatike izneo sam utemeljivač teorije sistema. Pozivajući se na Marksa, Viner je upozoravao da je osnovna uloga nove tehnologije pod kapitalizmom intenziviranje izrabljivanja radnika. Umesto da stvori više slobodnog vremena i poboljša životne standarde, kompjuterizacija ekonomije će pod fordizmom povećati nezaposlenost i smanjiti plate (Viner 1967, str. 206-221). Da bi se izbegla Vonegatova antiutopija, američki sindikalisti i politički aktivisti moraju se mobilisati protiv korporativnog Golema (Viner 1966, str. 54-55). U skladu sa Vinerom, kibernetika je dokazala kako veštačka inteligencija predstavlja pretnju za ljudske slobode. „Ne zaboravimo da je automatska mašina... precizan ekvivalent robovske radne snage. Svaka radna snaga koja se nadmeće sa robovskom mora prihvatiti ekonomske uslove robovske radne snage.“ (Viner 1967, str. 220) ¶Za poslovne rukovodioce, Vonegatova i Vinerova noćna mora bila je njihov računarski san na javi. Međutim, ova korporativna vizija kibernetičkog fordizma značila je zaboravljanje istorije samog fordizma. Ova ekonomska paradigma zasnivala se na uspešnoj koordinaciji masovne proizvodnje sa masovnom potrošnjom. Ironično, budući da su bile u većoj meri povezane sa društvenom realnošću, izložbe Demokrasiti i Futurama iz 1939. pružile su daleko tačnije predviđanje razvojnog puta informatike nego što je to učinio IBM-ov paviljon iz 1964. Baš kao i automobili dvadeset pet godina ranije, ova nova tehnologija polako se preobražavala iz retke, ručno pravljene mašine u sveprisutnu robu masovno proizvedenu u fabrici. Isto kao i u Fordovim fabrikama, IBM-ovi mejnfrejmovi sastavljali su se na pokretnim trakama (Pju, Džonson/Johnson i Palmer 1991, str. 87-105, 204-210).

Ti prvi koraci ka masovnoj proizvodnji računara predvideli su ono što će biti najvažniji pomak u ovom sektoru dvadeset pet godina kasnije: masovnu potrošnju računara. Po svojem spoljašnjem obliku, mejnfrejm System/360 iz 1964. je bio nezgrapan i skup prototip mnogo sitnijeg i jeftinijeg IBM-ovog PC-ja iz 1989. ¶Zamišljena budućnost veštačke inteligencije bila je način da se izbegne razmišljanje o verovatnim društvenim posledicama široko rasprostranjenog posedovanja računara. Ranih 1960-ih, superkompjuter tipa ‘Veliki Brat’ je pripadao moćnoj vladi i krupnom biznisu. Pre svega, povratna sprega je bila znanje onih nad kojima se vlada, monopolizovano od strane vladara. Međutim, kao što je istakao Viner, fordistička proizvodnja će skupe mejnfrejmove neminovno pretvoriti u jeftinu robu (Viner 1967, str. 210-211). Zauzvrat, sve rasprostranjenije posedovanje računara verovatno će poremetiti postojeći društveni poredak. Jer je povratna sprega informacija u okviru ljudskih institucija najdelotvornija kada je dvosmerna (Viner 1967, str. 67-73). Ponovnim povezivanjem zamisli i izvršenja, kibernetički fordizam je podrivao društvene hijerarhije koje su bile osnova samog fordizma. “... prosta koegzistencija dve jedinice infomacije relativno je male vrednosti, osim ako se te dve jedinice ne mogu uspešno kombinovati u nekom umu... koji je sposoban da jednu oplodi pomoću druge. Ovo je upravo suprotno od organizacije u kojoj svaki član prelazi unapred određeni put...” (Viner 1967, str. 172) ¶Na Svetskom sajmu 1964, ta mogućnost definitivno nije bila deo 55 IBM-ove zamišljene budućnosti. Pre nego da za cilj ima proizvodnju sve većeg broja sve efikasnijih mašina po nižim cenama, korporacija je bila usredsređena na stabilno povećavanje sposobnosti svojih računara kako bi sačuvala svoj skoro potpuni monopol nad vojnim i korporativnim tržištem. Umesto da se mašine veličine sobe smanjuju i vremenom postaju stoni računari, laptopovi i, naposletku, mobilni telefoni, IBM je bio uveren da će računari zauvek ostati krupni i nezgrapni mejnfrejmovi. Korporacija je iz sve snage verovala da će - ukoliko taj put tehnološkog razvoja bude ekstrapoliran - rezultat sasvim sigurno biti veštačka inteligencija. I, najvažnije, ovaj konzervativni oporavak kibernetike podrazumevao je da će svesne mašine neizbežno evoluirati u oblike života naprednije od običnih ljudi.

Fordističko razdvajanje između ideje i izvršenja bi dostiglo svoju tehnološku apoteozu. ¶Očekivano, IBM je bio rešen da se usprotivi tom uznemirujućem tumačenju sopstvene futurističke propagande. Na Svetskom sajmu 1964, paviljon korporacije je isticao utopijske mogućnosti informatike. Ipak, i upkros svojim najvećim naporima, IBM nije mogao da u potpunosti izbegne dvosmislenost sadržanu u zamišljenoj budućnosti veštačke inteligencije. Ta fetišizovana ideologija je mogla biti privlačna svim slojevima američkog društva samo u slučaju da će računari ispunjavati najdublje želje obe strane na radnom mestu. Stoga je IBM, na izložbama u svom paviljonu, promovisao jednu jedinu viziju zamišljene bu-

dućnosti, viziju koja je objedinjavala dva nepomirljiva tumačenja veštačke inteligencije. Sa jedne strane, radnicima se govorilo da će sve njihove potrebe zadovoljavati razumne mašine-roboti: sluge koje se nikada ne umaraju, ne žale i ne dovode naređenja u pitanje. Sa druge strane, kapitalistima se obećavalo da će njihovim fabrikama i kancelarijama upravljati razumne mašine-roboti: proizvođači koji nikada ne zabušavaju, ne izražavaju mišljenje i ne štrajkuju. Robot Robi više se nije mogao razlikovati od EPIKAK-a XIV. Iako tek na nivou ideologije, IBM je pomirio klasne podele u Americi 1960-ih. U zamišljenoj budućnosti, radnici više neće morati da rade, a poslodavcima više neće biti potrebni zaposleni. Naučnofantastična maštarija o veštačkoj inteligenciji uspešno je omela ljude u pokušaju da preispitaju posledice uvođenja informatike na radnom mestu. Posle posete IBM-ovom 56 paviljonu na Svetskom sajmu 1964, bilo je suviše lako poverovati da će svi biti na dobitku jednom kada mašine dobiju svest...

Izmišljanje novih budućnosti ¶Četrdeset godina kasnije, još čekamo na zamišljenu budućnost veštačke inteligencije. U međuvremenu, neprestano su nam obećavali njen neposredni dolazak. Ipak, uprkos stalnim pomacima u razvoju hardvera i softvera, mašine i dalje nisu sposobne da “misle”. Likovi u video-igrama i dalje predstavljaju nešto najbliže veštačkoj inteligenciji sa čime se većina ljudi susrela. Međutim, kao što pokazuje rastuća popularnost igranja na Internetu, gde ljudi i dalje igraju jedni protiv drugih, virtuelni protivnik je slaba zamena za ljudskog igrača. Kada se osvrnemo na istoriju ove zamišljene budućnosti, očigledno je da se ni optimistička ni pesimistička verzija veštačke inteligencije nisu ostvarile. Robot Robi nije naš verni sluga, a EPIKAK XIV ne upravlja našim životima. Umesto da se razviju u razumne mašine, računari su postali potrošačka roba. Mejnfrejmovi veličine sobe nastavljaju da se smanjuju u sve sitnije i sitnije mašine. U savremenom svetu računari su svugde – a njihovi korisnici itekako znaju da su oni i dalje glupi. ¶Ovi ponovljeni neuspesi bi, očekivano, trebalo da su nepovratno narušili ugled zamišljene budućnosti veštačke inteligencije. Ipak, njeni zagovornici nemaju griže savesti. Četiri decenije posle Svetskog sajma 1964, IBM i dalje tvrdi da su njihove mašine na pragu toga da postanu svesne (Bel/Bell 2004, str. 2). Upornost ove naučnofantastične fantazije pokazuje trajnu važnost Fon Nojmanovog konzervativnog pripajanja kibernetike računarskoj industriji. Kao i ranih 1960-ih, veštačka inteligencija i dalje pruža sjajan alibi za razvoj novih vojnih tehnologija. Stvaranje Singularnosti deluje daleko prijateljskije od sarađivanja sa američkim imperijalizmom. A što je još važnije, ova zamišljena budućnost nastavlja da prikriva posledice uvođenja informatike na radno mesto. I upravnicima i radnicima i dalje se obećavaju tehnološka rešenja za društveno-ekonomske probleme.

San o svesnim mašinama je mnogo bolji medijski materijal od realnosti

kibernetičkog fordizma. Na početku 21. veka, veštačka inteligencija ostaje dominantna ideološka manifestacija (velikog) obećanja informatike. ¶Verodostojnost ove zamišljene budućnosti zavisi od zaboravljanja njene sramotne istorije. Osvrt na to kako su ranije verzije proročanstva iznova i iznova diskreditovane podstiče duboki skepticizam po pitanju njegovog savremenog ponavljanja. Naša lična frustriranost računarskom tehnologijom bi trebalo da pokaže koliko je mala verovatnoća da se ona pretvori u Silicijumskog mesiju. Četrdeset godina posle Svetskog sajma u Njujorku, veštačka inteligencija je postala zamišljena budućnost iz davne prošlosti. Ono što nam umesto toga sada treba jeste jedna daleko prefinjenija analiza potencijala informatike. Viner - ne Fon Nojman - mora biti naš kibernetički guru. Proučavanje istorije bi trebalo da nas pouči kako da iznova izmislimo budućnost. Mesijanski misticizam se mora zameniti pragmatičnim materijalizmom. Pre svega, ta nova slika budućnosti bi trebalo da slavi računare kao oruđa za uvećavanje ljudske inteligencije i kreativnosti. Veličanje hijerarhija kontrole mora se zameniti zagovaranjem dvosmernog deljenja informacija. Budimo nadahnuti i strastveni u zamišljanju naših sopstvenih vizija boljih vremena koja će uslediti (Barbruk/Barbrook i Šulc/Shultz 1997; Barbruk 2000). • Prevod: Marko Mladenović, Vladimir Jerić

57

========================================================

Argumenti u ovom članku dalje se razvijaju u knjizi Ričarda Barbruka Zamišljene budućnosti: od razumnih mašina do globalnog sela, Pluto, London 2007. Više tekstova i ažurirane informacije na adresi: www.imaginaryfutures.net

========================================================

Ovaj tekst se ustupa pod licencom Creative Commons Autorstvo 3.0 Srbija. Da bi ste videli kopiju licence, posetite http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0/rs ili pošaljite pismo na Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, SAD.

Reference Agar, J. (2001) Turing and the Universal Machine: the making of the modern computer, Cambridge: Icon.

Agar, J. (2003) The Government Machine: a revolutionary history of the computer, Cambridge Mass: MIT Press.

Aglietta, M. (1979) A Theory of Capitalist Regulation: the US experience, London: Verso.

Asimov, I. (1968) I, Robot, London: Panther.

Asimov, I. (1968a) The Rest of the Robots, London: Panther.

Bahr, H.-D. (1980) ‘The Class Structure of Machinery: notes on the value form’ in P. Slater (ed.), Outlines of a Critique of Technology, London: Ink Links, pp.

101-141.

Barbrook, R. (2000) ‘Cyber-communism: how the Americans are superseding capitalism in cyberspace’, Science as Culture, No. 1, Vol. 9, pp. 5-40, <www.imaginaryfutures.net/2007/04/17/cyber-communism-how-the-americans-are-supersedingcapitalism-in-cyberspace>.

Barbrook, R. and Schultz, P. (1997) ‘The Digital Artisans Manifesto’, ZKP 4, Ljubljana: nettime, pp. 52-53, <www.ljudmila.org/nettime/zkp4/72.htm>.

Bell, J. (2004) ‘Exploring the ‘Singularity’’, <www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame. html?main=/articles/art0584.html?m%3D1>.

Beniger, J. (1986) The Control Revolution: technological and economic origins of the information society, Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press.

Berkeley, E. (1962) The Computer Revolution, New York: Doubleday.

Cameron, J. (dir.) (1984) The Terminator, MGM/United Artists.

Ceruzzi, P. (2003) A History of Modern Computing, Cambridge Mass: MIT Press.

Conway, F. and Siegelman, J. (2005) Dark Hero of the Information Age: in search of Norbert Wiener father of cybernetics, New York: Basic Books.

Dallek, R. (2003) John F. Kennedy: an unfinished life 1917-1963, London: Penguin.

DeLamarter, R. (1986) Big Blue: IBM’s use and abuse of power, London: Pan. Eames, C. and Eames, R. (1973) A Computer Perspective: a sequence of 20th century ideas, events and artefacts from the history of the information machine, Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press.

Editors of Time-Life Books (1964) Official Guide New York World’s Fair 1964/5, New York: Time.

Edwards, P. (1996) The Closed World: computers and the politics of discourse in Cold War America, Cambridge Mass: MIT Press.

Exposition Publications (1939) Official Guide Book of the New York World’s Fair 1939, New York: Exposition Publications.

Ford, H. and Crowther, S. (1922) My Life and Work, London: William Heinemann.

Heims, S. (1980) John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener: from mathematics to the technologies of life and death, Cambridge Mass: MIT Press.

Heims, S. (1991) The Cybernetics Group, Cambridge Mass: MIT Press.

Hodges, A. (1992) Alan Turing: the enigma, London: Vintage.

Honda (2004) ‘Asimo’, <world.honda.com/ASIMO>.

Isaacs, J. and Dowling, T. (1998) Cold War: for 45 years the world held its breath, London: Bantam.

Kahn, H. (1960) On Thermonuclear War, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Ray Kurzweil, (2004) ‘The Intelligent Universe’, <www.kurzweilai.net/meme/ frame.html?main=memelist.html?m=3%23534>.

Lang, F. (dir.) (2003) Metropolis, Eurekavideo.

Laurence, W. (1964) Science at the Fair, New York: New York 1964-1965 Fair Corporation.

Lefebvre, H. (1984) Everyday Life in the Modern World, New Brunswick: Transaction Publications.

Leslie, S. (1993) The Cold War and American Science: the military-industrial complex at MIT and Stanford, New York: Columbia University Press.

58

Lewontin, R.C. (1997) ‘The Cold War and the Transformation of the Academy’ in A. Schiffin (ed.), The Cold War and the University, New Press, New York, pp. 1-34.

Luce, H. (1941) The American Century, New York: Time.

Marx, K. (1973) Grundrisse, London: Penguin.

Marx, K. (1976) Capital Volume 1: a critique of political economy, London: Penguin.

McCulloch, W. and Pitts, W. (1943) ‘A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity’, Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics, Volume 5, pp. 115-133.

Minsky, M. (2004) ‘Steps Towards Artificial Intelligence’, <web.media.edu/~minsky/ papers/steps.html>.

Minsky M. (2004) ‘Matter, Mind and Models’, <web.media.edu/~minsky/papers/MatterMindModels.txt>. von Neumann, J. (1966) The Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata, Urbana: University of Illinois Press. von Neumann, J. (1976) ‘The General and Logical Theory of Automata’. Collected Works Volume V: design of computers, theory of automata and numerical analysis, Oxford: Pergamon Press, pp. 288-326. von Neumann, J. (2000) The Computer and the Brain, Yale: Yale University Press.

Pugh, E. (1995) Building IBM: shaping an industry and its technology, Cambridge Mass: MIT Press.

Pugh, E., Johnson, L. and Palmer, J. (1991) IBM’s 360 and Early 370 Systems, Cambridge Mass: MIT Press.

Rubin, I. (1972) Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value, Detroit: Black & Red,.

Schaffer, S. (2000) ‘OK Computer’, <www.imaginaryfutures.net/2007/04/16/okcomputer-by-simon-schaffer>.

Schefter, J. (1999)The Race: the definitive story of America’s battle to beat Russia to the moon, London: Century.

Shelley, M. (1969) Frankenstein: the modern Prometheus, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Simon, H. (1965) The Shape of Automation for Men and Management, New York: Harper.

Sobel, R. (1981) IBM: colossus in transition, New York: Truman Talley.

Smith, A. (1976) An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations Volume 1 & Volume 2, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Stanton, J. (2004) ‘Best of the World’s Fair’, <naid.sppsr.ucla.edu/ny64fair/ map-docs/bestoffair.htm>.

Stanton, J. (2004a) ‘Building the 1964 World’s Fair’, <naid.sppsr.ucla.edu/ny64fair/map-docs/buildingfair.htm>.

Startrek.com (2005), ‘Data’, <www.startrek.com/startrek/view/series/TNG/ character/1112457.html>.

Stern, R., Mellins, T. and Fishman, D. (1997) New York 1960: architecture and urbanism between the Second World War and the Bicentennial, Köln: Benedikt Taschen.

Turing, A., (2004) ‘On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem’ in B. J. Copeland (ed.), The Essential Turing: seminal writings in computing, logic, philosophy, artificial intelligence and artificial life plus the secrets of the Enigma, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 58-90.

Turing, A., (2004a) ‘Lecture on the Automatic Computing Engine’ in B. J. Copeland (ed.), The Essential Turing: seminal writings in computing, logic, philosophy, artificial intelligence and artificial life plus the secrets of the Enigma, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 378-394.

Turing, A., (2004b) ‘Intelligent Machinery’ in B. J. Copeland (ed.), The Essential Turing: seminal writings in computing, logic, philosophy, artificial intelligence and artificial life plus the secrets of the Enigma, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 410-432.

Turing, A., (2004c) ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’ in B. J. Copeland (ed.), The Essential Turing: seminal writings in computing, logic, philosophy,

59

artificial intelligence and artificial life plus the secrets of the Enigma, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 433-464.

Turing, A., (2004d) ‘Intelligent Machinery, a Heretical Theory’ in B. J. Copeland (ed.), The Essential Turing: seminal writings in computing, logic, philosophy, artificial intelligence and artificial life plus the secrets of the Enigma, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 472-475.

Turing, A., (2004e) ‘Can Digital Computers Think?’ in B. J. Copeland (ed.), The Essential Turing: seminal writings in computing, logic, philosophy, artificial intelligence and artificial life plus the secrets of the Enigma, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 482-486.

Vinge, V. (1993) ‘The Coming Technological Singularity: how to survive in the posthuman era’, VISION-21 Symposium, 30-31 March, <www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/vinge/ misc/singularity.html>.

Vonnegut, K. (1969) Player Piano, St. Albans: Panther.

Wiener, N. (1948) Cybernetics – or command and control in the animal and the machine, New York: John Wiley.

Wiener, N. (1966) God & Golem, Inc.: a comment of certain points where cybernetics impinges on religion, Cambridge Mass: MIT Press.

Wiener, N. (1967) The Human Use of Human Beings: cybernetics and society, New York: Avon Books.

Wilcox, F. (dir.) (1999) Forbidden Planet, Turner Entertainment.

60

Source code

61

62

The Principle of Notworking 1 /Concepts in Critical Internet Culture/ Geert Lovink

1 The title refers to the saying ‘networking is notworking’, meaning that chatting keeps one away of important work that needs to be done. I first heard of it in the early nineties, used by the billionaire George Soros, who was sceptical of creating cultural networks as part of his own charity organization.

Poets have descended from the peaks, which they believed themselves to be established. They have gone out into the streets, they have insulted their masters, they have no gods any longer and dared to kiss beauty and love on the mouth. (Paul Eluard)

Introduction ¶In this essay I present ongoing theoretical work, developed throughout 2004, the year I took up the position of ‘lector’ at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam. I will focus on three conceptual fields: the relation between multitude, network and culture, the art of collaboration and ‘free cooperation’, and finally present elements of a theory of ‘organized networks’. ¶After having finished My First Recession2 (mid 2003) I found myself, again, emerged in practices, of which the move from Brisbane to Amsterdam was by far the most challenging one. With the support of Emilie Randoe, the director of the interactive media school at HvA, 65 I set up a research agenda related to the ‘digital public domain’ and out of this emerged the Institute of Network Cultures, a venture that is unfolding as we speak.3 It might be premature to present a Theory of Network Culture. Instead, the work of the Institute should be seen as a wide ranging series of interventions, combining elements of engaged action research, critical reflection on (net) practice and, last but not least, speculative propositions.

Multitude, Network and Culture ¶George Yudice states in his study The Expediency of Culture4 that we have moved from the attitude of suspicion towards culture, and with the danger of its ‘inherent fall’, towards the so-called ‘productive view’. Yudice proposes to analyse culture as a resource rather than a commodity. Culture is an active and, potentially, innovative sector with the capacity to mobilize forces. This in particular counts for Internet culture. The failed dotcom models of the late nineties have 2 Geert Lovink (2003). My First Recession: Critical Internet Culture in Transition. Rotterdam: V2/NAi. 3 See www.networkcultures.org (the Institute of Network Cultures’ website plus weblog). Besides a lecture series (in Dutch) on new media in the Netherlands and curriculum planning for the theory part of the Interactive Media program, the Institute scheduled five international conferences for 2005: A Decade of Webdesign, German Media Theory, Alternatives in ICT forDevelopment, Curating for Public Screens and Art & Politics of Netporn.

4 George Yudice (2003). Expediency of Culture. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

shown how hideous – and wrong – commercial attempts were that tried to validate online communication as ‘value’, measured in ‘page views’. The translation of social activities into financial figures proved to be a bumpy ride. This is where Yudice’s culture-as-resource as the new epistemic framework comes into play. Against the Darwinian model of the winner-takes-it-all, advocated by libertarian ‘first movers’, culture-as-resource trades on the currency of diversity. Culture cannot thrive in a monopoly situation. Net culture does not fall out of the sky, and like other resources needs to be cared for in a sustainable manner. It needs slight distances, autonomous spaces in which clusters of groups and individuals can develop their own practices. Infrastructure plus access will not do the job. Culture does not equal leisure that locals and tourists ‘consume’ but is a strategic 66 asset. In that sense Richard Florida with his ‘creative class’ theory is right.5 The question is just how much of ‘creative industries’ policies is a hype in order to cover up structural problems within the Western labour market.6 Culture Inc. is not working. It produces, at best, McJobs and mainly runs on voluntary labour. ¶The rise of creative industries cannot be discussed outside of the broader issues of ‘precarious’ work (no contracts, ‘flexible’ hours, low payments, no health insurance, etc.).7 If ‘creative industries’ as a concept wants to be meaningful, and avoid being a policy version of the nineties’ ‘new economy’ craze (only without the venture capital), it will have to seriously address the issue of sustainability.

Otherwise there is no need to speak of new conditions caused by digital technologies. Instead we could better speak of rearrangements within existing institutions and drop the claim of the emergence of a new sector. ¶Internet culture is in a permanent flux. There is no linear growth, neither up nor down. The only certainty is the steady rise, both in absolute and relative numbers of users outside of the West.8 This is the ‘cultural turn’ most Western Internet experts have yet to come to grips with, in particular with the declining importance of the English language and the rise of ‘intranets’ for Japanese, Chinese, etc.

Against nostalgic characters that portray the Net as a medium in decline ever since the rise of commercialism, and eternal optimists, who present the Internet as a holy thing, ultimately connecting all human synapses, radical pragmatists (like me) emphasize the tradeoffs, misuses and the development of applications such as wikis, P2P and weblogs that reshape the new media field. The main enemy of ‘net criticism’ still is the PR sales talk and the religious nature of most theory and educational material in the new media field.

5 Richard Florida (2002). The Rise of the Creative Class. New York: Basic Book.

6 For a critique of creative industries, see the work of Ned Rossiter and Danny Butt, for instance http:// amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0212/msg00057.html. See also Ned Rossiter (2004). Creative Industries, Comparative Media Theory and the Limits of Critique from Within, in: Topia, Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies. Number Eleven. Spring 2004. Toronto, Canada.

7 See www.precairforum.nl.

8 See www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm.

¶The culturalization of the Internet is at hand, and both the offline elite and techno geeks and media activists look at this slow but steady process with dismay. Culturalization, as Yudice indicates, is not an innocent process but comes with the ‘mobilization and management of populations.’9 This cannot merely be understood in terms of control. For Yudice democratic inclusion of ‘communities of difference’ is a necessary and desirable aim. What Yudice coins the ‘expediency of culture’ underpins performativity as the fundamental logic of social life today.10 ¶Culturalization within the broader context of information technology (IT) can also be read as a moment of anticipation, a tactical sidetrack in response to the long-term decline of the engineering class in the West. The hegemonic role of computer scientists as inventors can easily be understood, but wasn’t going to last forever. Different fields of knowledge, from human computer interaction to usability and new media studies, have all in their own ways proclaimed the coming of the cultural turn. With the massive outsourcing of IT jobs to countries like India we may have finally reached this point. At last, there is an economic reason to pay more attention to the economic possibilities of techno culture. There is a growing urgency felt, at least in the educational sector, to start integrating ‘soft’ knowledge into the hardcore IT workforce. Until recently it seemed as if programmers and multi-media designers were from Mars and Venus.

The genderized identity building imposed on male coders and female 67 designers and communications staff still had an economic base in the division of labour within firms (IT versus marketing departments).

With IT outsourcing happening at such a fast pace the dominance of the male geek coder is no longer a given and there is a chance of ‘cultural mingling’. ¶The rise of multimedia design and communication courses, such as Interactive Media at HvA, forms a key response to this global transformation. So far, the educational sector has been slow in terms of adapting network technologies. Institutional infighting between existing disciplines has prevented higher education to become truly innovative. Universities worldwide are in the iron grip of Microsoft. The use of free and open source software is marginal, if not straight-out forbidden. Whereas academia played a key role in the development of the Internet, it lost ground over the years and is now desperately trying to catch up with a computer games course here or there. Speaking of 2005, the study of mobile devices is still in a premature phase. Part of the culturalization process would be to study, in detail, how users interact with applications and influence their further development. Network cultures come into being as a ‘productive friction’ between inter-human dynamics and the given

9 George Yudice (2003). Expediency of Culture. Durham and London: Duke University Press, p. 20.

10 Idem, p. 28.

framework of software. The social dynamics that develop within networks is not ‘garbage’ but essence. The aim of networks is not transportation of data but contestation of systems. ¶It is no longer enough, as Yudice argues, to prove that everyone’s culture has its value. This also counts for Internet researchers and their, currently popular, ‘ethnographic’ approach.11The Internet is no longer a marginal phenomenon that has to be studied, and presented, like an alien tribe. The study of the ‘everyday life’ of net culture has been useful, but nowadays seems incapable of providing us with a bigger picture. User-centred methodologies tend to overlook changes at the level of infrastructure, software, interface and organization. Sudden changes within mass markets of consumer electronics are not taken into account, nor are 68 global conflicts over intellectual property regimes. What we instead see happening is the collapse of the distinction between the ‘micro’ level of ‘users’ and the ‘macro’ level of society. Research into net cultures entails more than the study of ‘virtual communities’. ¶It is time to look for elements that can make up a network theory outside of post-modern cultural studies and ethnographic social sciences. What new media studies needs is a ‘language of new media’, to speak with Lev Manovich,12 not a science-centred ‘General Network Theory’. The notion that networks are not random but have underlying structures, can be a groundbreaking insight for scientists, but should not come as a surprise for critical Internet scholars. ¶It is interesting to see how ‘multitude’ theorists deal with the notions of users and networks. The term ‘multitude’ is used as an alternative for ‘the people’, a term closely associated with the project of the nation state. Much like the cultural studies shift from passive consumers and watchers towards ‘prosumers’ and users, the multitude expresses the diversity within the workforce, away from the homogeneous notion of class and the fixation on ‘the proletarians’. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri use the multitude concept to describe today’s social formations in a globalized world.13 Whereas networks hardly played a role in their popular book Empire (2000), in Multitude (2004) the network form of organization has reached centre stage. According to Hardt and Negri ‘the multitude must be conceived as a network, an open and expansive network in which all differences can be expressed freely and equally, a network that provides the means of encounter so that we can work and live freely in common.’14 Beyond good or evil, Hardt and Negri see networks everywhere we look – military organizations, social movements, business formations, migrations patterns, communication 11 See the website of the Association of Internet Researchers: www.aoir.org.

12 ‘The Language of New Media’ is the title of the influential study by media theorist Lev Manovich. Lev Manovich (2001). The Language of New Media. Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press.

13 Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri (2004). Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. New York: The Penguin Press.

14 Idem, p. xiv.

systems, physiological structures, linguistic relations, neural transmitters, and even personal relationships.’ ¶After September 11, 2001 the enemy is not a unitary sovereign state, but rather a network. The enemy, in other words, has a new form. And according to planners of the War against Terrorism the Internet is not well equipped to face up to the networked enemy.15 The multitude authors present distributed networks as a general condition. Hardt and Negri: ‘It is not that networks were not around before or that the structure of the brain has changed. It is that network has become a common form that tends to define our ways of understanding the world and acting in it. Most important from our perspective, networks are the form of organization of the cooperative and communicative relationships dictated by the immaterial paradigm of production. The tendency of this common form to emerge and exert its hegemony is what defines the period.’16 The network form is imposed on all facets of power strictly from the perspective of the effectiveness of rules, as large top-down organizations have proved to be inflexible and a managerial nightmare. Distributed relationships are more open to change. ¶‘It takes a network to fight a network’, Hardt and Negri write.17 But networks might be an unsuitable form to win a fight. Hardt and Negri present the network as the logical follow-up of the guerrilla struggle. ‘Network struggle does not rely on discipline: creativity, communication and self-organized cooperation are its primary values.’18 Its focus is primarily on the inside, not on the enemy.

Hardt and Negri rightly note that organization becomes less a means 69 and more an end in itself. Networks are the best guarantee that no isolated cells emerge dreaming of armed struggle, suicide bombing, etc. Network struggles first and foremost question all present and contemporary forms of organization, from the political party and its Leninist model to the peoples army and, in my opinion, even the social movement and its residual form of the NGO. Networks undermine, but not entirely eliminate, authority and make decision-making next to impossible. They deconstruct power and representation, and cannot simply be used as a tool by self proclaimed avant-garde groups.

In fact, networks prevent a lot of events from happening. This may not always be the right activist strategy but that’s where we are: preventing the repetition of tragic patterns in history. There are enough stories of lost struggles and organized idealism resulting in genocide. But then: networks do not only end histories, they also produce with their own set of politics.

15 Former CIA Director George J. Tenet called for new security measures to guard against attacks on the United States that use the Internet, which he called ‘a potential Achilles’ heel’. ‘I know that these actions will be controversial in this age when we still think the Internet is a free and open society with no control or accountability’, he told an information-technology security conference in Washington, ‘but ultimately the Wild West must give way to governance and control.’ Tenet calls for Internet security by Shaun Waterman, UPI report, December 2, 2004.

16 Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri (2004). Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. New York: The Penguin Press, p. 142.

17 Idem, p. 58.

18 Idem, p. 83.

¶Where are the ‘virtual intellectuals’19 that have incorporated the technological conditions into their way of operating? How much of the libertarian values will they incorporate? How long will it take until the roaring nineties, from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the fall of the dotcoms, have been thoroughly digested? To what extent will they be aware of the debates around free software and open source? The deeper computer networks penetrate the academy, the more this is becoming an urgent issue. Browsers, operating systems and search engines are not neutral tools but come with specific built-in social, cultural and aesthetic agendas. To emphasize the importance of being networked is one. Understanding network architectures is another. It is the task of new media activists, artists and theorists to take the lead and not only undertake critical probes but 70 also mediate the outcomes to a multitude of audiences. ¶In his book Protocol, How Control Exists after Decentralization, Alex Galloway takes network theory a step further. Starting out with roughly the same theorists as Hardt and Negri, Galloway utilizes his insightful knowledge of the workings of the network in order to formulate his ‘protocol’ theory. According to Galloway we should get rid of the myth of Internet as being chaotic. Protocol is based on two contradicting machines: ‘one machine radically distributes control into autonomous locales, the other machine focuses control into rigidly defined hierarchies.’ Networks may dissolve old forms of power, the hierarchies and bureaucracies, but also install a new regime, what Gilles Deleuze coined ‘the control society’. Networks constantly undermine the stable boundaries between inside and outside. While networks provoke a sense of liberation they install themselves into everyday life as ideal machines for control. ¶Let’s face it: friction free capitalism is not in need of networks. It may not even need Galloway’s protocols. All it requires is seamless data transport (from client to server, that is, no p2p, please). It aims for distribution without the network. What makes out today’s networking is the notworking. There would be no routing if there were no problems on the line. Spam, viruses and identity theft are not accidental mistakes, mishaps on the road to techno perfection. They are constitutional elements of yesterday’s network architectures. Networks increase levels of informality and also pump up noise levels, caused by chit-chat, misunderstandings and other all too human mistakes. The theory of protocols is retro-garde, in the sense that it tries to explain how networks were designed during the past decades. But like so many new media theories, it did not anticipate the backlash fight between libertarian principles (of openness, self-regulation, etc.) and the neo-conservative takeover after 9/11, which overruled the ‘protocol’ with its War on Terrorism security discourse.

19 More on the role of the virtual intellectual in: Geert Lovink (2002). Dark Fiber. Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press, pp. 30-40.

¶A key question of my recent work has been how networks deal with the ‘frustrated’, those who breach the consensus culture. After 9/11 and the following instalment of a global security regime, this is no longer such an odd question. The age of the ‘true believer’ is over, as amateur mass psychologist Eric Hoffer described this twentieth century figure in his study on mass movements.20 Networks are ultimately an obstacle for those who want to sacrifice their lives for a holy cause. To use networks for propaganda purposes is possible but not as effective as old school broadcast media. Unlike a century ago, the frustrated no longer predominate among the early adherents of movements. Today’s frustrated are nihilists, equipped with a perfect technical knowledge of the available machinery. Frustration, as Hoffer described it, may generate the characteristics of the true believer, but the ‘frustrated mind’ is a bad partner in online dialogues. ¶It is desire rather than discontent that lies at the core of the network. Today’s refusal of martyrdom pushes the ‘frustrated’ to the margins of networks and excludes them access. This poses the question of the ‘outside’ of networks. If all power is disseminating into networks what happens to the deleted, the ‘trashed’ subjects of the network society? It is hard to imagine that such individuals network themselves. The obsession of Western elites and their mass media with Islamic fundamentalism does not answer any of the passions and tensions that surround today’s network society. The only thing it does achieve is creating the illusion of an alien and out71 side, hostile to the global civilization – yet cleverly infiltrating its infrastructure. ¶Radical morality is not concerned with opinion. This is where the discourse of the network society meets its Waterloo. The reason for this is that network discourse cannot integrate – let alone imagine – outside point of views. This is where Castells meets his Marxist fellows Negri and Hardt, and Jesuit bonds blend into the larger Third Way spin machine. Networks have a certain post-human quality. The ‘most natural human behaviour’ cannot be found there. Networks are complex techno-social environments that defy simplistic reductions.

They are large-scale power transformation mechanisms in place. If networks were to dissolve power as such, the first such network has yet to be built. At best we can start describing network cultures beyond good and evil, in the best possible tradition of the novel, having yet to reach the psychological depth of Proust, the social drama à la Victor Hugo or the deep linking of hypertext master James Joyce.21 20 Hoffer, E. (1951). The True Believer. New York: Harper and Row. See also my chapter in Dark Fiber, which calls for a ‘mass psychology of the Net’.

21 An introduction to the ‘politics of the information age’ can be found in Terranova, T. (2004). Network Cultures. London/Ann Arbor: Pluto Press. Disappointing in this context is Steven Shaviro’s book (2003), Connected, or what it means to live in a networked sociaty. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Shaviro flirts with the idea of network cultures but at a closer look only refers to nineties’ Hollywood science fictions. Shaviro fails to make the connection between the realm of real existing social interac-

2. Theory of Free Cooperation ¶Academics and journalists often reduce the potential of the Internet to an additional medium for publishing, besides books and journals. But the Internet is not just used for self-promotion. It wasn’t even primarily designed for that task. There is a Net beyond the obligatory homepage and weblog.

For many Brazilian users the Internet equals chat rooms (dating sites) plus online TV guide. But let’s not focus on such reductions of the medium. In countless cases people interact and work together on specific tasks and exchange opinions and materials online. Or they assist each other in technical matters and write code together. What defines the Internet is its social architecture. It’s the living environment that 72 counts, the live interaction, not just the storage and retrieval procedure. ¶Together with New York artist Trebor Scholz I organized a conference on ‘free cooperation’ that took place on the Buffalo campus of the State University of New York, April 23-24, 2004.22 We decided to further investigate the art of (online) collaboration from media activist/artist perspectives. From cell phones to e-mail, and multiplayer online games, mailing lists, weblogs, and wikis our everyday lives are increasingly enmeshed with technology. The necessity to examine what happens when we collaborate in these technological channels through which we communicate, will soon become more apparent.

How can we find independence and enhance freedom in the context of networked collaboration? How do you collectively manage and own a shared resource such as a network? ¶We invited the Bremen-based media critic Christoph Spehr who coined the term ‘free cooperation’ in his essay ‘Gleicher als andere’ [More Equal Than Others]. In 2003 I did an online interview with Spehr.23 Most of Spehr’s writings are not translated into English and this event was an opportunity to introduce his ideas into Anglophone media discourses. Spehr’s writings use references to 1960s sci-fi movies to think about contemporary cooperation insisting on the option of refusal, independence, negotiation and renegotiation with ‘alien’ corporate or state monsters. Focusing on these ideas of equality and freedom the conference asked how they could be made useful for alternative networks of learning and the university. Spehr’s key concept is that everyone should have the freedom to dissolve collaboration at any given time. It is important to define a language in which we can openly talk about difference and power within groups or teams.

Or networks, for that matter. The option to bail out is the sovereign

tions on the Internet and the cyber imaginations of Hollywood – a widespread problem amongst literary scholars that enter the field.

22 See the conference website www.freecooperation.org for the archive of the mailing list and the program. Also a .pdf of the free newspaper, which was produced at the eve of the event in a circulation of 10,000 can be downloaded from this site.

23 Nettime, June 6, 2003, Science Fiction for the Multitudes, www.nettime.org.

act of network users. Notworking is their a priori, the very foundation all online activities are built upon. If you do not know how to log out, you’re locked in.

Another angle I would like to discuss is the relation between the multitude and collaboration. In A Grammar of the Multitude Paolo Virno attempts to describe the ‘nature of contemporary production’.24 The questions raised there are subjective and come up after the very act of ‘refusal’. What is collaboration once we conclude that life is being reduced to work? I would argue that it is important, at some point, to leave behind the initial, decisive stage of refusal because one otherwise ends up in individual anarchism or a Max Stirner-type of egoism in which there is nothing left to collaborate on. Notworking has to remain an option.

It is not the aim. There must be a basic consensus on what’s on the agenda, what is to be done. The collaboration question follows from there and cannot either be discussed in a political vacuum, otherwise it gets reduced to a managerial issue. Collaboration itself is not generating issues that can be translated into (political) campaigns.

Key to our effort to theorize individual and collective experiences, is the recognition that there must be a freedom to refuse to collaborate. There must be a constitutive exit strategy. At first instance this may be a mysterious, somewhat paradoxical statement. Why should the idea of the refusal be promoted as the very foundation of collaboration, as Christoph Spehr has suggested? It almost sounds like 73 a new dogma, a next rule, notworking as yet another human right.

The question of ‘free cooperation’ is, in essence, one of organization and comes up after the crisis of the (Fordist) factory model and its political mirror, the political party. This may be obvious.

The obsession with (post-)Fordism may be too much focussed on specific Italian subjectivities (needless to say, a wildcat culture of spontaneous strikes is not universal). It is up to us to update and modify the Italo concepts and come up with specific case studies of, for instance, depressing NGO office cultures, power relations within ‘social software’, dotcom leisure styles, ‘precarious’ freelance contracts, call centre blues or the boredom of project management. ¶The focus on ‘new social movements’ may already be outdated and should perhaps be replaced with much more temporary ruptures. With Galloway we can ask: what is politics after its decentralization?

Perhaps it is not even useful anymore to talk about ‘movements’ (as in ‘movement of movements’). Movement might suggest too much unity and continuity to describe today’s event on the streets and the Net. There is no movement without a timeline, without collective memory of landmark events. While the term is accurate if we want to express political and cultural diversity, it still has that promise of continuity in it – and with it comes the suggestion that decline and 24 Virno, P. (2004). A Grammar of the Multitude. Cambridge (Mass.): Semiotexte.

disappearance can be upheld. The movement should never stop. The energy of the Event that gave the movement its character and direction ought not to die. ¶This is where the gestalt of the ‘true believer’ enters the story. Rituals will be invented to bring back the masses to the street, no matter at what price. According to Paolo Virno the crisis of the society of labour is reflected in the multitude itself. We could extend this and say that multitudes are a highly problematic category, not for capital or the ‘control society’, but for the multitudes themselves. It will take a while to get used to the fact that there is no consciousness in and for itself, that revolutionaries can be wary – and bored – of their own revolutions.

There is talk of a collective ecstasy without a Grand Resolution. Fragmentation is not a romantic agony but a prime condition of politi74 cal life, and the networked condition only further transcribes this process, into software, into database structures. ¶Paolo Virno writes: ‘Social wealth is produced from science, from the general intellect, rather than from the work delivered by individuals. The work demanded seems reducible to a virtually negligible portion of a life. Science, information, knowledge in general, cooperation, these present themselves as the key support system of production – these, rather than labour time.’ This puts cooperation in a state of exception. It’s not the rule, not the everyday life condition; it’s rare, uncertain and always on the verge of being dissolved. For Virno the difference between labour time and non-labour time falls short. This is exactly why there is so much uncertainty (and curiosity) about collaboration. In what act, work, gesture, idea, are no traces of collaboration included? The distinction between collaboration and non-collaboration becomes more and more difficult to make. The opposition of the lonesome genius and the multi-disciplinary team sounds like an odd lifestyle choice and is not relevant. ¶What is at stake is the way in which negotiations take place inside each particular ‘credit’ economy. Which traces remain visible of a collaboration? Can terms of ownership be (re)negotiated further along the line or have forms of ownership and division of labour been fixed at day one? How many ‘defeated collaborations’ can one bear? Humans may once have been ‘social animals’ but that doesn’t mean they act like ants. There is enough herd mentality and this makes it hard, even impossible to promote collaboration as a virtue.

Yet, both wisdom and knowledge have blocked the road back to the land of Zarathustra. It is not society that keeps us away from individuation. The main issue is the method of evaluation. Do we look back in anger once the group has fallen apart? ¶It is hard to distinguish between the necessity to work in groups, for instance to produce large and complex artworks, conferences, festivals, protests or publications, and the desire to overcome isolation when you do individual work. For many of the new media artworks, collaboration is an absolute must because the individual art-

ist simply does not have all the skills to do the visuals, 3D, sound, editing, and performance and manage the whole process in terms of human resources and finance. A question here would be one of ‘economy of acknowledgement’ (which is a whole topic in itself...) and whether works are produced under the name of a single video artist (let’s say Bill Viola) or, more in accordance with reality, a group name. The film industry must have a whole history about the composition of the credits, and the battles that were fought in order to get included. The word ‘collaboration’ reminds me of anonymous early renaissance painting workshops and the way ‘individuals’ emerged out of that studio system. That is considered as a process of enlightenment. Yet, in our times, individuals working together in a group are regarded as something unique.25 Over the years I have noticed how curious people are about the internal group dynamics. Collaboration provokes voyeurism, because friction within the group is taken for granted. According to the prejudice, working together is difficult and has to end in a drama.

For over fifteen years a few friends and me produced ‘extramural theory’ under the group name Adilkno (or Bilwet in Dutch/German), the Foundation for the Advancement of Illegal Knowledge.26 Adilkno explicitly wrote about collaboration in the sense of a ‘third mind’, which is inherently different from the individual mindsets. Out of the Adilkno experience grew an intensive four years collaboration with Pit Schultz during the mid-nineties, the golden age of ‘net 75 criticism’, when we built up the Nettime project. These days 99 per cent of my collaborations are virtual. Working in real life is a luxury and big fun. Collaborating with a group in your own town is unique, as is continuing to do so. However, the more computer networks are being utilized, the less likely it will be that you will find people to collaborate with in your vicinity. ¶The more work is done online, the more important it is to understand the techno-social architectures of the tools we use. Think for instance about the gender-machine aspect, that is, the productive power relationships of malemale, male-female and female-female collaborations. Two German media theorists, Friedrich Kittler and Klaus Theweleit, have written about this. During the eighties Theweleit worked in the same department as Friedrich Kittler, in Freiburg.

Their work on gender, media and collaboration has striking similarities. Both Theweleit and Kittler stress the importance of the (Deleuzian) productive element of the male-female-machine triangle.

25 Relate this to what Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri write in Multitude (2004) about collaboration: ‘We are more intelligent together than any one of us is alone. Open source, collaborative programming does not lead to confusion and wasted energy. It actually works. One approach to understanding the democracy of the multitude, then, is an open-source society, that is, a society whose source code is revealed so that we all can work collaboratively to solve its bugs and create new, better social programs’ (Multitude, Penguin Press 2004, p. 340).

26 The online archive of Adilkno, with texts in Dutch, English and German, can be found at http://thing. desk.nl/bilwet.

This can also be a male-medium-male connection or a female-medium-female one, but obviously, in male dominated heterosexual societies, the male-femalemachine one is the dominant one. Theweleit looks into the oppressive aspect, in which males ‘sacrifice’ female bodies as their medium in order to create ‘high culture’ of eternal meaning. ¶We could ask ourselves if such gender stories are still out there. If I think about the Internet and the computer it is the bachelor’s machine that I think of, not the male genius author who is dictating his work to his secretary/lover – but I might be wrong there. Was the shift from the typewriter to PC-based word processing that crucial in this respect?

Perhaps we need a cultural history of the present that could describe the gender condition of online text/knowledge production. Despite the 76 fact that half of the Internet users are female, geeks/programmers remain predominantly male. ¶Collaboration, and in particular free cooperation, sounds somewhat idealistic. Would it perhaps be intended for people that are bored with themselves, handicapped with ‘lesser capacities’? Humans are social animals, in the end. We have to remain techno-realists in this respect. Let’s not dig too deep into a cynical reading of the topic. Another approach would be to investigate the rise of the cultural economy and the way in which creative industries force people to collaborate in teams. Economic innovation in networks is one of the principle conditions of the multitude, after all. So much in new media, computer engineering but also architecture and design is teamwork that it is actually astonishing to see how poorly developed the general understanding of this topic is. ¶The fight for the recognition of group work in sectors such as literature, the visual arts and academia will probably never be won. Institutions dislike working with amorphous social structures because no one seems to be accountable. Here we need to make the distinction between organized networks (see below) and the networked organization. It is quite easy to network organizations and to start a collaboration between institutions. The real challenge is the transformation of the ‘organized network’ model, the truly virtual communities out there not interfacing directly with the real world. It’s that interface between the real and virtual world that determines the type of collaboration. It is hard, and exhausting to collaborate online without having meetings ‘in real life’. Online work can be really ineffective, and slow. One needs to have patience to succeed. Some still believe that we are ‘communicating with the speed of light’ but that’s not at all the case if you work on a more complicated project with a group that is dispersed around the globe.

Collaboration gets particularly interesting when informal networks reach a critical mass, go beyond the initial stage of excitement and transform into something completely different. It’s a marvellous, mysterious moment when small and dispersed groups converge into a larger social movement and cause an event (as Alain Badiou calls

it). But that’s exceptional. Individual collaborations do not aim to create historical events.27 In the case of the World Social Forum, Indymedia and the 2003 anti-war protests it is interesting to see how these movements have a hard time dealing with ‘scalability’. It is extremely hard for decentralized autonomous organizations, so used to fragmentation, to scale up and build large size sustainable structures. For hyper-individuals like us, historical events have become much like carnival (as Bahktin described it). Making history is experienced as a festive interruption of the everyday. This makes it so hard to see such large events as an experience that can be passed on.

3. Dawn of the organized Networks At first glance the concept of ‘organized networks’ appears oxymoronic. In technical terms, all networks are organized. There are founders, administrators, moderators and active members who all take up roles. Think back to the early work on cybernetics and the ‘second order’ cybernetics of Bateson and others. Networks consist of mobile relations whose arrangement at any particular time is shaped by the ‘constitutive outside’ of feedback or noise. The order of networks is made up of a continuum of relations governed by interests, passions, affects and pragmatic necessities of different actors. The network of relations is never static, yet is not to be mistaken for some kind 77 of perpetual fluidity. Ephemerality is not a condition to celebrate for those wishing to function as political agents. ¶The theory of organized networks is to be read as a proposal, a draft, a concept in the process of becoming that needs active steering through disagreement and collective elaboration.28 What it doesn’t require is instant deconstruction. Everyone can do that.

Needless to say, organized networks have existed for centuries. Their history can and will be written, but that doesn’t bring us much further. The networks we are talking about here are specific in that they are situated within technical media. They can be characterized by their advanced irrelevance and invisibility for old media and pin-p (people in power). General network theory might be useful for enlightenment purposes, but that doesn’t answer the issues that new media based social networks face. Does it satisfy to know that molecules and DNA patterns also network? ¶Truism today: there are no networks outside of society. Like all human techno entities, they are infected by power. Networks are ideal Foucault machines: they undermine power as they produce it.

Their diagram of power may operate on a range of scales, traversing 27 This is a classic 20th century approach, in which political-aesthetics is framed within a larger, metaphysical process of history making.

28 See the discussion on the Fibreculture mailing list about list governance, censorship and organized networks in November/December 2004: www.fibreculture.org, go to: list archive.

intra-local networks and overlapping with trans-national insurgencies. No matter how harmless they seem, networks bring on differences. Foucault’s dictum: power produces. Translate this to organized networks and you get the force of invention. Indeed, translation is the condition of invention. Mediology, as defined by Régis Debray,29 is the practice of invention within the socio-technical system of networks. As a collaborative method of immanent critique, mediology assembles a multitude of components upon a network of relations as they coalesce around situated problems and unleashed passions. In this sense, the network constantly escapes attempts of command and control. Such is the entropic variability of networks. ¶Network users do not see their circle of peers as a sect. Ties are loose, up to the point of breaking up. Thus the ontology of the user, 78 in so many ways, mirrors the logic of capital. Indeed, the ‘user’ is the identity par excellence of capital that seeks to extract itself from rigid systems of regulation and control. The user increasingly has become a term corresponding with the auto-configuration of self-invention. Some would say the user is just a consumer: silent and satisfied, until hell breaks lose. The user is the identity of control by other means. In this respect, the ‘user’ is the empty vessel awaiting the spectral allure of digital commodity cultures and their promise of ‘mobility’ and ‘openness’. Let us harbour no fantasies: sociality is intimately bound within the dynamic array of technics exerted by the force of capital. Networks are everywhere.

The challenge for the foreseeable future is to create new openings, new possibilities, new temporalities and spaces within which life may assert its insistence on an ethico-aesthetic existence. Organized networks should be read as a proposal, aimed to replace the problematic term ‘virtual community’.30 It should put the internal power relations within networks on the agenda and break with the invisible workings that made out the consensus era. Organized networks are ‘clouds’ of social relationships in which disengagement is pushed to the limit. Community is an idealistic construct and suggests bonding and harmony, which often is simply not there. The same could be said of the post-9/11 call for ‘trust’. Networks thrive on diversity and conflict (the notworking), not on unity, and this is what community theorists were unable to reflect upon. For them disagreement equals a disruption of the ‘constructive’ flow of dialogue. It takes an effort to reflect on distrust as a productive principle. Indifference between networks is a main reason not to get organized, so this aspect has to be takenseriously. Interaction and involvement are idealistic constructs. ¶Passivity rules. Browsing, watching, reading, waiting, thinking, deleting, chatting, skipping and surfing are the default condition 29 Régis Debray (1996). Media Manifestos: on the Technological Transmission of Cultural Forms. London & NY: Verso.

30 See also the introduction and conclusion of Geert Lovink (2003). My First Recession. Rotterdam: V2/ NAi. The theory of organized networks should be read as a follow up of this book.

of online life. Total involvement implies madness to the highest degree. What characterizes networks is a shared sense of a potentiality that does not have to be realized. ¶Millions of replies from all to all would cause every network, no matter what architecture, to implode. Within every network there is a long time of interpassivity, interrupted by outbursts of interactivity. Networks foster, and reproduce, loose relationships – and it’s better to face this fact straight into the eye. They are hedonistic machines of promiscuous contacts. Networked multitudes create temporary and voluntary forms of collaboration that transcend, but not necessary disrupt the Age of Disengagement. ¶The concept of organized networks is useful to enlist for strategic purposes. After a decade of ‘tactical media’, the time has come to scale up the operations of radical media practices. We should all well and truly have emerged from the retro-fantasy of the benevolent welfare state. Networks will never be rewarded and ‘embedded’ in well-funded structures. Just as the modernist avant-garde saw itself punctuating the fringes of society, so too have tactical media taken comfort in the idea of targeted micro-interventions. Tactical media too often assume to reproduce the curious spatio-temporal dynamic and structural logic of the modern state and industrial capital: difference and renewal from the peripheries. But there’s a paradox at work here. Disruptive as their actions may often be, tactical media corroborate the temporal mode of post-Fordist capital: short79 termism. ¶It is retro-garde that tactical media in a post-Fordist era continue to operate in terms of ephemerality and the logic of ‘tactics’.

Since the punctuated attack model is the dominant condition, tactical media have an affinity with that which they seek to oppose. This is why tactical media are treated with a kind of benign tolerance.

There is a neurotic tendency to disappear. Anything that solidifies is lost in the system. The ideal is to be little more than a temporary glitch, a brief instance of noise or interference. Tactical media set themselves up for exploitation in the same manner that ‘modders’ do in the game industry: they both dispense with their knowledge of loop holes in the system for free. They point out the problem, and then run away. Capital is delighted, and thanks the tactical media outfit or nerd-modder for the home improvement. ¶But make no mistake, the emergence of organized networks amount to an articulation of info-war. This battle currently revolves around the theme of ‘sustainability’; neo-liberal governments and institutions wish to extricate themselves from responsibility to annoying constituencies. Organized networks are required to invent models of sustainability that go beyond the latest Plan of Action update, which is only then inserted into paper shredders of member states and ‘citizen friendly’ businesses. ¶Organized networks compete with established institutions in terms of branding and identity building, but primarily as sites of knowledge

production and concept development. These days, most bricks and mortal institutions can only subtract value from networks. They are not merely unwilling but in fact incapable of giving anything back. This is where the real potential of virtual networks lies. Virtual networks are not yet represented in negotiations over budgets, grants, investments and job hiring. At best they are seen as sources of inspiration amongst peers. ¶The organized network is a ‘hybrid’ formation: part tactical media, part institutional formation. There are benefits to be obtained from both these lineages. The clear distinction of the organized network is that its institutional logic is internal to the socio-technical dimensions of the media of communication. This means there is no universal formula for how an organized network might invent its conditions of 80 existence. There will be no ‘internationalism’ for networks. While we have outlined the background condition of neo-liberalism as integral to the emergence of organized networks, it also has to be said that just as uneven modernities created vastly different social and national experiences and formations, from the East to the West, from the North to the South, so too does capital in its neo-liberal phase manifest itself in a plurality of ways. The diversity of conditions attached to free-trade agreements is just one example of the multiple forms of capital. From the point of analysis, the understanding of capital is always going to vary according to the range of inputs one defines as constituting the action of capital. ¶Eventually organized networks will be mirrored against the networked organization. But we’re not there yet. There will not be an easy synthesis. Roughly speaking, one can witness a ‘convergence’ between the informality of virtual networks and the formality of institutions. This process, however, is anything but harmonious.

Clashes between networks and organizations are occurring before our very own eyes. Debris spreads in every possible direction, depending on the locality. The networked multitude, one could say, is constituted – and crushed – as a part of this process. It is naive to believe that, under the current circumstances, networks will win this battle (if you want to put it in those terms). This is precisely why networks need their own form of organization. In this process they will have to deal with the following three aspects: accountability, sustainability and scalability. ¶Let’s start with the question if who and if networks represent and what form of internal democracy they envision. Formal networks have members but most online initiatives don’t. Let’s face it. Networks disintegrate traditional forms of representation. This is what makes the question ‘Did blogs affect the 2004 US-election?’ so irrelevant.

The blogosphere, at best, influenced a hand-full of TV and newspaper editors. Instead of spreading the word, the Net has questioned authority – any authority – and therefore was not useful to push this or that candidate up the rating-scale of electoral appeal. Networks

that thrive higher up will fail. No matter what you think of Derrida, networks do deconstruct society. It is deep linkage that matters, not some symbolic coup d’état. If there is an aim, it would be to parallel hegemony, which can only be achieved if underlying premises are constantly put under scrutiny by the initiators of the next techno-social wave of innovations. The rise of ‘community informatics’31 as a field of research and project building could be seen as an exemplary platform that could deal with the issues treated here. For all the interest community informatics has in building projects ‘from below’, a substantial amount of research within this field is directed toward ‘e-democracy’ issues. It is time to abandon the illusion that the myths of representational democracy might somehow be transferred and realised within networked settings. That is not going to happen. After all, the people benefiting from such endeavours as the World Summit of the Information Society (WSIS) are, for the most part, those on the speaking and funding circuits, not people who are supposedly represented in such a process. Networks call for a new logics of politics, not just based on a handpicked collection of NGOs that have identified themselves as ‘global civil society’. ¶Networks are not institutions of representative democracy, despite the frequency with which they are expected to model themselves on such failed institutions. Instead, there is a search for ‘postdemocratic’ models of decision making that avoid classic models of representation and related identity policies. The emerging theme of non-representative democracies places an emphasis on process over 81 its after-effect, consensus. Certainly, there’s something attractive in process-oriented forms of governance. But ultimately the process model is about as sustainable as an earthworks sculpture burrowed into a patch of dirt called the 1970s. Process is fine as far as it integrates a plurality of forces into the network. But the primary questions remain: Where does it go? How long does it last? Why do it in the first place? But also: Who is speaking? And: Why bother? A focus on the vital forces that constitute socio-technical life is thus required. Herein lie the variability and wildcards of organized networks. The persistence of dispute and disagreement can be taken as a given. Rational consensus models of democracy have proven, in their failure, that such underlying conditions of social-political life cannot be eradicated. ¶Organized networks will increasingly be concerned with their own sustainability. Networks are not hypes. They may look temporary but are here to stay. Individual clusters might die off sooner rather than later but there is a Will to Contextualize that is hard to suppress. Links may be dead at some point but that’s not the end of the data itself. Nonetheless networks are extremely fragile. This all may sound obvious, but let’s not forget that pragmatism is built

31 One of the many crossovers between computer science and humanities, as proposed by Michael Gurstein and others. Some of their texts can be found at www.netzwissenschaft.de/sem/pool.htm.

upon the passions, joys and thrills of invention. Something will be invented to bridge time and this something we might call the organized network. Time has come for cautious planning. There is a self-destructive tendency of networks faced with the challenge of organization. Organized networks have to feel confident about defining their value systems in ways meaningful and relevant to the internal operations of their socio-technical complex. That’s actually not so difficult. The danger is that of ghettoization. The trick is to work out a collaborative value system able to deal with issues such as funding, internal power plays and the demand for ‘accountability’ and ‘transparency’ as they scale up their operations.

82

Let’s get monetary. Organized networks first and foremost have to keep their virtual house in order. It is of strategic importance to use a non-profit provider (ISP) and have backups made, or even run a mirror in another country. Also, it is wise not to make use of commercial services such as Yahoo!Groups, Hotmail, Geocities or Google as they are unreliable and suffer from regular security breaches. Be aware of costs for the domain names, e-mail addresses, storage and bandwidth, even if they are relatively small. Often conflicts arise because passwords and ownership of the domain name are in the hands of one person that is leaving the group in a conflict situation. This can literally mean the end of the project. ¶Networks are never hundred per cent virtual and always connected at some point with the monetary economy. This is where the story of organized networks starts. Perhaps incorporation is necessary. If you do not want to bother the network with legal matters, keep in mind what the costs of not going there will be. Funding for online activities, meetings, editorial work, coding, design, research or publications can of course be channelled through allied institutions.

Remember that the more online activities you unfold, the more likely it is that you will have to pay for a network administrator. The inward looking free software world only uses its paradiselike voluntary work rules for its own coding projects. Keep in mind that cultural, artistic and activist projects do not fall under this category, no matter how politically correct they might be. The same counts for content editors and web designers. Ideally, online projects are high on communitarian spirits and are able to access the necessary skills. But the further we leave behind the moment of initiation, the more likely it will be that work will have to be paid. Organized networks have to face this economic reality or find themselves marginalized, no matter how advanced their dialogues and network use might be. Talk about the rise of ‘immaterial labour’ and ‘precarious work’ is useful, but could run out of steam, as it remains incapable of making the jump from speculative reflection to a political program that will outline how networks can be funded over time.

Let’s end with the perhaps least investigated aspect of scalability. Why is it so difficult for networks to scale up? There seems to be an immanent tendency to split up in a thousand micro conversations. This also counts for the ‘social software’ blogs like Orkut, Friendster and LinkIn, in which millions from all over the globe participate. For the time being it is only the geeky Slashdot that manages to centralize conversations amongst the tens of thousands of its online users. Electronic mailing lists do not seem to get above a few thousand before the conversation actually slows down, heavily moderated as it is. The ideal size for an in-depth, open discussion still seems to be somewhere between 50 and 500 participants.

What does this mean for the networked multitudes? The question would be: to what extend is this all a software issue? Could the necessary protocols being written up by women? Can we image very large-scale conversations that do not only make sense but also have an impact?

What network cultures can transform large institutions?•

83

Acknowledgements Needless to say, this text is a product of numerous (online) collaborations. Besides mailing lists such as Nettime, Fibreculture, Rohrpost, Oekonux, Incommunicado and Spectre, and the now defunct collaborative weblog Discordia, I have to mention my intensive exchanges with Trebor Scholz (on free cooperation) and Ned Rossiter, with whom I am working on organized networks. Soenke Zehle and Florian Schneider have also been there as valuable dialogue partners.

I would like to thank Emilie Randoe for our ongoing conversations and Sabine Niederer at the Institute of Network Cultures for her comments and editorial support. I dedicate this work to my beloved Linda Wallace and our son Kazimir, with whom I live this turbulent, inspiring life.

Biography Dr. Geert Lovink (1959, Amsterdam), media theorist, net critic and activist, studied political science at the University of Amsterdam (MA), and holds a PhD at the University of Melbourne. Besides his lectureship at IAM (since January 2004), he works as a senior researcher at the University of Amsterdam, Media & Culture.

Geert Lovink is a member of Adilkno, the Foundation for the Advancement of Illegal Knowledge, a free association of media-related intellectuals established in 1983 (Agentur Bilwet in German). From Adilkno the following books appeared: Empire of Images (1985), Cracking the Movement (1990) on the squatter movement and the media, Listen or Die (1992) on free radio, the collected theoretical work The Media Archive (1992 – translated into German, English, Croatian and Slovenian), the collection of essays The Datadandy (1994 – in German) and the book/CD Electronic Solitude (1997). Most of the early texts of Lovink and Adilkno in Dutch, German and English can be found at http://thing.desk.nl/bilwet. Geert Lovink’s recent online text archive is: www.laudanum.net/geert.

Geert Lovink is a former editor of the media art magazine Mediamatic (1989-94) and has been teaching and lecturing media theory throughout Central and Eastern Europe. He is a co-founder of the Amsterdam-based free community network ‘Digital City’ (www.dds.nl) and the support campaign for independent media in South-East Europe Press Now www.dds.nl/pressnow. He was the co-organizer of conferences such as Wetware (1991), Next Five Minutes 1-3 (93-96-99) www.n5m. org, Metaforum 1-3 (Budapest 94-96) www.mrf.hu, Ars Electronica (Linz, 1996/98) www.aec.at and Interface 3 (Hamburg 95). In 1995, together with Pit Schultz, he founded the international ‘nettime’ circle www.nettime.org which is both a mailing list (in English, Dutch, French, Spanish/Portuguese, Romanian and Chinese), a series of meetings and publications such as zkp 1-4, ‘Netzkritik’ (ID-Archiv, 1997, in German) and ‘Readme!’ (Autonomedia, 1998). From 1996-1999 Lovink was based at De Waag, the Society for Old and New Media (www.waag.org) where he was responsible for public research. Since 1996, once a year Lovink has been coordinating a project and teaching at the IMI mediaschool in Osaka/ Japan (www.iminet.ac.jp). A series of temporary media labs was started in 1997 at the arts exhibition Documenta X in Kassel/Germany called Hybrid Workspace (for archive see www.medialounge.net) which continued in Manchester (1998) and Helsinki, in the contemporary arts museum Kiasma (http://temp.kiasma.fi). A conference he organized was Tulipomania Dotcom conference, which took place in Amsterdam, June 2000, focusing on a critique of the New Economy www.balie. nl/tulipomania. In early 2001 he co-founded www.fibreculture.org, a forum for Australian Internet research and culture which has its first publication out, launched at the first fibreculture meeting in Melbourne (December 2001). Since 2000 Lovink is a consultant/editor to the exchange program of Waag Society (Amsterdam) and Sarai New Media Centre (Delhi). He co-organized Dark Markets on new media and democracy in times of crisis (Vienna, October 2002, http:// darkmarkets.t0.or.at/) and Crisis Media, Uncertain States of Reportage (Delhi, March 2003, www.sarai.net/events/crisis_media/crisis_media.htm).

Three books document Lovinks collaboration with the Dutch designer Mieke Gerritzen which he co-edited: Everyone is a Designer (BIS, 2000), Catalogue of Strategies (Gingko Press, 2001) and Mobile Minded (BIS, 2002). Together with Mieke Gerritzen he co-founded the Browserday events (www.browserday.com), a competition for new media design students in 1998. In 2002 The MIT Press published two of his titles: Dark Fiber, a collection of essays on Internet culture (translated into Italian, Spanish, Romanian, German and Japanese) and Uncanny Networks, collected interviews with media theorists and artists. V2 in Rotterdam published his most recent study on Internet culture, My First Recession, in September 2003.

84

Literature Castells, M. (1996). The Information Age, Volume I: The Rise of the Network Society.

Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Inc. Debray, R. (1996). Media Manifestos: on the Technological Transmission of Cultural Forms. London and New York: Verso.

Florida, R. (2002). The Rise of the Creative Class. New York: Basic Books.

Hardt, M. & Negri, A. (2000). Empire. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press.

Hardt, M. & Negri, A. (2004). Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire.

New York: The Penguin Press.

Hoffer, E. (1951). The True Believer. New York: Harper and Row. Lovink, G. (2002). Dark Fiber. Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press.

Lovink, G. (2003). My First Recession: Critical Internet Culture in Transition.

Rotterdam: V2/NAi. Manovich, L. (2001). The Language of New Media. Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press.

Shaviro, S. (2003). Connected, or what it means to live in a networked society.

Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.

Terranova, T. (2004). Network Cultures. London/Ann Arbor: Pluto Press.

Virno, P. (2004). A Grammar of the Multitude. Cambridge (Mass.): Semiotexte.

Yudice, G. (2003). The Expediency of Culture. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Online Resources http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0212/msg00057.html http://thing.desk.nl/bilwet www.aoir.org. www.fibreculture.org, go to: list archive. www.freecooperation.org www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm. www.nettime.org www.networkcultures.org www.netzwissenschaft.de/sem/pool.htm

85

NEW YORK PROPHECIES: THE IMAGINARY FUTURE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Richard Barbrook

The Future Is What It Used To Be ‘Biological intelligence is fixed, because it is an old, mature paradigm, but the new paradigm of non-biological computation and intelligence is growing exponentially. The crossover will be in the 2020s and after that, at least from a hardware perspective, non-biological computation will dominate…’ (Kurzweil 2004, p. 3.) ¶At the beginning of the 21st century, the dream of artificial intelligence is deeply embedded within the modern imagination. From childhood onwards, people in the developed world are told that computers will one day be able to reason – and even feel emotions – just like humans. In science fiction stories, thinking machines have long been favourite characters. Audiences have grown up with images of 89 robot buddies like Data in Star Trek TNG and of pitiless monsters like the cyborg in The Terminator (Startrek.com 2005; Cameron 1984).

These science fiction fantasies are encouraged by confident predictions from prominent computer scientists. Continual improvements in hardware and software will eventually led to the creation of artificial intelligences more powerful than the ‘biological intelligence’ of the human mind. ¶Commercial developers are already looking forward to selling sentient machines which can do the housework and help the elderly (Honda 2004). Some computer scientists even believe that the creation of ‘non-biological intelligences’ is a spiritual quest. In California, Ray Kurzweil, Vernor Vinge and their colleagues are eagerly waiting for the Singularity: the First Coming of the Silicon Messiah (Vinge 1993; Bell 2004). Whether inspired by money or mysticism, all these advocates of artificial intelligence share the conviction that the present must be understood as the future in embryo – and the future illuminates the potential of the present. Every advance in computing technology is heralded as another step towards the creation of a fully conscious machine. The prophecy of artificial intelligence comes closer to fulfilment with the launch of each new piece of software or hardware. It is not what computers can do now that is important but what they are about to do. The present is the beta version of a science fiction dream: the imaginary future.

¶Despite its cultural prominence, the meme of sentient machines is vulnerable to theoretical exorcism. Far from being a free-floating signifier, this prophecy is deeply rooted in time and space. Not surprisingly, contemporary boosters of artificial intelligence rarely acknowledge the antiquity of the concept itself. They want to move forwards not look backwards. Yet, it’s over forty years since the dream of thinking machines first gripped the public’s imagination. The imaginary future of artificial intelligence has a long history.

Analysing this original version of this prophecy is the precondition for understanding its contemporary iterations. With this motivation in mind, let’s go back to the second decade of the Cold War when the world’s biggest computer company put on a show about the wonders of thinking machines in the financial capital of the most powerful and wealthiest 90 nation on the planet…

A Millennium Of Progress ¶On the 22nd April 1964, the New York World’s Fair was opened to the general public. During the next two years, this modern wonderland welcomed over 51 million visitors. Every section of the American elite was represented at the exposition: the federal government, US state governments, large corporations, financial institutions, industry lobbies and religious groups. The World’s Fair proved that the USA was the leader in everything: consumer goods, democratic politics, show business, modernist architecture, fine art, religious tolerance, domestic living and, above all else, new technology. As one of the exposition’s advertising slogans implied, a ‘millennium of progress’ had culminated in the American century (Stanton, 2004, 2004a; Luce 1941). ¶This patriotic message was celebrated in the awe-inspiring displays of new technologies at the World’s Fair. Writers and film-makers had long fantasised about travelling to other worlds. Now, in NASA’s Space Park, the public could admire the huge rockets which had taken American astronauts into orbit (Editors of Time-Life Books 1964, p.

208; Laurence 1964, pp. 2-14). Despite its early setback when the Russians launched the first satellite in 1957, the USA was now on the verge of overtaking its rival in the ‘space race’ (Schefter 1999, pp.

145-231). Best of all, visitors to the World’s Fair were told that they too would have the opportunity to become astronauts in their own lifetimes. In the General Motors’ Futurama pavilion, Americans of the 1980s were shown taking their holidays on the moon. (Editors of Time-Life Books 1964, p. 222). Other corporations were equally confident that the achievements of the present would soon be surpassed by the triumphs of tomorrow. At its Progressland pavilion, General Electric predicted that electricity generated by nuclear fusion reactors would be ‘too cheap to meter’ (Editors of Time-Life Books 1964, pp. 90-92; Laurence 1964, pp. 40-43). In the imaginary future of the World’s Fair, Americans would not only become space tourists but also be blessed with free energy.

¶For many corporations, the most effective method of proving their technological modernity was showcasing a computer. Clairol’s machine selected ‘the most flattering hair shades’ for female visitors and Parker Pen’s mainframe matched American kids with ‘pen pals’ in foreign countries (Editors of Time-Life Books 1964, pp 86, 90). However impressive they might have appeared to their audience, these exhibits were nothing more than advertising gimmicks. In contrast, IBM was able to dedicate its pavilion exclusively to the wonders of computing as a distinct technology. For over a decade, this corporation had been America’s leading mainframe manufacturer. In 1961, one single product – the IBM 1401 – had accounted for a quarter of all the computers operating in the USA (Pugh 1995, pp. 265-267). In the minds of many Americans, IBM was computing. Just before the opening of the World’s Fair, the corporation had launched a series of products which would maintain its dominance over the industry for another two decades: the System/360 (DeLamarter 1986, pp. 54-146). Seizing the opportunity for self-promotion offered by the exposition, the bosses of IBM commissioned a pavilion designed to eclipse all others. Eero Saarinen – the renowned Finnish architect – supervised the construction of the building: a white, corporate-logo-embossed, egg-shaped theatre which was suspended high in the air by 45 rust-coloured metal trees. Underneath this striking feature were interactive exhibits celebrating IBM’s contribution to the computer industry (Stern, Mellins and Fishman 1997, pp. 1046-1047). ¶For the theatre itself, Charles and Ray Eames – the couple who 91 epitomised American modernist design - created the main attraction at the IBM pavilion: ‘The Information Machine’. After taking their places in the 500-seat ‘People Wall’, visitors were elevated upwards into the egg-shaped structure. Once inside, a narrator introduced a ‘mind-blowing’ multi-media show about how the machines exhibited in the IBM pavilion were forerunners of the sentient machines of the future. Computers were in the process of acquiring consciousness.

(Editors of Time-Life Books 1964, pp. 70-74; Laurence 1964, pp. 57-58).

In the near future, every American would own a devoted mechanical servant just like Robby the Robot in the popular 1956 sci-fi film Forbidden Planet (Wilcox 1999). At the New York World’s Fair, IBM proudly announced that this dream of artificial intelligence was finally about to be realised. With the launch of the System/360 series, mainframes were now powerful enough to construct the prototypes of a fully conscious computer. ¶The IBM pavilion’s stunning combination of avant-garde architecture and multi-media performance was a huge hit with both the press and the public. Alongside space rockets and nuclear reactors, the computer had confirmed its place as one of the three iconic technologies of modern America. The ideological message of these machines was clear-cut: the present was the future in embryo. Within at the IBM pavilion, computers existed in two time frames at once. On the one hand, the current models on display were prototypes of the sentient machines of the future. On the other hand, the vision of computer

consciousness showed the true potential of the mainframes exhibited in the IBM pavilion. At the 1964 New York World’s Fair, the launch of the System/360 series was celebrated as the harbinger of the imaginary future of artificial intelligence.

‘Duplicating the problem-solving and information-handling capabilities of the [human] brain is not far off; it would be surprising if it were not accomplished within the next decade.’ (Simon, p. 39.)

Inventing the Thinking Machine ¶The futurist fantasies of IBM’s multi-media show were inspired by the dispassionate logic of the academy. Alan Turing – the founding 92 father of computer science – had defined the development of artificial intelligence as the long-term goal of this new discipline. In the mid-1930s, this Cambridge mathematician had published the seminal article which described the abstract model for a programmable computer: the ‘universal machine’ (Turing 2004). During the Second World War, his team of engineers had created a pioneering electronic calculator to speed up the decryption of German military signals. When the conflict was over, Turing moved to Manchester University to join a team of researchers who were building a programmable machine. As proposed in his 1936 article, software would be used to enable the hardware to perform a variety of different tasks. On 21st June 1948, before he’d even taken up his new post, Turing’s colleagues switched on the world’s first electronic stored-program computer: Baby. The theoretical concept described in an academic journal had taken material form as an enormous metal box filled with valves, switches, wires and dials. (Turing 2004a; Agar 2001 pp. 3-5, 113-124; Hodges 1992, pp. 314-402). ¶For Turing, Baby was much more than just an improved version of the office tabulator. When software could control hardware, counting became consciousness. In a series of seminal articles, Turing argued that his mathematical machine was the precursor of an entirely new life form: the mechanical mathematician. He backed up this prediction by defining human intelligence as what computers could do. Since calculating was a sophisticated type of thinking, calculating machines must be able to think. If children acquired knowledge through education, educational software could create knowledgeable computers. Because the human brain worked like a machine, it was obvious that a machine could behave like an electronic brain (Turing 2004a, 2004b, 2004d, 2004e; Schaffer 2000). According to Turing, although the early computers weren’t yet powerful enough to fulfil their true potential, continual improvements in hardware and software would – sooner or later - overcome these limitations. In the second half of the twentieth-century, computing technology was rapidly evolving towards its preordained destiny: artificial intelligence.

‘The memory capacity of the human brain is probably of the order of ten thousand million binary digits. But most of this is probably used

in remembering visual impressions, and other comparatively wasteful ways. One might reasonably hope to be able to make some real progress [towards artificial intelligence] with a few million digits [of computer memory].’ (Turing 2004a, p. 393) ¶In his most famous article, Turing described a test for identifying the winner of this race to the future. Once an observer couldn’t tell whether they were talking with a human or a computer in an on-line conversation, then there was no longer any substantial difference between the two types of consciousness. If the imitation was indistinguishable from the original, the machine must be thinking. The computer had passed the test (Turing 2004c, pp. 441-448; Schaffer 2000). From this point onwards, computers were much more than just practical tools and tradable commodities. As Turing’s articles explained, the imaginary future of artificial intelligence revealed the transformative potential of this new technology. Despite their shortcomings, the current models of computers were forerunners of the sentient machines to come. ¶By the late-1940s, the catechism of artificial intelligence had been fixed. Within computing, what was and what will be were one and the same thing. Despite this achievement, Turing was a prophet whose influence was waning within his own country. The computer might have been invented in Britain, but its indebted government lacked the resources to dominate the development of this new technology (Agar 2003, pp. 266-278). Across the Atlantic, the situation was very different. During the Second World War, the American government had 93 also provided generous funding for research into electronic calculation. Crucially, when the victory was won, scientists working on these projects didn’t encounter severe problems in maintaining their funding. While money was scarce in Britain, the USA could easily afford to pay for cutting-edge research into new technologies. Once the Cold War was underway, American politicians had no problem in justifying these subsidies to their constituents (Leslie 1993, pp.

1-13; Lewontin 1997). ¶In the USA, computer scientists possessed another major advantage over their British rivals: the meta-theory of cybernetics. During the late-1940s and early-1950s, a group of prominent American intellectuals came together at the Macy conferences to explore ways of breaking down the barriers between the various academic disciplines: (Heims 1991). From the outset, Norbert Wiener was recognised as the guru of this endeavour. While working at MIT, he had devised cybernetics as a new theoretical framework for analysing the behaviour of both humans and machines. The input of information about the surrounding environment led to the output of actions designed to transform the environment. Dubbed ‘feedback’, this cycle of stimulus and response reversed the spread of entropy within the universe. Order could be created out of chaos (Wiener 1948, pp. 74-136). According to Wiener, this master theory described all forms of purposeful behaviour.

Whether in humans or machines, there was continual feedback between

information and action. The same mathematical equations could be used to describe the behaviour of living organisms and technological systems (Wiener 1948, pp. 168-191). Echoing Turing, this theory implied that it was difficult to tell the difference between humans and their machines (Wiener 1948, pp.

21, 32-33). In 1948, Wiener outlined his new master theory in a book filled with pages of mathematical proofs: Cybernetics – or command and control in the animal and the machine. ¶Much to his surprise, this academic had written a bestseller. For the first time, a common set of abstract concepts covered both the natural sciences and the social sciences. Wiener‘s text had provided potent metaphors for describing the new hi-tech world of Cold War America.

Even if they didn’t understand his mathematical equations, readers 94 could easily recognise cybernetic systems within the social institutions and communication networks which dominated their everyday lives. Feedback, information and systems soon became incorporated into popular speech (Conway and Siegelman 2005, pp. 171-194; Heims 1991, pp. 271-272). Despite this public acclamation, Wiener remained an outsider within the US intelligentsia. Flouting the ideological orthodoxies of Cold War America, this guru was a pacifist and a socialist. ¶In the early-1940s, Wiener – like almost every US scientist - had believed that developing weapons to defeat Nazi Germany benefited humanity. When the Cold War started, his military-funded colleagues claimed that their research work was also contributing to the struggle against an aggressive totalitarian enemy (Lewontin 1997). Challenging this patriotic consensus, Wiener argued that American scientists should adopt a very different stance in the confrontation with Russia. He warned that the nuclear arms race could lead to the destruction of humanity. Faced with this dangerous new situation, responsible scientists should refuse to carry out military research (Conway and Siegelman 2005, pp. 237-243, 255-271). During the 1950s and early-1960s, Wiener’s political dissidence inspired his socialist interpretation of cybernetics. In the epoch of corporate monopolies and atomic weaponry, the theory that explained the behaviour of both humans and machines must be used to place humans in control of their machines. Abandoning his earlier enthusiasm for Turing’s prophecy, Wiener now emphasised out the dangers posed by sentient computers (Wiener 1966, pp. 52-60, 1967, pp. 239-254). Above all, this attempt to build artificial intelligences was a diversion from the urgent task of creating social justice and global peace.

‘The world of the future will be an ever more demanding struggle against the limitations of our own intelligence, not a comfortable hammock in which we can lie down to be waited upon by our robot slaves.’ (Wiener 1966, p. 69.) ¶By opposing the militarisation of scientific research, the founder of cybernetics had embarrassed his sponsors among the US elite. For-

tunately for the rulers of America, there was another brilliant mathematician at the Macy conferences who was also a fanatical Cold War warrior: John von Neumann. Traumatised by the nationalisation of his family’s bank during the 1919 Hungarian revolution, his anti-communist politics were so extreme that he had argued in the mid-1940s in favour of launching a pre-emptive war to stop Russia acquiring nuclear weapons (Heims 1980, pp. 235-236, 244-251).

While playing a leading role in developing the atomic bomb, von Neumann had already applied his mathematical and organisational talents to the new field of computing. When the first Macy conference was held in 1946, his team of researchers were working on building a prototype mainframe for the US navy (Ceruzzi 2003, pp. 21-4). In von Neumann, the American empire had found a guru without any trace of heresy. ¶At the early Macy conferences, the political differences among its attendees weren’t apparent. United by the anti-fascist struggle, Wiener and von Neumann could champion the same concept of cybernetics (Conway and Siegelman 2005, pp. 143-149; Heims 1980, pp. 201-207).

But, as their politics diverged, these two stars of Macy conferences began advocating rival interpretations of this meta-theory.

In its left-wing version, artificial intelligence was denounced as the apotheosis of technological domination. When he formulated his right-wing remix, von Neumann took cybernetics in exactly the opposite direction. Above all, his interpretation emphasised that this master theory had been inspired by the prophecy of thinking machines.

Back in the mid-1930s, Turing had briefly worked with von Neumann at 95 Princeton. A decade before his own involvement in computing, this Hungarian scientist had known all about the idea of the universal machine. When two Chicago psychologists in the early-1940s applied Turing’s theory to explain the processes of human thought, von Neumann became fascinated by the implications of their speculations. ¶Since the mechanical calculator was modelled on the human brain, Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts argued that consciousness was synonymous with calculation. Like the electrical contacts of an IBM tabulator, neurons were switches which transmitted information in binary form (McCulloch and Pitts 1943). Entranced by this inversion of Turing’s line of argument, von Neumann became convinced that it was theoretically possible to build a thinking machine. If neurons acted as switches within the human brain, valves could be used to create an electronic brain (von Neumann 1966, pp. 43-46, 1976, pp.

308-311). When he was working on computer research for the US military, von Neumann used the human brain as the model for his eponymous computer architecture. Echoing Turing, this prophet claimed that - as the number of valves in a computer approached those of the neurons in the brain - the machine would be able to think (von Neumann 1966, pp. 36-41, 1976, pp. 296-300, 2000, pp. 39-52). Within a decade, von Neumann and his colleagues would be equipping the US military with cybernetic soldiers capable of fighting and winning a nuclear war.

‘Dr. McCulloch: How about designing computing machines so that if they were damaged in air raids … they could replace parts … and continue to work? Dr. von Neumann: These are really quantitative rather than qualitative questions.’ (von Neumann 1976, p. 324) ¶By the early-1950s, the USA’s academic and corporate research teams had seized the leadership of computing from their British rivals. From then onwards, all of the most advanced machines were made-in-America (Ceruzzi 2003, pp. 13-46). Yet, by creating cybernetics without Wiener, von Neumann had ensured that these US laboratories would also follow Turing’s path to the imaginary future: building artificial intelligence. The metaphor of feedback now proved that computers operated like humans. Inputs of information led to outputs of action. If the mind operated like a ma96 chine, then it must be possible to develop a machine which duplicated the functions of the mind. Computers could already calculate faster than their human inventors. Mastering the complexities of mathematical logic must be the first step towards endowing these machines with the other attributes of human consciousness. Language was a set of rules which could be codified as software. Learning from new experiences could be programmed into hardware (Minsky, 2004, 2004a).

Throughout the 1950s and early-1960s, American scientists worked hard to build the thinking machine. Once it had enough processing power, the computer would achieve consciousness. (Edwards 1996, pp. 239273). When IBM launched its System/360 mainframe at the 1964 World’s Fair, Turing’s dream appeared to be close to realisation.

Cold War Computing ¶A quarter of a century earlier, one of the stars of the 1939 New York World’s Fair had been Electro: a robot which – according to its publicists - ‘… could walk, talk, count on its fingers, puff a cigarette, and distinguish between red and green with the aid of a photoelectric cell’ (Eames and Eames 1973, p. 105). For all its fakery, this exhibit was the first iteration of the imaginary future of artificial intelligence. Before the 1939 World’s Fair, robots in books and movies had almost always been portrayed as Frankenstein monsters intent on destroying their human creators (Shelley 1969; Lang 2003). Inspired by his visits to the exposition, Isaac Asimov decided to change this negative image. Just like Electro, the robots in his sci-fi stories were safe and friendly products of a large corporation (Asimov, 1968, 1968a). By the time that the 1964 New York World’s Fair opened, this positive image of artificial intelligence had become one of the USA’s most popular imaginary futures. In both science fiction and science fact, the robot servant was the symbol of better times to come. ¶At the 1939 New York World’s Fair, Electro was competing against the technological icon of the moment: the motor car. The must-see attractions were Democracity – a model featured in the New York State’s

Perisphere building - and Futurama - a diorama inside the General Motors’ pavilion. Both exhibits promoted a vision of an affluent and hi-tech America of the 1960s. In this imaginary future, the majority of population lived in family homes in the suburbs and commuted to work in their own motor cars (Exposition Publications 1939, pp. 42-45, 207-209). For most visitors to the 1939 New York World’s Fair, this prophecy of consumer prosperity must have seemed like a utopian dream. The American economy was still recovering from the worst recession in the nation’s history, Europe was on the brink of another devastating civil war and East Asia was already engulfed by murderous conflicts. Yet, by the time that the 1964 World’s Fair opened, the most famous prediction of the 1939 exposition had been realised.

However sceptical visitors might have been back in 1939, the Democracity and Futurama dioramas seemed remarkably prescient twenty-five years later. By the early-1960s, America was a suburban-dwelling, car-owning consumer society. The imaginary future had become contemporary reality.

‘The motor car… directs [social] behaviour from economics to speech.

Traffic circulation is one of the main functions of a society… Space [in urban areas] is conceived in terms of motoring needs and traffic problems take precedence over accommodation… it is a fact that for many people the car is perhaps the most substantial part of their ‘living conditions’.’ (Lefebvre 1984, p. 100.) ¶Since the predictions of the 1939 exposition had largely come true, visitors to the 1964 New York World’s Fair could have been forgiven 97 for believing that its three main imaginary futures would also be realised. Who could doubt that - by 1990 at the latest – the majority of Americans would be enjoying the delights of space tourism and unmetered electricity? Best of all, they would be living in a world where sentient machines were their devoted servants. However, the American public’s confidence in these imaginary futures would have been founded upon a mistaken sense of continuity. Despite being held on the same site and having many of the same exhibitors, the 1964 World’s Fair had a very different focus from its 1939 antecedent.

Twenty-five years earlier, the centrepiece of the exposition had been the motor car: a mass produced consumer product. In contrast, the stars of the show at the 1964 World’s Fair were state-funded technologies for fighting the Cold War. Computers calculated the trajectories which would guide American missiles armed with nuclear bombs to destroy Russian cities and their unfortunate inhabitants (Isaacs and Dowling 1998, pp. 230-243). While its 1939 predecessor had showcased motorised transportation for the masses, the stars of the 1964 World’s Fair were the machines of atomic armageddon. ¶When the IBM pavilion was being designed, the corporation had to deal with this public relations problem. Like nuclear reactors and space rockets, computers had also been developed as Cold War weaponry. ENIAC – the first prototype mainframe built in America – was a machine for calculating tables to improve the accuracy of artillery

guns (Ceruzzi 2003, p. 15). From the early-1950s onwards, IBM’s computer division was focused on winning orders from the Department of Defence (Pugh 1995, pp. 167-172). Using mainframes supplied by the corporation, the US military prepared for nuclear war, organised invasions of ‘unfriendly’ countries, directed the bombing of enemy targets, paid the wages of its troops, ran complex war games and managed its supply chain (Berkeley 1962, pp. 56-7, 59-60, 137-145). Thanks to the American taxpayers, IBM had become the technological leader of the computer industry. ¶When the 1964 New York World’s Fair opened, IBM was still closely involved in a wide variety of military projects. Yet, its pavilion was dedicated to promoting the sci-fi fantasy of thinking machines. Like the predictions of unmetered energy and space tourism, the imaginary 98 future of artificial intelligence distracted visitors at the World’s Fair from discovering the original motivation for developing IBM’s mainframes: killing millions of Russian civilians. Although the superpowers’ imperial hegemony depended upon atomic weapons, the threat of global annihilation made their possession increasingly problematic. Two years earlier, the USA and Russia had almost blundered into a catastrophic war over Cuba (Dallek 2003, pp. 535-574).

Despite disaster being only narrowly averted, the superpowers were incapable of stopping the arms race. In the bizarre logic of the Cold War, the prevention of an all-out confrontation between the two blocs depended upon the continual growth in the number of nuclear weapons held by both sides. The ruling elites of the USA and Russia had difficulties in admitting to themselves – let alone to their citizens – the deep irrationality of this new form of military competition. In a rare moment of lucidity, American analysts invented an ironic acronym for this high-risk strategy of ‘mutually assured destruction’: MAD (Isaacs and Dowling 1998, pp. 230-243; Kahn 1960, pp. 119-189). ¶Not surprisingly, the propagandists of both sides justified the enormous waste of resources on the arms race by promoting the peaceful applications of the leading Cold War technologies. By the time that the 1964 New York World’s Fair opened, the weaponry of genocide had been successfully repackaged into people-friendly products. Nuclear power would soon be providing unmetered energy for everyone.

Space rockets would shortly be taking tourists for holidays on the moon. Almost all traces of the military origins of these technologies had disappeared. Similarly, in the IBM pavilion, the System/360 mainframe was promoted as the harbinger of artificial intelligence.

Visitors were expected to admire the technological achievements of the corporation not to question its dubious role in the arms race.

The horrors of the Cold War present had been hidden by the marvels of the imaginary future. ¶IBM’s ideological legerdemain was made much easier by one of the distinguishing features of industrial modernity: the breaking of the explicit links between products and their producers. For millennia,

warriors and priests had overtly extracted the surpluses of the peasantry for their own benefit. But, when Europeans started to privatise land ownership and mechanise handicraft production, a new – and more advanced - economic system was born: liberal capitalism. Entrepreneurs proved that price competition could indirectly coordinate human labour much more efficiently than the direct methods of feudalism. Adventurers discovered that selling commodities in the world market was much more profitable than rack-renting peasants in one locality. For the first time in human history, the productive potential of collective labour was being realised (Smith 1976, pp. 1-287, 401-445; Marx 1976, pp. 762-940). ¶In this new economy, people were required to interact with each other through things: commodities, money and capital. The distribution and division of labour across the economy was regulated by the prices and wages set by market competition. However, the demise of the aristocracy and the priesthood hadn’t ended class rule. When labour was bought and sold in the capitalist economy, equality within the marketplace resulted in inequality inside the workplace (Marx 1976, pp. 270-280; Rubin 1972, pp. 77-253). Because commodities were exchanged with others of equivalent value, this new form of class rule was very different from its predecessor. Indirect exploitation had replaced direct domination. Above all, the impersonal movements of the markets now determined the destiny of individuals. Things not people now ruled the world.

‘The mysterious character of the commodity-form consists… simply 99 in the fact that the commodity reflects the social characteristics of [women and] men’s own labour as objective characteristics of the products of labour themselves, as the socio-natural properties of these things. Hence it also reflects the social relations of the producers to the sum total of labour as a social relation between objects, a relation which exists apart from and outside the producers.’ (Marx 1976, pp. 164-165) ¶The growth of capitalism created a much more complex division of labour within the economy. In parallel with the proliferation of factory and office jobs, scientific research also emerged as a distinct profession (Bahr 1980; Smith 1976, pp. 7-16). Successful firms grew by not only employing more workers but also investing in new machinery.

In the fetishised world of capitalism, the growth in productivity caused by the increasingly sophisticated cooperation of factory labour and scientific research was expressed as the development of cutting-edge technologies. With human creativity hidden behind the commodity, the process of modernity had acquired a highly visible object as its subject: the ‘… automatic system of machinery … a moving power that moves itself.’ (Marx 1973, p. 692). ¶During the mid-twentieth century, the fetishisation of technology reached its apotheosis in the prophecy of artificial intelligence.

Living in a society where new machinery appeared to be the driving force of social evolution, Turing and von Neumann’s claim that ma-

chines were evolving into living beings didn’t seem outlandish. When computers were operating, the labour involved in developing their hardware and writing their programs wasn’t immediately visible. Mesmerised by technological fetishism, the admirers of Turing and von Neumann had convinced themselves that an electronic brain would soon be able to think just like a human brain. In 1964, the calculating power of the System/360 mainframe was so great that this IBM machine seemed be on the threshold of consciousness. The creation was about to become the creator.

Cybernetic Supremacy ¶At the 1964 World’s Fair, imaginary futures temporarily succeeded in concealing the primary purpose of its three iconic technologies from the American public. But even the flashiest showmanship couldn’t hide dodgy use values forever. As the decades passed, none of the predictions made at the World’s Fair about the key Cold War technologies were realised. Energy remained metered, tourists didn’t visit the moon and computers never became intelligent. Unlike the prescient vision of motoring for the masses at the 1939 World’s Fair, the prophecies about the star technologies of the 1964 exposition seemed almost absurd twenty-five years later. Hyper-reality had collided with reality – and lost. ¶Despite the failure of its prophecy, IBM suffered no damage. In stark contrast with nuclear power and space travel, computing was the Cold War technology which successfully escaped from the Cold War. Right from the beginning, machines made for the US military were also sold to commercial clients (Pugh 1995, pp. 152-155). By the time that IBM built its pavilion for the 1964 World’s Fair, the imaginary future of artificial intelligence had to hide more than the unsavoury military applications of computing. Commodity fetishism also performed its classic function of concealing the role of human labour within production. Computers were described as ‘thinking’ so the hard work involved in designing, building, programming and operating them could be discounted. Above all, the prophecy of artificial intelligence obscured the role of technological innovation within American workplaces. ¶The invention of computers came at an opportune moment for big business. During the first half of the twentieth century, large corporations had become the dominant institutions of the American economy. Henry Ford’s giant car factory became the eponymous symbol of the new social paradigm: Fordism (Ford and Crowther 1922; Aglietta 1979). When it boosted their profits, corporations replaced the indirect regulation of production by markets with direct supervision by bureaucrats. As the wage-bill for white-collar employees steadily rose, businesses needed increasing amounts of equipment to raise productivity within the office. Long before the invention of the computer, Fordist corporations were running an information economy with

100

tabulators, typewriters and other types of office equipment (Beniger 1986, pp.

291-425). However, by the beginning of the 1950s, the mechanisation of clerical labour had stalled. Increases in productivity in the office were lagging well behind those in the factory. When the first computers appeared on the market, corporate managers quickly realised that the new technology offered a solution to this pressing problem (Sobel 1981, pp. 95-184). The work of large numbers of tabulator operators could now be done by a much smaller group of engineers using a mainframe (Berkeley 1962, p. 5). Even better, the new technology of computing enabled capitalists to deepen their control over their organisations. Much more information about many more topics could now be collected and processed in increasingly complex ways. The managers were masters of all that they surveyed. ¶Almost from its first appearance in the workplace, the mainframe was caricatured – with good reason - as the mechanical perfection of bureaucratic tyranny. In Asimov’s sci-fi stories, Mr and Mrs Average were the owners of robot servants. Yet, when the first computers arrived in America’s factories and offices, this new technology was controlled by the bosses not the workers. In 1952, Kurt Vonnegut published a sci-fi novel which satirised the authoritarian ambitions of corporate computing. In his dystopian future, the ruling elite had delegated the management of society to an omniscient artificial intelligence.

‘EPICAC XIV… decided how many [of] everything America and her customers could have and how much they would cost. And it… would de101 cide how many engineers and managers and… civil servants, and of what skills, would be needed to deliver the goods; and what I.Q. and aptitude levels would separate the useful men [and women] from the useless ones, and how many… could be supported at what pay level…’

(Vonnegut 1969, p. 106.) ¶At the 1964 World’s Fair, the IBM pavilion promised that thinking machines would be the servants of all of humanity. Yet, at the same time, its sales personnel were telling the bosses of large corporations that computers were hard-wiring bureaucratic authority into modern society. Herbert Simon – one of America’s leading management theorists and a former colleague of von Neumann – foresaw that the increasing power of mainframes would enable companies to automate more and more clerical tasks. Just like in the factory, machines were taking over from human labour in the office. When artificial intelligence arrived, mainframes would almost completely replace bureaucratic and technical labour within manufacturing. The ultimate goal was the creation of the fully automated workplace. Companies would then no longer need either blue-collar or white-collar workers to make products or provide services. Even most managers would become surplus to requirements. Instead, thinking machines would be running the factories and offices of America (Simon 1965, pp. 26-52). In the imaginary future of artificial intelligence, the corporation and the computer would be one and the same thing.

¶This prediction was founded upon von Neumann’s conservative interpretation of cybernetics. In his management theory texts, Simon argued that the workings of a firm resembled the operations of a computer. As in McCulloch and Pitts’ psychology, this identification was made in two directions. Managing workers was equated with programming a computer. Writing software was like drawing up a business plan. Both employees and machinery were controlled by orders issued from above. The workers’ dystopia of Big Brother mainframe had now mutated into the capitalist utopia of cybernetic Fordism. Ironically, the credibility of Simon’s managerial ideology depended upon his readers forgetting the fierce criticisms of corporate computing made by the founding father of systems theory. Echoing Marx, Wiener had warned that the primary role of new technology under capitalism was 102 to intensify the exploitation of the workers. Instead of creating more leisure time and improving living standards, the computerisation of the economy under Fordism would increase unemployment and cut wages (Wiener 1967, pp. 206-221). If Vonnegut’s dystopia was to be avoided, American trade unionists and political activists must mobilise against the corporate Golem (Wiener 1966, pp. 54-55). According to Wiener, cybernetics proved that artificial intelligence threatened the freedoms of humanity.

‘Let us remember that the automatic machine… is the precise equivalent of slave labour. Any labour which competes with slave labour must accept the economic conditions of slave labour.’ (Wiener 1967, p. 220.) ¶For business executives, Vonnegut and Wiener’s nightmare was their computer daydream. However, this corporate vision of cybernetic Fordism meant forgetting the history of Fordism itself. This economic paradigm had been founded upon the successful co-ordination of mass production with mass consumption. Ironically, since these exhibits were more closely connected to social reality, Democracity and Futurama in 1939 provided a much more accurate prediction of the development path of computing than the IBM pavilion did in 1964.

Just like motor cars twenty-five years earlier, this new technology was also slowly being transformed from a rare, hand-made machine into a ubiquitous, factory-produced commodity. As in the Ford factories, IBM’s System/360 mainframes were manufactured on assembly-lines (Pugh, Johnson and Palmer 1991, pp. 87-105, 204-210). These opening moves towards the mass production of computers anticipated what would be most important advance in this sector twenty-five years later: the mass consumption of computers. In its formal design, the 1964 System/360 mainframe was a bulky and expensive prototype of the much smaller and cheaper IBM PCs of 1989. ¶The imaginary future of artificial intelligence was a way of avoiding thinking about the likely social consequences of the widespread ownership of computers. In the early-1960s, Big Brother mainframe belonged to big government and big business. Above all, feedback was knowledge of the ruled monopolised by the rulers. However, as Wiener

had pointed out, Fordist production would inevitably transform expensive mainframes into cheap commodities (Wiener 1967, pp. 210-211). In turn, increasing ownership of computers was likely to disrupt the existing social order. For the feedback of information within human institutions was most effective when it was two-way (Wiener 1967, pp. 67-73). By reconnecting conception and execution, cybernetic Fordism threatened the social hierarchies which underpinned Fordism itself. ‘… the simple coexistence of two items of information is of relatively small value, unless these two items can be effectively combined in some mind… which is able to fertilises one by means of the other. This is the very opposite of the organisation which every member travels a preassigned path…’ (Wiener 1967, p. 172.) ¶At the 1964 World’s Fair, this possibility was definitely not part of IBM’s imaginary future. Rather than aiming to produce ever greater numbers of more efficient machines at cheaper prices, the corporation was focused on steadily increasing the capabilities of its computers to preserve its near-monopoly over the military and corporate market. Instead of room-sized machines shrinking down into desktops, laptops and, eventually, mobile phones, IBM was convinced that computers would always be large and bulky mainframes. The corporation fervently believed that - if this path of technological progress was extrapolated - artificial intelligence must surely result. Crucially, this conservative recuperation of cybernetics implied that sentient machines would inevitably evolve into lifeforms which were more ad103 vanced than mere humans. The Fordist separation between conception and execution would have achieved its technological apotheosis. ¶Not surprisingly, IBM was determined to counter this unsettling interpretation of its own futurist propaganda. At the 1964 World’s Fair, the corporation’s pavilion emphasised the utopian possibilities of computing. Yet, despite its best efforts, IBM couldn’t entirely avoid the ambiguity inherent within the imaginary future of artificial intelligence. This fetishised ideology could only appeal to all sections of American society if computers fulfilled the deepest desires of both sides within the workplace. Therefore, in the exhibits at its pavilion, IBM promoted a single vision of the imaginary future which combined two incompatible interpretations of artificial intelligence.

On the one hand, workers were told that all their needs would be satisfied by sentient robots: servants who never tired, complained or questioned orders. On the other hand, capitalists were promised that their factories and offices would be run by thinking machines: producers who never slacked off, expressed opinions or went on strike.

Robby the Robot had become indistinguishable from EPICAC XIV. If only at the level of ideology, IBM had reconciled the class divisions of 1960s America. In the imaginary future, workers would no longer need to work and employers would no longer need employees. The sci-fi fantasy of artificial intelligence had successfully distracted people from questioning the impact of computing within the workplace. After

visiting IBM’s pavilion at the 1964 World’s Far, it was all too easy to believe that everyone would win when the machines acquired consciousness.

Inventing New Futures ¶Forty years later, we’re still waiting for the imaginary future of artificial intelligence. In the intervening period, we’ve been repeatedly promised its imminent arrival. Yet, despite continual advances in hardware and software, machines are still incapable of ‘thinking’. The nearest thing to artificial intelligence which most people have encountered are characters in video games. But, as the growing popularity of on-line gaming demonstrates, a virtual opponent is a poor substitute for a 104 human player. Looking back at the history of this imaginary future, it is obvious that neither the optimistic nor the pessimistic versions of artificial intelligence have been realised. Robby the Robot isn’t our devoted servant and EPICAC XIV doesn’t control our lives.

Instead of evolving into thinking machines, computers have become consumer goods. Room-sized mainframes have kept on shrinking into smaller and smaller machines. Computers are everywhere in the modern world – and their users are all too aware that they’re dumb. ¶Repeated failure should have discredited the imaginary future of artificial intelligence for good. Yet, its proponents remain unrepentant. Four decades on from the 1964 World’s Fair, IBM is still claiming that its machines are on the verge of acquiring consciousness (Bell 2004, p. 2). The persistence of this sci-fi fantasy demonstrates the continuing importance of von Neumann’s conservative appropriation of cybernetics within the computer industry. As in the early-1960s, artificial intelligence still provides a great cover story for the development of new military technologies. Bringing on the Singularity seems much more friendly than collaborating with American imperialism. Even more importantly, this imaginary future continues to disguise the impact of computing within the workplace.

Both managers and workers are still being promised technological fixes for socio-economic problems. The dream of sentient machines makes better media copy than the reality of cybernetic Fordism. At the beginning of the 21st century, artificial intelligence remains the dominant ideological manifestation of the promise of computing. ¶The credibility of this imaginary future depends upon forgetting its embarrassing history. Looking back at how earlier versions of the prophecy were repeatedly discredited encourages deep scepticism about its contemporary iterations. Our own personal frustrations with computer technology should demonstrate the improbability of its transformation into the Silicon Messiah. Forty years after the New York World’s Fair, artificial intelligence has become an imaginary future from the distant past. What is needed instead is a much more sophisticated analysis of the potential of computing. Wiener – not von Neumann – must be our cybernetic guru. The study of his-

tory should inform the reinvention of the future. Messianic mysticism must be replaced by pragmatic materialism. Above all, this new image of the future should celebrate computers as tools for augmenting human intelligence and creativity. Praise for top-down hierarchies of control must be superseded by the advocacy of two-way sharing of information. Let’s be inspired and passionate about imagining our own visions of the better times to come (Barbrook and Schultz 1997; Barbrook 2000). •

105

========================================================

The arguments in this article are developed further in Richard Barbrook, Imaginary Futures: from thinking machines to the global village, Pluto, London 2007. Check out the book’s website: <www.imaginaryfutures.net>.

========================================================

References Agar, J. (2001) Turing and the Universal Machine: the making of the modern computer, Cambridge: Icon.

Agar, J. (2003) The Government Machine: a revolutionary history of the computer, Cambridge Mass: MIT Press.

Aglietta, M. (1979) A Theory of Capitalist Regulation: the US experience, London: Verso.

Asimov, I. (1968) I, Robot, London: Panther.

Asimov, I. (1968a) The Rest of the Robots, London: Panther.

Bahr, H.-D. (1980) ‘The Class Structure of Machinery: notes on the value form’ in P. Slater (ed.), Outlines of a Critique of Technology, London: Ink Links, pp.

101-141.

Barbrook, R. (2000) ‘Cyber-communism: how the Americans are superseding capitalism in cyberspace’, Science as Culture, No. 1, Vol. 9, pp. 5-40, <www.imaginaryfutures.net/2007/04/17/cyber-communism-how-the-americans-are-supersedingcapitalism-in-cyberspace>.

Barbrook, R. and Schultz, P. (1997) ‘The Digital Artisans Manifesto’, ZKP 4, Ljubljana: nettime, pp. 52-53, <www.ljudmila.org/nettime/zkp4/72.htm>.

Bell, J. (2004) ‘Exploring the ‘Singularity’’, <www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame. html?main=/articles/art0584.html?m%3D1>.

Beniger, J. (1986) The Control Revolution: technological and economic origins of the information society, Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press.

Berkeley, E. (1962) The Computer Revolution, New York: Doubleday.

Cameron, J. (dir.) (1984) The Terminator, MGM/United Artists.

Ceruzzi, P. (2003) A History of Modern Computing, Cambridge Mass: MIT Press.

Conway, F. and Siegelman, J. (2005) Dark Hero of the Information Age: in search of Norbert Wiener father of cybernetics, New York: Basic Books.

Dallek, R. (2003) John F. Kennedy: an unfinished life 1917-1963, London: Penguin.

DeLamarter, R. (1986) Big Blue: IBM’s use and abuse of power, London: Pan. Eames, C. and Eames, R. (1973) A Computer Perspective: a sequence of 20th century ideas, events and artefacts from the history of the information machine, Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press.

Editors of Time-Life Books (1964) Official Guide New York World’s Fair 1964/5, New York: Time.

Edwards, P. (1996) The Closed World: computers and the politics of discourse in Cold War America, Cambridge Mass: MIT Press.

Exposition Publications (1939) Official Guide Book of the New York World’s Fair 1939, New York: Exposition Publications.

Ford, H. and Crowther, S. (1922) My Life and Work, London: William Heinemann.

Heims, S. (1980) John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener: from mathematics to the technologies of life and death, Cambridge Mass: MIT Press.

Heims, S. (1991) The Cybernetics Group, Cambridge Mass: MIT Press.

Hodges, A. (1992) Alan Turing: the enigma, London: Vintage.

Honda (2004) ‘Asimo’, <world.honda.com/ASIMO>.

Isaacs, J. and Dowling, T. (1998) Cold War: for 45 years the world held its breath, London: Bantam.

Kahn, H. (1960) On Thermonuclear War, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Ray Kurzweil, (2004) ‘The Intelligent Universe’, <www.kurzweilai.net/meme/ frame.html?main=memelist.html?m=3%23534>.

Lang, F. (dir.) (2003) Metropolis, Eurekavideo.

Laurence, W. (1964) Science at the Fair, New York: New York 1964-1965 Fair Corporation.

Lefebvre, H. (1984) Everyday Life in the Modern World, New Brunswick: Transaction Publications.

Leslie, S. (1993) The Cold War and American Science: the military-industrial complex at MIT and Stanford, New York: Columbia University Press.

106

Lewontin, R.C. (1997) ‘The Cold War and the Transformation of the Academy’ in A. Schiffin (ed.), The Cold War and the University, New Press, New York, pp. 1-34.

Luce, H. (1941) The American Century, New York: Time.

Marx, K. (1973) Grundrisse, London: Penguin.

Marx, K. (1976) Capital Volume 1: a critique of political economy, London: Penguin.

McCulloch, W. and Pitts, W. (1943) ‘A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity’, Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics, Volume 5, pp. 115-133.

Minsky, M. (2004) ‘Steps Towards Artificial Intelligence’, <web.media.edu/~minsky/ papers/steps.html>.

Minsky M. (2004) ‘Matter, Mind and Models’, <web.media.edu/~minsky/papers/MatterMindModels.txt>. von Neumann, J. (1966) The Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata, Urbana: University of Illinois Press. von Neumann, J. (1976) ‘The General and Logical Theory of Automata’. Collected Works Volume V: design of computers, theory of automata and numerical analysis, Oxford: Pergamon Press, pp. 288-326. von Neumann, J. (2000) The Computer and the Brain, Yale: Yale University Press.

Pugh, E. (1995) Building IBM: shaping an industry and its technology, Cambridge Mass: MIT Press.

Pugh, E., Johnson, L. and Palmer, J. (1991) IBM’s 360 and Early 370 Systems, Cambridge Mass: MIT Press.

Rubin, I. (1972) Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value, Detroit: Black & Red,.

Schaffer, S. (2000) ‘OK Computer’, <www.imaginaryfutures.net/2007/04/16/okcomputer-by-simon-schaffer>.

Schefter, J. (1999)The Race: the definitive story of America’s battle to beat Russia to the moon, London: Century.

Shelley, M. (1969) Frankenstein: the modern Prometheus, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Simon, H. (1965) The Shape of Automation for Men and Management, New York: Harper.

Sobel, R. (1981) IBM: colossus in transition, New York: Truman Talley.

Smith, A. (1976) An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations Volume 1 & Volume 2, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Stanton, J. (2004) ‘Best of the World’s Fair’, <naid.sppsr.ucla.edu/ny64fair/ map-docs/bestoffair.htm>.

Stanton, J. (2004a) ‘Building the 1964 World’s Fair’, <naid.sppsr.ucla.edu/ny64fair/map-docs/buildingfair.htm>.

Startrek.com (2005), ‘Data’, <www.startrek.com/startrek/view/series/TNG/ character/1112457.html>.

Stern, R., Mellins, T. and Fishman, D. (1997) New York 1960: architecture and urbanism between the Second World War and the Bicentennial, Köln: Benedikt Taschen.

Turing, A., (2004) ‘On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem’ in B. J. Copeland (ed.), The Essential Turing: seminal writings in computing, logic, philosophy, artificial intelligence and artificial life plus the secrets of the Enigma, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 58-90.

Turing, A., (2004a) ‘Lecture on the Automatic Computing Engine’ in B. J. Copeland (ed.), The Essential Turing: seminal writings in computing, logic, philosophy, artificial intelligence and artificial life plus the secrets of the Enigma, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 378-394.

Turing, A., (2004b) ‘Intelligent Machinery’ in B. J. Copeland (ed.), The Essential Turing: seminal writings in computing, logic, philosophy, artificial intelligence and artificial life plus the secrets of the Enigma, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 410-432.

Turing, A., (2004c) ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’ in B. J. Copeland (ed.), The Essential Turing: seminal writings in computing, logic, philosophy,

107

artificial intelligence and artificial life plus the secrets of the Enigma, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 433-464.

Turing, A., (2004d) ‘Intelligent Machinery, a Heretical Theory’ in B. J. Copeland (ed.), The Essential Turing: seminal writings in computing, logic, philosophy, artificial intelligence and artificial life plus the secrets of the Enigma, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 472-475.

Turing, A., (2004e) ‘Can Digital Computers Think?’ in B. J. Copeland (ed.), The Essential Turing: seminal writings in computing, logic, philosophy, artificial intelligence and artificial life plus the secrets of the Enigma, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 482-486.

Vinge, V. (1993) ‘The Coming Technological Singularity: how to survive in the posthuman era’, VISION-21 Symposium, 30-31 March, <www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/vinge/ misc/singularity.html>.

Vonnegut, K. (1969) Player Piano, St. Albans: Panther.

Wiener, N. (1948) Cybernetics – or command and control in the animal and the machine, New York: John Wiley.

Wiener, N. (1966) God & Golem, Inc.: a comment of certain points where cybernetics impinges on religion, Cambridge Mass: MIT Press.

Wiener, N. (1967) The Human Use of Human Beings: cybernetics and society, New York: Avon Books.

Wilcox, F. (dir.) (1999) Forbidden Planet, Turner Entertainment.

108

Network Maps, Energy Diagrams / Structure and Agency in the Global System Brian Holmes

The Internet is the vector of a new geography – not only because it conjures up virtual realities, but because it shapes our lives in society, and shifts our perceptions along with the ground beneath our feet. Networks have become the dominant structures of cultural, economic and military power. Yet that power remains largely invisible. How can the networked society be represented? And how can it be navigated, appropriated, reshaped in its turn? ¶Reflecting in the early 1980s on the spatial chaos that technological and financial developments had impressed upon contemporary cities, Fredric Jameson pointed to the need for “an aesthetics of cognitive mapping” to resolve “the incapacity of our minds, at least at present, to map the great global multinational and decentered com111 municational network in which we find ourselves caught as individual subjects.” He conceived this cartographic aesthetics as a collective pedagogy, whose challenge would be to correlate the abstract knowledge of global realities with the imaginary figures that orient our daily experience. Epistemological shifts, pushed forward by the use of sophisticated technical instruments, would need to be paralleled by the deployment of radically new visual vocabularies, in order to produce a clearer understanding of contemporary symbolic relations (social roles, class divides, hierarchies) and a fresh capacity for political intervention in the postmodern world. Only by inventing “some as yet unimaginable new mode of representing” could we “again begin to grasp our positioning as individual and collective subjects and regain a capacity to act and struggle which is at present neutralized by our spatial as well as our social confusion.”1 ¶Twenty years later, what has become of the mapping impulse? What new forms of cartography have arisen to chart the virtual/real spaces of the present? What kinds of agency do they permit? What modes of social organization do they foster? Can critical and dissenting maps be distinguished among the established and dominant ones?

Let’s start by looking at an impressive technical and aesthetic feat: the “Skitter Graph” by the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (Caida) – an academic offshoot of the military-industrial complex, based in the city of San Diego. This map shows a record of peering sessions between some 12,500 “autonomous systems” (basically equivalent to Internet Service Providers, or ISPs).2 To produce it, twenty-five different monitoring points run a “traceroute” program known as Skitter over a period of two weeks, following packets from over 1,100,000 IP addresses. The researchers analyze the path of the packet stream, which is only considered significant when it goes outside its autonomous system of origin. Information from the Border Gateway Protocol database is used to track each message

112

back to a localized ISP. The graph displays the major link lines between the autonomous systems, and represents the quantity of outgoing connections per ISP, placing the lower values on the edges, in light blue, with higher intensities as you move toward the center, in dark blue, violet, orange and finally yellow. But to give all this data the form of a world map, it is also organized by the geographical location of the ISPs – or at least, their head offices – which are distributed around the circle according to longitude. ¶The autonomous systems fall into three major groups. At the bottom are those in North America — from San Jose and Vancouver to the Eastern seaboard — clearly dominating the Western hemisphere. Slightly

further east are two exceptions: Buenos Aires and Sao Paulo/Rio, indicating the only significant connectivity in South America. Next comes Europe, with a great arc of ISPs stretching from London to Moscow; Pretoria falls in the middle, the one African city to be mentioned. On the upper left is Asia, with peak intensities in Tokyo, Seoul and Hong Kong, and lower values in Singapore, Perth and Sydney. Only in the 2005 version of this map does the immensely productive population of mainland China even begin to make a significant showing on this map of outgoing connections. ¶The Skitter Graph presents the raw facts of location and transmission: a geography of unqualified information flow. But what does it tell us about social relations? It can be compared to the map of “Centers and Peripheries,” elaborated by the geographer Denis Retaillé in 1992 and published in a 1994 volume on the “globalization of capital” by the economist François Chesnais.3 This map shows three things. First, a circuit linking the United States, Western Europe and Japan, the so-called “Triad” regions, which form a “global oligopoly” accounting for the majority of industrial and financial exchanges.

Second, the major nodes of the world network, represented by densely outlined circles. And third, the hierarchical relations between the regions, as described with these categories: center; periphery integrated to the center; an113 nexed periphery; exploited periphery; abandoned periphery. Chesnais performs a Marxist analysis, showing how globally fragmented production lines are coordinated through the computerized circuits of the financial sphere. His map describes the hierarchy of social relations in a post-national era, when no political formation can erect any substantial barrier to the dictates of capital. And it reveals the near-perfect correlation between the graph of virtual flows and the geography of human exploitation. ¶Having identified a dominant map, I now want to ask the political question. Where do the forces of resistance come from, and how do they gain agency in an era of planetary management and control? ¶To get an idea, you can log back onto the Caida site and look at an animated version of exactly the same information used in the Skitter Graph. Each frame of this movie-map is a snapshot of Internet usage across the world during a few hours time; five different images were compiled every two days, over a period of some eighteen months. The result is an extraordinary visual experience. The ISPs turn green and advance toward the center as their connectivity increases; the link lines shift as the routing structure reconfigures to meet the moment’s demands. We watch the diurnal flux of the Internet, and feel the complex, disjunctive rhythm of the global information machine.

It’s like the pulsing of a hive, a planetary brain: the cognitive and imaginary activity of untold millions of individuals, establishing far-flung connections.

What the activation of the Skitter Graph reveals – as though despite itself – is the micro-political dimension of the global production system: not a stratified representation, but a generative diagram. ¶The visual spectacle of this animated map can help us to sense the presence of an underlying diagram, in the sense described by Gilles Deleuze: “a cartography that is coextensive with the whole social field.”4 The notion of the diagram, derived from Michel Foucault’s work on the microphysics of power, does not designate a static grid, a preconceived template for the application of a unified force. Rather it describes a productive matrix: a dynamic field where tensions culminate at an al114 most infinite number of heterogeneous points. Each of these ‘points’ – human beings, but also their material objects and inventions – is entwined in singular and evolving relations to others, relations of power that involve both constraint and freedom. From the interplay of such relations, functional patterns and statistical averages emerge. These can be codified as stratified ‘laws’ within the social sciences. They can be charted in a synoptic table, by representations like the Skitter Graph or the map of centers and peripheries. But beyond the stratified structures, the vital dynamics of each period arise from what Deleuze calls strategies, which can be understood as the generative moves of social experimentation. ¶Thus we can distinguish between a determinate network map — a geographical representation of structures of networked power, which attempts to identify and measure the forces at play – and an undetermined energy diagram, which opens up a field of possible agency.

Deleuze describes the diagram of power as “highly unstable or fluid… constituting hundreds of points of emergence or creativity.” His aim is to indicate the openness, the possibility for intervention that inheres to every social relation, because of the limited but real power that flows through each of the participants. Thus at its point of application, where individual behavior is molded into functional patterns by the convergence of mutually reinforcing constraints, power can also fold in upon itself, producing resistance and alterity through its own redoubling in the subject, then its subsequent dispersal. This understanding of the way that social hierarchies can be altered or dissolved by a deliberate twisting or counter-application of the very forces that make them cohere was the fundamental breakthrough of French critical thinking in the late 1979s and early 1980s, going beyond the deterministic schemas of traditional Marxism (even that of Louis Althusser), but without abandoning the description of dominant structures. At stake here is a fundamental concept of resistance and exodus. Two decades later, that epistemological breakthrough has lent momentum to an aesthetics of critical and dissident cartography, capable of twisting the techniques and visual languages of network maps away from their normalized uses,

and thereby pointing to a place for autonomous agents within the global information grid. ¶Jameson saw the correlation of abstract knowledge and imaginary figures as key to understanding contemporary symbolic structures, and regaining the capacity to act within them. A range of recent mapping projects, all dealing with the forms of social organization, will serve as exemplars of this process. They can be arrayed within a circle marked by four cardinal points and traversed by two major oppositions. power

dissemanation

constitution

swarm At the top of the compass, an initial group of maps offers critical depictions of hierarchically concentrated cultural, economic and military power. At its polar opposite, another group invokes swarms of self-organizing singularities. In the right-hand quadrant are diagrams of social networks in the process of constitution, represented either in their tendency toward the concentration of power, or in their moment of dispersion into all-channel meshworks. And in the 115 left-hand quadrant, opposite these constitutive diagrams, we find the cartography of dissemination, which traces and effaces the footfalls of wanderers in the global labyrinth. ¶The cardinal examples of the first group are the flowcharts by Bureau d’Etudes, such as “The World Government” (2003), which can be seen as a culmination of the critical analysis of globalization carried out scholars and social movements since the early 1990s. This information map uses pictograms to represent over forty different categories of actors, linked into a continuous and contradictory network. At the center is a financial core, populated by transnational investment groups. Around these groups, in a structure of nested rings, are the most powerful nation-states, themselves subsumed under regional or strategic ensembles. Major industries, service providers and transnational organizations appear in direct or ambiguous relations to these blocs. The effect is one of arresting detail, compelling the eye to a seemingly endless iteration of links. But if you draw back, this extraordinarily complex map reveals rounded, almost cosmological forms, small enough to be seen in a single gaze.

“To understand a real thing in its totality we always tend to work from its parts. The resistance it offers us is overcome by dividing it,” writes the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss. He compares this analytic process to the effect of artistic miniatures:

“Reduction in scale reverses this situation. Being smaller, the object as a whole seems less formidable. More exactly, this quantitative transposition extends and diversifies our power over a homologue of the thing, and by means of it the latter can be grasped, assessed and apprehended at a glance. A child’s doll is no longer an enemy, a rival or even an interlocutor. In and through it a person is made into a subject.”5 Through miniaturization, the aesthetics of cognitive mapping becomes a way for an individual subject to grasp the complexity of the networked world. ¶The shift from object to subject propels us from one pole of the compass to its opposite, from hierarchies of power to self-organizing swarms. Howard Rheingold has described this new organizational form, showing how “smart mobs” use mobile devices to coordinate actions in

116

real time.6 But the momentary convergence of mobile, self-organized groups goes back at least to the Zapatista uprising, and was used extensively by the counterglobalization movements. The best examples of what might be called “swarm cartography” have come from activist groups in Spain. “Transacciones/Fadaiat” is a “geography of the geopolitical territory of the Straits of Gibraltar,” compiled in 2004 by independent media producers of the group “Hackitectura,” with collaborations from Tangiers and the Canary Islands. One side is a map of power: on a Mercator projection turned upside-down, it shows seagoing migration routes, refugee camps, destination zones, electronic surveillance systems, military installations, internment centers, etc. But the other side traces a complex meshwork of activist groups

on both sides of the Straits, showing their interrelations, their meetings, their evolution over time. The aim is not only to represent, but above all to catalyze a future range of possible interventions by autonomous agents, from direct action protests to immigrant support networks, legal cases, satire, subversion and the production of dissident knowledge. A comparable project was completed in 2004 by activist groups in Barcelona, who created a sophisticated city map to help spark protests against the Universal Forum of Cultures, widely perceived as a mere prop for real-estate speculation along the waterfront. ¶This strategy of diverse, punctual, recurrent interventions was defined

by John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt in their study of Zapatista Social Netwar: “Swarming occurs when the dispersed nodes of a network of

small (and perhaps some large) forces can converge on a target from multiple directions. The overall aim is sustainable pulsing – swarm networks must be able to coalesce rapidly and stealthily on a target, then dissever and re-disperse, immediately ready to recombine for a new pulse.”7 Arquilla and Ronfeldt’s formulation has been highly influential – first among activists, but then for the U.S. government, after the attacks of September 11. The glaring contradiction of a direct-democratic strategy defined by military experts and utilized by terrorists might encourage us to ask how networked organizations actually emerge in contemporary society, and how in the best of cases they also dissolve entirely, avoiding the destinies of instrumentalization or hierarchical stratification.

¶The first question shifts us to the right-hand quadrant of our hypothetical map of maps, to explore the constitutive processes that midway lie between swarm phenomena and hierarchical structures. Social network analysis yields insights here, especially when combined with computerized visualization techniques. The maps by Govcom.org use an “Issue Crawler” to analyze a group of websites, discovering common outgoing links (eg. two included sites both linking to a third one, outside the initial group). Thus they identify a larger network of issues. For example, “Ruckus Camp” starts with the websites of forty-nine organizations, whose common links reveal a remarkably consistent set of almost three hundred activist groups. A more complex document entitled “Climate Change” (http://govcom.org/ publications/drafts/climate_existing.pdf) displays a densely inter118 linked cluster of major international organizations at upper right, relatively isolated from a broader meshwork of NGOs, businesses and domestic governmental agencies. The map illustrates the difficulty for bureaucratic hierarchies to interface with ad hoc civil-society initiatives. But can social network analysis be used to portray the full dynamics of network formation? ¶An intriguing sequence of diagrams entitled “The case of Sklyarov versus Adobe on the Web” (http:// w w w.govco m.org/maps/map _ set_2.0/GCO_ Maps_set_2.0_ Sklyarov.pdf) shows how a constellation of ephemeral allies comes together to defend a Russian programmer’s hack of a proprietary software application. We see the timeline of a smallscale swarm phenomenon, from constitution to final dispersal. Unfortunately, few network analyses deal with such dynamics. More characteristic is Josh On’s ingenious database project, They Rule (www.theyrule.net), which uses a “friend of a friend” algorithm to generate charts of overlapping membership on the boards of America’s Fortune 100 companies, revealing what are arguably the most robust networks of power in the contemporary world. “They Rule” clearly moves toward the hierarchical maps of contemporary capitalist power compiled by Bureau d’Etudes. But the weakness of all such studies is precisely to focus on what sociologists call “strong ties” – eliminating the play of chance encounters and the insurgency of events that continually reshape social existence.

¶When power structures coalesce and harden, the specific opposite of network constitution becomes an issue. The last quadrant of our metamap deals with the cartography of dissemination. The idea of a dispersed, subjective cartography is inspired by Michel de Certeau’s opposition between the representational grid of the modern map and the “spatial practices” of walkers in the city, their “opaque and blind mobility,” narrated through word and footstep. “One can follow the swarming activity of these procedures that, far from being regulated or eliminated by panoptic administration, have reinforced themselves in a proliferating illegitimacy.”8 That phrase can perfectly introduce the “Geograffiti” proposal on www.gpster.net, which involves spontaneously recording waypoints with a GPS device and associating them with impressions about what’s on that particular spot – all to

119

be inscribed on a website accessible to the mobile devices of other passers-by. The dream is to retell the story of the world with your ideas and emotions, even while moving through it. ¶Christian Nold gives that dream another twist, with his Biomapping project (www.biomapping.net). A galvanic sensor is wrapped around a person’s finger, to register the so-called “startle response” that provokes a drop in the electrical resistance of the skin. That information, coupled with continuous waypoint recording by a GPS device, produces a map of the participant’s route through the city in cool green dots, punctuated by bursts of stress or excitement marked in red. Psychogeography goes automatic. But Nold foresees critical ap-

plications too: the Biomapping unit could be connected to additional sensors correlating stress response with pollution, radiation, noise levels and so forth.

The most beautiful example of cartography in motion is Esther Polak’s “Amsterdam RealTime: Diary in Traces,” where GPS-equipped pedestrians sketch out the city plan of Amsterdam as a record of their everyday itineraries.

Their paths appear as lines of light on a black ground, only to be gradually effaced, giving way to the traces of other walkers. But the work is a fragile gesture, fraught with ambiguity: the individual’s wavering life-line appears at once as testimony of human singularity in time, and proof of infallible performance by the satellite mapping system. ¶The increasing use of Geographic Information Systems to profile the 120 habits and desires of consuming populations makes clear the ways that corporate networks can now reach in to seize the very flux of subjective difference. A company like iMapData (www.imapdata.com) sorts such consumer profiles into precise geographic “envelopes” on a digitized city plan (a political jurisdiction, an infrastructure service zone, an area impacted by a major sports facility, a tourist attraction, a natural disaster, etc.). Web access to these maps is sold to businessmen who want to make strategic marketing decisions on the go. Even more impressive is the integration of such privatesector archives to government databases, themselves keyed to the new biometric passports with which security forces seek to track entire populations caught up in the frenetic mobility of the present. An International Campaign Against Mass Surveillance (www.i-cams.org) has been mounted to warn the public of the dangers that may lie ahead. ¶Critical and dissident cartographies arise against the background of these dominant mapping technologies. They appear as counter-behaviors in Michel Foucault’s sense: deliberately denormalized refusals of the reason of state – that is, of transnational state capitalism – elaborated with and against the very tools that consolidate the control society.9 •

Notes 1 Fredric Jameson, “Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,” New Left Review no. 146 (July-August 1984).

2 See the graph and an explanation of the discovery processs at www.caida.org/analysis/ topology/as_core_network. I used the 2003 version. The animated map, discussed below, is accessed on the same page (download the flipbook version).

3 François Chesnais, La mondialisation du capital (Paris: Syros, 1994), p. 26; adapted from M. F. Durand, J. Levy and D. Retallé, Le Monde: espaces et systèmes (Paris: Presses de la Fondation des sciences politiques, 1992).

4 Gilles Deleuze, Foucault (London: Athlone Press, 1988), p. 34.

5 Claude Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (University of Chicago Press, 1966), p.

23.

6 Howard Rheingold, Smart Mobs (Cambridge, MA: Perseus, 2003).

7 D. Ronfeldt, J. Arquilla, et alii, The Zapatista “Social Netwar” in Mexico (Rand Corporation, 1998), chapter 2, available at www.rand.org/publications/ MR/MR994.

8 Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: UC Press, 1984), pp. 91-96.

9 See Michel Foucault, Sécurité, Territoire, Population (Paris: Gallimard/ Seuil, 2004), pp. 195-219 and 362-365.

121

Piratbyrån presents: Four Shreddings and a Funeral

a manuscript: http://piratbyran.org/walpurgis/txt

A walpurgis ritual on spring mountain ¶The spring mountain. The highest point in Stockholm. It’s twilight time at Walpurgis Night. Four piles of the book “Copy Me” are assembled in the formation of a rhomb. ¶In the middle stands the May Queen, in green clothing and a face mask of feathers. In her hand, a burning torch. ¶“Welcome to Piratbyran’s Walpurgis ritual year 2007: “Four shreddings and a funeral”. Today, we will finally put an end to the socalled “file-sharing debate”; the same file-sharing debate that we once took part in initiating has now served its time. ¶When Piratbyran was founded four years ago, there was no such dis125 cussion in Sweden as there is today. There were anti-piracy groups whose words stood unchallenged, but first and foremost there existed a copying without historical equivalent, taking place in file-sharing networks. ¶We gave a voice to that copying, but now it is time to move along. ¶After two years of activity, Piratbyran collected the texts from our webpage and let them be printed printed in a book, entitled Copy Me. This book is the only enduring and burnable document from the past years. By destroying that document we will sweep out the old and frozen positions, and make room for new ones. Everything has its time, and Walpurgis Night is the time to leave bygone stuff behind and greet the spring and its playfulness. ¶Hereby we burn, in four book-fires, four conceptual opposites which we are now done with, and which are already collapsing. ¶[The May Queen initiates fire #1]

126

# Legal/Illegal ¶Copying takes place everywhere and all the time. To use digital data is to copy it. No matter if it’s from hard drive to RAM memory, from one portable device to another or from peer to peer. No matter if the physical distance of the copy is measured in millimeters or miles. No matter if the copy travels through a neurological path, through cable or wireless, on plastic discs, chips or constellations of cells. ¶Still some people prefer to speak for or against file-sharing, as if it was an isolated phenomena. As if the alternatives was no more than two: file-sharing networks or selling digital files. ¶Yesterday we walked around with megabytes in our pockets, today with gigabytes and tomorrow terabytes. The day after tomorrow, for a reasonable price, we will have tiny storage devices that contain more film, music, text and images than we can ever incorporate into out lives. Everything ready for immediate transfer to another persons device. ¶[The May Queen lights the second fire]

# Here/There

127

¶There is no longer an archive that is yours entirely. Neither an archive completely open to all. The divide between private and public networks, copies and performances does not comply anymore. What’s left are networks through which you have more or less access to different archives. There are localities and communities to take part in, technical and social barriers to access, but there is no fundamental difference between a copy from your external hard drive and one from an open file-sharing network. ¶File-sharing has a potential to create meaning, community and context -- a bigger potential than most other forms of reproduction. We want to keep talking about how that potential may be realized in the best manner possible, how cultural circulation can be organized and how the unleashed forces of the open archives can be used for more that stacking a pile of objects which we care less and less about.

However, we want to stop explaining why file-sharing is righteous or not - as if there was a choice between copying and non-copying. ¶[The May Queen sets the third pile on fire]

128

# Free/Charge ¶To ask if distribution of film and music should be free or cost money is like asking if it should be free or cost money to attend a party.

Sometimes, someone manages to charge a toll when we want to enter a space that summons something better than the spaces that are free, but no one would even think of banning free parties. When do you actually have a party, and when are you just having some fun? ¶The files are already downloaded. The files are already uploaded.

They’ve been going up and down and in and out in abundance. Instead of discussion how the forces of winter are going to sell snow to Eskimos, we want to talk about how to extract meaning from this abundance. ¶[The May Queen initiates the last fire and performs a ritual dance]

# Art/Technology/Life

129

¶The digital networks makes processes, identities, contexts and works infinitely connected. The division between creator, work and consumer is a bleak way of describing cultural circulation and digital lifeforms. ¶The cost of upholding copyright’s abstract relations between art, technology and life is a world that is mute and ever more depopulated. ¶Hence, we are not about anti-copyright but more - Thank you and good bay (sic!). Let’s have a fucking party! ¶[The May Queen spreads the ashes by the wind. In the distance, more fires are lit throughout the Stockholm suburbs.]

¶The file-sharing debate is hereby buried. When we talk about filesharing from now on it’s as one of many ways to copy. We talk about better and worse ways of indexing, archiving and copying, not whether copying is right or wrong. Winter is pouring down the hillside.

Make way for spring! •

S23X BELGRADE BUS LECTURE

BY PIRATBYRÅN

/The lecture by Piratbyrån [Rasmus Fleischer, Magnus Eriksson] held in S23X modified bus, parked in front of the Museum of 25th of May, Belgrade, 7th of November, 2008./

This photo is from the spring mountain in Stockholm1 and that was the place where we made this performance, yes it was in spring last year. What we did there was actually to burn the book Copy Me that we had published in 2005, and we did a statement that can be read here, that the file-sharing debate is over. And in one sense it was we who once started the file-sharing debate. Before, there was only one entity with the name ‘pirate’ in Sweden – The Bureau Against Piracy.

So, more or less, Piratbyrån maybe started out as a joke, we don’t really remember. It was obvious that if there’s an anti-piracy bureau, then there must also be a bureau for pirates, so we started and got an immediate response. Starting this by choosing this name and publicly defending copying, it was quite a new thing. So, I can say 133 we started a file-sharing debate in Sweden, and in 2007, we declared it to be over. And now I’ll try to give some time-lines: I’ll go back from this physical analog space to and connect back to the Internet, because I think this project is very much about the constellation between what is usually known as analog and digital. And since I’m historian I’m obsessed with time-lines, I’ll try to make really brief historization of our views of the digital work. ¶We often talk about the 1990s as an entity, but I will try to break up that periodization and instead talk about one decade from 1995 to 2005, and then another one where we are now, maybe up until 2015, if we go a bit into the future. The period between 1995 and 2005 was the breakthrough of the Internet discourse and of the Internet in everyday life. First as the World Wide Web, then as peer-to-peer.

By 2005, it had somehow stabilized with bit-torrent as a protocol, and with the Pirate Bay. During this time of breakthrough for everyday Internet use from 1995 to 2005, I think one could talk about connectivity, networking, bandwidth, computer capacities as more or less synonymous things – you were more or less online. And if we are to put in some canonic texts, I’d say that the best example – from when this period started – is John Perry Barlow’s text: “Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace”. It’s very funny to read it today and 1 See page 125 of this publication.

one must have ambivalent feelings around it because it sounds in one sense very radical, but in today’s context it also sounds reactionary. Very dialectical.

OK, this very Californian guy, writes this “Declaration of Independence” for the cyberspace in 1996: “Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself”, and he writes that “our identities have no bodies” and to me it looks like one must speak in religious terms about this, it’s like a pure, total separation between body and spirit. Body, matter and anything physical and analog belongs to the past, and now we go into purely new world, where we bring some of the old, but only to digitalize it, to rebuild it again. ¶So, we’ve been thinking a lot about this, the question about analog the digital, and how we talk about it, how we relate to it, how we 134 and conceptualize it for ourselves, what the relation is between cassette tapes and the bus, and so on. And we’ve had fun doing it.

I said that during this time, 1995-2005, you could still conceptualize it as a quantity question: being more or less online... Like our parole “Welfare starts at 100 megabit”. We made some 1st of May demonstrations, of a very new kind, we tried not only to connect with workers’ struggle but also with conspiracies – you know the Illuminati were said to be founded on the 1st of May – and also pagan traditions of Spring rituals, like we did on the Spring mountain… like how you forget the old and move on to the new. I think in the beginning this was still partly in line with this Californian-influenced idea of going from analog to digital, going from 1st of May and instead of the traditional social-democratic parade in Stockholm you say “Welfare starts at 100 megabit!” It was really nice, it turned something around and was able to drawn a map for a new territory.

But today we’d definitely not put it that way, but there are probably other groups in Sweden that does. So I actually think – and this is very speculative thesis, but we need periodizations to orient in time – I think that now, loosely between 2005 and 2015, we live in a period of transition. If we want to draw a parallel to this bus trip, one obvious reference is the tradition of the hippie-bus, in California and other places, but there is also one another reference that can be more important to us through the time, and it’s bus trip made by Neue Slovenische Kunst in the middle of the 1990’s – Transnationale, that traveled from the US east coast to the west, and they published the great book which were very much about the time of transition and how the concept of the art world in the Eastern Europe could relate to the Western art system. So we published a fanzine with this great text of Victor Misiano titled The Institutionalisation of friendship. This text was after the trip, so we mixed, we changed some names of the participants in this bus travel, we changed the talk about transition period of west-east, to discussion about transition from analog to digital which is an obvious topic. It produced no answers, it just presents some different ways to conceptualize that.

We are in a period of transition where we can no longer just talk

about like digitalization as a quantitative question, or to be more or less online. What counts now is not so much like speed, size, computer capacity, but what we do with all this. There was a phrase that just came up one day: The files have been downloaded, there is no more up or down anymore. Maybe it was in 2005. I’d like to think that. In 2005, the files were downloaded and we had to start thinking what to do with them. And to do that we can still extrapolate some technical facts into the future, but not in order to follow some deterministic line of development, but we have to differentiate between this different technical aspects of digitalization, not at least to the question of how storage capacity of the digital media is increasing much faster then the internet bandwidth. It’s sometimes called Kryder’s Law. ¶So if we take all this pocket-sized storage devices... it is predictable that within like 10 or 15 years, and maybe in 2015, we’ll probably be able to hold all the recorded music that had ever been released. And it’s obvious that we can’t just discuss about should it be copied or not, but what to do with it. It’s ridiculous today to talk about whether it should be copied. The question is how to copy, how to use, and how to know what we like to listen to. It’s a scary thought, to think about sitting with all music ever recorded in one playlist. What do you do with it? Do you just press “shuffle”? It wouldn’t be music, it’ll just be a sound. If you turn on short-wave radio it could give more music... Or play melodica – that would make more music than all music on shuffle could ever produce.

135 ¶We all know it, I think. We’ve all been sitting sometimes with two big mp3 archives and don’t know where to start. We had this same experience at the bus, also. It’s a quite analog bus, when the people first hear that The Pirate Bay is going on a busride, everyone is thinking that it’s going to be equipped with all kinds of hi-tech stuff, live-streaming, so much data... but it’s not! And in this travel we really pushed that tape recorder to it’s end, we have been listening to mp3’s that’s been available... It was much stronger musical experience as soon as we bought a new used tape-recorder under the bridge in Belgrade and started playing mix tapes again.

You don’t have this temptation to jump to the next track... Now I’m standing here like a traditionalist disliking mp3 music! But I’m not, it’s not constructive stand to have in a long run, you have to find out ways to handle situation of cultural hyper-abundance and to create meaning out of the abundance. And within the technology discourse of today the standard answer for this is that we must create smarter software, that recognizes what you want to listen and chose it for you... I mean it’s perfectly nice with all this services, social networks, like Last.fm. Last.fm is the perfect example, and I’ve discovered lots of good music which I would never ever discovered if not through Last.fm. But still I think that in the end we must come back through the loop to the same place we were. Because in 2015, we will say “Which of all these social networks should I

use? Which of all this media should I use? Should I hit shuffle?” and you come back to the same situation. So I don’t think that recommendation algorithms – even if they are driven by social networks – can take you away from the terror of the shuffle button. Because the terror of the shuffle button is the main problem today in the terms of music. For me, music is the best place to start this discussion. And also this recommendations systems are based on the idea that every individual has a taste, that you are still individual, and I’m not so sure that it’s true. Maybe we’re more individuals in this climate of cultural hyper-abundance. Your so-called taste is not just something that follows you throughout the life, but it depends on context, if we’ve chosen all this mix tapes today that are glowing in the dark – that’s not just coincidence, it’s fitting very well to the 136 content of the bus. You are not an individual that has a taste that is “enlarged” by software. ¶So, for a contemporary music fan there is no such thing as individual taste that is independent of the context. Of course that we need indexing and software, but we also need communities. Communities are extremely... however you put the question, you can’t like delegate it to software, and in the end we’ll come back to the question of community and context. And the question about what music is always about limits, and being somewhere between totally... the sound that is totally predictable is not music, and the sound that is totally unpredictable is also not music, it’s always somewhere in between that the music is happening. And that is true when you stand on the stage with an instrument and improvise and the instrument itself is a limitation, and it is true if you sit in front of mp3 archive. That’s why I’m not really sure that music can come out of a limitless archive of music, if you imagine yourself just as an individual without context. ¶So, information and the community are very related to the question of copyright, I’ll come back to it. Yes I will. It’s very interesting to see what size of the community is best to decide what we want to hear. I don’t think that a very very very huge group is the most productive one - it is not the size of the community that makes the community, it is also not in the individual – it is somewhere in between. And I think that maybe the number 23 for us – we’ve been experimenting with that number – has been kinda productive... And there are also very similar experiments going right now on by Bill Drummond, the former frontman of The KLF, who basically inspires us a lot and we’ve discovered many affinities... He chooses the number of 17, you go for prime numbers... I don’t know what it means, but maybe community can’t be, like, subdivided too easily, but it has this size: 17 to 23. On this trip we’ve been 9... maybe we should have been 11?

That’s a prime number... maybe, I don’t know. ¶So there are dynamics that are not possible on the stage or in a kitchen, or a bedroom, but in between – like in a bus, for example... and here we get back to copyright. Because copyright does not recog-

nize this in-betweenness. From it’s very beginning, or at least from... I would like to go to this larger periodization... maybe later... However, copyright does not recognize this in-betweenness. Copyright recognizes two modes of interacting with content: either it is private or it is public. And in between are the 17, the 23, and so on. When the activities are enlarging in the middle... like if you open a space in a town and 17 or 23 people are hanging there, listening to music, then after a while there comes a corporate guy and say “Well, is this a public performance or is it a private?” That’s crucial for copyright: when we talk about it it’s very common that we have this idea that copyright is always expanding and that it wants to submit everything to copyright... but that’s not really true. Copyright

is rather working as a modulation of the modes of the private and the public.

Copyright is redefining what community means, what publicness means, what privateness means. And it will always allow free things within the private sphere because otherwise it will collapse. It will always allow you to play music in your home for your family, you won’t have to pay a license for that. So within... when talking in terms of this all-too-easy distinction between analog and digital, it is very easy, but it is much easier within analog architecture then within digital, because there are standardized ways of how we interact: we have a home, the apartment, that’s clearly the private space, you can play whatever music you want, show a movie for your friends. There are also – in the terms of architecture – the arena, that’s obviously a public space.

138 ¶With computer networks it is much much harder to tell the distinction between what is private use and what is public use. ¶The interesting thing with copyright laws and copyright institutions and copyright morals - in the sense that they clash against this informal in-between activities – is that when there is a legal power for copyright to act on this, it tend to force these activities to choose one of these ways: either they choose the way of the private, when they have to keep underground and can’t too openly (approach) to people, can’t advertise on them etc. Or you can go the public way and start paying the license fees. Now we have the example of film... if you have a small pirate cinema which in the beginning has maybe 5 people, next week comes 17, next week 23... oh, maybe it’s not so much people, but if you advertise on the Internet and there comes 77 people and you show them all the movies, then you can be sure that the film-industry guys will say “this is the public performance of this film, you have to pay licenses”, and the licenses for showing the film in public are very high, very high. It means that you have to commercialize, you have to do it totally, you have to be completely public, completely commercial, you have to start selling pop-corn...

It is also related to this kind of non-commercial question. ¶But this is also a problem with copyright critics, my main problem with Creative Commons is that there is no something which is completely commercial or completely non-commercial...

The problem with Creative Commons is that they don’t consider that three categories that you suggest: you suggest private, you suggest some kind of category of community, and the category of public. Creative Commons only suggests private and public.

Yes, the philosophy of this critique is that copyright is not just a repressive power, it’s Foucauldian, in the sense of Foucault.

Copyright is not just repressive, it is also productive: it’s producing certain kind of interaction with cultural artifacts. And in that sense copyright materializes much more within the city, it affects things like what kinds of spaces are those that we use for certain

things, so it goes back to the material. And also it is not only about the architecture of the city, but about the architecture of the computer networks – right now the fight is very much about what kind of in-communities sharing technologies will be allowed. Sharing music on email is not an issue, because they consider it private. And these guys know nothing about this! ¶So, to draw the line between private and public was pretty hard to do during the 20th century. Copyright guys and copyright institutions had lot of problems: what to do with education institutions, religious institutions, and certain other contexts that you don’t know if they should be categorized as private or public... So these are the questions that those corporate guys have to think about a lot. They had to think hard about it in the previous century, but even harder in this century. Because drawing the line between private and public in the architecture itself is kind of easy compared to drawing the line between private and public in computer networks, because computers operate by copying corporate information all the time, copying between, for example, sound card and memory, and between computer and iPod... So where to draw this line between public and private is very very unclear.

This is also about both code and the infrastructure, because you can make something private by code, to have password for it, but also the infrastructure of your network, from your ISP to your cable to the computer, it is private... and if you share to your iPod it is private, it cannot theoretically be controlled.

139 So the question of copyright is not the question of, like, here we got artworks and here we got networks and how should artworks go through the networks. The question is - what do we mean by these two things, it is two questions really. One is, what do we mean with ‘artwork’? The second question is what do we mean with ‘network’? ¶So, yeah, that’s it... [short break] OK, we told you about communities, and this temporariness is really connected with this bus. I think that is one of the main conclusions from our second trip – it is about the difference between being in the bus while it’s rolling, and being in bus while stationed. Because while the bus is rolling you must be in it, you can’t just get out of it, you’re kind of stuck in it. And that is when the real creative outbursts appear. The bus rolls and people immediately start with various workshops, people do things. When the bus stops, there is always a bit of boredom in that, I mean, we always come over it, but it’s just that thing that you can actually get out of it. You have a bit too much freedom, maybe. You can get out of the bus at any time, and therefore you are not forced to start doing stuff. And maybe that’s somehow related to the difference between listening to mix-tapes and listening to music that you recorded as mp3. Because you have to have some limits on what you can do, what

to relate to. Being in the bus that is running means that you’re deemed to be in this community, but of course it’s only for a certain period of time – bus can’t go forever, it’s especially true in the connection with the fact that the fossil fuel is about to end. ¶I quote from this fanzine here: “To a contemporary art the group functions as a foreigner, it’s an alien structure. Our basic aim is to establish this structure, that’s why we’re always talking about strategy. The ultimate threat to art world is not some subjective revolt, it is an alien structure. We are trying to establish that alien structure. The last question is how we relate to this structure personally, and that’s perhaps our biggest blind spot.”

140

This idea of the structure is that the question is not how would networks distribute artworks, or what networks do we use to distribute artworks, but the right question is how through the terms of artwork and network these notions cross-define each other. And of course that this relates to our bus-project, which has not only one author, not presents just one producer of meaning, and it wasn’t really clear what will happen before the bus started rolling. Of course, it’s a bit of a trouble to write a text about what you will do before… And also, when we came down to Bolzano, people – the art journalists – asked if our work was finished yet, and said they will come back the next day if we didn’t finish it today, so that they can write a review of it. So, one of the reasons why this idea came up, to do this trip, was that we found that the bus lost it’s meaning while it was stationed there.

So how the networks and artworks define each other? The answer is ‘connect the dots’. This connecting of dots relates to two things: of course it relates to our project and to connecting the people in the bus with all its objects and structures and so on, but also the another thing that happened a bit before and during our trip in summer was that we were trying to connect a certain Swedish word, that might be a third Swedish word that got internationalized after the words “smörgåsbord” and “ombudsman”, and that is”signalspaning”, where “signal” is signal, while “spanning” means to look for or listen to or somehow spying after signals. The reason that this became a known word this summer in Sweden is because we had something called FRA, the defense radio establishment that during the cold war has been listening to the signals from Russia, basically, to the radiowaves and satellites, and they proposed that they will have resources to transfer this “signalspaning” from radiowaves to cables, so they want to plug-in, they want to basically copy all this traffic that goes in and out from Sweden to their supercomputer and look for patterns, for threats to Sweden, and so on. And this became a really big thing in Sweden, it started on blogs, the protests against this started. Later this summer it culminated in the Parliament because

all the newspapers were against it, because they thought it would be a threat to anonymous communications with the newspapers. And there was a big livesound debate in the Parliament before they voted.

It was actually the day we modified the most of the bus.

A lot of people heard about the reactionary attitude of this, they thought it is against the rights to have privacy and so on, that will be misused and... But we thought about doing more affirmative approach to it, so we adopted, more or less consciously, this idea of signal-spanning during the trip. There are two things that make it impossible to have a signal: if we have no input whatsoever, or if we have too much input – which is just noise. We have to be somewhere in between to be able to find patterns and so on. The question of being between the private and public is connected with that. You can’t create meaning starting from zero and you can’t do it starting with everything. It’s the same way as when we talked about private and public. And the idea of this signal-spanning, that FRA was supposed to do, is to find where terrorist threats are located, and they don’t do this by tracking individuals like in old Big Brother style surveillance - instead, what they are after is the communication, the traffic, patterns, between people and so on. Not interested in what that communication is about, so therefore they can say back: “No, we don’t read your emails - we are just interested in patterns”. • 141 Transcript: Miša Mašina Redaction: Rasmus, Magnus, Vlidi

CIP - Каталогизација у публикацији Народна библиотека Србије, Београд 004.7:316.7(082) WORK Undone = Nezavršen posao / [editor, urednik Vladimir Jerić Vlidi ; translation, prevod Vladimir Jerić, Marko Mladenović ; photo, fotografije Vladan Jeremić, Richard Barbrook, Piratbyrån]. - Beograd : Biro za kulturu i komunikaciju, 2009 (Beograd : Akademija). - 143 str. : ilustr. ; 21 cm Deo teksta uporedo na srp. i engl. jeziku. Tiraž 600. - Napomene i bibliografske reference uz tekst.

ISBN 978-86-907379-4-9 1. Up. stv. nasl. a) Рачунарске мреже - Културолошки аспект Зборници COBISS.SR-ID 172009228

144

Geert Lovink / Richard Barbrook / Brian Holmes / Piratbyrån