[FC-discuss] Is disorder is a strength in open culture?

[Ben Moskowitz]

I don't agree that this question is  flamebait-y, or that it shows a  
lack of clear thinking. It's perfectly consistent with lots of  
research on self-organization and distributed communities. See Shirky  
and especially Weinberger.

Asheesh is right that "disorder" needs a more stable definition in  
this thesis. In a lot of cases open culture is simply synonymous with  
counter-culture—that is one kind of disorder. A different kind of  
disorder is visible when there are no clear organizational structures  
or hierarchies. SFC is a pretty good example of this, since it's  
pretty autonomous.

Yet as Asheesh says, some of these communities have a LOT of self- 
imposed order. Take one look at the insane bureaucracy at Wikipedia;  
does that self-imposed order help the project, or does it make  
Wikipedia less dynamic and flexible? In the Wikipedia case, there's  
arguably a SURPLUS of order. It becomes harder to make contributions  
to a project when it becomes so institutionalized. In that sense, it's  
easy to argue that "disorder" can be a major source of energy.

I can get behind Christian's basic idea. Without condoning piracy, you  
have to admit like a super-distribution system like BitTorrent is  
incredibly efficient and innovative, and also impossible to do  
legitimately. All innovations are born on the edges of legitimacy—when  
Google started, sysadmins all over the world were complaining to the  
Stanford computer lab from which the first Google crawler was leaching  
copies of every resource on their servers. It just seemed wrong. Today  
the legitimacy of search engines and indexing is beyond dispute.

-Ben

On Feb 26, 2010, at 12:37 AM, Asheesh Laroia wrote:

> On Wed, 10 Feb 2010, Christian Villum wrote:
>
>> Science question: I am researching disorder in open culture (open  
>> culture defined as referring to the actors, practices and produce  
>> that constitute an environment of open sharing, prosumerism,  
>> copyright liberalization activism and collaborative development  
>> work).
>>
>> My hypothesis is that the immanent and ubiquitous disorder  
>> (unstable, autonomous, illegal, unpaid and irregular practices) is  
>> a most significant part of what makes open culture vibrant,  
>> dynamic, innovative, productive and even at times what makes it  
>> competitive (compared to similar conventional/proprietary/ 
>> controlled/corporate practices). In other words, that this disorder  
>> is a strength in the open culture, not a flaw. Do you agree?  
>> Disagree? Why and why not?
>>
>> Secondly, I am looking for particular examples from open culture  
>> where disorder is appearant.
>
> So this question is pretty flamebait-y for FC-Discuss, which  
> generally stays on the "legal" side rather than the illegal.
>
> But a few thoughts:
>
> * Windows Mobile and Apple iPhone hacking groups seem to relish  
> legal uncertainty of their position. I think that having a *fight*  
> really helps these groups gather enthusiasm.
>
> * "Irregular" practices could mean either (a) rapidly-changing or  
> (b) unusual. If it means (b) then it's only "irregular" from your  
> perspective. For example, IRC chat is considered "irregular" by most  
> Internet users these days. Yes, Free Software geeks take some pride  
> in their use of a historic but today-obscure protocol.
>
> * Your willingenss to call "unpaid" work evidence of "disorder" is  
> strange, at best.
>
> Take a look at the emergence of freeculture.org chapters,  
> Hackerspaces, the co-working groups, and the Maker community and  
> you'll see that the human beings who participate in open culture  
> find order useful. It's a balancing act. Check out the history of  
> Students for Free Culture. It started out as ad-hoc and disorderly  
> (even possibly illegal -- we won OPG v. Diebold, but we could have  
> lost the case). Today it's so institutionalized we have sponsorship  
> and (I think) a legal entity. There are efficiencies that  
> organization can provide, and open culture groups are no exception.
>
> The Internet itself is "disorderly", but it appears calm to users.  
> You only see the disorder when (for example) an ISP in Pakistan  
> breaks YouTube for much of the rest of the world by fiddling with  
> the routing tables the whole world uses. (see http://blogs.zdnet.com/threatchaos/?p=548 
>  and http://www.circleid.com/posts/82258_pakistan_hijacks_youtube_closer_look 
>  )
>
> Generally, I think your question doesn't show clear thinking or good  
> understanding of the communities we'd call open culture ones. That,  
> or it's bizarrely vague. The answer lies in the specifics and your  
> perspective.
>
> But there are some thoughts.
>
> -- Asheesh.
>
> -- 
> All most people want is a little more than they'll ever get.
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