At 10.50 -0800 0-01-17, Paul Dillon wrote:
>Perhaps we suffer from an erred tendency to associate the specific pattern
>of cooperation and exchange that has characterized the internet from its
>inception with other "communitarian visions."
Well... for one thing I am not so sure about the Internet network of
networks as a whole having exhibited these patterns of cooperation and
exchange through the whole of its trajectory. I am working here AGAINST my
own tendency to look in the places where the ideology of voluntary
collaboration CAN be believed in. For another thing, I cannot help but
wonder who are the "we" suffering from this erred tendency. For me it is
still a puzzle I'm trying to get a grip on, the way communitarian
discourses pop up in the most disparate places.
Your LINUX example makes me think about the chain from Mosaic over Netscape
in its versions to Microsoft Exploiter, and of the development of LISTSERV.
Stuff starting out in the free field and being absorbed into the spheres of
profit.
>Here again the parallel with capitalism and feudalism might be instructive.
>You wrote, 'I would like to keep my right to regard them as still an "active
>force". ' Yes, but how strong is that force.
I wasn't happy about the formulation, but as opposed to King et al. I would
like to recognize that communitarian "visions" AND practices continue to be
a "voice" in Internet communication. For one thing, they won't go away just
because they are "deconstructed". For another thing I'm wondering about
their function in the "dialogue" with voices like the one in which Case and
Levin speak.
>I think there's a tendency to
>see the source of the "communitarianism" in the ethos of the 60s generation
>who just so happened to be the generation to integrate the internet into
>their daily practice.
Do you agree with this? And where, in that case does a generation get its
"ethos" from?
>The communitarianism is then not something essential
>in the process of using the internet as I tend to see it.
I agree with you there. But the way you develop the argument from the
previous sentence to this one makes me see I am still clueless as to where
you are "coming from".
Always more explaining to do...
Eva
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Feb 01 2000 - 01:02:20 PST