Hi Eva,
I'm enjoying your exchanges with Paul, but I'm wondering if I am
interpreting you correctly.
You state:
I am working here AGAINST my own tendency to look in the places where
the ideology of voluntary collaboration CAN be believed in.
For my benefit, could you be more specific about such places. Also, your
message implies that the Internet is not a place where voluntary
collaboration can be believed in, (or am I misinterpreting something?).
Could you elaborate on this thought?
Thanks,
Martin R.
On Tue, 18 Jan 2000, Eva Ekeblad wrote:
> 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
>
>
>
>
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