Christian Siefkes: From Exchange to Contributions: Generalizing Peer Production Into the Physical World (2008) [English/German]

17 August 2009, dusan

Filed under book | Tags: · commons, economy, floss, peer production, software

A new mode of production has emerged in the areas of software and content production. This mode, which is based on sharing and cooperation, has spawned whole mature operating systems such as GNU/Linux as well as innumerable other free software applications; giant knowledge bases such as the Wikipedia; a large free culture movement; and a new, wholly decentralized medium for spreading, analyzing and discussing news and knowledge, the so-called blogosphere.

So far, this new mode of production–peer production–has been limited to certain niches of production, such as information goods. This book discusses whether this limitation is necessary or whether the potential of peer production extends farther. In other words: Is a society possible in which peer production is the primary mode of production? If so, how could such a society be organized?

Is a society possible where production is driven by demand and not by profit? Where there is no need to sell anything and hence no unemployment? Where competition is more a game than a struggle for survival? Where there is no distinction between people with capital and those without? A society where it would be silly to keep your ideas and knowledge secret instead of sharing them; and where scarcity is no longer a precondition of economic success, but a problem to be worked around?

It is, and this book describes how.

Length 156 pages

The text can be modified and copied under the conditions of the Creative Commons NonCommercial-ShareAlike-Licence.

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English edition: Christian Siefkes. From Exchange to Contributions: Generalizing Peer Production into the Physical World. Edition C. Siefkes, Berlin, 2007. ISBN 978-3-940736-00-0.
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German translation: Christian Siefkes. Beitragen statt tauschen. Materielle Produktion nach dem Modell Freier Software. AG SPAK Bücher, Neu-Ulm, 2008. ISBN 978-3-930830-99-2.
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Adrian Mackenzie: Cutting Code: Software and Sociality (2006)

16 July 2009, dusan

Filed under book | Tags: · algorithm, bioinformatics, code, programming, sociology, software, software art, software studies

“Software has often been marginalized in accounts of digital cultures and network societies. Although software is everywhere, it is hard to say what it actually is. Cutting Code: Software and Sociality is one of the first books to treat software seriously as a full-blown cultural process, and as a subtly powerful material in contemporary communication. From deCSS to Java, from Linux to Extreme Programming, this book analyses software artworks, operating systems, commercial products, infrastructures and programming practices. It explores social forms, identities, materialities and power relations associated with software, and it asks how software provokes the re-thinking of production, consumption and distribution as entwined cultural processes. Cutting Code argues that analysis of code as a mosaic of algorithms, protocols, infrastructures, and programming conventions offers valuable insights into how contemporary social formations invent new kinds of personhood and new ways of acting.”

Publisher Peter Lang, 2006
ISBN 0820478237, 9780820478234
215 pages

Keywords and phrases
bioinformatics, Linux kernel, Java Virtual Machine, deCSS, extreme programming, JUnit, operating system, Sun Microsystems, CORBA, open-source software, software art, Java programming language, ontology, software development, unit tests, Linus Torvalds, RAMOSS, source code, Perl poetry, Unix philosophy

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Radical Software (1970-1974)

10 June 2009, dusan

Filed under magazine | Tags: · art, computer art, electromagnetism, software, technology, television, video, video art

The historic video magazine Radical Software was started by Beryl Korot, Phyllis Gershuny, and Ira Schneider and first appeared in Spring of 1970, soon after low-cost portable video equipment became available to artists and other potential videomakers. Though scholarly works on video art history often refer to Radical Software, there are few places where scholars can review its contents. Individual copies are rare, and few complete collections exist.

Radical Software was an important voice of the American video community in the early 70s; the only periodical devoted exclusively to independent video and video art at the time when those subjects were still being invented. Issues included contributions by Nam June Paik, Douglas Davis, Paul Ryan, Frank Gillette, Beryl Korot, Charles Bensinger, Ira Schneider, Ann Tyng, R. Buckminster Fuller, Gregory Bateson, Gene Youngblood, Parry Teasdale, Ant Farm, and many others.

Eleven issues of Radical Software were published from 1970 to 1974, first by the Raindance Corporation and then by the Raindance Foundation with Gordon and Breach Publishers.

Radical Software, Volume I, Number 1
The Alternate Television Movement,
Spring 1970
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