Graziano, Mars & Medak
Learning from #Syllabus
2019
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LEARNING FROM
#SYLLABUS
VALERIA GRAZIANO,
MARCELL MARS,
TOMISLAV MEDAK
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LEARNING FROM #SYLLABUS
VALERIA GRAZIANO, MARCELL MARS, TOMISLAV MEDAK
The syllabus is the manifesto of the 21st century.
—Sean Dockray and Benjamin Forster1
#Syllabus Struggles
In August 2014, Michael Brown, an 18-year-old boy living in Ferguson, Missouri,
was fatally shot by police officer Darren Wilson. Soon after, as the civil protests denouncing police brutality and institutional racism began to mount across the United
States, Dr. Marcia Chatelain, Associate Professor of History and African American
Studies at Georgetown University, launched an online call urging other academics
and teachers ‘to devote the first day of classes to a conversation about Ferguson’ and ‘to recommend texts, collaborate on conversation starters, and inspire
dialogue about some aspect of the Ferguson crisis.’2 Chatelain did so using the
hashtag #FergusonSyllabus.
Also in August 2014, using the hashtag #gamergate, groups of users on 4Chan,
8Chan, Twitter, and Reddit instigated a misogynistic harassment campaign against
game developers Zoë Quinn and Brianna Wu, media critic Anita Sarkeesian, as well as
a number of other female and feminist game producers, journalists, and critics. In the
following weeks, The New Inquiry editors and contributors compiled a reading list and
issued a call for suggestions for their ‘TNI Syllabus: Gaming and Feminism’.3
In June 2015, Donald Trump announced his candidacy for President of the United
States. In the weeks that followed, he became the presumptive Republican nominee,
and The Chronicle of Higher Education introduced the syllabus ‘Trump 101’.4 Historians N.D.B. Connolly and Keisha N. Blain found ‘Trump 101’ inadequate, ‘a mock college syllabus […] suffer[ing] from a number of egregious omissions and inaccuracies’,
failing to include ‘contributions of scholars of color and address the critical subjects
of Trump’s racism, sexism, and xenophobia’. They assembled ‘Trump Syllabus 2.0’.5
Soon after, in response to a video in which Trump engaged in ‘an extremely lewd
conversation about women’ with TV host Billy Bush, Laura Ciolkowski put together a
‘Rape Culture Syllabus’.6
1
2
3
4
5
6
Sean Dockray, Benjamin Forster, and Public Office, ‘README.md’, Hyperreadings, 15 February
2018, https://samiz-dat.github.io/hyperreadings/.
Marcia Chatelain, ‘Teaching the #FergusonSyllabus’, Dissent Magazine, 28 November 2014,
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/teaching-ferguson-syllabus/.
‘TNI Syllabus: Gaming and Feminism’, The New Inquiry, 2 September 2014, https://thenewinquiry.
com/tni-syllabus-gaming-and-feminism/.
‘Trump 101’, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 19 June 2016, https://www.chronicle.com/article/
Trump-Syllabus/236824/.
N.D.B. Connolly and Keisha N. Blain, ‘Trump Syllabus 2.0’, Public Books, 28 June 2016, https://
www.publicbooks.org/trump-syllabus-2-0/.
Laura Ciolkowski, ‘Rape Culture Syllabus’, Public Books, 15 October 2016, https://www.
publicbooks.org/rape-culture-syllabus/.
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In April 2016, members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe established the Sacred Stone
Camp and started the protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline, the construction of
which threatened the only water supply at the Standing Rock Reservation. The protest at the site of the pipeline became the largest gathering of native Americans in
the last 100 years and they earned significant international support for their ReZpect
Our Water campaign. As the struggle between protestors and the armed forces unfolded, a group of Indigenous scholars, activists, and supporters of the struggles of
First Nations people and persons of color, gathered under the name the NYC Stands
for Standing Rock Committee, put together #StandingRockSyllabus.7
The list of online syllabi created in response to political struggles has continued to
grow, and at present includes many more examples:
All Monuments Must Fall Syllabus
#Blkwomensyllabus
#BLMSyllabus
#BlackIslamSyllabus
#CharlestonSyllabus
#ColinKaepernickSyllabus
#ImmigrationSyllabus
Puerto Rico Syllabus (#PRSyllabus)
#SayHerNameSyllabus
Syllabus for White People to Educate Themselves
Syllabus: Women and Gender Non-Conforming People Writing about Tech
#WakandaSyllabus
What To Do Instead of Calling the Police: A Guide, A Syllabus, A Conversation, A
Process
#YourBaltimoreSyllabus
It would be hard to compile a comprehensive list of all the online syllabi that have
been created by social justice movements in the last five years, especially, but not
exclusively, those initiated in North America in the context of feminist and anti-racist
activism. In what is now a widely spread phenomenon, these political struggles use
social networks and resort to the hashtag template ‘#___Syllabus’ to issue calls for
the bottom-up aggregation of resources necessary for political analysis and pedagogy
centering on their concerns. For this reason, we’ll call this phenomenon ‘#Syllabus’.
During the same years that saw the spread of the #Syllabus phenomenon, university
course syllabi have also been transitioning online, often in a top-down process initiated
by academic institutions, which has seen the syllabus become a contested document
in the midst of increasing casualization of teaching labor, expansion of copyright protections, and technology-driven marketization of education.
In what follows, we retrace the development of the online syllabus in both of these
contexts, to investigate the politics enmeshed in this new media object. Our argument
7
‘#StandingRockSyllabus’, NYC Stands with Standing Rock, 11 October 2016, https://
nycstandswithstandingrock.wordpress.com/standingrocksyllabus/.
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is that, on the one hand, #Syllabus names the problem of contemporary political culture as pedagogical in nature, while, on the other hand, it also exposes academicized
critical pedagogy and intellectuality as insufficiently political in their relation to lived
social reality. Situating our own stakes as both activists and academics in the present
debate, we explore some ways in which the radical politics of #Syllabus could be supported to grow and develop as an articulation of solidarity between amateur librarians
and radical educators.
#Syllabus in Historical Context: Social Movements and Self-Education
When Professor Chatelain launched her call for #FergusonSyllabus, she was mainly
addressing a community of fellow educators:
I knew Ferguson would be a challenge for teachers: When schools opened across
the country, how were they going to talk about what happened? My idea was simple, but has resonated across the country: Reach out to the educators who use
Twitter. Ask them to commit to talking about Ferguson on the first day of classes.
Suggest a book, an article, a film, a song, a piece of artwork, or an assignment that
speaks to some aspect of Ferguson. Use the hashtag: #FergusonSyllabus.8
Her call had a much greater resonance than she had originally anticipated as it reached
beyond the limits of the academic community. #FergusonSyllabus had both a significant impact in shaping the analysis and the response to the shooting of Michael
Brown, and in inspiring the many other #Syllabus calls that soon followed.
The #Syllabus phenomenon comprises different approaches and modes of operating. In some cases, the material is clearly claimed as the creation of a single individual, as in the case of #BlackLivesMatterSyllabus, which is prefaced on the project’s
landing page by a warning to readers that ‘material compiled in this syllabus should
not be duplicated without proper citation and attribution.’9 A very different position on
intellectual property has been embraced by other #Syllabus interventions that have
chosen a more commoning stance. #StandingRockSyllabus, for instance, is introduced as a crowd-sourced process and as a useful ‘tool to access research usually
kept behind paywalls.’10
The different workflows, modes of engagements, and positioning in relation to
intellectual property make #Syllabus readable as symptomatic of the multiplicity
that composes social justice movements. There is something old school—quite
literally—about the idea of calling a list of online resources a ‘syllabus’; a certain
quaintness, evoking thoughts of teachers and homework. This is worthy of investigation especially if contrasted with the attention dedicated to other online cultural
phenomena such as memes or fake news. Could it be that the online syllabus offers
8
9
10
Marcia Chatelain, ‘How to Teach Kids About What’s Happening in Ferguson’, The Atlantic, 25
August 2014, https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/08/how-to-teach-kids-aboutwhats-happening-in-ferguson/379049/.
Frank Leon Roberts, ‘Black Lives Matter: Race, Resistance, and Populist Protest’, 2016, http://
www.blacklivesmattersyllabus.com/fall2016/.
‘#StandingRockSyllabus’, NYC Stands with Standing Rock, 11 October 2016, https://
nycstandswithstandingrock.wordpress.com/standingrocksyllabus/.
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a useful, fresh format precisely for the characteristics that foreground its connections to older pedagogical traditions and techniques, predating digital cultures?
#Syllabus can indeed be analyzed as falling within a long lineage of pedagogical tools
created by social movements to support processes of political subjectivation and the
building of collective consciousness. Activists and militant organizers have time and
again created and used various textual media objects—such as handouts, pamphlets,
cookbooks, readers, or manifestos—to facilitate a shared political analysis and foment
mass political mobilization.
In the context of the US, anti-racist movements have historically placed great emphasis on critical pedagogy and self-education. In 1964, the Council of Federated Organizations (an alliance of civil rights initiatives) and the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee (SNCC), created a network of 41 temporary alternative
schools in Mississippi. Recently, the Freedom Library Project, a campaign born out
of #FergusonSyllabus to finance under-resourced pedagogical initiatives, openly
referenced this as a source of inspiration. The Freedom Summer Project of 1964
brought hundreds of activists, students, and scholars (many of whom were white)
from the north of the country to teach topics and issues that the discriminatory
state schools would not offer to black students. In the words of an SNCC report,
Freedom Schools were established following the belief that ‘education—facts to
use and freedom to use them—is the basis of democracy’,11 a conviction echoed
by the ethos of contemporary #Syllabus initiatives.
Bob Moses, a civil rights movement leader who was the head of the literary skills initiative in Mississippi, recalls the movement’s interest, at the time, in teaching methods
that used the very production of teaching materials as a pedagogical tool:
I had gotten hold of a text and was using it with some adults […] and noticed that
they couldn’t handle it because the pictures weren’t suited to what they knew […]
That got me into thinking about developing something closer to what people were
doing. What I was interested in was the idea of training SNCC workers to develop
material with the people we were working with.12
It is significant that for him the actual use of the materials the group created was much
less important than the process of producing the teaching materials together. This focus
on what could be named as a ‘pedagogy of teaching’, or perhaps more accurately ‘the
pedagogy of preparing teaching materials’, is also a relevant mechanism at play in the
current #Syllabus initiatives, as their crowdsourcing encourages different kinds of people
to contribute what they feel might be relevant resources for the broader movement.
Alongside the crucial import of radical black organizing, another relevant genealogy in
which to place #Syllabus would be the international feminist movement and, in particular, the strategies developed in the 70s campaign Wages for Housework, spearheaded
11
12
Daniel Perlstein, ‘Teaching Freedom: SNCC and the Creation of the Mississippi Freedom Schools’,
History of Education Quarterly 30.3 (Autumn 1990): 302.
Perlstein, ‘Teaching Freedom’: 306.
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by Selma James and Silvia Federici. The Wages for Housework campaign drove home
the point that unwaged reproductive labor provides a foundation for capitalist exploitation. They wanted to encourage women to denaturalize and question the accepted
division of labor into remunerated work outside the house and labor of love within
the confines of domesticity, discussing taboo topics such as ‘prostitution as socialized housework’ and ‘forced sterilization’ as issues impacting poor, often racialized,
women. The organizing efforts of Wages for Housework held political pedagogy at their
core. They understood that that pedagogy required:
having literature and other materials available to explain our goals, all written in a
language that women can understand. We also need different types of documents,
some more theoretical, others circulating information about struggles. It is important
that we have documents for women who have never had any political experience.
This is why our priority is to write a popular pamphlet that we can distribute massively and for free—because women have no money.13
The obstacles faced by the Wages for Housework campaign were many, beginning
with the issue of how to reach a dispersed constituency of isolated housewives
and how to keep the revolutionary message at the core of their claims accessible
to different groups. In order to tackle these challenges, the organizers developed
a number of innovative communication tactics and pedagogical tools, including
strategies to gain mainstream media coverage, pamphlets and leaflets translated
into different languages,14 a storefront shop in Brooklyn, and promotional tables at
local events.
Freedom Schools and the Wages for Housework campaign are only two amongst
the many examples of the critical pedagogies developed within social movements.
The #Syllabus phenomenon clearly stands in the lineage of this history, yet we should
also highlight its specificity in relation to the contemporary political context in which it
emerged. The #Syllabus acknowledges that since the 70s—and also due to students’
participation in protests and their display of solidarity with other political movements—
subjects such as Marxist critical theory, women studies, gender studies, and African
American studies, together with some of the principles first developed in critical pedagogy, have become integrated into the educational system. The fact that many initiators of #Syllabus initiatives are women and Black academics speaks to this historical
shift as an achievement of that period of struggles. However, the very necessity felt by
these educators to kick-start their #Syllabus campaigns outside the confines of academia simultaneously reveals the difficulties they encounter within the current privatized and exclusionary educational complex.
13
14
Silvia Federici and Arlen Austin (eds) The New York Wages for Housework Committee 1972-1977:
History, Theory and Documents. New York: Autonomedia, 2017: 37.
Some of the flyers and pamphlets were digitized by MayDay Rooms, ‘a safe haven for historical
material linked to social movements, experimental culture and the radical expression of
marginalised figures and groups’ in London, and can be found in their online archive: ‘Wages
for Housework: Pamphlets – Flyers – Photographs’, MayDay Rooms, http://maydayrooms.org/
archives/wages-for-housework/wfhw-pamphlets-flyers-photographs/.
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#Syllabus as a Media Object
Besides its contextualization within the historical legacy of previous grassroots mobilizations, it is also necessary to discuss #Syllabus as a new media object in its own
right, in order to fully grasp its relevance for the future politics of knowledge production and transmission.
If we were to describe this object, a #Syllabus would be an ordered list of links to
scholarly texts, news reports, and audiovisual media, mostly aggregated through a
participatory and iterative process, and created in response to political events indicative of larger conditions of structural oppression. Still, as we have seen, #Syllabus
as a media object doesn’t follow a strict format. It varies based on the initial vision
of their initiators, political causes, and social composition of the relevant struggle.
Nor does it follow the format of traditional academic syllabi. While a list of learning
resources is at the heart of any syllabus, a boilerplate university syllabus typically
also includes objectives, a timetable, attendance, coursework, examination, and an
outline of the grading system used for the given course. Relieved of these institutional
requirements, the #Syllabus typically includes only a reading list and a hashtag. The
reading list provides resources for understanding what is relevant to the here and
now, while the hashtag provides a way to disseminate across social networks the call
to both collectively edit and teach what is relevant to the here and now. Both the list
and the hashtag are specificities and formal features of the contemporary (internet)
culture and therefore merit further exploration in relation to the social dynamics at
play in #Syllabus initiatives.
The different phases of the internet’s development approached the problem of the
discoverability of relevant information in different ways. In the early days, the Gopher
protocol organized information into a hierarchical file tree. With the rise of World Wide
Web (WWW), Yahoo tried to employ experts to classify and catalog the internet into
a directory of links. That seemed to be a successful approach for a while, but then
Google (founded in 1998) came along and started to use a webgraph of links to rank
the importance of web pages relative to a given search query.
In 2005, Clay Shirky wrote the essay ‘Ontology is Overrated: Categories, Links and
Tags’,15 developed from his earlier talk ‘Folksonomies and Tags: The Rise of User-Developed Classification’. Shirky used Yahoo’s attempt to categorize the WWW to argue
against any attempt to classify a vast heterogenous body of information into a single
hierarchical categorical system. In his words: ‘[Yahoo] missed [...] that, if you’ve got
enough links, you don’t need the hierarchy anymore. There is no shelf. There is no file
system. The links alone are enough.’ Those words resonated with many. By following
simple formatting rules, we, the internet users, whom Time magazine named Person of
the Year in 2006, proved that it is possible to collectively write the largest encyclopedia
ever. But, even beyond that, and as per Shirky’s argument, if enough of us organized
our own snippets of the vast body of the internet, we could replace old canons, hierarchies, and ontologies with folksonomies, social bookmarks, and (hash)tags.
15
Clay Shirky, ‘Ontology Is Overrated: Categories, Links, and Tags’, 2005, http://shirky.com/writings/
herecomeseverybody/ontology_overrated.html.
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Very few who lived through those times would have thought that only a few years later
most user-driven services would be acquired by a small number of successful companies and then be shut down. Or, that Google would decide not to include the biggest
hashtag-driven platform, Twitter, into its search index and that the search results on
its first page would only come from a handful of usual suspects: media conglomerates, Wikipedia, Facebook, LinkedIn, Amazon, Reddit, Quora. Or, that Twitter would
become the main channel for the racist, misogynist, fascist escapades of the President
of United States.
This internet folk naivety—stoked by an equally enthusiastic, venture-capital-backed
startup culture—was not just naivety. This was also a period of massive experimental
use of these emerging platforms. Therefore, this history would merit to be properly
revisited and researched. In this text, however, we can only hint to this history: to contextualize how the hashtag as a formalization initially emerged, and how with time the
user-driven web lost some of its potential. Nonetheless, hashtags today still succeed in
propagating political mobilizations in the network environment. Some will say that this
propagation is nothing but a reflection of the internet as a propaganda machine, and
there’s no denying that hashtags do serve a propaganda function. However, it equally
matters that hashtags retain the capacity to shape coordination and self-organization,
and they are therefore a reflection of the internet as an organization machine.
As mentioned, #Syllabus as a media object is an ordered list of links to resources.
In the long history of knowledge retrieval systems and attempts to help users find
relevant information from big archives, the list on the internet continues in the tradition of the index card catalog in libraries, of charts in the music industry, or mixtapes
and playlists in popular culture, helping people tell their stories of what is relevant and
what isn’t through an ordered sequence of items. The list (as a format) together with
the hashtag find themselves in the list (pun intended) of the most iconic media objects
of the internet. In the network media environment, being smart in creating new lists
became the way to displace old lists of relevance, the way to dismantle canons, the
way to unlearn. The way to become relevant.
The Academic Syllabus Migrates Online
#Syllabus interventions are a challenge issued by political struggles to educators as
they expose a fundamental contradiction in the operations of academia. While critical pedagogies of yesteryear’s social movements have become integrated into the
education system, the radical lessons that these pedagogies teach students don’t
easily reconcile with their experience: professional practice courses, the rethoric of
employability and compulsory internships, where what they learn is merely instrumental, leaves them wondering how on earth they are to apply their Marxism or feminism
to their everyday lives?
Cognitive dissonance is at the basis of degrees in the liberal arts. And to make things
worse, the marketization of higher education, the growing fees and the privatization
of research has placed universities in a position where they increasingly struggle to
provide institutional space for critical interventions in social reality. As universities become more dependent on the ‘customer satisfaction’ of their students for survival, they
steer away from heated political topics or from supporting faculty members who might
decide to engage with them. Borrowing the words of Stefano Harney and Fred Moten,
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‘policy posits curriculum against study’,16 creating the paradoxical situation wherein
today’s universities are places in which it is possible to do almost everything except
study. What Harney and Moten propose instead is the re-appropriation of the diffuse
capacity of knowledge generation that stems from the collective processes of selforganization and commoning. As Moten puts it: ‘When I think about the way we use the
term ‘study,’ I think we are committed to the idea that study is what you do with other
people.’17 And it is this practice of sharing a common repertoire—what Moten and
Harney call ‘rehearsal’18—that is crucially constitutive of a crowdsourced #Syllabus.
This contradiction and the tensions it brings to contemporary neoliberal academia can
be symptomatically observed in the recent evolution of the traditional academic syllabus. As a double consequence of (some) critical pedagogies becoming incorporated
into the teaching process and universities striving to reduce their liability risks, academic syllabi have become increasingly complex and extensive documents. They are
now understood as both a ‘social contract’ between the teachers and their students,
and ‘terms of service’19 between the institution providing educational services and the
students increasingly framed as sovereign consumers making choices in the market of
educational services. The growing official import of the syllabus has had the effect that
educators have started to reflect on how the syllabus translates the power dynamics
into their classroom. For instance, the critical pedagogue Adam Heidebrink-Bruno has
demanded that the syllabus be re-conceived as a manifesto20—a document making
these concerns explicit. And indeed, many academics have started to experiment with
the form and purpose of the syllabus, opening it up to a process of co-conceptualization with their students, or proposing ‘the other syllabus’21 to disrupt asymmetries.
At the same time, universities are unsurprisingly moving their syllabi online. A migration
that can be read as indicative of three larger structural shifts in academia.
First, the push to make syllabi available online, initiated in the US, reinforces the differential effects of reputation economy. It is the Ivy League universities and their professorial star system that can harness the syllabus to advertise the originality of their
scholarship, while the underfunded public universities and junior academics are burdened with teaching the required essentials. This practice is tied up with the replication
in academia of the different valorization between what is considered to be the labor of
production (research) and that of social reproduction (teaching). The low esteem (and
corresponding lower rewards and remuneration) for the kinds of intellectual labors that
can be considered labors of care—editing journals, reviewing papers or marking, for
instance—fits perfectly well with the gendered legacies of the academic institution.
Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study, New York:
Autonomedia, 2013, p. 81.
17 Harney and Moten, The Undercommons, p. 110.
18 Harney and Moten, The Undercommons, p. 110.
19 Angela Jenks, ‘It’s In The Syllabus’, Teaching Tools, Cultural Anthropology website, 30 June 2016,
https://culanth.org/fieldsights/910-it-s-in-the-syllabu/.
20 Adam Heidebrink-Bruno, ‘Syllabus as Manifesto: A Critical Approach to Classroom Culture’,
Hybrid Pedagogy, 28 August 2014, http://hybridpedagogy.org/syllabus-manifesto-criticalapproach-classroom-culture/.
21 Lucy E. Bailey, ‘The “Other” Syllabus: Rendering Teaching Politics Visible in the Graduate
Pedagogy Seminar’, Feminist Teacher 20.2 (2010): 139–56.
16
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Second, with the withdrawal of resources to pay precarious and casualized academics during their ‘prep’ time (that is, the time in which they can develop new
course material, including assembling new lists of references, updating their courses as well as the methodologies through which they might deliver these), syllabi
now assume an ambivalent role between the tendencies for collectivization and
individualization of insecurity. The reading lists contained in syllabi are not covered
by copyrights; they are like playlists or recipes, which historically had the effect of
encouraging educators to exchange lesson plans and make their course outlines
freely available as a valuable knowledge common. Yet, in the current climate where
universities compete against each other, the authorial function is being extended
to these materials too. Recently, US universities have been leading a trend towards
the interpretation of the syllabus as copyrightable material, an interpretation that
opened up, as would be expected, a number of debates over who is a syllabus’
rightful owner, whether the academics themselves or their employers. If the latter interpretation were to prevail, this would enable universities to easily replace
academics while retaining their contributions to the pedagogical offer. The fruits of
a teacher’s labor could thus be turned into instruments of their own deskilling and
casualization: why would universities pay someone to write a course when they can
recycle someone else’s syllabus and get a PhD student or a precarious post doc to
teach the same class at a fraction of the price?
This tendency to introduce a logic of property therefore spurs competitive individualism and erasure of contributions from others. Thus, crowdsourcing the syllabus
in the context of growing precarization of labor risks remaining a partial process,
as it might heighten the anxieties of those educators who do not enjoy the security
of a stable job and who are therefore the most susceptible to the false promises of
copyright enforcement and authorship understood as a competitive, small entrepreneurial activity. However, when inserted in the context of live, broader political
struggles, the opening up of the syllabus could and should be an encouragement
to go in the opposite direction, providing a ground to legitimize the collective nature
of the educational process and to make all academic resources available without
copyright restrictions, while devising ways to secure the proper attribution and the
just remuneration of everyone’s labor.
The introduction of the logic of property is hard to challenge as it is furthered by commercial academic publishers. Oligopolists, such as Elsevier, are not only notorious for
using copyright protections to extract usurious profits from the mostly free labor of
those who write, peer review, and edit academic journals,22 but they are now developing all sorts of metadata, metrics, and workflow systems that are increasingly becoming central for teaching and research. In addition to their publishing business, Elsevier
has expanded its ‘research intelligence’ offering, which now encompasses a whole
range of digital services, including the Scopus citation database; Mendeley reference
manager; the research performance analytics tools SciVal and Research Metrics; the
centralized research management system Pure; the institutional repository and pub-
22 Vincent Larivière, Stefanie Haustein, and Philippe Mongeon, ‘The Oligopoly of Academic
Publishers in the Digital Era’, PLoS ONE 10.6 (10 June 2015),https://journals.plos.org/plosone/
article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0127502/.
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lishing platform Bepress; and, last but not least, grant discovery and funding flow tools
Funding Institutional and Elsevier Funding Solutions. Given how central digital services
are becoming in today’s universities, whoever owns these platforms is the university.
Third, the migration online of the academic syllabus falls into larger efforts by universities to ‘disrupt’ the educational system through digital technologies. The introduction
of virtual learning environments has led to lesson plans, slides, notes, and syllabi becoming items to be deposited with the institution. The doors of public higher education are being opened to commercial qualification providers by means of the rise in
metrics-based management, digital platforming of university services, and transformation of students into consumers empowered to make ‘real-time’ decisions on how to
spend their student debt.23 Such neoliberalization masquerading behind digitization
is nowhere more evident than in the hype that was generated around Massive Open
Online Courses (MOOCs), exactly at the height of the last economic crisis.
MOOCs developed gradually from the Massachusetts Institute of Techology’s (MIT) initial experiments with opening up its teaching materials to the public through the OpenCourseWare project in 2001. By 2011, MOOCs were saluted as a full-on democratization of access to ‘Ivy-League-caliber education [for] the world’s poor.’24 And yet, their
promise quickly deflated following extremely low completion rates (as low as 5%).25
Believing that in fifty years there will be no more than 10 institutions globally delivering
higher education,26 by the end of 2013 Sebastian Thrun (Google’s celebrated roboticist
who in 2012 founded the for-profit MOOC platform Udacity), had to admit that Udacity
offered a ‘lousy product’ that proved to be a total failure with ‘students from difficult
neighborhoods, without good access to computers, and with all kinds of challenges in
their lives.’27 Critic Aaron Bady has thus rightfully argued that:
[MOOCs] demonstrate what the technology is not good at: accreditation and mass
education. The MOOC rewards self-directed learners who have the resources and
privilege that allow them to pursue learning for its own sake [...] MOOCs are also a
really poor way to make educational resources available to underserved and underprivileged communities, which has been the historical mission of public education.28
Indeed, the ‘historical mission of public education’ was always and remains to this
day highly contested terrain—the very idea of a public good being under attack by
dominant managerial techniques that try to redefine it, driving what Randy Martin
23 Ben Williamson, ‘Number Crunching: Transforming Higher Education into “Performance Data”’,
Medium, 16 August 2018, https://medium.com/ussbriefs/number-crunching-transforming-highereducation-into-performance-data-9c23debc4cf7.
24 Max Chafkin, ‘Udacity’s Sebastian Thrun, Godfather Of Free Online Education, Changes Course’,
FastCompany, 14 November 2013, https://www.fastcompany.com/3021473/udacity-sebastianthrun-uphill-climb/.
25 ‘The Rise (and Fall?) Of the MOOC’, Oxbridge Essays, 14 November 2017, https://www.
oxbridgeessays.com/blog/rise-fall-mooc/.
26 Steven Leckart, ‘The Stanford Education Experiment Could Change Higher Learning Forever’,
Wired, 20 March 2012, https://www.wired.com/2012/03/ff_aiclass/.
27 Chafkin, ‘Udacity’s Sebastian Thrun’.
28 Aaron Bady, ‘The MOOC Moment and the End of Reform’, Liberal Education 99.4 (Fall 2013),
https://www.aacu.org/publications-research/periodicals/mooc-moment-and-end-reform.
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STATE MACHINES
aptly called the ‘financialization of daily life.’29 The failure of MOOCs finally points to a
broader question, also impacting the vicissitudes of #Syllabus: Where will actual study
practices find refuge in the social, once the social is made directly productive for capital at all times? Where will study actually ‘take place’, in the literal sense of the phrase,
claiming the resources that it needs for co-creation in terms of time, labor, and love?
Learning from #Syllabus
What have we learned from the #Syllabus phenomenon?
The syllabus is the manifesto of 21st century.
Political struggles against structural discrimination, oppression, and violence in the
present are continuing the legacy of critical pedagogies of earlier social movements
that coupled the process of political subjectivation with that of collective education.
By creating effective pedagogical tools, movements have brought educators and students into the fold of their struggles. In the context of our new network environment,
political struggles have produced a new media object: #Syllabus, a crowdsourced list
of resources—historic and present—relevant to a cause. By doing so, these struggles
adapt, resist, and live in and against the networks dominated by techno-capital, with
all of the difficulties and contradictions that entails.
What have we learned from the academic syllabus migrating online?
In the contemporary university, critical pedagogy is clashing head-on with the digitization of higher education. Education that should empower and research that should
emancipate are increasingly left out in the cold due to the data-driven marketization
of academia, short-cutting the goals of teaching and research to satisfy the fluctuating demands of labor market and financial speculation. Resistance against the capture of data, research workflows, and scholarship by means of digitization is a key
struggle for the future of mass intellectuality beyond exclusions of class, disability,
gender, and race.
What have we learned from #Syllabus as a media object?
As old formats transform into new media objects, the digital network environment defines the conditions in which these new media objects try to adjust, resist, and live. A
right intuition can intervene and change the landscape—not necessarily for the good,
particularly if the imperatives of capital accumulation and social control prevail. We
thus need to re-appropriate the process of production and distribution of #Syllabus
as a media object in its totality. We need to build tools to collectively control the workflows that are becoming the infrastructures on top of which we collaboratively produce
knowledge that is vital for us to adjust, resist, and live. In order to successfully intervene in the world, every aspect of production and distribution of these new media objects becomes relevant. Every single aspect counts. The order of items in a list counts.
The timestamp of every version of the list counts. The name of every contributor to
29 Randy Martin, Financialization Of Daily Life, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2002.
ACTIONS
127
every version of the list counts. Furthermore, the workflow to keep track of all of these
aspects is another complex media object—a software tool of its own—with its own order and its own versions. It is a recursive process of creating an autonomous ecology.
#Syllabus can be conceived as a recursive process of versioning lists, pointing to textual, audiovisual, or other resources. With all of the linked resources publicly accessible to all; with all versions of the lists editable by all; with all of the edits attributable to
their contributors; with all versions, all linked resources, all attributions preservable by
all, just such an autonomous ecology can be made for #Syllabus. In fact, Sean Dockray, Benjamin Forster, and Public Office have already proposed such a methodology in
their Hyperreadings, a forkable readme.md plaintext document on GitHub. They write:
A text that by its nature points to other texts, the syllabus is already a relational
document acknowledging its own position within a living field of knowledge. It is
decidedly not self-contained, however it often circulates as if it were.
If a syllabus circulated as a HyperReadings document, then it could point directly to the texts and other media that it aggregates. But just as easily as it circulates, a HyperReadings syllabus could be forked into new versions: the syllabus
is changed because there is a new essay out, or because of a political disagreement, or because following the syllabus produced new suggestions. These forks
become a family tree where one can follow branches and trace epistemological
mutations.30
It is in line with this vision, which we share with the HyperReadings crew, and in line
with our analysis, that we, as amateur librarians, activists, and educators, make our
promise beyond the limits of this text.
The workflow that we are bootstrapping here will keep in mind every aspect of the media object syllabus (order, timestamp, contributor, version changes), allowing diversity
via forking and branching, and making sure that every reference listed in a syllabus
will find its reference in a catalog which will lead to the actual material, in digital form,
needed for the syllabus.
Against the enclosures of copyright, we will continue building shadow libraries and
archives of struggles, providing access to resources needed for the collective processes of education.
Against the corporate platforming of workflows and metadata, we will work with social
movements, political initiatives, educators, and researchers to aggregate, annotate,
version, and preserve lists of resources.
Against the extractivism of academia, we will take care of the material conditions that
are needed for such collective thinking to take place, both on- and offline.
30 Sean Dockray, Benjamin Forster, and Public Office, ‘README.md’, Hyperreadings, 15 February
2018, https://samiz-dat.github.io/hyperreadings/.
128
STATE MACHINES
Bibliography
Bady, Aaron. ‘The MOOC Moment and the End of Reform’, Liberal Education 99.4 (Fall 2013), https://
www.aacu.org/publications-research/periodicals/mooc-moment-and-end-reform/.
Bailey, Lucy E. ‘The “Other” Syllabus: Rendering Teaching Politics Visible in the Graduate Pedagogy
Seminar’, Feminist Teacher 20.2 (2010): 139–56.
Chafkin, Max. ‘Udacity’s Sebastian Thrun, Godfather Of Free Online Education, Changes Course’,
FastCompany, 14 November 2013, https://www.fastcompany.com/3021473/udacity-sebastianthrun-uphill-climb/.
Chatelain, Marcia. ‘How to Teach Kids About What’s Happening in Ferguson’, The Atlantic, 25 August
2014, https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/08/how-to-teach-kids-about-whatshappening-in-ferguson/379049/.
_____. ‘Teaching the #FergusonSyllabus’, Dissent Magazine, 28 November 2014, https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/teaching-ferguson-syllabus/.
Ciolkowski, Laura. ‘Rape Culture Syllabus’, Public Books, 15 October 2016, https://www.publicbooks.
org/rape-culture-syllabus/.
Connolly, N.D.B. and Keisha N. Blain. ‘Trump Syllabus 2.0’, Public Books, 28 June 2016, https://www.
publicbooks.org/trump-syllabus-2-0/.
Dockray, Sean, Benjamin Forster, and Public Office. ‘README.md’, HyperReadings, 15 February 2018,
https://samiz-dat.github.io/hyperreadings/.
Federici, Silvia, and Arlen Austin (eds) The New York Wages for Housework Committee 1972-1977: History, Theory, Documents, New York: Autonomedia, 2017.
Harney, Stefano, and Fred Moten, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study, New York:
Autonomedia, 2013.
Heidebrink-Bruno, Adam. ‘Syllabus as Manifesto: A Critical Approach to Classroom Culture’, Hybrid
Pedagogy, 28 August 2014, http://hybridpedagogy.org/syllabus-manifesto-critical-approach-classroom-culture/.
Jenks, Angela. ‘It’s In The Syllabus’, Teaching Tools, Cultural Anthropology website, 30 June 2016,
https://culanth.org/fieldsights/910-it-s-in-the-syllabus/.
Larivière, Vincent, Stefanie Haustein, and Philippe Mongeon, ‘The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era’, PLoS ONE 10.6 (10 June 2015), https://journals.plos.org/plosone/
article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0127502/.
Leckart, Steven. ‘The Stanford Education Experiment Could Change Higher Learning Forever’, Wired,
20 March 2012, https://www.wired.com/2012/03/ff_aiclass/.
Martin, Randy. Financialization Of Daily Life, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2002.
Perlstein, Daniel. ‘Teaching Freedom: SNCC and the Creation of the Mississippi Freedom Schools’,
History of Education Quarterly 30.3 (Autumn 1990).
Roberts, Frank Leon. ‘Black Lives Matter: Race, Resistance, and Populist Protest’, 2016, http://www.
blacklivesmattersyllabus.com/fall2016/.
‘#StandingRockSyllabus’, NYC Stands with Standing Rock, 11 October 2016, https://nycstandswithstandingrock.wordpress.com/standingrocksyllabus/.
Shirky, Clay. ‘Ontology Is Overrated: Categories, Links, and Tags’, 2005, http://shirky.com/writings/
herecomeseverybody/ontology_overrated.html.
‘The Rise (and Fall?) Of the MOOC’, Oxbridge Essays, 14 November 2017, https://www.oxbridgeessays.
com/blog/rise-fall-mooc/.
‘TNI Syllabus: Gaming and Feminism’, The New Inquiry, 2 September 2014, https://thenewinquiry.com/
tni-syllabus-gaming-and-feminism/.
‘Trump 101’, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 19 June 2016, https://www.chronicle.com/article/
Trump-Syllabus/236824/.
‘Wages for Housework: Pamphlets – Flyers – Photographs,’ MayDay Rooms, http://maydayrooms.org/
archives/wages-for-housework/wfhw-pamphlets-flyers-photographs/.
Williamson, Ben. ‘Number Crunching: Transforming Higher Education into “Performance Data”’,
Medium, 16 August 2018, https://medium.com/ussbriefs/number-crunching-transforming-highereducation-into-performance-data-9c23debc4cf7/.
WHW
There Is Something Political in the City Air
2016
What, How & for Whom / WHW
“There is something political in the city air”*
The curatorial collective What,
How & for Whom / WHW, based
in Zagreb and Berlin, examine
the interconnections between
contemporary art and political and
social strata, including the role of art
institutions in contemporary society.
In the present essay, their discussion
of recent projects they curated
highlights the struggle for access to
knowledge and the free distribution
of information, which in Croatia also
means confronting the pressures
of censorship and revisionism
in the writing of history and the
construction of the future.
Contemporary art’s attempts to come to terms with its evasions in delivering on the promise of its own intrinsic capacity to propose alternatives, and
to do better in the constant game of staying ahead of institutional closures
and marketization, are related to a broader malady in leftist politics. The
crisis of organizational models and modes of political action feels especially acute nowadays, after the latest waves of massive political mobilization
and upheaval embodied in such movements as the Arab Spring and Occupy and the widespread social protests in Southern Europe against austerity
measures – and the failure of these movements to bring about structural
changes. As we witnessed in the dramatic events that unfolded through the
spring and summer of 2015, even in Greece, where Syriza was brought to
power, the people’s will behind newly elected governments proved insufficient to change the course of austerity politics in Europe. Simultaneously,
a series of conditional gains and effective defeats gave rise to the alarming
ascent of radical right-wing populism, against which the left has failed to
provide any real vision or driving force.
Both the practice of political articulation and the political practices of
art have been affected by the hollowing and disabling of democracy related
to the ascendant hegemony of the neoliberal rationale that shapes every
domain of our lives in accordance with a specific image of economics,1
as well as the problematic “embrace of localism and autonomy by much
of the left as the pure strategy”2 and the left’s inability to destabilize the
dominant world-view and reclaim the future.3 Consequently, art practices
increasingly venture into novel modes of operation that seek to “expand
our collective imagination beyond what capitalism allows”.4 They not only
point to the problems but address them head on. By negotiating art’s autonomy and impact on the social, and by conceptualizing the whole edifice
of art as a social symptom, such practices attempt to do more than simply
squeeze novel ideas into exhausted artistic formats and endow them with
political content that produces “marks of distinction”,5 which capital then
exploits for the enhancement of its own reproduction.
The two projects visited in this text both work toward building truly
accessible public spaces. Public Library, launched by Marcell Mars and
Tomislav Medak in 2012, is an ongoing media and social project based on
ideas from the open-source software movement, while Autonomy Cube, by
artist Trevor Paglen and the hacker and computer security researcher Jacob Appelbaum, centres on anonymized internet usage in the post–Edward
*
1
2
3
4
5
David Harvey, Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution, Verso, London and New York, 2012, p. 117.
See Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution, Zone books,
New York, 2015.
Harvey, Rebel Cities, p. 83.
See Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World
Without Work, Verso, London and New York, 2015.
Ibid., p. 495.
See Harvey, Rebel Cities, especially pp. 103–109.
“There is something political in the city air”
289
Snowden world of unprecedented institutionalized surveillance. Both projects operate in tacit alliance with art institutions that more often than not
are suffering from a kind of “mission drift” under pressure to align their
practices and structures with the profit sector, a situation that in recent
decades has gradually become the new norm.6 By working within and with
art institutions, both Public Library and Autonomy Cube induce the institutions to return to their initial mission of creating new common spaces
of socialization and political action. The projects develop counter-publics
and work with infrastructures, in the sense proposed by Keller Easterling:
not just physical networks but shared standards and ideas that constitute
points of contact and access between people and thus rule, govern, and
control the spaces in which we live.7
By building a repository of digitized books, and enabling others to do this
as well, Public Library promotes the idea of the library as a truly public institution that offers universal access to knowledge, which “together with
free public education, a free public healthcare, the scientific method, the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Wikipedia, and free software,
among others – we, the people, are most proud of ”, as the authors of the
project have said.8 Public Library develops devices for the free sharing of
books, but it also functions as a platform for advocating social solidarity
in free access to knowledge. By ignoring and avoiding the restrictive legal
regime for intellectual property, which was brought about by decades of
neoliberalism, as well as the privatization or closure of public institutions,
spatial controls, policing, and surveillance – all of which disable or restrict
possibilities for building new social relations and a new commons – Public
Library can be seen as part of the broader movement to resist neoliberal
austerity politics and the commodification of knowledge and education
and to appropriate public spaces and public goods for common purposes.
While Public Library is fully engaged with the movement to oppose the
copyright regime – which developed as a kind of rent for expropriating the
commons and reintroducing an artificial scarcity of cognitive goods that
could be reproduced virtually for free – the project is not under the spell of
digital fetishism, which until fairly recently celebrated a new digital commons as a non-frictional space of smooth collaboration where a new political and economic autonomy would be forged that would spill over and
undermine the real economy and permeate all spheres of life.9 As Matteo
Pasquinelli argues in his critique of “digitalism” and its celebration of the
6
7
8
9
See Brown, Undoing the Demos.
Keller Easterling, Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space, Verso, London and
New York, 2014.
Marcell Mars, Manar Zarroug, and Tomislav Medak, “Public Library”, in Public Library,
ed. Marcell Mars, Tomislav Medak, and What, How & for Whom / WHW, exh. publication, What, How & for Whom / WHW and Multimedia Institute, Zagreb, 2015, p. 78.
See Matteo Pasquinelli, Animal Spirits: A Bestiary of the Commons, NAi Publishers, Rotterdam, and Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, 2008.
290
What, How & for Whom / WHW
virtues of the information economy with no concern about the material
basis of production, the information economy is a parasite on the material
economy and therefore “an accurate understanding of the common must
be always interlinked with the real physical forces producing it and the material economy surrounding it.”10
Public Library emancipates books from the restrictive copyright regime
and participates in the exchange of information enabled by digital technology, but it also acknowledges the labour and energy that make this possible. There is labour that goes into the cataloguing of the books, and labour
that goes into scanning them before they can be brought into the digital
realm of free reproduction, just as there are the ingenuity and labour of
the engineers who developed a special scanner that makes it easier to scan
books; also, the scanner needs to be installed, maintained, and fed books
over hours of work. This is where the institutional space of art comes in
handy by supporting the material production central to the Public Library
endeavour. But the scanner itself does not need to be visible. In 2014, at
the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, we curated the
exhibition Really Useful Knowledge, which dealt with conflicts triggered by
struggles over access to knowledge and the effects that knowledge, as the
basis of capital reproduction, has on the totality of workers’ lives. In the
exhibition, the production funds allocated to Public Library were used to
build the book scanner at Calafou, an anarchist cooperative outside Barcelona. The books chosen for scanning were relevant to the exhibition’s
themes – methods of reciprocal learning and teaching, forms of social and
political organization, the history of the Spanish Civil War, etc. – and after
being scanned, they were uploaded to the Public Library website. All that
was visible in the exhibition itself was a kind of index card or business card
with a URL link to the Public Library website and a short statement (fig. 1):
A public library is:
• free access to books for every member of society
• library catalog
• librarian
With books ready to be shared, meticulously cataloged, everyone is a
librarian. When everyone is librarian, the library is everywhere.11
Public Library’s alliance with art institutions serves to strengthen the
cultural capital both for the general demand to free books from copyright
restrictions on cultural goods and for the project itself – such cultural capital could be useful in a potential lawsuit. Simultaneously, the presence and
realization of the Public Library project within an exhibition enlists the host
institution as part of the movement and exerts influence on it by taking
the museum’s public mission seriously and extending it into a grey zone of
10
11
Ibid., p. 29.
Mars, Zarroug, and Medak, “Public Library”, p. 85.
“There is something political in the city air”
291
questionable legality. The defence of the project becomes possible by making the traditional claim of the “autonomy” of art, which is not supposed
to assert any power beyond the museum walls. By taking art’s autonomy
at its word, and by testing the truth of the liberal-democratic claim that
the field of art is a field of unlimited freedom, Public Library engages in a
kind of “overidentification” game, or what Keller Easterling, writing about
the expanded activist repertoire in infrastructure space, calls “exaggerated
compliance”.12 Should the need arise, as in the case of a potential lawsuit
against the project, claims of autonomy and artistic freedom create a protective shroud of untouchability. And in this game of liberating books from
the parochial capitalist imagination that restricts their free circulation, the
institution becomes a complicit partner. The long-acknowledged insight
that institutions embrace and co-opt critique is, in this particular case, a
win-win situation, as Public Library uses the public status of the museum
as a springboard to establish the basic message of free access and the free
circulation of books and knowledge as common sense, while the museum
performs its mission of bringing knowledge to the public and supporting
creativity, in this case the reworking, rebuilding and reuse of technology
for the common good. The fact that the institution is not naive but complicit produces a synergy that enhances potentialities for influencing and
permeating the public sphere. The gesture of not exhibiting the scanner in
the museum has, among other things, a practical purpose, as more books
would be scanned voluntarily by the members of the anarchist commune
in Calafou than would be by the overworked museum staff, and employing
somebody to do this during the exhibition would be too expensive (and the
mantra of cuts, cuts, cuts would render negotiation futile). If there is a flirtatious nod to the strategic game of not exposing too much, it is directed less
toward the watchful eyes of the copyright police than toward the exhibition
regime of contemporary art group shows in which works compete for attention, the biggest scarcity of all. Public Library flatly rejects identification
with the object “our beloved bookscanner” (as the scanner is described on
the project website13), although it is an attractive object that could easily
be featured as a sculpture within the exhibition. But its efficacy and use
come first, as is also true of the enigmatic business card–like leaflet, which
attracts people to visit the Public Library website and use books, not only to
read them but also to add books to the library: doing this in the privacy of
one’s home on one’s own computer is certainly more effective than doing
it on a computer provided and displayed in the exhibition among the other
art objects, films, installations, texts, shops, cafés, corridors, exhibition
halls, elevators, signs, and crowds in a museum like Reina Sofia.
For the exhibition to include a scanner that was unlikely to be used or
a computer monitor that showed the website from which books might be
12
13
Easterling, Extrastatecraft, p. 492.
See https://www.memoryoftheworld.org/blog/2012/10/28/our-belovedbookscanner-2/ (accessed July 4, 2016).
292
What, How & for Whom / WHW
downloaded, but probably not read, would be the embodiment of what
philosopher Robert Pfaller calls “interpassivity”, the appearance of activity or a stand-in for it that in fact replaces any genuine engagement.14 For
Pfaller, interpassivity designates a flight from engagement, a misplaced libidinal investment that under the mask of enjoyment hides aversion to an
activity that one is supposed to enjoy, or more precisely: “Interpassivity is
the creation of a compromise between cultural interests and latent cultural
aversion.”15 Pfaller’s examples of participation in an enjoyable process that
is actually loathed include book collecting and the frantic photocopying of
articles in libraries (his book was originally published in 2002, when photocopying had not yet been completely replaced by downloading, bookmarking, etc.).16 But he also discusses contemporary art exhibitions as sites of
interpassivity, with their overabundance of objects and time-based works
that require time that nobody has, and with the figure of the curator on
whom enjoyment is displaced – the latter, he says, is a good example of
“delegated enjoyment”. By not providing the exhibition with a computer
from which books can be downloaded, the project ensures that books are
seen as vehicles of knowledge acquired by reading and not as immaterial
capital to be frantically exchanged; the undeniable pleasure of downloading and hoarding books is, after all, just one step removed from the playground of interpassivity that the exhibition site (also) is.
But Public Library is hardly making a moralistic statement about the
virtues of reading, nor does it believe that ignorance (such as could be
overcome by reading the library’s books) is the only obstacle that stands
in the way of ultimate emancipation. Rather, the project engages with, and
contributes to, the social practice that David Harvey calls “commoning”:
“an unstable and malleable social relation between a particular self-defined social group and those aspects of its actually existing or yet-to-becreated social and/or physical environment deemed crucial to its life and
livelihood”.17 Public Library works on the basis of commoning and tries to
enlist others to join it, which adds a distinctly political dimension to the
sabotage of intellectual property revenues and capital accumulation.
The political dimension of Public Library and the effort to form and
publicize the movement were expressed more explicitly in the Public Li14
15
16
17
Robert Pfaller, On the Pleasure Principle in Culture: Illusions Without Owners, Verso, London and New York, 2014.
Ibid., p. 76.
Pfaller’s book, which first appeared in German, was published in English only in 2014.
His ideas have gained greater relevance over time, not only as the shortcomings of the
immensely popular social media activism became apparent – where, as many critics
have noted, participation in political organizing and the articulation of political tasks
and agendas are often replaced by a click on an icon – but also because of Pfaller’s
broader argument about the self-deception at play in interpassivity and its role in eliciting enjoyment from austerity measures and other calamities imposed on the welfare
state by the neoliberal regime, which since early 2000 has exceeded even the most sober (and pessimistic) expectations.
Ibid., p. 73.
“There is something political in the city air”
293
brary exhibition in 2015 at Gallery Nova in Zagreb, where we have been
directing the programme since 2003. If the Public Library project was not
such an eminently collective practice that pays no heed to the author function, the Gallery Nova show might be considered something like a solo exhibition. As it was realized, the project again used art as an infrastructure
and resource to promote the movement of freeing books from copyright
restrictions while collecting legitimization points from the art world as enhanced cultural capital that could serve as armour against future attacks
by the defenders of the holy scripture of copyright laws. But here the more
important tactic was to show the movement as an army of many and to
strengthen it through self-presentation. The exhibition presented Public
Library as a collection of collections, and the repertory form (used in archive science to describe a collection) was taken as the basic narrative procedure. It mobilized and activated several archives and open digital repositories, such as MayDay Rooms from London, The Ignorant Schoolmaster and
His Committees from Belgrade, Library Genesis and Aaaaaarg.org, Catalogue
of Free Books, (Digitized) Praxis, the digitized work of the Midnight Notes
Collective, and Textz.com, with special emphasis on activating the digital
repositories UbuWeb and Monoskop. Not only did the exhibition attempt to
enlist the gallery audience but, equally important, the project was testing
its own strength in building, articulating, announcing, and proposing, or
speculating on, a broader movement to oppose the copyright of cultural
goods within and adjacent to the art field.
Presenting such a movement in an art institution changes one of the
basic tenets of art, and for an art institution the project’s main allure probably lies in this kind of expansion of the art field. A shared politics is welcome, but nothing makes an art institution so happy as the sense of purpose that a project like Public Library can endow it with. (This, of course,
comes with its own irony, for while art institutions nowadays compete for
projects that show emphatically how obsolete the aesthetic regime of art is,
they continue to base their claims of social influence on knowledge gained
through some form of aesthetic appreciation, however they go about explaining and justifying it.) At the same time, Public Library’s nonchalance
about institutional maladies and anxieties provides a homeopathic medicine whose effect is sometimes so strong that discussion about placebos
becomes, at least temporarily, beside the point. One occasion when Public
Library’s roving of the political terrain became blatantly direct was the exhibition Written-off: On the Occasion of the 20th Anniversary of Operation
Storm, which we organized in the summer of 2015 at Gallery Nova (figs.
2–4).
The exhibition/action Written-off was based on data from Ante Lesaja’s
extensive research on “library purification”, which he published in his book
Knjigocid: Uništavanje knjige u Hrvatskoj 1990-ih (Libricide: The Destruction
of Books in Croatia in the 1990s).18 People were invited to bring in copies of
18
Ante Lesaja, Knjigocid: Uništavanje knjige u Hrvatskoj 1990-ih, Profil and Srbsko narodno
294
What, How & for Whom / WHW
books that had been removed from Croatian public libraries in the 1990s.
The books were scanned and deposited in a digital archive; they then became available on a website established especially for the project. In Croatia during the 1990s, hundreds of thousands of books were removed from
schools and factories, from public, specialized, and private libraries, from
former Yugoslav People’s Army centres, socio-political organizations, and
elsewhere because of their ideologically inappropriate content, the alphabet they used (Serbian Cyrillic), or the ethnic or political background of the
authors. The books were mostly thrown into rubbish bins, discarded on
the street, destroyed, or recycled. What Lesaja’s research clearly shows is
that the destruction of the books – as well as the destruction of monuments
to the People’s Liberation War (World War II) – was not the result of individuals running amok, as official accounts preach, but a deliberate and systematic action that symbolically summarizes the dominant politics of the
1990s, in which war, rampant nationalism, and phrases about democracy
and sovereignty were used as a rhetorical cloak to cover the nakedness of
the capitalist counter-revolution and criminal processes of dispossession.
Written-off: On the Occasion of the 20th Anniversary of Operation Storm
set up scanners in the gallery, initiated a call for collecting and scanning
books that had been expunged from public institutions in the 1990s, and
outlined the criteria for the collection, which corresponded to the basic
domains in which the destruction of the books, as a form of censorship,
was originally implemented: books written in the Cyrillic alphabet or in
Serbian regardless of the alphabet; books forming a corpus of knowledge
about communism, especially Yugoslav communism, Yugoslav socialism,
and the history of the workers’ struggle; and books presenting the anti-Fascist and revolutionary character of the People’s Liberation Struggle during
World War II.
The exhibition/action was called Written-off because the removal and
destruction of the books were often presented as a legitimate procedure
of library maintenance, thus masking the fact that these books were unwanted, ideologically unacceptable, dangerous, harmful, unnecessary, etc.
Written-off unequivocally placed “book destruction” in the social context
of the period, when the destruction of “unwanted” monuments and books
was happening alongside the destruction of homes and the killing of “unwanted” citizens, outside of and prior to war operations. For this reason,
the exhibition was dedicated to the twentieth anniversary of Operation
Storm, the final military/police operation in what is called, locally, the
Croatian Homeland War.19
The exhibition was intended as a concrete intervention against a political logic that resulted in mass exile and killing, the history of which is
glossed over and critical discussion silenced, and also against the official
19
vijeće, Zagreb, 2012.
Known internationally as the Croatian War of Independence, the war was fought between Croatian forces and the Serb-controlled Yugoslav People’s Army from 1991 to
1995.
“There is something political in the city air”
295
celebrations of the anniversary, which glorified militarism and proclaimed
the ethical purity of the victory (resulting in the desired ethnic purity of the
nation).
As both symbolic intervention and real-life action, then, the exhibition
Written-off took place against a background of suppressed issues relating
to Operation Storm – ethno-nationalism as the flip side of neoliberalism,
justice and the present status of the victims and refugees, and the overall character of the war known officially as the Homeland War, in which
discussions about its prominent traits as a civil war are actively silenced
and increasingly prosecuted. In protest against the official celebrations
and military parades, the exhibition marked the anniversary of Operation
Storm with a collective action that evokes books as symbolic of a “knowledge society” in which knowledge becomes the location of conflictual engagement. It pointed toward the struggle over collective symbolic capital
and collective memory, in which culture as a form of the commons has a
direct bearing on the kind of place we live in. The Public Library project,
however, is engaged not so much with cultural memory and remembrance
as a form of recollection or testimony that might lend political legitimation
to artistic gestures; rather, it engages with history as a construction and
speculative proposition about the future, as Peter Osborne argues in his
polemical hypotheses on the notion of contemporary art that distinguishes
between “contemporary” and “present-day” art: “History is not just a relationship between the present and the past – it is equally about the future.
It is this speculative futural moment that definitively separates the concept
of history from memory.”20 For Public Library, the future that participates
in the construction of history does not yet exist, but it is defined as more
than just a project against the present as reflected in the exclusionary, parochially nationalistic, revisionist and increasingly fascist discursive practices of the Croatian political elites. Rather, the future comes into being as
an active and collective construction based on the emancipatory aspects of
historical experiences as future possibilities.
Although defined as an action, the project is not exultantly enthusiastic
about collectivity or the immediacy and affective affinities of its participants, but rather it transcends its local and transient character by taking
up the broader counter-hegemonic struggle for the mutual management
of joint resources. Its endeavour is not limited to the realm of the political
and ideological but is rooted in the repurposing of technological potentials
from the restrictive capitalist game and the reutilization of the existing infrastructure to build a qualitatively different one. While the culture industry adapts itself to the limited success of measures that are geared toward
preventing the free circulation of information by creating new strategies
for pushing information into a form of property and expropriating value
20
Peter Osborne, Anywhere or Not at All: Philosophy of Contemporary Art, Verso, London
and New York, 2013, p. 194.
296
What, How & for Whom / WHW
fig. 1
Marcell Mars, Art as Infrastructure: Public Library, installation
view, Really Useful Knowledge, curated by WHW, Museo
Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, 2014.
Photo by Joaquin Cortes and Roman Lores / MNCARS.
fig. 2
Public Library, exhibition view, Gallery Nova, Zagreb, 2015.
Photo by Ivan Kuharic.
fig. 3
Written-off: On the Occasion of the 20th Anniversary of Operation
Storm, exhibition detail, Gallery Nova, Zagreb, 2015.
Photo by Ivan Kuharic.
fig. 4
Written-off: On the Occasion of the 20th Anniversary of Operation
Storm, exhibition detail, Gallery Nova, Zagreb, 2015.
Photo by Ivan Kuharic.
fig. 5
Trevor Paglen and Jacob Appelbaum, Autonomy Cube,
installation view, Really Useful Knowledge, curated by WHW,
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, 2014.
Photo by Joaquín Cortés and Román Lores / MNCARS.
through the control of metadata (information about information),21 Public Library shifts the focus away from aesthetic intention – from unique,
closed, and discrete works – to a database of works and the metabolism
of the database. It creates values through indexing and connectivity, imagined communities and imaginative dialecticization. The web of interpenetration and determination activated by Public Library creates a pedagogical endeavour that also includes a propagandist thrust, if the notion of
propaganda can be recast in its original meaning as “things that must be
disseminated”.
A similar didactic impetus and constructivist praxis is present in the work
Autonomy Cube, which was developed through the combined expertise of
artist and geographer Trevor Paglen and internet security researcher, activist and hacker Jacob Appelbaum. This work, too, we presented in the
Reina Sofia exhibition Really Useful Knowledge, along with Public Library
and other projects that offered a range of strategies and methodologies
through which the artists attempted to think through the disjunction between concrete experience and the abstraction of capital, enlisting pedagogy as a crucial element in organized collective struggles. Autonomy Cube
offers a free, open-access, encrypted internet hotspot that routes internet
traffic over TOR, a volunteer-run global network of servers, relays, and services, which provides anonymous and unsurveilled communication. The
importance of the privacy of the anonymized information that Autonomy
Cube enables and protects is that it prevents so-called traffic analysis – the
tracking, analysis, and theft of metadata for the purpose of anticipating
people’s behaviour and relationships. In the hands of the surveillance
state this data becomes not only a means of steering our tastes, modes of
consumption, and behaviours for the sake of making profit but also, and
more crucially, an effective method and weapon of political control that
can affect political organizing in often still-unforeseeable ways that offer
few reasons for optimism. Visually, Autonomy Cube references minimalist
sculpture (fig. 5) (specifically, Hans Haacke’s seminal piece Condensation
Cube, 1963–1965), but its main creative drive lies in the affirmative salvaging of technologies, infrastructures, and networks that form both the leading organizing principle and the pervasive condition of complex societies,
with the aim of supporting the potentially liberated accumulation of collective knowledge and action. Aesthetic and art-historical references serve
as camouflage or tools for a strategic infiltration that enables expansion of
the movement’s field of influence and the projection of a different (contingent) future. Engagement with historical forms of challenging institutions
becomes the starting point of a poetic praxis that materializes the object of
its striving in the here and now.
Both Public Library and Autonomy Cube build their autonomy on the dedi21
McKenzie Wark, “Metadata Punk”, in Public Library, pp. 113–117 (see n. 9).
“There is something political in the city air”
305
cation and effort of the collective body, without which they would not
exist, rendering this interdependence not as some consensual idyll of cooperation but as conflicting fields that create further information and experiences. By doing so, they question the traditional edifice of art in a way
that supports Peter Osborne’s claim that art is defined not by its aesthetic
or medium-based status, but by its poetics: “Postconceptual art articulates a post-aesthetic poetics.”22 This means going beyond criticality and
bringing into the world something defined not by its opposition to the real,
but by its creation of the fiction of a shared present, which, for Osborne,
is what makes art truly contemporary. And if projects like these become a
kind of political trophy for art institutions, the side the institutions choose
nevertheless affects the common sense of our future.
22
Osborne, Anywhere or Not at All, p. 33.
306
What, How & for Whom / WHW
“There is something political in the city air”
307
Constant
Conversations
2015
This book documents an ongoing dialogue between developers and designers involved in the wider ecosystem of Libre
Graphics. Its lengthy title, I think that conversations are the
best, biggest thing that Free Software has to offer its user, is taken
from an interview with Debian developer Asheesh Laroia, Just
ask and that will be that, included in this publication. His remark points at the difference that Free Software can make when
users are invited to consider, interrogate and discuss not only
the technical details of software, but its concepts and histories
as well.
Conversations documents discussions about tools and practices
for typography, layout and image processing that stretch out
over a period of more than eight years. The questions and answers were recorded in the margins of events such as the yearly
Libre Graphics Meeting, the Libre Graphics Research Unit,
a two-year collaboration between Medialab Prado in Madrid,
Worm in Rotterdam, Piksel in Bergen and Constant in Brussels,
or as part of documenting the work process of the Brussels’
design team OSP. Participants in these intersecting events and
organisations constitute the various instances of ‘we’ and ‘I’ that
you will discover throughout this book.
The transcriptions are loosely organised around three themes:
tools, communities and design. At the same time, I invite you
to read Conversations as a chronology of growing up in Libre
Graphics, a portrait of a community gradually grasping the interdependencies between Free Software and design practice.
Femke Snelting
Brussels, December 2014
Introduction
A user should not be able to shoot himself in the foot
I think the ideas behind it are beautiful in my mind
We will get to know the machine and we will understand
ConTeXt and the ballistics of design
Meaningful transformations
Tools for a Read Write World
Etat des Lieux
Distributed Version Control
Even when you are done, you are not done
Having the tools is just the beginning
Data analysis as a discourse
Why you should own the beer company you design for
Just Ask and That Will Be That
Tying the story to data
Unicodes
If the design thinking is correct, the tools should be irrelevant
You need to copy to understand
What’s the thinking here
The construction of a book (Aether9)
Performing Libre Graphics
Computational concepts, their technological language and the hybridisation of creative practice have been successfully explored in Media Arts for a
few decades now. Digital was a narrative, a tool and a concept, an aesthetic
and political playground of sorts. These experiments created a notion of
the digital artisan and creative technologist on the one hand and enabled
a new view of intellectual property on the other. They widened a pathway
to participation, collaboration and co-creation in creative software development, looking critically at the software as cultural production as well as
technological advance.
This book documents conversations between artists, typographers, designers, developers and software engineers involved in Libre Graphics, an independent, self-organised, international community revolving around Free,
Libre, Open Source software (F/LOSS). Libre Graphics resembles the community of Media arts of the late twentieth Century, in so far that it is using
software as a departure point for creative exploration of design practice. In
some cases it adopts software development processes and applies them to
graphic design, using version control and platforms such as GitHub, but it
also banks on a paradigm shift that Free Software offers – an active engagement with software to bend it, fork it, reshape it – and in that it establishes
conversations with a developers community that haven’t taken place before.
This pathway was, however, at moments full of tension, created by diverging views on what the development process entails and what it might
mean. The conversations brought together in this book resulted from the
need to discuss those complex issues and to adress the differences and similarities between design, design production, Free Culture and software development. As in theatre, where it is said that conflict drives the plot forward,
so it does here. It makes us think harder about the ethics of our practices
while we develop tools and technologies for the benefit of all.
The Libre Graphics Meeting (LGM) was brought to my attention in
2012 as an interesting example of dialogue between creative types and developers. The event was running since 2006 and was originally conceived as an
annual gathering for discussions about Free and Open Source software used
in graphics. At the time I was teaching at the University of Westminster
for nearly ten years. The subject was computers, arts and design and it took
a variety of forms; sometimes focused on graphic design, sometimes on
contemporary media practice, interaction design, software design and mysterious hypermedia. F/LOSS was part of my artistic practice for many years,
7
Larisa Blazic:
Introduction
but its inclusion to the UK Higher Education was a real challenge. My
frustration with difficult computer departments grew exponentially year by
year and LGM looked like a place to visit and get much needed support.
Super fast-forward to Madrid in April 2013: I landed. Little did I know
that this journey would change everything. Firstly, the wonderfully diverse
group of people present: artists, designers, software developers, typographers, interface designers, more software developers! It was very exciting
listening to talks, overhearing conversations in breaks, observing group discussions and slowly engaging with the Libre Graphics community. Being
there to witness how far the F/LOSS community has come was so heartwarming and uplifting, that my enthusiasm was soaring.
The main reason for my attendance at the Madrid LGM was to join
the launch of a network of Free Culture aware educators in art, music and
design education. 1 Aymeric Mansoux and his colleagues from the Willem
De Kooning Academie and the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam convened
the first ever meeting of the network with the aim to map out a landscape
of current educational efforts as well as to share experiences. I was aware of
Aymeric’s efforts through his activities with GOTO10 and the FLOSS+Art
book 2 that they published a couple of years before we finally met. Free
Culture was deeply embedded in his artistic and educational practice, and it
was really good to have someone like him set the course of discussion.
Lo’ and behold the conversation started – we sat in a big circle in the
middle of Medialab Prado. The introduction round began, and I thought:
there are so many people using F/LOSS in their teaching! Short courses,
long courses, BA courses, MA courses, summer schools, all sorts! There
were so many solutions presented for overcoming institutional barricades,
Adobe marriages and Apple hostages. Individual efforts and group efforts,
long term and short, a whole world of conventional curriculums as well as
a variety of educational experimentations were presented. Just sitting there,
listening about shared troubles and achievements was enough to give me a
new surge of energy to explore new strategies for engaging BA level students
with F/LOS tools and communities.
Taking part in LGM 2013 was a useful experience that has informed
my art and educational practice since. It was clear from the gathering that
1
2
http://eightycolumn.net/
Aymeric Mansoux and Marloes de Valk. FLOSS+Art. OpenMute, 2008.
http://things.bleu255.com/floss-art
8
Larisa Blazic:
Introduction
F/LOSS is not a ghetto for idealists and techno fetishists – it was ready for
an average user, it was ready for a specialist user, it was ready for all and
what is most important the communication lines were open. Given that
Linux distributions extend the life of a computer by at least ten years, in
combination with the likes of Libre Graphics, Open Video and a plethora
of other F/LOS software, the benefits are manyfold, important for all and
not to be ignored by any form of creative practice worldwide.
Libre Graphics seems to offer a very exciting transformation of graphic design practice through implementation of F/LOS software development and
production processes. A hybridisation across these often separated fields of
practice that take under consideration openness and freedom to create, copy,
manipulate and distribute, while contributing to the development of visual
communication itself. All this may lease a new life to an over-commercialised
graphic design practice, banalised by mainstream culture.
This book brings together reflections on collaboration and co-creation
in graphic design, typography and desktop publishing, but also on gender
issues and inclusion to the Libre Graphics community. It offers a paradigm
shift, supported by historical research into graphic and type design practice,
that creates strong arguments to re-engage with the tools of production.
The conversations conducted give an overview of a variety of practices and
experiences which show the need for more conversations and which can help
educate designers and developers alike. It gives detailed descriptions of the
design processes, productions and potential trade-offs when engaged in software design and development while producing designed artefacts. It points
to the importance of transparent software development, breaking stereotypes and establishing a new image of the designer-developer combo, a fresh
perspective of mutual respect between disciplines and a desire to engage in
exchange of knowledge that is beneficial beyond what any proprietary software could ever be.
Larisa Blazic is a media artist living and working in London. Her interests range from
creative collaborations to intersections between video art and architecture. As senior lecturer
at the Faculty of Media, Arts and Design of the University of Westminster, she is currently
developing a master’s program on F/LOSS art & design.
9
While in the background participants of the Libre Graphics
Meeting 2007 start saying goodbye to each other, Andreas
Vox makes time to sit down with us to talk about Scribus,
the Open Source application for professional page layout.
The software is significant not only to it’s users that do design with it, but also because Scribus helps us think about
links between software, Free Culture and design. Andreas
is a mathematician with an interest in system dynamics,
who lives and works in Lübeck, Germany. Together with
Franz Schmid, Petr Vanek (subik), Riku Leino (Tsoots),
Oleksandr Moskalenko (malex), Craig Bradney (MrB), Jean
Ghali and Peter Linnel (mrdocs) he forms the core Scribus
developer team. He has been working on Scribus since
2003 and is currently responsible for redesigning the internal workings of its text layout system.
This weekend Peter Linnel presented amongst many other new Scribus features 1 ,
‘The Color Wheel’, which at the click of a button visualises documents the way
they would be perceived by a colour blind person. Can you explain how such a
feature entered into Scribus? Did you for example speak to accessibility experts?
I don’t think we did. The code was implemented by subik 2 , a developer
from the Czech Republic. As far as I know, he saw a feature somewhere else
or he found an article about how to do this kind of stuff, and I don’t know
where he did it, but I would have to ask him. It was a logic extension of the
colour wheel functionality, because if you pick different colours, they look
different to all people. What looks like red and green to one person, might
look like grey and yellow to other persons. Later on we just extended the
code to apply to the whole canvas.
1
2
http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/Version_1.3.4%2B-New_Features
Petr Vanek
13
It is quite special to offer such a precise preview of different perspectives in your
software. Do you think it it is particular to Scribus to pay attention to these kind
of things?
Yeah, sure. Well, the interesting thing is ... in Scribus we are not depending
on money and time like other proprietary packages. We can ask ourselves:
Is this useful? Would I have fun implementing it? Am I interested in seeing
how it works? So if there is something we would like to see, we implement
it and look at it. And because we have a good contact with our user base,
we can also pick up good ideas from them.
There clearly is a strong connection between Scribus and the world of prepress
and print. So, for us as users, it is an almost hallucinating experience that while
on one side the software is very well developed when it comes to .pdf export for
example, I would say even more developed than in other applications, but than
still it is not possible to undo a text edit. Could you maybe explain how such a
discrepancy can happen, to make us understand better?
One reason is, that there are more developers working on the project,
and even if there was only one developer, he or she would have her own
interests. Remember what George Williams said about FontForge ... 3 he is
not that interested in nice Graphical User Interfaces, he just makes his own
functionality ... that is what interests him. So unless someone else comes
up who compensates for this, he will stick to what he likes. I think that
is the case with all Open Source applications. Only if you have someone
interested and able to do just this certain thing, it will happen. And if it
is something boring or something else ... it will probably not happen. One
way to balance this, is to keep in touch with real users, and to listen to
the problems they have. At least for the Scribus team, if we see people
complaining a lot about a certain feature missing ... we will at some point
say: come on, let’s do something about it. We would implement a solution and
when we get thanks from them and make them happy, that is always nice.
Can you tell us a bit more about the reasons for putting all this work into
developing Scribus, because a layout application is quite a complex monster with
all the elements that need to work together ... Why is it important you find, to
develop Scribus?
3
I think the ideas behind it are beautiful in my mind
14
I use to joke about the special mental state you need to become a Scribus
developer ... and one part of it is probably megalomania! It is kind of mountain climbing. We just want to do it, to prove it can be done. That must
have been also true for Franz Schmid, our founder, because at that time,
when he started, it was very unlikely that he would succeed. And of course
once you have some feedback, you start to think: hey, I can do it ... it works.
People can use it, people can print with it, do things ... so why not make it even
better? Now we are following InDesign and QuarkXpress, and we are playing
the top league of page layout applications ... we’re kind of in a competition
with them. It is like climbing a mountain and than seeing the next, higher
mountain from the top.
In what way is it important to you that Scribus is Free Software?
Well ... it would not work with closed software. Open software allows you to
get other people that also are interested in working on the project involved,
so you can work together. With closed software you usually have to pay
people; I would only work because someone else wants me to do it and
we would not be as motivated. It is totally different. If it was closed, it
would not be fun. In Germany they studied what motivates Open Source
developers, and they usually list: ‘fun’; they want to do something more
challenging than at work, and some social stuff is mentioned as well. Of
course it is not money.
One of the reasons the Scribus project seems so important to us, is that it might
draw in other kinds of users, and open up the world of professional publishing to
people who can otherwise not afford proprietary packages. Do you think Scribus
will change the way publishing works? Does that motivate you, when you work
on it?
I think the success of Open Source projects will also change the way people
use software. But I do not think it is possible to foresee or plan, in what
way this will change. We see right now that Scribus is adopted by all kinds
of idealists, who think that is interesting, lets try how far we can go, and
do it like that. There are other users that really just do not have the money
to pay for a professional page layout application such as very small newspapers associations, sports groups, church groups. They use Scribus because
otherwise they would have used a pirated copy of some other software, or
15
another application which is not up to that task, such as a normal word processor. Or otherwise they would have used a deficient application like MS
Publisher to do it. I think what Scribus will change, is that more people
will be exposed to page layout, and that is a good thing, I think.
In another interview with the Scribus team 4 , Craig Bradney speaks about the
fact that the software is often compared with its proprietary competition. He
brings up the ‘Scribus way of doing things’. What do you think is ‘The Scribus
Way’?
I don’t think Craig meant it that way. Our goal is to produce good output,
and make that easy for users. If we are in doubt, we think for example:
InDesign does this in quite an OK way, so we try to do it in a similar way;
we do not have any problems with that. On the other hand ... I told you a
bit about climbing mountains ... We cannot go from the one top to the next
one just in one step. We have to move slowly, and have to find our ways and
move through valleys and that sometimes also limits us. I can say: I want it
this way but then it is not possible now, it might be on the roadmap, but we
might have to do other things first.
When we use Scribus, we actually thought we were experiencing ‘The Scribus
Way’ through how it differences from other layout packages. First of all, in
Scribus there is a lot more attention for everything that happens after the layout
is done, i.e. export, error checking etc. and second, working with the text editor
is clearly the preferred way of doing layout. For us it links the software to a more
classic ways of doing design: a strictly phased process where a designer starts with
writing typographic instructions which are carried out by a typesetter, after which
the designer pastes everything into the mock-up. In short: it seems easier to do a
magazine in Scribus, than a poster. Do you recognize that image?
That is an interesting thought, I have never seen it that way before. My
background is that I did do a newspaper, magazine for a student group, and
we were using PageMaker, and of course that influenced me. In a small
group that just wants to bring out a magazine, you distribute the task of
writing some articles, and usually you have only one or two persons who are
capable of using a page layout application. They pull in the stories and make
some corrections, and then do the layout. Of course that is a work flow I am
4
familiar with, and I don’t think we really have poster designers or graphic
artists in the team. On the other hand ... we do ask our users what they
think should be possible with Scribus and if a functionality is not there, we
ask them to put in a bug report so we do not forget it and some time later
we will pick it up and implement it. Especially the possibility to edit from
the canvas, this will approve in the upcoming versions.
Some things we just copied from other applications. I think Franz 5 had no
previous experience with PageMaker, so when I came to Scribus, and saw
how it handled text chains, I was totally dismayed and made some changes
right away because I really wanted it to work the way it works in PageMaker,
that is really nice. So, previous experience and copying from another applications was one part of the development. Another thing is just technical
problems. Scribus is at the moment internally not that well designed, so we
first have to rewrite a lot of code to be able to reach some elements. The
coding structure for drawing and layout was really cumbersome inside and
it was difficult to improve. We worked with 2.500 lines of code, and there
were no comments in between. So we broke it down in several elements,
put some comments in and also asked Franz: why did you did this or that, so
we could put some structure back into the code to understand how it works.
There is still a lot of work to be done, and we hope we can reach a state
where we can implement new stuff more easily.
It is interesting how the 2.500 lines of code are really tangible when you use
Scribus old-style, even without actually seeing them. When Peter Linnel was
explaining how to make the application comply to the conservative standards of
the printing business, he used this term ‘self-defensive code’ ...
At Scribus we have a value that a file should never break in a print shop.
Any bug report we receive in this area, is treated with first priority.
We can speak from experience, that this is really true! But this robustness shifts
out of sight when you use the inbuilt script function; then it is as if you come
in to the software through the backdoor. From self-defence to the heart of the
application?
It is not really self-defence ... programmers and software developers sometimes use the expression: ‘a user should not shoot himself in the foot’.
5
Schmid
17
Scribus will not protect you from ugly layout, if that would be possible at
all! Although I do sometimes take deliberate decisions to try and do it ...
for example that for as long as I am around, I will not make an option to
do ‘automatic letter spacing’, because I think it is just ugly. If you do it
manually, that is your responsibility; I just do not feel like making anything
like that work automatically. What we have no problems with, is to prevent
you from making invalid output. If Scribus thinks a certain font is not OK,
and it might break on one or two types of printers ... this is reason enough
for us to make sure this font is not used. The font is not even used partially,
it is gone. That is the kind of self-defence Peter Linnel was talking about.
It is also how we build .pdf files and PostScript. Some ways of building
PostScript take less storage, some of it would be easier to read for humans,
but we always take an approach that would be the least problematic in a
print shop. This meant for example, that you could not search in a .pdf. 6
I think you can do that now, but there are still limitations; it is on the
roadmap to improve over time, to even add an option to output a web oriented .pdf and a print oriented .pdf ... but it is an important value in Scribus
is to get the output right. To prevent people to really shoot themselves in
the foot.
Our last question is about the relation between the content that is layed out
in Scribus, and the fact that it is an Open Source project. Just as an example,
Microsoft Word will come out with an option to make it easy to save a document
with a Creative Commons License 7 . Would this, or not, be an interesting option
to add to Scribus? Would you be interested in making that connection, between
software and content?
It could well be we would copy that, if it is not already been patented by
Microsoft! To me it sounds a bit like a marketing trick ... because it is such
an easy function to do. But, if someone from Creative Commons would ask
for this function, I think someone would implement it for Scribus in a short
time, and I think we would actually like it. Maybe we would generalize it a
little, so that for example you could also add other licenses too. We already
have support for some meta data, and in the future we might put some more
function in to support license managing, for example also for fonts.
6
7
because the fonts get outlined and/or reencoded
http://creativecommons.org/press-releases/entry/5947
18
About the relation between content and Open Source software in general
... there are some groups who are using Scribus I politically do not really
identify with. Or more or less not at all. If I meet those people on the IRC
chat, I try to be very neutral, but I of course have my own thoughts in the
back of my head.
Do you think using a tool like Scribus produces a certain kind of use?
No. Preferences for work tools and political preference are really orthogonal,
and we have both. For example when you have some right wing people they
could also enjoy using Scribus and socialist groups as well. It is probably the
best for Scribus to keep that stuff out of it. I am not even sure about the
political conviction of the other developers. Usually we get along very well,
but we don’t talk about those kinds of things very much. In that sense I
don’t think that using Scribus will influence what is happening with it.
As a tool, because it makes creating good page layouts much easier, it will
probably change the landscape because a lot of people get exposed to page
layout and they learn and teach other people; and I think that is growing,
and I hope it will be growing faster than if it is all left to big players like
InDesign and Quark ... I think this will improve and it will maybe also
change the demands that users will make for our application. If you do page
layout, you get into a new frame of mind ... you look in a different way at
publications. It is less content oriented, but more layout oriented. You will
pick something up and it will spread. People by now have understood that
it is not such a good idea to use twelve different fonts in one text ... and I
think that knowledge about better page layout will also spread.
19
When we came to the Libre Graphics Meeting
for the first time in 2007, we recorded this rare
conversation with George Williams, developer of
FontForge, the editing tool for fonts. We spoke
about Shakespeare, Unicode, the pleasure of making beautiful things, and pottery.
We‘re doing these interviews, as we’re working as designers on Open Source
OK.
With Open Source tools, as typographers, but often when we speak to
developers they say well, tell me what you want, or they see our interest in
what they are doing as a kind of feature request or bug report.
(laughs) Yes.
Of course it’s clear that that’s the way it often works, but for us it’s also
interesting to think about these tools as really tools, as ways of shaping
work, to try and understand how they are made or who is making them.
It can help us make other things. So this is actually what we want to talk
about. To try and understand a bit about how you’ve been working on
FontForge. Because that’s the project you’re working on.
OK.
And how that connects to other ideas of tools or tools’ shape that you
make. These kind of things. So maybe first it’s good to talk about what
it is that you make.
OK. Well ... FontForge is a font editor.
I started playing with fonts when I bought my first Macintosh, back in the
early eighties (actually it was the mid-eighties) and my father studied textual bibliography and looked at the ways the printing technology of the
Renaissance affected the publication of Shakespeare’s works. And what that
meant about the errors in the compositions we see in the copies we have
left from the Renaissance. So my father was very interested in Renaissance
printing (and has written books on this subject) and somehow that meant
23
that I was interested in fonts. I’m not quite sure how that connection happened, but it did. So I was interested in fonts. And there was this program
that came out in the eighties called Fontographer which allowed you to create PostScript 1 and later TrueType 2 fonts. And I loved it. And I made lots
of calligraphic fonts with it.
You were ... like 20?
I was 20~30. Lets see, I was born in 1959, so in the eighties I was in my
twenties mostly. And then Fontographer was bought up by Macromedia 3
who had no interest in it. They wanted FreeHand 4 which was done by
the same company. So they dropped Fon ... well they continued to sell
Fontographer but they didn’t update it. And then OpenType 5 came out and
Unicode 6 came out and Fontographer didn’t do this right and it didn’t do
that right ... And I started making my own fonts, and I used Fontographer
to provide the basis, and I started writing scripts that would add accents to
latin letters and so on. And figured out the Type1 7 format so that I could
decompose it — decompose the Fontographer output so that I could add
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
PostScript fonts are outline font specifications developed by Adobe Systems for professional
digital typesetting, which uses PostScript file format to encode font information.
Wikipedia. PostScript fonts — Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2014. [Online; accessed 18.12.2014]
TrueType is an outline font standard developed by Apple and Microsoft in the late 1980s as a
competitor to Adobe’s Type 1 fonts used in PostScript.
Wikipedia. TrueType — Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2014. [Online; accessed 18.12.2014]
Macromedia was an American graphics, multimedia and web development software company
(1992–2005). Its rival, Adobe Systems, acquired Macromedia on December 3, 2005.
Wikipedia. Macromedia — Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2014. [Online; accessed 18.12.2014]
Adobe FreeHand (formerly Macromedia Freehand) is a computer application for creating
two-dimensional vector graphics. Adobe discontinued development and updates to the
program. Wikipedia. Adobe FreeHand — Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2014. [Online; accessed 18.12.2014]
OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType,
retaining TrueType’s basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing
typographic behavior. Wikipedia. Opentype — wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 2014. [Online; accessed 18.12.2014]
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and
handling of text expressed in most of the world’s writing systems.
Wikipedia. Unicode — Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2014. [Online; accessed 18.12.2014]
Type 1 is a font format for single-byte digital fonts for use with Adobe Type Manager
software and with PostScript printers. It can support font hinting. It was originally a
proprietary specification, but Adobe released the specification to third-party font
manufacturers provided that all Type 1 fonts adhere to it.
Wikipedia. PostScript fonts — Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2014. [Online; accessed 18.12.2014]
24
my own things to it. And then Fontographer didn’t do Type0 8 PostScript
fonts, so I figured that out.
And about this time, the little company I was working for, a tiny little
startup — we wrote a web HTML editor — where you could sit at your
desk and edit pages on the web — it was before FrontPage 9 , but similar to
FrontPage. And we were bought by AOL and then we were destroyed by
AOL, but we had stock options from AOL and they went through the roof.
So ... in the late nineties I quit. And I didn’t have to work.
And I went off to Madagascar for a while to see if I wanted to be a primatologist. And ... I didn’t. There were too many leaches in the rainforest.
(laughs)
So I came back, and I wrote a font editor instead.
And I put it up on the web and in late 99, and within a month someone
gave me a bug report and was using it.
(laughs) So it took a month
Well, you know, there was no advertisement, it was just there, and someone
found it and that was neat!
(laughs)
And that was called PfaEdit (because when it began it only did PostScript)
and I ... it just grew. And then — I don’t know — three, four, five years ago
someone pointed out that PfaEdit wasn’t really appropriate any more, so I
asked various users what would be a good name and a french guy said How
’bout FontForge? So. It became FontForge then. — That’s a much better
name than PfaEdit.
(laughs)
Used it ever since.
But your background ... you talked about your father studying ...
8
9
Type 0 is a ‘composite’ font format . A composite font is composed of a high-level font that
references multiple descendent fonts.
Wikipedia. PostScript fonts — Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2014. [Online; accessed 18.12.2014]
Microsoft FrontPage is a WYSIWYG HTML editor and Web site administration tool from
Microsoft discontinued in December 2006.
Wikipedia. Microsoft FrontPage — Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2014. [Online; accessed 18.12.2014]
25
I grew up in a household where Shakespeare was quoted at me every day,
and he was an English teacher, still is an English teacher, well, obviously
retired but he still occasionally teaches, and has been working for about 30
years on one of those versions of Shakespeare where you have two lines of
Shakespeare text at the top and the rest of the page is footnotes. And I went
completely differently and became a mathematician and computer scientist
and worked in those areas for almost twenty years and then went off and
tried to do my own things.
So how did you become a mathematician?
(pause) I just liked it.
(laughs) just liked it
I was good at it. I got pushed ahead in high school. It just never occurred
to me that I’d do anything else — until I met a computer. And then I still
did maths because I didn’t think computers were — appropriate — or — I
was a snob. How about that.
(laughs)
But I spent all my time working on computers as I went through university.
And then got my first job at JPL 10 and shortly thereafter the shuttle 11
blew up and we had some — some of our experiments — my little group
— flew on the shuttle and some of them flew on an airplane which went
over the US took special radar pictures of the US. We also took special radar
pictures of the world from the shuttle (SIR-A, SIR-B, SIR-C). And then
our airplane burned up. And JPL was not a very happy place to work after
that. So then I went to a little company with some college friends of mine,
that they’d started, created compilers and debuggers — do you know what
those are?
Mm-hmm.
And I worked a long time on that, and then the internet came out and found
another little company with some friends — and worked on HTML.
10
11
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster occurred on January 28, 1986, when the NASA Space
Shuttle orbiter Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, leading to the deaths of its
seven crew members.
Wikipedia. Space Shuttle Challenger disaster — Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2014. [Online; accessed 18.12.2014]
26
So when, before we moved, I was curious about, I wanted you to talk
about a Shakespearian influence on your interest in fonts. But on the
other hand you talk about working in a company where you did HTML
editors at the time you actually started, I think. So do you think that
is somehow present ... the web is somehow present in your — in how
FontForge works? Or how fonts work or how you think about fonts?
I don’t think the web had much to do with my — well, that’s not true.
OK, when I was working on the HTML editor, at the time, mid-90s, there
weren’t any Unicode fonts, and so part of the reason I was writing all these
scripts to add accents and get Type0 support in PostScript (which is what
you need for a Unicode font) was because I needed a Unicode font for our
HTML product.
To that extent — yes-s-s-s.
It had an effect. Aside from that, not really.
The web has certainly allowed me to distribute it. Without the web I doubt
anyone would know — I wouldn’t have any idea how to ‘market’ it. If that’s
the right word for something that doesn’t get paid for. And certainly the
web has provided a convenient infrastructure to do the documentation in.
But — as for font design itself — that (the web) has certainly not affected
me.
Maybe with this creative commons talk that Jon Phillips was giving, there
may be, at some point, a button that you can press to upload your fonts to
the Open Font Library 12 — but I haven’t gotten there yet, so I don’t want
to promise that.
(laughs) But no, indeed there was – hearing you speak about ccHost 13 –
that’s the ...
Mm-hmm.
... Software we are talking about?
That’s what the Open Font Library uses, yes.
12
13
Open Font Library is a project devoted to the hosting and encouraged creation of fonts
released under Free Licenses.
Wikipedia. Open Font Library — Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2014. [Online; accessed 18.12.2014]
ccHost is a web-based media hosting engine upon which Creative Commons’ ccMixter remix
web community is built. Wikipedia. CcHost — Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2012. [Online; accessed 18.12.2014]
27
Yeah. And a connection to FontForge could change the way, not only
how you distribute fonts, but also how you design fonts.
It — it might. I don’t know ... I don’t have a view of the future.
I guess to some extent, obviously font design has been affected by requiring
it (the font) to be displayed on a small screen with a low resolution display.
And there are all kinds of hacks in modern fonts formats for dealing with
low resolution stuff. PostScript calls them hints and TrueType calls them
instructions. They are different approaches to the same thing. But that,
that certainly has affected font design in the last — well since PostScript
came out.
The web itself? I don’t think that has yet been a significant influence on
font design, but then — I’m no longer a designer. I discovered I was much
better at designing font editors than at designing fonts.
So I’ve given up on that aspect of things.
Mm-K, because I’m curious about your making a division about being a
designer, or being a font-editor-maker, because for me that same definition of maker, these two things might be very related.
Well they are. And I only got in to doing it because the tools that were
available to me were not adequate. But I have found since — that I’m
not adequate at doing the design, there are many people who are better at
designing — designing fonts, than I am. And I like to design fonts, but I
have made some very ugly ones at times.
And so I think I will — I’ll do that occasionally, but that’s not where I’m
going to make a mark.
Mostly now —
I just don’t have the —
The font editor itself takes up so much of time that I don’t have the energy,
the enthusiasm, or anything like that to devote to another major creative
project. And designing a font is a major creative project.
Well, can we talk about the major creative project of designing a font
editor? I mean, because I’m curious how — how that is a creative project
for you — how you look at that.
I look at it as a puzzle. And someone comes up to me with a problem, and I
try and figure out how to solve it. And sometimes I don’t want to figure out
28
how to solve it. But I feel I should anyway. And sometimes I don’t want to
figure out how to solve it and I don’t.
That’s one of the glories of being one’s own boss, you don’t have to do
everything that you are asked.
But — to me — it’s just a problem. And it’s a fascinating problem. But
why is it fascinating? — That’s just me. No one else, probably, finds
it fascinating. Or — the guys who design FontLab probably also find it
fascinating, there are two or three other font design programs in the world.
And they would also find it fascinating.
Can you give an example of something you would find fascinating?
Well. Dave Crossland who was sitting behind me at the end was talking
to me today — he sat down — we started talking after lunch but on the
way up the stairs — at first he was complaining that FontForge isn’t written
with a standard widget set. So it looks different from everything else. And
yes, it does. And I don’t care. Because this isn’t something which interests
me.
On the other hand he was saying that what he also wanted was a paragraph
level display of the font. So that as he made changes in the font he could
see a ripple effect in the paragraph.
Now I have a thing which does a word level display, but it doesn’t do multilines. Or it does multi-lines if you are doing Japanese (vertical writing mode)
but it doesn’t do multi-columns then. So it’s either one vertical row or one
horizontal row of glyphs.
And I do also have a paragraph level display, but it is static. You bring
it up and it takes the current snapshot of the font and it generates a real
TrueType font and pass it off to the X Window 14 rasterizer — passes it off
to the standard Linux toolchain (FreeType) as that static font and asks that
toolchain to display text.
So what he’s saying is OK, do that, but update the font that you pass off every
now and then. And Yeah, that’d be interesting to do. That’s an interesting project
to work on. Much more interesting than changing my widget set which is
just a lot of work and tedious. Because there is nothing to think about.
It’s just OK, I’ve got to use this widget instead of my widget. My widget does
14
The X Window System is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on UNIX-like
computer operating systems. X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment:
drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting with a mouse and
keyboard. Wikipedia. X Window System — Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2014. [Online; accessed 18.12.2014]
29
exactly what I want — because I designed it that way — how do I make this
thing, which I didn’t design, which I don’t know anything about, do exactly
what I want?
And — that’s dull. For me.
Yeah, well.
Dave, on the other hand, is very hopeful that he’ll find some poor fool
who’ll take that on as a wonderful opportunity. And if he does, that would
be great, because not having a standard widget set is one of the biggest
complaints people have. Because FontForge doesn’t look like anything else.
And people say Well the grey background is very scary. 15
I thought it was normal to have a grey background, but uh ... that’s why we
now have a white background. A white background may be equally scary,
but no one has complained about it yet.
Try red.
I tried light blue and cream. One of them I was told gave people migraines
— I don’t remember specifically what the comment was about the light
blue, but
(someone from inkscape): Make it configurable.
Oh, it is configurable, but no one configures it.
(someone from inkscape): Yeah, I know.
So ...
So, you talked about spending a lot of time on this project, how does that
work, you get up in the morning and start working on FontForge? Or ...
Well, I do many things. Some mornings, yes, I get up in the morning and I
start working on FontForge and I cook breakfast in the background and eat
breakfast and work on FontForge. Some mornings I get up at four in the
morning and go out running for a couple of hours and come back home and
sort of collapse and eat a little bit and go off to yoga class and do a pilates
class and do another yoga class and then go to my pottery class, and go to
the farmers’ market and come home and I haven’t worked on FontForge at
all. So it varies according to the day. But yes I ...
15
It used to have a grey background, now it has a white background
30
There was a period where I was spending 40, 50 hours a week working
on FontForge, I don’t spend that much time on it now, it’s more like 20
hours, though the last month I got all excited about the release that I put
out last Tuesday — today is Sunday. And so I was working really hard —
probably got up to — oh — 30 hours some of that time. I was really excited
about the change. All kinds of things were different — I put in Python
scripting, which people had been asking for — well, I’m glad I’ve done it,
but it was actually kind of boring, that bit — the stuff that came before was
— fascinating.
Like?
I — are you familiar with the OpenType spec? No. OK. The way you ...
the way you specify ligatures and kerning in OpenType can be looked at at
several different levels. And the way OpenType wants you to look at it, I
felt, was unnecessarily complicated. So I didn’t look at it at that level. And
then after about 5 years of looking at it that way I discovered that the reason
I thought it was unnecessarily complicated was because I was only used to
Latin or Cyrillic or Greek text, and for Latin, Cyrillic or Greek, it probably
is unnecessarily complicated. But for Indic scripts it is not unnecessarily
complicated, and you need all those things. So I ripped out all of the code
for specifying strange glyph conversions. You know in Arabic a character
looks different at the beginning of a word and so on? So that’s also handled
in this area. And I ripped all that stuff out and redid it in the way that
OpenType wanted it to be done and not the somewhat simplified but not
sufficiently powerful method that I’d been using up until then.
And that I found, quite fascinating.
And once I’d done that, it opened up all kinds of little things that I could
change that made the font editor itself bettitor. Better. Bettitor?
(laughs) That’s almost Dutch.
And so after I’d done that the display I talked about which could show a
word — I realized that I should redo that to take advantage of what I had
done. And so I redid that, and it’s now, it’s now much more usable. It now
shows — at least I hope it shows — more of what people want to see when
they are working with these transformations that apply to the font, there’s
now a list of the various transformations, that can be enabled at any time
and then it goes through and does them — whereas before it just sort of —
31
well it did kerning, and if you asked it to it would substitute this glyph so
you could see what it would look like — but it was all sort of — half-baked.
It wasn’t very elegant.
And — it’s much better now, and I’m quite proud of that.
It may crash — but it’s much better.
So you bring up half-baked, and when we met we talked about bread
baking.
Oh, yes.
And the pleasure of handling a material when you know it well. Maybe
make reliable bread — meaning that it comes out always the same way,
but by your connection to the material you somehow — well — it’s a
pleasure to do that. So, since you’ve said that, and we then went on
talking about pottery — how clay might be of the same — give the same
kind of pleasure. I’ve been trying to think — how does FontForge have
that? Does it have that and where would you find it or how is the ...
I like to make things. I like to make things that — in some strange
definition are beautiful. I’m not sure how that applies to making bread,
but my pots — I think I make beautiful pots. And I really like the glazing I
put onto them.
It’s harder to say that a font editor is beautiful. But I think the ideas behind
it are beautiful in my mind — and in some sense I find the user interface
beautiful. I’m not sure that anyone else in the world does, because it’s what
I want, but I think it’s beautiful.
And there’s a satisfaction in making something — in making something
that’s beautiful. And there’s a satisfaction too (as far as the bread goes) in
making something I need. I eat my own bread — that’s all the bread I eat
(except for those few days when I get lazy and don’t get to make bread that
day and have to put it off until the next day and have to eat something that
day — but that doesn’t happen very often).
So it’s just — I like making beautiful things.
OK, thank you.
Mm-hmm.
That was very nice, thank you very much.
Thank you. I have pictures of my pots if you’d like to see them?
Yes, I would very much like to see them.
32
This conversation with Juliane de Moerlooze was recorded in March 2009.
When you hear people talk about women having more sense
for the global, intuitive and empathic ... and men are more
logical ... even if it is true ... it seems quite a good thing to
have when you are doing math or software?
Juliane is a Brussels based computer scientist, feminist
and Linux user from the beginning. She studied math,
programming and system administration and participates in Samedies. 1 In February 2009 she was voted
president of the Brussels Linux user group (BXLug).
I will start at the end ... you have recently become president of the BXLug. Can
you explain to us what it is, the BXLug?
It is the Brussels Linux user group, a group of Linux users who meet
regularly to really work together on Linux and Free Software. It is the most
active group of Linux users in the French speaking part of Belgium.
How did you come into contact with this group?
That dates a while back. I have been trained in Linux a long time ago ...
Five years? Ten years? Twenty years?
Almost twenty years ago. I came across the beginnings of Linux in 1995 or
1996, I am not sure. I had some Slackware 2 installed, I messed around with
friends and we installed everything ... then I heard people talk about Linux
distributions 3 and decided to discover something else, notably Debian. 4
1
2
3
4
Femmes et Logiciels Libres, group of women maintaining their own server
http://samedi.collectifs.net
one of the earliest Linux distributions
a distribution is a specific collection of applications and a software kernel
one of the largest Linux distributions
37
It is good to know that with Linux you really have a diversity, there are
distributions specially for audio, there are distributions for the larger public
with graphical interfaces, there are distributions that are a bit more ‘geek’,
in short you find everything: there are thousands of distributions but there
are a few principal ones and I heard people talk about an interesting development, which was Debian. I wanted to install it to see, and I discovered
the BXLug meetings, and so I ended up there one Sunday.
What was your experience, the first time you went?
(laughs) Well, it was clear that there were not many women, certainly not. I
remember some sessions ...
What do you mean, not many women? One? Or five?
Usually I was there on my own. Or maybe two. There was a time that we
were three, which was great. There was a director of a school who pushed
Free Software a lot, she organised real ’Journées du Libre’ 5 at her school,
to which she would invite journalists and so on. She was the director but
when she had free time she would use it to promote Free Software, but
I haven’t seen her in a while and I don’t know what happened since. I
also met Faty, well ... I wasn’t there all the time either because I had also
other things to do. There was a friendly atmosphere, with a little bar where
people would discuss with each other, but many were cluttered together in
the middle of the room, like autists hidden behind their computers, without
much communication. There were other members of the group who like me
realised that we were humans that were only concentrating on our machines
and not much was done to make new people feel welcome. Once I realised,
I started to move to the back of the room and say hello to people arriving.
Well, I was not the only one who started to do that but I imagine it might
have felt like a closed group when you entered for the first time. I also
remember in the beginning, as a girl, that ... when people asked questions
... nobody realised that I was actually teaching informatics. It seemed there
was a prejudice even before I had a chance to answer a question. That’s a
funny thing to remember.
Could you talk about the pleasure of handling computers? You might not be the
kind of person that loses herself in front of her computer, but you have a strong
5
Journées du Libre is a yearly festival organised by the BXLug
38
relationship with technology which comes out when you open up the commandline
... there’s something in you that comes to life.
Oh, yes! To begin with, I am a mathematician (‘matheuse’), I was a math
teacher, and I have been programming during my studies and yes, there
was something fantastic about it ... informatics for me is all about logic, but
logic in action, dynamic logic. A machine can be imperfect, and while I’m
not specialised in hardware, there is a part on which you can work, a kind
of determinism that I find interesting, it poses challenges because you can
never know all, I mean it is not easy to be a real system administrator that
knows every detail, that understands every problem. So you are partially in
the unknown, and discovering, in a mathematical world but a world that
moves. For me a machine has a rhythm, she has a cadence, a body, and her
state changes. There might be things that do not work but it can be that
you have left in some mistakes while developing etcetera, but we will get
to know the machine and we will understand. And after, you might create
things that are maybe interesting in real life, for people that want to write
texts or edit films or want to communicate via the Internet ... these are all
layers one adds, but you start ... I don’t know how to say it ... the machine is
at your service but you have to start with discovering her. I detest the kind
of software that asks you just to click here and there and than it doesn’t
work, and than you have to restart, and than you are in a situation where
you don’t have the possibility to find out where the problem is.
When it doesn’t show how it works?
For me it is important to work with Free Software, because when I have
time, I will go far, I will even look at the source code to find out what’s
wrong with the interface. Luckily, I don’t have to do this too often anymore
because software has become very complicated, twenty years later. But we
are not like persons with machines that just click ... I know many people,
even in informatics, who will say ‘this machine doesn’t work, this thing
makes a mistake’
The fact that Free Software proposes an open structure, did that have anything
to do with your decision to be a candidate for BXLug?
Well, last year I was already very active and I realised that I was at a point
in my life that I could use informatics better, and I wanted to work in this
39
field, so I spent much time as a volunteer. But the moment that I decided,
now this is enough, I need to put myself forward as a candidate, was after a
series of sexist incidents. There was for example a job offer on the BXLug
mailing list that really needed to be responded to ... I mean ... what was
that about? To be concrete: Someone wrote to the mailing list that his
company was looking for a developer in so and so on and they would like
a Debian developer type applying, or if there weren’t any available, it would
be great if it would be a blond girl with large tits. Really, a horrible thing so
I responded immediately and than it became even worse because the person
that had posted the original message, sent out another one asking whether
the women on the list were into castration and it took a large amount of
diplomacy to find a way to respond. We discussed it with the Samediennes 6
and I though about it ... I felt supported by many people that had well
understood that this was heavy and that the climate was getting nasty but
in the end I managed to send out an ironic message that made the other
person excuse himself and stop these kind of sexist jokes, which was good.
And after that, there was another incident, when the now ex-president of
the group did a radio interview. I think he explained Free Software relatively
well to a public that doesn’t know about it, but as an example how easy it is
to use Free Software, he said even my wife, who is zero with computers, knows
how it works, using the familiar cliché without any reservation. We discussed
this again with the Samediennes, and also internally at the BXLug and than
I thought: well, what is needed is a woman as president, so I need to present
myself. So it is thanks to the Samedies, that this idea emerged, out of the
necessity to change the image of Free Software.
In software and particularly in Free Software, there are relatively few women
participating actively. What kinds of possibilities do you see for women to enter?
It begins already at school ... all the clichés girls hear ... it starts there. We
possibly have a set of brains that is socially constructed, but when you hear
people talk about women having more sense for the global, intuitive and
empathic ... and men are more logic ... even if it is true ... it seems quite a
good thing to have when you are doing math or software? I mean, there is
no handicap we start out with, it is a social handicap ... convincing girls to
become a secretary rather than a system administrator.
6
Participants in the Samedies: Femmes et logiciels libres (http://www.samedies.be)
40
I am assuming there is a link between your feminism and your engagement with
Free Software ...
It is linked at the point where ... it is a political liaison which is about reappropriating tools, and an attempt to imagine a political universe where we
are ourselves implicated in the things we do and make, and where we collectively can discuss this future. You can see it as something very large, socially,
and very idealist too. You should also not idealise the Free Software community itself. There’s an anthropologist who has made a proper description 7 ...
but there are certainly relational and organisational problems, and political
problems, power struggles too. But the general idea ... we have come to the
political point of saying: we have technologies, and we want to appropriate
them and we will discuss them together. I feel I am a feminist ... but I know
there are other kinds of feminism, liberal feminism for example, that do not
want to question the political economical status quo. My feminism is a bit
different, it is linked to eco-feminism, and also to the re-appropriation of
techniques that help us organise as a group. Free Software can be ... well,
there is a direction in Free Software that is linked to ‘Free Enterprise’ and
the American Dream. Everything should be possible: start-ups or pin-ups,
it doesn’t matter. But for me, there is another branch much more ‘libertaire’
and left-wing, where there is space for collective work and where we can ask
questions about the impact of technology. It is my interest of course, and I
know well that even as president of the BXLug I sometimes find myself on
the extreme side, so I will not speak about my ‘libertaire’ ideas all the time
in public, but if anyone asks me ... I know well what is at stake but it is not
necessarily representative of the ideas within the BXLug.
Are their discussions between members, about the varying interests in Free Software?
I can imagine there are people more excited about efficiency and performativity
of these tools, and others attracted by it’s political side.
Well, these arguments mix, and also since some years there is unfortunately
less of a fundamental discussion. At the moment I have the impression that
we are more into ‘things to do’ when we meet in person. On the mailing
list there are frictions and small provocations now and then, but the really
interesting debates are over, since a few years ... I am a bit disappointed in
7
Christophe Lazarro. La liberté logicielle. Une ethnographie des pratiques d’échange et de
coopération au sein de la communauté Debian. Academia editons, 2008
41
that, actually. But it is not really a problem, because I know other groups
that pose more interesting questions and with whom I find it more interesting to have a debate. Last year we have been working away like small busy
bees, distributing the general idea of Free Software with maybe a hint to the
societal questions behind but in fact not marking it out as a counterweight
to a commercialised society. We haven’t really deepened the problematics,
because for me ... it is clear that Free Software has won the battle, they have
been completely recuperated by the business world, and now we are in a
period where tendencies will become clear. I have the impression that with
the way society is represented right now ... where they are talking about the
economical crisis ... and that we are becoming a society of ‘gestionnaires’
and ideological questions seem not very visible.
So do you think it is more or less a war between two tendencies, or can both
currents coexist, and help each other in some way?
The current in Free Software that could think about resistance and ask
political questions and so on, does not have priority at the moment. But
what we can have is debates and discussions from person to person and we
can interpolate members of the BXLug itself, who really sometimes start to
use a kind of marketing language. But it is relational ... it is from person
to person. At the moment, what happens on the level of businesses and
society, I don’t know. I am looking for a job and I see clearly that I will
need to accept the kinds of hierarchies that exist but I would like to create
something else. The small impact a group like BXLug can make ... well,
there are several small projects, such as the one to develop a distribution
specifically designed for small organisations, to which nobody could object
of course. Different directions coexist, because there is currently not any
project with enough at stake that it would shock the others.
To go once again from a large scale to a small scale ... how would you describe
your own itinerary from mathematics to working on and with software?
I did two bachelors at the University Libre de Bruxelles, and than I studied
to become a math teacher. I had a wonderful teacher, and we were into
the pleasure of exercising our brains, and discovering theory but a large part
of our courses were concentrated on pedagogy and how to become a good
teacher, how to open up the mind of a student in the context of a course.
That’s when I discovered another pleasure, of helping a journey into a kind
42
of math that was a lot more concrete, or that I learned to render concrete.
One of the difficult subjects you need to teach in high schools, is scales and
plans. I came up with a rendering of a submarine and all students, boys as
well as girls, were quickly motivated, wanting to imagine themselves at the
real scale of the vessel. I like math, because it is not linked to a pre-existing
narrative structure, it is a theoretical construct we accept or not, like the
rules of a game. For me, math is an ideal way to form a critical mind.
When you are a child, math is fundamentally fiction, full stop. I remember
that when I learned modern math at school ... I had an older teacher, and
she wasn’t completely at ease with the subject. I have the impression that
because of this ... maybe it was a question of the relation between power and
knowledge ... she did not arrive with her knowledge all prepared, I mean it
was a classical form of pedagogy, but it was a new subject to her and there
was something that woke up in me, I felt at ease, I followed, we did not go
too fast ...
It was open knowledge, not already formed and closed?
Well, we discovered the subject together with the teacher. It might sound
bizarre, and she certainly did not do this on purpose, but I immediately felt
confident, which did not have too much to do with the subject of the class,
but with the fact that I felt that my brains were functioning.
I still prefer to discover the solution to a mathematical problem together
with others. But when it comes to software, I can be on my own. In
the end it is me, who wants to ask myself: why don’t I understand? Why
don’t I make any progress? In Free Software, there is the advantage of
having lots of documentation and manuals available online, although you
can almost drown in it. For me, it is always about playing with your brain,
there is at least always an objective where I want to arrive, whether it is
understanding theory or software ... and in software, it is also clear that you
want something to work. There is a constraint of efficiency that comes in
between, that of course somehow also exists in math, but in math when you
have solved a problem, you have solved it on a piece of paper. I enjoy the
game of exploring a reality, even if it is a virtual one.
43
In September 2013 writer, developer, freestyle rapper and
poet John Haltiwanger joined the ConTeXt user meeting in
Brejlov (Czech Republic) 1 to present his ideas on Subtext,
‘A Proposed Processual Grammar for a Multi-Output PreFormat’. The interview started as a way to record John’s
impressions fresh from the meeting, but moved into discussing the future of layout in terms of ballistics.
How did you end up going to the ConTeXt meeting? Actually, where was it?
It was in Brejlov, which apparently might not even be a town or city. It
might specifically be a hotel. But it has its own ... it’s considered a location,
I guess. But arriving was already kind of a trick, because I was under the
impression there was a train station or something. So I was asking around:
Where is Brejlov? What train do I take to Brejlov? But nobody had any clue,
that this was even something that existed. So that was tricky. But it was really a beautiful venue. How I ended up at the conference specifically? That’s
a good question. I’m not an incredibly active member on the ConTeXt
mailing list, but I pop up every now and again and just kind of express a
few things that I have going on. So initially I mentioned my thesis, back in
January or maybe March, back when it was really unformulated. Maybe it
was even in 2009. But I got really good responses from Hans. 2 Originally,
when I first got to the Netherlands in 2009 in August, the next weekend
was the third annual ConTeXt meeting. I had barely used the software at
that point, but I had this sort of impulse to go. Well anyway, I did not have
the money for it at that time. So the fact that there was another one coming
round, was like: Ok, that sounds good. But there was something ... we got
into a conversation on the mailing list. Somebody, a non-native English
speaker was asking about pronouns and gendered pronouns and the proper
way of ‘pronouning’ things. In English we don’t have a suitable gender neutral pronoun. So he asked the questions and some guy responded: The
1
2
http://meeting.contextgarden.net/2013/
Hans Hagen is the principal author and developer of ConTeXt, past president of NTG, and
active in many other areas of the TeX community
Hans Hagen – Interview – TeX Users Group. http://tug.org/interviews/hagen.html, 2006. [Online; accessed 18.12.2014]
47
proper way to do it, is to use he. It’s an invented problem. This whole question is
an invented question and there is no such thing as a need for considering any other
options besides this. 3 So I wrote back and said: That’s not up to you to decide,
because if somebody has a problem, than there is a problem. So I kind of naively
suggested that we could make a Unicode character, that can stand in, like a
typographical element, that does not necessarily have a pronounciation yet.
So something that, when you are reading it, you could either say he or she
or they and it would be sort of [emergent|dialogic|personalized].
Like delayed political correctness or delayed embraciveness. But, little did I
know, that Unicode was not the answer.
Did they tell you that? That Unicode is not the answer?
Well, Arthur actually wrote back 4 , and he knows a lot about Unicode and
he said: With Unicode you have to prove that it’s in use already. In my sense,
Unicode was a playground where I could just map whatever values I wanted
to be whatever glyph I wanted. Somewhere, in some corner of unused
namespace or something. But that’s not the way it works. But TeX works
like this. So I could always just define a macro that would do this. Hans
actually wrote a macro 5 that would basically flip a coin at the beginning of
your paper. So whenever you wanted to use the gender neutral, you would
just use the macro and then it wouldn’t be up to you. It’s another way of
obfuscating, or pushing the responsibility away from you as an author. It’s
like ok, well, on this one it was she, the next it was he, or whatever.
So in a way gender doesn’t matter anymore?
Right. And then I was just like, that’s something we should talk about at the
meeting. I guess I sent out something about my thesis and Hans or Taco,
they know me, they said that it would great for you to do a presentation of
this at the meeting. So that’s very much how I ended up there.
You had never met anyone from ConTeXt before?
3
4
5
No. You and Pierre were the only people I knew, that have been using it,
besides me, at the time. It was interesting in that way, it was really ... I mean
I felt a little bit ... nervous isn’t exactly the word, but I sort of didn’t know
what exactly my positon was meant to be. Because these guys ... it’s a users’
meeting, right? But the way that tends to work out for Open Source projects
is developers talking to developers. So ... my presentation was saturated ...
I think, I didn’t realise how quickly time goes in presentations, at the time.
So I spent like 20 minutes just going through my attack on media theory in
the thesis. And there was a guy, falling asleep on the right side of the room,
just head back. So, that was entertaining. To be the black sheep. That’s
always a fun position. It was entertaining for me, to meet these people
and to be at the same time sort of an outsider. Not a really well known
user contrasted with other people, who are more like cornerstones of the
community. They were meeting everybody in person for the first time. And
somehow I could connect. So now, a month and a half later we’re starting
this ConTeXt group, an international ConTeXt users’ group and I’m on the
board, I’m editing the journal. So it’s like, it ...
... that went fast!
It went fast indeed!
What is this ‘ConTeXt User Group’?
To a certain extent the NTG, which is the Netherlands TeX Group, had sort
of been consumed from the inside by the heavyness of ConTeXt, specifically
in the Netherlands. The discussion started to shift to be more ConTeXt.
Now the journal, the MAPS journal, there are maybe 8 or 10 articles, two of
which are not written by either Hans or Taco, who are the main developers
of ConTeXt. And there is zero on anything besides ConTeXt. So the NTG
is almost presented as ok, if you like ConTeXt or if you wanna be in a ConTeXt
user group, you join the NTG. Apparently the journal used to be quite thick
and there are lots of LaTeX users, who are involved. So partially the attempt
is sort of ease that situation a little bit.
It allowed the two communities to separate?
49
Yeah, and not in any way like fast or abrupt fashion. We’re trying to be
very conscious about it. I mean, it’s not ConTeXt’s fault that LaTeX users
are not submitting any articles for the journal. That user group will always have the capacity, those people could step up. The idea is to setup a
more international forum, something that has more of the sense of support
for ... because the software is getting bigger and right now we’re really reliant on this mailing list and if you have your stupid question either Hans,
Taco or Wolfgang will shoot something back. And they become reliant on
Wolfgang to be able to answer questions, because there are more users coming. Arthur was really concerned, among other people, with the scalability
of our approach right now. And how to set up this infrastructure to support
the software as it grows bigger. I should forward you this e-mail that I
wrote, that is a response to their name choices. They were contemplating
becoming a group called ‘cows’. Which is clearly an inside joke because they
loved to do figure demonstrations with cows. And seeing ConTeXt as I do,
as a platform, a serious platform, for the future, something that ... it’s almost like it hasn’t gotten to its ... I mean it’s in such rapid development ...
it’s so undocumented ... it’s so ... like ... it’s like rushing water or something.
But at some point ... it’s gonna fill up the location. Maybe we’re still building this platform, but when it’s solid and all the pieces are ... everything
is being converted to metric, no more inches and miles and stuff. At that
point, when we have this platform, it will turn into a loadable Lua library.
It won’t even be an executable at that point.
It is interesting how quickly you have become part of this community. From being
complete outsider not knowing where to go, to now speaking about a communal
future.
To begin with, I guess I have to confront my own seemingly boundless
propensity for picking obscure projects ... as sort of my ... like the things
that I champion. And ... it often boils down to flexibility.
You think that obscurity has anything to do with the future compatibility of
ConTeXt?
50
Well, no. I think the obscurity is something that I don’t see this actually
lasting for too long in the situation of ConTeXt. As it gets more stable it’s
basically destined to become more of a standard platform. But this is all
tied into to stuff that I’m planning to do with the software. If my generative
typesetting platform ... you know ... works and is actually feasible, which is
maybe a 80% job.
Wait a second. You are busy developing another platform in parallel?
Yes, although I’m kind of hovering over it or sort of superceeding it as
an interface. You have LaTeX, which has been at version 2e since the
mid-nineties, LaTeX 3 is sort of this dim point on the horizon. Whereas
ConTeXt is changing every week. It’s converting the entire structure of this
macro package from being written in TeX to being written in Lua. And
so there is this transition from what could be best described as an archaic
approach to programming, to this shiny new piece of software. I see it as
being competitive strictly because it has so much configurability. But that’s
sort of ... and that’s the double edged sword of it, that the configuration
is useless without the documentation. Donald Knuth is famous for saying
that he realises he would have to write the software and the manual for the
software himself. And I remember in our first conversation about the sort
of paternalistic culture these typographic projects seem to have. Or at least
in the sense of TeX, they seem to sort of coagulate around a central wizard
kind of guy.
You think ConTeXt has potential for the future, while TeX and LaTeX belong
... to the past?
I guess that’s sort of the way it sounds, doesn’t it?
I guess I share some of your excitement, but also have doubts about how far the
project actually is away from the past. Maybe you can describe how you think it
will develop, what will be that future? How you see that?
Right. That’s a good way to start untangling all the stuff I was just talking
about, when I was sort of putting the cart before the horse. I see it developing in some ways ... the way that it’s used today and the way that current,
51
heavy users use it. I think that they will continue to use in it in a similar
way. But you already have people who are utilising LuaTeX ... and maybe
this is an important thing to distinguish between ConTeXt and LuaTeX.
Right now they’re sort of very tied together. Their development is intrinsic,
they drive each other. But to some extent some of the more interesting
stuff that is been being done with these tools is ... like ... XML processing.
Where you throw XML into Lua code and run LuaTeX kerning operations
and line breaking and all this kind of stuff. Things that, to a certain extent,
you needed to engage TeX on its own terms in the past. That’s why macro
packages develop as some sort of sustainable way to handle your workflow.
This introduction of LuaTeX I think is sort of ... You can imagine it being
loaded as a library just as a way to typeset the documentation for code. It
could be like this holy grail of literate programming. Not saying this is the
answer, but that at least it will come out as a nice looking .pdf.
LuaTeX allows the connection to TeX to widen?
Yeah. It takes sort of the essence of TeX. And this is, I guess, the crucial
thing about LuaTeX that up until now TeX is both a typesetting engine and
a programming language. And not a very good one. So now that TeX can
be the engine, the Tschicholdian algorithms, the modernist principles, that,
for whatever reason, do look really good, can be utilised and connected to
without having to deal with this 32 year old macro programming language.
On top of that and part of how directly engaging with that kind of movement foreward is ... not that I am switching over to LuaTeX entirely at this
point ... but that this generative typesetting platform that was sort of the
foundation of this journal proposal we did. Where you could imagine actual
humanity scholars using something that is akin to markdown or a wiki formatting kind of system. And I have a nice little buzzword for that: ‘visually
semantic markup’. XML, HTML, TeX, ... none of those are visually semantic. Because it’s all based around these primitives ‘ok, between the angle
brackets’. Everything is between angle brackets. You have to look what’s
inside the angle brackets to know what is happening to what’s between the
angle brackets. Whereas a visually semantic markup ... OK headers! OK
so it’s between two hashmarks or it’s between two whatever ... The whole
52
design of those preformatting languages, maybe not wiki markup, but at
least markdown was that it could be printed as a plaintext document and
you could still get a sense of the structure. I think that’s a really crucial
development. So ... in a web browser, on one half of the browser you have
you text input, on the other half you have an real-time rendering of it into
HTML. In the meantime, the way that the interface works, the way that
the visually semantic markup works, is that it is a mutable interface. It
could be tailored to your sense of what it should look like. It can be tailored
specifically to different workflows. And because there is such a diversity
within typographic workflows, typesetting workflows ... that is akin to the
separation of form and content in HTML and CSS, but it’s not meant to be
... as problematic as that. I’m not sure if that is a real goal, or if that goal
is feasible or not. But it’s not meant to be drawing an artificial line, it’s just
meant to make things easier.
So by pulling apart historically grown elements, it becomes ... possibly modern?
Hypermodern?
Something for now and later.
Yes. Part of this idea, the trick ... This software is called ‘Subtext’ and at
this point it’s a conceptual project, but that will change pretty soon. Its
trick is this idea of separation instead of form and content, it’s translation
and effect. The parser itself has to be mutable, has to be able to pull in
the interface, print like decorations basically from a YAML configuration
file or some sort of equivalent. One of this configuration mechanisms that
was designed to be human readable and not machine readable. Like, well
both, striking that balance. Maybe we can get to that kind of ... talking
about agency a little bit. Its trick to really pull that out so that if you want
to ... for instance now in markdown if you have quotes it will be translated
in ConTeXt into \quotation. In ConTeXt that’s a very simple switch
to turn it into German quotes. Or I guess that’s more like international
quotes, everything not English. For the purposes of markdown there is
no, like really easy way, to change that part of the interface. So that when
53
I’m writing, when I use the angle brackets as a quote it would turn into
a \quotation in the output. Whereas with ‘Subtext’ you would just go
into the interface type like configuration and say: These are converted into
a quote basically. And then the effects are listed in other configuration files
so that the effects of quotes in HTML can be ...
... different.
Yes. Maybe have specific CSS properties for spacing, that kind of stuff. And
then in ConTeXt the same sort of ... both the environmental setup as well
as the raw ‘what is put into the document when it’s translated’. This kind of
separation ... you know at that point if both those effects are already the way
that you want them, then all you have to do is change the interface. And
then later on typesetting system, maybe iTeX comes out, you know, Knuth’s
joke, anyway. 6 That kind of separation seems to imply a future proofing
that I find very elegant. That you can just add later on the effects that you
need for a different system. Or a different version of a system, not that you
have to learn ‘mark 6’, or something like that ...
Back to the future ... I wonder about ConTeXt being bound to a particular
practise located with two specific people. Those two are actually the ones that
produce the most complete use cases and thereby define the kind of practise that
ConTeXt allows. Do you think this is a temporary stage or do you think that by
inviting someone like you on the board, as an outsider, that it is a sign of things
going to change?
Right. Well, yeah, this is another one of those put-up or shut-up kind of
things because for instance at the NTG meeting on Wednesday my presentation was very much a user presentation in a room of developers. Because I
basically was saying: Look like this is gonna be a presentation – most presentation are about what you know – and this presentation is really about
what I don’t know ... but what I do know is that there is a lot of room for
teaching ConTeXt in a more practical fashion, you could say. So my idea is
to basically write this documentation on how to typeset poetry, which gets
6
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Knuth#Humor
54
into a lot of interesting questions, just a lot of interesting things. Like you
gonna need to write your own macros just at the start ... to make sure you
have not to go in and change every width value at some point. you know,
this kind of thing like ... really baby steps. How to make a cover page. These
kinds of things are not documented.
Documentation is let’s say an interesting challenge for ConTeXt. How do you
think the ConTeXt community could enable different kinds of use, beyond the
ones that are envisioned right now? I guess you have a plan?
Yeah ... that’s a good question. Part of it is just to do stuff, like to get you
more involved in the ConTeXt group for instance, because I was talking to
Arthur and he hadn’t even read the article from V/J10 7 . I think that kind
of stuff is really important. It’s like the whole Blender Foundation kind
of impulse. We have some developers who are paid to do this and that’s
kind of rare already in an Open Source/Free Software project. But then to
kind of have users pushing the boundaries and hitting limits. It’s rare that
Hans will encounter some kind of use case that he didn’t think of and react
in a negative way. Or react in a way like I’m not gonna even entertain that
possibility. Part of it is moving beyond this ... even the sort of centralisation
as you call it ... how to do that directly ... I see it more as baby steps for
me personally at this point. Just getting a tutorial on how to typeset a cd
booklet. Just basically what I’m writing. That at the same time, you know,
gets you familiar with ConTeXt and TeX in general. Before my presentation
I was wondering, I was like: how do you set a variable in TeX. Well, it’s a
macro programming language so you just make a macro that returns a value.
Like that kind of stuff is not initially obvious if you’re used to a different
paradigm or you know .. So these baby steps of kind of opening the field up
a little bit and then using it my own practise of guerilla typesetting and kind
of putting it out there. and you know ... And people gonna start being like:
oh yeah, beautiful documents are possible or at least better looking documents
are possible. And then once we have them at that, like, then how do you we
7
Constant, Clementine Delahaut, Laurence Rassel, and Emma Sidgwick.
Verbindingen/Jonctions: Tracks in electr(on)ic fields. Constant Verlag, 2009.
http://ospublish.constantvzw.org/sources/vj10
55
take it to the next level. How do I turn a lyric sheet from something that
is sort of static to ... you know ... two pages that are like put directly on the
screen next to each other. Like a screen based system where it’s animated
to the point ... and this is what we actually started to karaoke last night ...
so you have an English version and a Spanish version – for instance in the
case of the music that I’ve been doing. And we can animate. We can have
timed transitions so you can have a ‘current lyric indicator’ move down the
page. That kind of use case is not something that Pragma 8 is ever going
to run into. But as soon as it is done and documented then what’s the next
thing, what kind of animations are gonna be ... or what kind of ... once that
possibility is made real or concrete ... you know, so I kind of see it as a very
iterative process at this point. I don’t have any kind of grand scheme other
than ‘Subtext’ kind of replacing Microsoft Word as the dominant academic
publishing platform, I think. (laughs)
Just take over the world.
That’s one way to do it, I think.
You talked about manuals for things that you would maybe not do in another
kind of software ...
Right.
Manuals that not just explain ‘this is how you do it’ but also ‘this is the kind of
user you could be’.
Right.
I’m not sure if instructions for how to produce a cd cover would draw me in, but
if it helped me understand how to set a variable, it would.
Right.
8
Hans Hagen’s company for Advanced Document Engineering
56
You want the complete manual of course?
Yeah!
You were saying that ConTeXt should replace Microsoft Word as the standard
typesetting tool for academic publishing. You are thinking about the future for
ConTeXt more in the context of academic publishing than in traditional design
practise?
Yes. In terms of ‘Subtext’, I mean the origins of that project, very much
... It’s an interesting mix because it’s really a hybridity of many different
processes. Some, much come directly from this obscure art project ‘the abstraction’. So I have stuff like the track changes using Git version control
and everything being placed on plaintext as a necessity. That’s a holdover
from that project as well as the idea of gradiated presence. Like software
enabling a more real-time peer review, anonymous peer review system. And
even a collaborative platform where you don’t know who you’re writing with,
until the article comes out. Someting like out that. So these interesting
tweaks that you can kind of make, those all are holdovers from this very,
very much maybe not traditional design practise but certainly like ... twisted
artistic project that was based around hacking a hole from signified to siginifier and back again. So ... In terms of its current envisionment and the
use case for which we were developing it at the beginning, or I’m developing
it, whatever ... I’ll say it the royal way, is an academic thing. But I think
that ... doesn’t have to stop there and ...
At some point at OSP we decided to try ConTeXt because we were stuck with
Scribus for page layout as the only option in Free Software. We wanted escape
that kind of stiffness of the page, or of the canvas in a way. But ConTeXt
was not the dream solution either. For us it had a lot to do, of course, with
issues of documentation ... of not understanding, not coming from that kind of
automatism of treating it as another programming language. So I think we could
have had much more fun if we had understood the culture of the project better.
I think the most frustrating experience was to find out how much the model of
typesetting is linked to the Tschichold universe, that at the moment you try to
57
break out, the system completely looses all flexibility. And it is almost as if you
can hear it freeze. So if we blame half of our troubles with ConTeXt on our
inability to actually understand what we could do with ConTeXt, I think there is
a lot also in its assumption what a legible text would look like, how it’s structured,
how it’s done. Do you think a modern version of ConTeXt will keep that kind
of inflexibility? How can it become more flexible in it’s understanding of what a
page or a book could be?
That’s an interesting question, because I’m not into the development side
of LuaTex at all, but I would be surprised if the way that it was being
implemented was not significantly more modular than for instance when
it was written in Pascal, you know, how that was. Yeah, that’s a really
interesting question of how swappable is the backend. How much can we
go in and kind of ... you know. And it its an inspirational question to me,
because now I’m trying to envision a different page. And I’m really curious
about that. But I think that ConTeXt itself will likely be pretty stable in its
scope ... in that way of being ... sort of ... deterministic in its expectations.
But where that leaves us as users ... first I’d be really surprised if the engine
itself, if LuaTeX was not being some way written to ... I feel really ignorant
about this, I wish I just knew. But, yeah, there must be ... There is no way
to translate this into a modern programming language without somehow
thinking about this in terms of the design. I guess to certain extent the
answer to your question is dependent on the conscientiousness of Taco and
the other LuaTex developers for this kind of modularity. But I don’t ... you
know ... I’m actually feeling very imaginatively lacking in terms of trying to
understand what you’re award-winning book did not accomplish for you ...
Yeah, what’s wrong with that?
I think it would be good to talk with Pierre, not Pierre Marchand but Pierre ...
... Huggybear.
Yeah. We have been talking about ‘rivers’ as a metaphor for layout ... like were
you could have things that are ... let’s say fluid and other things that could be
placed and force things around it. Layout is often a combination of those two
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things. And this is what is frustrating in canvas based layout that it is all fixed
and you have to make it look like it’s fluid. And here it’s all fluid and sometimes
you want it to be fixed. And at the moment you fix something everything breaks.
Then it’s up to you. You’re on your own.
Right.
The experience of working with ConTeXt is that it is very much elastic, but there
is very little imagination about what this elasticity could bring.
Right.
It’s all about creating universally beautiful pages, in a way it is using flexibility
to arrive at something that is already fixed.
Right.
Well, there is a lot more possible than we ever tried, but ... again ... this goes
back to the sort of centralist question: If those possibilities are mainly details in
the head of the main developers than how will I ever start to fantasize about the
book I would want to make with it?
Right.
I don’t even need access to all the details. Because once I have a sort of sense of
what I want to do, I can figure it out. Right now you’re sort of in the dark about
the endless possibilities ...
Its existence is very opaque in some ways. The way that it’s implemented,
like everything about it is sort of ... looking at the macros that they wrote,
the macros that you invoke ... like ... that takes ... flow control in TeX is like
... I mean you might as well write it in Bash or ... I mean I think Bash would
even be more sensible to figuring out what’s going on. So, the switch to Lua
there is kind of I think a useful step just in being more transparent. To allow
you to get into becoming more intimate with the source or the operation
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of the system ... you know ... without having to go ... I mean I guess ... the
TeX Book would still be useful in some ways but that’s ... I mean ... to go
back and learn TeX when you’re just trying to use ConTeXt is sort of ...
it’s not ... I’m not saying it’s, you know ... it’s a proper assumption to say oh
yeah, don’t worry about the rules and the way TeX is organised but you’re not
writing your documents in ConTeXt the way you would write them if you’re
using plain TeX. I mean that’s just ... it’s just not ... It’s a different workflow
... it has a completely different set of processes that you need to arrange. So
it has a very distinct organisational logic ... that I think that ... yeah ... like
being able to go into the source and be like oh OK, like I can see clearly this
is ... you know. And then you can write in your own way, you can write back
in Lua.
This kind of documentation would be the killer feature of ConTeXt ...
Yeah.
It’s kind of strange paradox in the TeX community. At one hand you’re sort of
supposed to be able to do all of it. But at the same time on every page you’re told
not to do it, because it’s not for you to worry about this.
Right. That’s why the macro packages exist.
With ConTeXt there is this strange sense of very much wanting to understand the
way the logic works, or ... what the material is, you’re dealing with. And at the
same time being completely lost in the labyrinth between the old stuff from TeX
and LaTeX, the newer stuff from LuaTex, Mark 4, 3, 5, 6 ...
So that was sort of my idea with the cd typesetting project, is not to say,
that that is something that is immediately interesting to anybody who is
not trying to do that specifically, right? But at the same time if I’m ... if it’s
broken down into ‘How to do a bitmap cover page’ (=Lesson 1).
Lesson 2: ‘How to start defining you own macros’. And so you know, it’s
this thing that could be at one point a very ... because the documentation as
it stands right now is ... I think it’s almost ... fixing that documentation, I’m
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not sure is even possible. I think that it has to be completely approached
differently. I mean, like a real ConTeXt manual, that documents ... you
know ... command by command exactly what those things do. I mean our
reference manual now just shows you what arguments are available, but
doesn’t even list the available arguments. It’s just like: These are the positions
of the arguments. And it’s interesting.
So expecting writers of the program to write the manual fails?
Right.
What is the difference between your plans for ‘Subtext’ and a page layout program
like Scribus?
You mentioned ‘Subtext’ coming from a more academic publishing rather
than a design background. I think that this belies where I have come into
typesetting and my understanding of typography. Because in reality DTP
has never kind of drawn me in in that way. The principle differences are
really based on this distribution of agency, in my mind. That when you’re
demanding the software to be ‘what you see is what you get’ or when you
place that metaphor between you and your process. Or you and your engagement, you’re gaining the usefulness of that metaphor, which is ... it’s
almost ... I hope I don’t sound offensive ... but it’s almost like child’s play.
It’s almost like point, click, place. To me it just seems so redundant or ...
time-consuming maybe ... to really deal with it that way. There are advantages to that metaphor. For instance I don’t plan on designing covers in
ConTeXt. Or even a poster or something like that. Because it doesn’t really
give affordances for that kind of creativity. I mean you can do generative
stuff with the MetaFun package. You can sort of play around with that. But
I haven’t seen a ConTeXt generated cover that I liked, to be honest.
OK.
OK. Principle differences. I’m trying to ... I’m struggling a little bit. I think
that’s partially because I’m not super comfortable with the layout mechanism
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and stuff yet. And you have things like \blank in order to move down the
page. Because it has this sort of literal sense of a page and movement on
a page. Obviously Scribus has a literal idea of a page as well, but because
it’s WYSIWYG it has that benefit where you don’t have to think OK, well,
maybe it should be 1.6 ems down or maybe it should be 1.2 ems down. You
move it until it looks right. And then you can measure it and you’re like
ok, I’m gonna use this measurement for the further on in my document. So it’s
that whole top-down vs. bottom-up approach. It really breaks down into
the core organisational logics of those softwares.
I think it’s too easy to make the difference based on the fact that there is a
metaphorical layer or not. I think there is a metaphorical layer in ConTeXt too
...
Right. Yeah for sure.
And they come at a different moment and they speak a different language. But I
think that we can agree that they’re both there. So I don’t think it’s about the one
being without and the other being with. Of course there is another sense of placing
something in a canvas-based software than in a ... how would you call this?
So I guess it is either ‘declarative’ or ‘sequence’ based. You could say generative in a way ... or compiled or ... I don’t even know. That’s a cool question.
What is the difference really and why would you choose the one or the other? Or
what would you gain from one to the other? Because it’s clear that posters are not
easily made in ConTeXt. And that it’s much easier to typeset a book in ConTeXt
than it is in Scribus, for example.
Declarative maybe ...
So, there’s hierarchy. There’s direction. There’s an assumption about structure
being good or bad.
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Yeah. Boxes, Glue. 9
What is exciting in something like this is that placement is relative always.
Relative to a page, relative to a chapter, relative to itself, relative to what’s next
to it. Where in a canvas based software your page is fixed.
Right.
This is very different from a system where you make a change, then you compile
and then you look at it and then you go back into your code. So where there is a
larger distinction between output and action. It’s almost gestural ...
It’s like two different ways of having a conversation. Larry Wall has this really great metaphor. He talks about ‘ballistic design’. So when you’re doing
code, maybe he’s talking more about software design at this point, basically
it’s a ‘ballistic practise’ to write code. Ballistics comes from artillery. So you
shoot at a thing. If you hit it, you hit it. If you miss it, you change the
amount of gun powder, the angle. So code is very much a ‘ballistic practise’.
I think that filters into this difference in how the conversation works. And
this goes back to the agencies where you have to wait for the computer to
figure out. To come with its into the conversation. You’re putting the code
in and then the computer is like ok; this is what the code means
and then is this what you wanted? Whereas with the WYSIWYG
kind of interface the agency is distributed in a different way. The computer is just like ok, I m a canvas; I m just here to hold what
you re putting on and I m not going to change it any way or
affect it in any way that you don t tell me to. I mean it’s
the same way but I ... is it just a matter of the compilation time? In one
you’re sort of running a experiment, in another you’re just sort of painting.
If that’s a real enough distinction or if that’s ... you know ... it’s sort of ... I
mean I kind of see that it is like this. There is ballistics vs. maybe fencing
or something.
9
Boxes, which are things can be drawn on a page, and glue, which is invisible stretchy stuff that sticks
boxes together. Mark C. Chu-Carroll. The Genius of Donald Knuth: Typesetting with Boxes and Glue, 2008
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Fencing?
Fencing. Like more of a ...
Or wrestling?
Or wrestling.
When you said just sort of painting I felt offended. ( laughs)
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.
Maybe back to wrestling vs. ballistics. Where am I and where is the machine?
Right.
I understand that there’s lots of childish way of solving this need to make the
computer dissapear. Because if you are not wrestling ... you’re dancing, you know.
Yeah.
But I think it’s interesting to see that ballistics, that the military term of shooting
at something, is the kind of metaphor to be used. Which is quite different than a
creative process where there is a direct feedback between something placed and the
responses you have.
Right.
And it’s not always about aiming, but also sometimes about trying and about
kind of subtle movements that spark off something else. Which is very immediate.
And needs an immediate connection to ... let’s say ... what you do and what you
get. It would be interesting to think about ways to talking about ‘what you see
is what you get’ away from this assumption that is always about those poor users
that are not able do it in code.
Right.
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Because I think there is essential stuff that you can not do in a tool like this –
that you can do in canvas-based tools. And so ... I think it’s really a pity when
... yeah ... It’s often overlooked and very strange to see. There is not a lot of good
thinking about that kind of interaction. Like literal interaction. Which is also
about agency with the painter. With the one that makes the movement. Where
here the agency is very much in this confrontational relation between me aiming
and ...
So yeah, when we put it in those metaphors. I’m on the side with the
painting, because ...
But I mean it’s difficult to do a book while wrestling. And I think that’s why a
poster is very difficult to do in this sort of aiming sense. I mean it’s fun to do but
it’s a strange kind of posters you get.
You can’t fit it all in your head at once. It’s not possible.
No. So it’s okay to have a bit of delay.
I wondered to what extent, if it were updated in real time, all the changes
you’re making in the code, if compilation was instantaneous, how that would
affect the experience. I guess it would still have this ballistic aspect, because
what you are doing is ... and that’s really the side of the metaphor ... or
a metaphorical difference between the two. One is like a translation. The
metaphor of ok this code means this effect ... That’s very different from picking
a brush and choosing the width of the stroke. It’s like when you initialise
a brush in code, set the brush width and then move it in a circle with a
radius of x. It’s different than taking the brush in Scribus or in whatever
WYSIWYG tool you are gonna use. There is something intrinsically different about a translation from primitives to visual effect than this kind of
metaphorical translation of an interaction between a human and a canvas ...
kind of put into software terms.
But there is a translation from me, the human, to the machine, to my human eye
again, which is hard to grasp. Without wanting it to be made invisible somehow.
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Or to assume that it is not there. This would be my dream tool that would
allow you to sense that kind of translation without losing the ... canvasness of the
canvas. Because it’s frustrating that the canvas has to not speak of itself to be able
to work. That’s a very sad future for the canvas, I think.
I agree.
But when it speaks of itself it’s usually seen as buggy or it doesn’t work. So that’s
also not fair to the canvas. But there is something in drawing digitally, which
is such a weird thing to do actually, and this is interesting in this sort of cyborgs
we’re becoming, which is all about forgetting about the machine and not feeling
what you do. And it’s completely a different world in a way than the ballistics of
ConTeXt, LaTeX or whatever typesetting platform.
Yeah, that’s true. And it’s something that my students were forced to confront and it was really interesting because that supposed invisibility or almost
necessitated invisibility of the software. As soon as they’re in Inkscape instead of Illustrator they go crazy. Because it’s like they know what they want
to do, but it’s a different mechanism. It’s the same underlying process which
itself is only just meant to give you a digital version of what you could easily
do on a piece of paper. Provided you have the right paints and stuff. So
perhaps it’s like the difference between moving from a brush to an air brush.
It’s a different ... interface. It’s a different engagement. There is a different
thing between the human and the canvas. You engage in this creative process where it’s like ok, we’ll now have an airbrush and I can play around to
see what the capacities are without being stuck in well I can’t get it to do
my fine lines the same way I can when I have my brush. It’s like when you
switch the software out from between the person and the canvas. It’s that
sort of invisibility of the interface and it’s intense for people. They actually
react quite negatively. They’re not gonna bother to learn this other software
because in the end they’re doing less. The reappearance of this software
... of software between them and their ideas is kinda too much. Whereas
people who don’t have any preconceived notions are following the tutorials
and they’re learning and they’re like ok, I’m gonna continue to play with this.
Because this software is starting to become more invisible.
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But on a sort of theoretical level the necessitated invisibility, as you said it nicely, is
something I would always speak against. Because that means you hide something
that’s there. Which seems a stupid thing to do, especially when you want to find
a kind of more flexible relation to your tools. I want to find a better word for
describing that sort of quick feedback. Because if it’s too much in the way, then
the process stops. The drawing can not be made if I’m worried too much about
the point of my pencil that might break ... or the ... I dont’t know ... the nozzle
being blocked.
Dismissing the other tools is ... I was kinda joking, but ... there is something sort of blocklike: Point. Move. This. But at the same time, like I
said, I wouldn’t do a cover in ConTeXt. Just like I probably wouldn’t try to
do something like a recreation of a Pre-Raphaelite painting in Processing or
something like that. There is just points where our metaphors break down.
And so ... It sounded sort of, ok, bottom-up über alles like always.
Ok, there’s still painters and there’s still people doing Pre-Raphaelite paintings
with Pre-Raphaelite tools, but most of us are using computers. So there should be
more clever ways of thinking about this.
Yeah. To borrow a quote from my old buddy Donald Rumsfeld: There are
the known knowns, the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns. That
actually popped into my head earlier because when we were talking about
the potentials of the software and the way that we interact and stuff, it’s like
we know that we don’t know ... other ways of organizing. We know that
there are, like there has to be, another way, whether it is a middle path between these two or some sort of ... Maybe it’s just tenth dimensional, maybe
it’s fourth dimensional, maybe it’s completely hypermodern or something.
Anyway. But the unknown unknowns ... It’s like the stuff that we can’t
even tell we don’t know about. The questions that we don’t know about
that would come up once we figure out these other ways of organising it.
That’s when I start to get really interested in this sort of thing. How do you
even conceive of a practise that you don’t know? And once you get there,
there’s going to be other things that you know you don’t know and have to
keep finding them. And then there’s gonna be things that you don’t know
you don’t know and they just appear from nowhere and ... it’s fun.
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We discovered the work of Tom Lechner for the first time at
the Libre Graphics Meeting 2010 in Brussels. Tom traveled
from Portland to present Laidout, an amazing tool that he
made to produce his own comic books and also to work on
three dimensional mathematical objects. We were excited
about how his software represents the gesture of folding,
loved his bold interface decisions plus were impressed by the
fact that Tom decided to write his own programming framework for it. A year later, we met again in Montreal, Canada
for the Libre Graphics Meeting 2011 where he presents a
follow-up. With Ludivine Loiseau 1 and Pierre Marchand 2 ,
we finally found time to sit down and talk.
What is Laidout?
Well, Laidout is software that I wrote to lay out my cartoon books in an
easy fashion. Nothing else fit my needs at the time, so I just wrote it.
It does a lot more than laying out cartoons?
It works for any image, basically, and gradients. It does not currently do
text. It is on my todo list. I usually write my own text, so it does not really
need to do text. I just make an image of it.
It can lay out T-shirts?
But that’s all images too. I guess it’s two forms of laying out. It’s laying
out pieces of paper that remain whole in themselves, or you can take an
image and lay it out on smaller pieces of paper. Tiling, I guess you could
call it.
Can you talk us through the process of doing the T-shirt?
1
2
amateur bookbinder and graphic designer
artist/developer, contributing amongst others to PodofoImpose and Scribus
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OK. So, you need a pattern. I had just a shirt that sort of fit and I
approximated it on a big piece of paper, to figure out what the pieces were
shaped like, and took a photograph of that. I used a perspective tool to
remove the distortion. I had placed rulers on the ground so that I could
remember the actual scale of it. Then once it was in the computer, I traced
over it in Inkscape, to get just the basic outline so that I could manipulate
further. Blender didn’t want to import it so I had to retrace it. I had to
use Blender to do it because that lets me shape the pattern, take it from
flat into something that actually makes 3D shapes so whatever errors were
in the original pattern that I had on the paper, I could now correct, make
the sides actually meet and once I had the molded shape, and in Blender
you have to be extremely careful to keep any shape, any manipulation that
you do to make sure your surface is still unfoldable into something flat. It is
very easy to get away from flat surfaces in Blender. Once I have the molded
shape, I can export that into an .off file which my unwrapper can import
and that I can then unwrap into the sleeves and the front and the back as
well as project a panoramic image onto those pieces. Once I have that, it
becomes a pattern laid out on a giant flat surface. Then I can use Laidout
once again to tile pages across that. I can export into a .pdf with all the
individual pieces of the image that were just pieces of the larger image that
I can print on transfer paper. It took forty iron-on transfer papers I ironed
with an iron provided to me by the people sitting in front of me so that
took a while but finally I got it all done, cut it all out, sewed it up and there
you go.
Could you say something about your interest in moving from 2D to 3D
and back again? It seems everything you do is related to that?
I don’t know. I’ve been making sculpture of various kinds for quite a
long time. I’ve always drawn. Since I was about eighteen, I started making
sculptures, mainly mathematical woodwork. I don’t quite have access to a
full woodwork workshop anymore, so I cannot make as much woodwork as
I used to. It’s kind of an instance of being defined by what tools you have
available to you, like you were saying in your talk. I don’t have a woodshop,
but I can do other stuff. I can still make various shapes, but mainly out of
paper. Since I had been doing woodwork, I picked up photography I guess
and I made a ton of panoramic images. It’s kind of fun to figure out how
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to project these images out of the computer into something that you can
physically create, for instance a T-shirt or a ball, or other paper shapes.
Is there ever any work that stays in the computer, or does it always need
to become physical?
Usually, for me, it is important to make something that I can actually
physically interact with. The computer I usually find quite limiting. You
can do amazing things with computers, you can pan around an image, that
in itself is pretty amazing but in the end I get more out of interacting with
things physically than just in the computer.
But with Laidout, you have moved folding into the computer! Do you
enjoy that kind of reverse transformation?
It is a challenge to do and I enjoy figuring out how to do that. In making
computer tools, I always try to make something that I can not do nearly as
quickly by hand. It’s just much easier to do in a computer. Or in the case
of spherical images, it’s practically impossible to do it outside the computer.
I could paint it with airbrushes and stuff like that but that in itself would
take a hundred times longer than just pressing a couple of commands and
having the computer do it all automatically.
My feeling about your work is that the time you spent working on the
program is in itself the most intriguing part of your work. There is of course a
challenge and I can imagine that when you are doing it like the first time you
see a rectangle, and you see it mimic a perspective you think wow I am folding
a paper, I have really done something. I worked on imposition too but more
to figure out how to work with .pdf files and I didn’t go this way of the gesture
like you did. There is something in your work which is really the way you wrote
your own framework for example and did not use any existing frameworks. You
didn’t use existing GUIs and toolboxes. It would be nice to listen to you about
how you worked, how you worked on the programming.
I think like a lot of artists, or creative people in general, you have to
enjoy the little nuts and bolts of what you’re doing in order to produce any
final work, that is if you actually do produce any final work. Part of that is
making the tools. When I first started making computer tools to help me
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in my artwork, I did not have a lot of experience programming computers.
I had some. I did little projects here and there. So I looked around at the
various toolkits, but everything seemed really rigid. If you wanted to edit
some text, you had this little box and you write things in this little box and
if you want to change numbers, you have to erase it and change tiny things
with other tiny things. It’s just very restrictive. I figured I could either
figure out how to adapt those to my own purposes, or I could just figure
out my own, so I figured either way would probably take about that same
amount of time I guessed, in my ignorance. In the process, that’s not quite
been true. But it is much more flexible, in my opinion, what I’ve developed,
compared to a lot of other toolkits. Other people have other goals, so I’m
sure they would have a completely different opinion. For what I’m doing,
it’s much more adaptable.
You said you had no experience in programming? You studied in art school?
I don’t think I ever actually took computer programming classes. I grew
up with a Commodore 64, so I was always making letters fly around the
screen and stuff like that, and follow various curves. So I was always doing
little programming tricks. I guess I grew up in a household where that
sort of thing was pretty normal. I had two brothers, and they both became
computer programmers. And I’m the youngest, so I could learn from their
mistakes, too. I hope.
You’re looking for good excuses to program.
(laughs) That could be.
We can discuss at length about how actual toolkits don’t match your needs,
but in the end, you want to input certain things. With any recent toolkit, you
can do that. It’s not that difficult or time consuming. The way you do it, you
really enjoy it, by itself. I can see it as a real creative work, to come up with new
digital shapes.
Do you think that for you, the program itself is part of the work?
I think it’s definitely part of the work. That’s kind of the nuts and bolts
that you have to enjoy to get somewhere else. But if I look back on it, I
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spend a huge amount of time just programming and not actually making
the artwork itself. It’s more just making the tools and all the programming
for the tools. I think there’s a lot of truth to that. When it comes time to
actually make artwork, I do like to have the tool that’s just right for the job,
that works just the way that seems efficient.
I think the program itself is an artwork, very much. To me it is also
a reflection on moving between 2D and 3D, about physical computation.
Maybe this is the actual work. Would you agree?
I don’t know. To an extent. In my mind, I kind of class it differently.
I’ve certainly been drawing more than I’ve been doing technical stuff like
programming. In my mind, the artwork is things that get produced, or a
performance or something like that. And the programming or the tools
are in service to those things. That’s how I think of it. I can see that ...
I’ve distributed Laidout as something in itself. It’s not just some secret tool
that I’ve put aside and presented only the artwork. I do enjoy the tools
themselves.
I have a question about how the 2D imagines 3D. I’ve seen Pierre and
Ludi write imposition plans. I really enjoy reading this, almost as a sort of
poetry, about what it would be to be folded, to be bound like a book. Why is
it so interesting for you, this tension between the two dimensions?
I don’t know. Perhaps it’s just the transformation of materials from
something more amorphous into something that’s more meaningful, somehow. Like in a book, you start out with wood pulp, and you can lay it out in
pages and you have to do something to that in order to instil more meaning
to it.
Is binding in any way important to you?
Somewhat. I’ve bound a few things by hand. Most of my cartoon books
ended up being just stapled, like a stack of paper, staple in the middle and
fold. Very simple. I’ve done some where you cut down the middle and lay
the sides on top and they’re perfect bound. I’ve done just a couple where
it’s an actual hand bound, hard cover. I do enjoy that. It’s quite a time
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consuming thing. There’s quite a lot of craft in that. I enjoy a lot of hand
made, do-it-yourself activities.
Do you look at classic imposition plans?
I guess that’s kind of my goal. I did look up classic book binding
techniques and how people do it and what sort of problems they encounter.
I’m not sure if I’ve encompassed everything in that, certainly. But just the
basics of folding and trimming, I’ve done my best to be able to do the same
sort of techniques that have been done in the past, but only manually. The
computer can remember things much more easily.
Imposition plans are quite fixed, you have this paper size and it works with
specific imposition plans. I like the way your tool is very organic, you can play
with it. But in the end, something very classic comes out, an imposition plan you
can use over and over, which gives a sort of continuity.
What’s impressive is the attention you put into the visualization. There are
some technical programs which do really big imposition stuff, but it’s always at the
printer. Here, you can see the shape being peeled. It’s really impressive. I agree
with Femke that the program is an artwork too, because it’s not only technical,
it’s much more.
How is the material imagined in the tool?
So, far not really completely. When you fold, you introduce slight twists
and things like that. And that depends on the stiffness of the paper and
the thickness of the paper and I’ve not adequately dealt with that so much.
If you just have one fold, it’s pretty easy to figure out what the creep is for
that. You can do tests and you can actually measure it. That’s pretty easy
to compensate for. But if you have many more folds than that, it becomes
much more difficult.
Are you thinking about how to do that?
I am.
That would be very interesting. To imagine paper in digital space, to give
an idea of what might come out in the end. Then you really have to work
your metaphors, I think?
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A long time ago, I did a lot of T-shirt printing. Something that I did not
particularly have was a way to visualize your final image on some kind of shirt
and the same thing applies for book binding, too. You might have a strange
texture. It would be nice to be able to visualize that beforehand, as well
as the thickness of the paper that actually controls physical characteristics.
These are things I would like to incorporate somehow but haven’t gotten
around to.
You talked about working with physical input, having touchpads ... Can
you talk a bit more about why you’re interested in this?
You can do a lot of things with just a mouse and a keyboard. But it’s
still very limiting. You have to be sitting there, and you have to just control
those two things. Here’s your whole body, with which you can do amazing
things, but you’re restricted to just moving and clicking and you only have a
single point up on the screen that you have to direct very specifically. It just
seems very limiting. It’s largely an unexplored field, just to accept a wider
variety of inputs to control things. A lot of the multitouch stuff that’s been
done is just gestures for little tiny phones. It’s mainly for browsing, not
necessarily for actual work. That’s something I would like to explore quite a
lot more.
Do you have any fantasies about how these gestures could work for real?
There’s tons of sci fi movies, like ‘Minority Report’, where you wear these
gloves and you can do various things. Even that is still just mainly browsing.
I saw one, it was a research project by this guy at Caltech. He had made
this table and he wore polarized glasses so he could look down at this table
and see a 3D image. And then he had gloves on, and he could sculpt things
right in the air. The computer would keep track of where his hand is going.
Instead of sculpting clay, you’re sculpting this 3D mesh. That seemed quite
impressive to me.
You’re thinking about 3D printers, actually?
It’s something that’s on my mind. I just got something called the
Eggbot. You can hold spheres in this thing and it’s basically a plotter that
can print on spherical surfaces or round surfaces. That’s something I’d like
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to explore some more. I’ve made various balls with just my photographic
panoramas glued onto them. But that could be used to trace an outline for
something and then you could go in with pens or paints and add more detail.
If you’re trying to paint on a sphere, just paint and no photograph, laying out
an outline is perhaps the hardest part. If you simplify it, it becomes much
easier to make actual images on spheres. That would be fun to explore.
I’d like to come back to the folding. Following your existing aesthetic, the
stiffness and the angles of the drawing are very beautiful. Is it important you,
preserving the aesthetic of your programs, the widgets, the lines, the arrows ...
I think the specific widgets, in the end, are not really important to me
at all. It’s more just producing an actual effect. So if there is some better
way, more efficient way, more adaptable way to produce some effect, then it’s
better to just completely abandon what doesn’t work and make something
that’s new, that actually does work. Especially with multitouch stuff, a lot of
old widgets make no more sense. You have to deal with a lot of other kinds
of things, so you need different controls.
It makes sense, but I was thinking about the visual effect. Maybe it’s not
Laidout if it’s done in Qt.
Your visuals and drawings are very aesthetically precise. We’re wondering
about the aesthetics of the program, if it’s something that might change in the
future.
You mean would the quality of the work produced be changed by the
tools?
That’s an interesting question as well. But particularly the interface, it’s
very related to your drawings. There’s a distinct quality. I was wondering
how you feel about that, how the interaction with the program relates to the
drawings themselves.
I think it just comes back to being very visually oriented. If you have to
enter a lot of values in a bunch of slots in a table, that’s not really a visual
way to do it. Especially in my artwork, it’s totally visual. There’s no other
component to it. You draw things on the page and it shows up immediately.
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It’s just very visual. Or if you make a sculpture, you start with this chunk
of stuff and you have to transform it in some way and chop off this or sand
that. It’s still all very visual. When you sit down at a computer, computers
are very powerful, but what I want to do is still very visually oriented. The
question then becomes: how do you make an interface that retains the visual
inputs, but that is restricted to the types of inputs computers need to have
to talk to them?
The way someone sets up his workshop says a lot about his work. The way
you made Laidout and how you set up its screen, it’s important to define a spot
in the space of the possible.
What is nice is that you made the visualisation so important. The windows
and the rest of the interface is really simple, the attention is really focused on
what’s happening. It is not like shiny windows with shadows everywhere, you feel
like you are not bothered by the machine.
At the same time, the way you draw the thickness of the line to define the
page is a bit large. For me, these are choices, and I am very impressed because I
never manage to make choices for my own programs. The programs you wrote,
or George Williams, make a strong aesthetic assertion like: This is good. I can’t
do this. I think that is really interesting.
Heavy page borders, that still comes down to the visual thing you end
up with, is still the piece of paper so it is very important to find out where
that page outline actually is. The more obvious it is, the better.
Yes, I think it makes sense. For a while now, I paid more attention than
others in Scribus to these details like the shape of the button, the thickness of the
lines, what pattern do you chose for the selection, etcetera. I had a lot of feedback
from users like: I want this, this is too big and at some point you want to please
everybody and you don’t make choices. I don’t think that you are so busy with
what others think.
Are there many other users of the program?
Not that I know of (laughter). I know that there is at least one other
person that actually used it to produce a booklet. So I know that it is
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possible for someone other than myself to make things with it. I’ve gotten
a couple of patches from people to not make it crash at various places but
since Laidout is quite small, I can just not pay any attention to criticism.
Partially because there isn’t any, and I have particular motivations to make
it work in a certain way and so it is easier to just go forward.
I think people that want to use your program are probably happy with this
kind of visualisation. Because you wrote it alone, there is also a consistency across
the program. It is not like Scribus, that has parts written by a lot of people so you
can really recognize: this is Craig (Bradney), this is Andreas (Vox), this is Jean
(Ghali), this is myself. There is nothing to follow.
I remember Donald Knuth talking about TeX and he was saying that
the entire program was written from scratch three times before its current
incarnation. I am sympathetic to that style of programming.
Start again.
I think it is a good idea, to start again. To come back to a little detail. Is
there a fileformat for your imposition tool, to store the imposition plan? Is it a
text or a binary format?
It is text-based, an indented file format, sort of like Python. I did
not want to use XML, every time I try to use XML there are all these
greater thans and less thans. It is better than binary, but it is still a huge
mess. When everything is indented like a tree, it is very easy to find things.
The only problem is to always input tabs, not spaces. I have two different
imposition types, basically, the flat-folding sheets and the three dimensional
ones. The three dimensional one is a little more complicated.
If you read the file, do you know what you are folding?
Not exactly. It lists what folds exists. If you have a five by five grid, it
will say Fold along this line, over in such and such direction. What it actually
translates to in the end, is not currently stored in the file. Once you are in
Laidout you can export into a PodofoImpose plan file.
Is this file just values, or are there keywords, is it like a text?
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I try to make it pretty readable, like trimright or trimleft.
Does it talk about turning pages? This I find beautiful in PodofoImpose
plans, you can almost follow the paper through the hands of the program.
Turn now, flip backwards, turn again. It is an instruction for a dance.
Pretty much.
The text you can read in the PodofoImpose plans was taken from what Ludi
and me did by hand. One of us was folding the paper, and the other was writing
it into the plan. I think a lot of the things we talk about, are putting things from
the real world into the computer. But you are putting things from the computer
into the real world.
Can you describe again these two types of imposition, the first one being
very familiar to us. It must be the most frequently asked question on the
Scribus mailing list: How to do imposition. Even the most popular search
term on the OSP website is ‘Bookletprinting’. But what is the difference with
the plan for a 3D object? A classic imposition plan is also somehow about
turning a flat surface into a three dimensional object?
It is almost translatable. I’m reworking the 3D version to be able to
incorporate the flat folding. It is not quite there yet, the problem is the
connection between the pages. Currently, in the 3D version, you have a
shape that has a definitive form and that controls how things bleed across
the edges. When you have a piece of paper for a normal imposition, the
pages that are next to each other in the physical form are not necessarily
related to each other at all in the actual piece of paper. Right now, the piece
of paper you use for the 3D model is very defined, there is no flexibility.
Give me a few months!
So it is very different actually.
It is a different approach. One person wanted to do flexagons, it is sort
of like origami I guess, but it is not quite as complicated. You take a piece
of paper, cut out a square and another square, and than you can fold it and
you end up with a square that is actually made up of four different sections.
Than you can take the middle section, and you get another page and you can
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keep folding in strange ways and you get different pages. Now the question
becomes: how do you define that page, that is a collection of four different
chunks of paper? I’m working on that!
We talk about the move from 2D to 3D as if these pages are empty. But
you actually project images on them and I keep thinking about maps, transitional objects where physical space is projected on paper which then becomes a
second real space and so on. Are you at all interested in maps?
A little bit. I don’t really want to because it is such a well-explored
field already. Already for many hundreds of years the problem is how do
you represent a globe onto a more or less two dimensional surface. You
have to figure out a way to make globe gores or other ways to project it and
than glue it on to a ball for example. There is a lot of work done with that
particular sort of imagery, but I don’t know.
Too many people in the field!
Yes. One thing that might be interesting to do though is when you have
a ball that is a projection surface, then you can do more things, like overlays
onto a map. If you want to simulate earthquakes for example. That would
be entertaining.
And the panoramic images you make, do you use special equipment for
this?
For the first couple that I made, I made this 30-sided polyhedron that
you could mount a camera inside and it sat on a base in a particular way so
you could get thirty chunks of images from a really cheap point and shoot
camera. You do all that, and you have your thirty images and it is extremely
laborious to take all these thirty images and line them up. That is why I
made the 3D portion of Laidout, it was to help me do that in an easier
fashion. Since then I’ve got a fish-eyed lens which simplifies things quite
considerably. Instead of spending ten hours on something, I can do it in ten
minutes. I can take 6 shots, and one shot up, one shot down. In Hugin you
can stitch them all together.
And the kinds of things you photograph? We saw the largest rodent on
earth? How do you pick a spot for your images?
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I am not really sure. I wander around and than photograph whatever
stands out. I guess some unusual configuration of architecture frequently
or sometimes a really odd event, or a political protest sometimes. The trick
with panoramas is to find an area where something is happening all over
the globe. Normally, on sunny days, you take a picture and all your image
is blank. As pretty as the blue sky is, there is not a lot going on there
particularly.
Panoramic images are usually spherical or circular. Do you take certain
images with a specific projection surface in mind?
To an extent. I take enough images. Once I have a whole bunch of
images, the task is to select a particular image that goes with a particular
shape. Like cubes there are few lines and it is convenient to line them up to
an actual rectangular space like a room. The tetrahedron made out of cones,
I made one of Mount St. Helens, because I thought it was an interesting
way to put the two cones together. You mentioned 3D printers earlier, and
one thing I would like to do is to extend the panoramic image to be more
like a progression. For most panoramic images, the focal point is a single
point in space. But when you walk along a trail, you might have a series of
photographs all along. I think it could be an interesting work to produce,
some kind of ellipsoidal shape with a panoramic image that flows along the
trail.
Back to Laidout, and keeping with the physical and the digital. Would
there be something like a digital papercut?
Not really. Maybe you can have an Arduino and a knife?
I was more imagining a well placed crash?
In a sense there is. In the imposition view, right now I just have a green
bar to tell where the binding is. However when you do a lot of folds, you
usually want to do a staple. But if you are stapling and there is not an actual
fold there, than you are screwed.
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The following statements were recorded by Urantsetseg
Ulziikhuu (Urana) in 2014. She studied communication in
Istanbul and Leuven and joined Constant for a few months
to document the various working practices at Constant
Variable. Between 2011 and 2014, Variable housed studios
for Artists, Designers, Techno Inventors, Data Activists,
Cyber Feminists, Interactive Geeks, Textile Hackers, Video
Makers, Sound Lovers, Beat Makers and other digital creators who were interested in using F/LOS software for
their creative experiments.
Why do you think people should use and or practice
Open Source software? What is in it for you?
Urantsetseg Ulziikhuu
The knitting machine that I am using normally has a
computer from the eighties. Some have these scanners that are really old
and usually do not work anymore. They became obsolete. If it wasn’t for
Open Source, we couldn’t use these technologies anymore. Open Source
developers decided that they should do something about these machines and
found that it was not that complicated to connect these knitting machines
directly to computers. I think it is a really good example how Open Source
is important, because these machines are no longer produced and industry
is no longer interested in producing them again, and they would have died
without further use.
The idea that Open Source is about sharing is also important. If you try to
do everything from zero, you just never advance. Now with Open Source, if
somebody does something and you have access to what they do, and you can
take it further and take it into a different direction.
Claire Williams
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I haven’t always used Open Source software. It started
at the Piet Zwart Institute where there was a decision made by Matthew
Fuller and Femke Snelting who designed the program. They brought a
bunch of people together that asked questions about how our tools influence
practice, how they are used. And so, part of my process is then teaching in
that program, and starting to use Free Software more and more. I should
say, I had already been using one particular piece of Free Software which
is FFmpeg, a program that lets you work with video. So there again there
was a kind of connection. It was just by the virtue of the fact that it was
one of the only tools available that could take a video, pull out frames,
work with lots of different formats, just an amazing tool. So it started with
convenience. But the more that I learned about the whole kind of approach
of Open Source, the more Open Source I started to use. I first switched from
MacOSX to maybe Dual Booting and now indeed I am pretty much only
using Open Source. Not exclusively Open Source, because I occasionally use
platforms online that are not free, and some applications.
I am absolutely convinced that when you use these tools, you are learning
much more about inner workings of things, about the design decisions that
go into a piece of software so that you are actually understanding at a very
deep level, and this then lets you move between different tools. When
tools change, or new things are offered, I think it is really a deep learning
that helps you for the future. Whereas if you just focus on the specific
particularities of one platform or piece of software, that is a bit fragile and
will inevitably be obsolete when a software stops being developed or some
kind of new kind of way of working comes about.
Michael Murtaugh
I use Open Source software every day, as I have
Debian on my laptop. I came to it through anarchism – I don’t have a tech
background – so it’s a political thing mainly. Not that F/LOSS represents
a Utopian model of production by any means! As an artist it fits in with
my interest in collaborative production. I think the tools we use should be
malleable by the people who use them. Unfortunately, IT education needs
to improve quite a lot before that ideal becomes reality.
Politically, I believe in building a culture which is democratic and malleable
by its inhabitants, and F/LOSS makes this possible in the realm of software.
The benefits as a user are not so great unless you are tech-savvy enough to
really make use of that freedom. The software does tend to be more secure
Eleanor Greenhalgh
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and so on, though I think we’re on shaky ground if we try to defend F/LOSS
in terms of its benefits to the end user. Using F/LOSS has a learning curve,
challenges which I put up with because I believe in it socially. This would
probably be a different answer from say, a sysadmin, someone who could see
really concrete benefits of using F/LOSS.
Actually I came from Open Content and alternative licensing to the technical side of using GNU/Linux. My main motivation
right now is the possibility to develop a deeper relationship with my tools.
For me it is interesting to create my own tools for my work, rather than
to use something predefined. Something everyone else uses. With Free
Software this is easier – to invent tools. Another important point is that
with Free Software and open standards it’s more likely that you will be able
to keep track of your work. With proprietary software and formats, you are
pretty much dependent on decisions of a software company. If the company
decides that it will not continue an application or format, there is not much
you can do about it. This happened to users of FreeHand. When Adobe
acquired their competitor Macromedia they decided to discontinue the development of FreeHand in favour of their own product Illustrator. You can
sign a petition, but if there is no commercial interest, most probably nothing
will happen. Let’s see what happens to Flash.
Christoph Haag
I studied sculpture, which is a very solitary way of working. Already through my studies, this idea of an artist sitting around in a
studio somewhere, being by himself, just doing his work by himself, didn’t
make sense to me. It is maybe true for certain people, but it is definitely
not true to me today, the person I am. I always integrated other people into
my work, or do collaborative work. I don’t really care about this ‘it is my
work’ or ‘it is your work’, if you do something together, at some point the
work exists by itself. For me, that is the greatest moment, it is just independent. It actually rejoins the authorship question, because I don’t think
you can own ideas. You can kind of put them out there and share them.
It is organic, like things that can grow and that they will become bigger
and bigger, become something else that you couldn’t have ever thought. It
makes the horizon much bigger. It is a different way of working I guess.
The obvious reason is that it is free, but the sharing philosophy is really at
the core of it. I have always thought that when you share things, you do not
Christina Clar
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get back things instantly, but you do get so much things in another way,
not in the way you expect. But if you put in a idea out, use tools that are
open and change them, put them out again. So there is lot of back and
forth of communication. I think that is super important. It is the idea of
evolving together, not just by ourselves. I really do believe that we do evolve
much quicker if we are together than everybody trying to do things by his
or herselves. I think it is very European idea to get into this individualism,
this thinking of idea of doing things by myself, my thing. But I think we
can learn a lot from Asia, just ways of doing, because there community is
much more important.
I don’t necessarily develop like software or codes, because I am not a software developer. But I would say, I am involved in
analog way. I do use Open Source software, although I have to say I do not
much with computers. Most of my work is analog. But I do my researches
on the website. I am a user.
I started to develop an antipathy against large corporations, operating systems or softwares, and started to look for alternatives. Then you come to the
Linux system and Ubuntu which has a very user-friendly interface. I like the
fact that behind the software that I am using, there is a whole community,
who are until now without major financial interests and who develop tools
for people like me. So now I am totally into Open Source software, and I
try to use as much as I can. So my motivation would be I want to get off
the track of big corporates who will always kind of lead you into consuming
more of their products.
John Colenbrander
What does Free Culture mean to you? Are you taking
part in a ‘Free Culture Movement’?
Urantsetseg Ulziikhuu
Michael Murtaugh I’d like to think so, but I realised of that it is quite
hard. Only now, I am seriously trying to really contribute back to projects
and I wouldn’t even say that I am an active contributer to Free Software
projects. I am much more of a user and part of the system. I am using it in
my teaching and my work, but now I try to maybe release software myself in
some way or I try to create projects that people could actually use. I think
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it is another kind of dimension of engagement. I haven’t really fully realised
it, so yes for that question if I am contributing to Free Culture. Yes, but I
could go lot deeper.
John Colenbrander I am a big supporter of the idea of Free Culture. I
think information should be available for people, especially for those who
have little access to information. I mean we live in the West and we have
access to information more or less with physical libraries and institutions
where we can go. Specially in Asia, South America, Africa this is very
important. There is a big gap between those who have access to knowledge
and those don’t have access to knowledge.
That’s a big field to explore to be able to open up information to people who
have very poor access to information. Maybe they are not even able to write
or read. That’s already is a big handicap. So I think it is a big mission in
that sense.
Could Free Culture be seen as an opposition to commercialism?
Urantsetseg Ulziikhuu
Michael Murtaugh It is a tricky question. I think no matter what, if you
go down the stack, in terms of software and hardware, if you get down to
the deepest level of a computer then there is little free CPU design. So I
think it is really important to be able to work in this kind of hybrid spaces
and to be aware of then how free Free is, and always look for alternatives
when they are available. But to a certain degree, I think it is really hard to
go for a total absolute. Or it is a decision, you can go absolute but that may
mean that you are really isolated from other communities. So that’s always
a bit of balancing act, how independent can you be, how independent you
want to be, how big does your audience need to be, or you community needs
to be. So that’s a lot of different decisions. Certainly, when I am working
in the context of an art school with design practitioners, you know it is not
always possible to really go completely independent and there are lots of
implications in terms of how you work and whom you can work with, and
the printers you can work with. So it is always a little bit of trade-off, but it
is important to understand what the decisions are.
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Eleanor Greenhalgh I think the idea of a Free Culture movement is very
exciting and important. It has always gone on, but stating it in copyrightaware terms issues an important challenge to the ‘all rights reserved’ statusquo. At the same time I think it has limitations, at least in its current form.
I’m not sure that rich white kids playing with their laptops is necessarily a
radical act. The idea and the intention are very powerful though, because
it does have the potential to challenge the way that power – in the form of
‘intellectual property’ – is distributed.
Christoph Haag Copyright has become much more enforced over the last
years than it was ever before. In a way, culture is being absorbed by companies trying to make money out of it. And Free Culture developed as a
counter movement against this. When it comes to mainstream culture, you
are most often reduced to a consumer of culture. Free Culture then is a
obvious reaction. The idea of culture where you have the possibility to engage again, to become active and create your version, not just to consume
content.
How could Open Source software be economically sustainable, in a way that is beneficial for both developers/creators and users?
Urantsetseg Ulziikhuu
Eleanor Greenhalgh That’s a good question! A very hard one. I’m not
involved enough in that community to really comment on its economic future. But it does, to me, highlight what is missing from the analysis in
Free Culture discourse, the economic reality. It depends on where they (developers) work. A lot of them are employed by companies so they get a
salary. Others do it for a hobby. I’d be interested to get accurate data on
what percentage of F/LOSS developers are getting paid, etc. In the absence
of that data, I think it’s fair to say it is an unsolved problem. If we think
that developers ‘should’ be compensated for their work, then we need to talk
about capitalism. Or at least, about statutory funding models.
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It is interesting that you used both ‘sustainability’ and
‘economic viability’. And I think those are two things very often in opposition. I am doing a project now about publishing workflows and future electronic publishing forums. And that was the one thing we looked at. There
were several solutions on the market. One was a platform called ‘Editorial’
which was a very nice website that you could use to mark down texts collaboratively and and then it could produce ePub format books. After about
six months of running, it closed down as many platforms do. Interestingly,
in their sign-off message it said: You have a month to get your stuff out of the
website, and sorry we have decided not to Open Source the project. As much as
we loved making it, it was just too much work for us to keep this running. In
terms of real sustainability, Open Source of course would have allowed them
to work with anybody, even if it is just a hobby.
Michael Murtaugh
It is very related to passion of doing these things.
Embroidering machines have copyrighted softwares installed. The software
itself is very expensive, around 1000 , and the software for professionals is
6000 to buy. Embroidering machines are very expensive themselves too.
These softwares are very tight and closed, you even have to have special USB
key for patterns. And there are these two guys who are software developers,
they are trying to come up with a format which all embroidering machines
could read. They take their time to do this and I think in the end if the
project works out, they will probably get attention and probably get paid
also. Because instead of giving 1000 to copyrighted software, maybe you
would be happy to give 50 to these people.
Claire Williams
For a long time I have wanted to organise a conversation with you
about the place and meaning of distributed version control in OSP
design work. First of all because after three years of working with
Git intensely, it is a good moment to take stock. It seems that many
OSP methods, ideas and politics converge around it and a conversation discussing OSP practice linked to this concrete (digital) object
could produce an interesting document; some kind of update on what
OSP has been up to over the last three years and maybe will be in
the future. Second: Our last year in Variable has begun. Under the
header Etat des Lieux, Constant started gathering reflections and documents to archive this three year working period. One of the things
I would like to talk about is the parallels and differences between a
physical studio space and a distributed workflow. And of course I am
personally interested in the idea of ‘versions’ linked to digital collaboration. This connects to old projects and ideas and is sparked again
by new ones revived through the Libre Graphics Research Unit and
of course Relearn.
I hope you are also interested in this, and able to make time for it. I
would imagine a more or less structured session of around two hours
with at least four of you participating, and I will prepare questions
(and cake).
Speak soon!
xF
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How do you usually explain Git to design students?
Before using Git, I would work on a document. Let’s say a layout, and to
keep a trace of the different versions of the layout, I would append _01, _02
to the files. That’s in a way already versioning. What Git does, is that it
makes that process somehow transparent in the sense that, it takes care of
it for you. Or better, you have to make it take care for you. So instead of
having all files visible in your working directory, you put them in a database,
so you can go back to them later on. And then you have some commands to
manipulate this history. To show, to comment, to revert to specific versions.
More than versioning your own files, it is a tool to synchronize your work
with others. It allows you to work on the same projects together, to drive
parallel projects.
It really is a tool to make collaboration easier. It allows you to see differences.
When somebody proposes you a new version of a file, it highlights what has
changed. Of course this mainly works on the level of programming code.
Did you have any experience with Git before working with OSP?
Well, not long before I joined OSP, we had a little introduction to Mercurial,
another versioning software, at school in 2009. Shortly after I switched to
Git. I was working with someone else who was working with Git, and it was
so much better.
Alex was interested in using Git to make Brainch 1 . We wanted to make a web
application to fork texts that are not code. That was our first use of Git.
I met OSP through Git in a way. An intern taught me the program and he
said: Eric once you’ll get it, you’ll get so excited!. We were in the cafeteria of
the art school. I thought it was really special, like someone was letting me
in on a secret and we we’re the only ones in the art school who knew about
it. He thought me how to push and pull. I saw quickly how Git really
is modeled on how culture works. And so I felt it was a really interesting,
promising system. And then I talked about it at the Libre Graphics Meeting
in 2010, and so I met OSP.
1
A distributed text editing platform based on Django and Git http://code.dyne.org/brainch
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I started to work on collaborative, graphic design related stuff when I was
developing a font manager. I’ve been connected to two versioning systems
and mainly used SVN. Git came well after, it was really connected to web
culture, compared to Subversion, which is more software related.
What does it mean that Git is referred to as ‘distributed versioning’?
The first command you learn in Git, is the clone command. It means that
you make a copy of a project that is somehow autonomous. Contrary to
Subversion you don’t have this server-client architecture. Every repository
is in itself a potential server and client. Meaning you can keep track of your
changes offline.
At some point, you decided to use ‘distributed versioning’ rather than a
centralized system such as Subversion. I remember there was quite some
discussion ...
I was not hard to convince. I had no experience with other versioning
systems. I was just excited by the experience that others had with this new
tool. In fact there was this discussion, but I don’t remember exactly the
arguments between SVN or Git. For what I remember Git was easier.
The discussion was not really on the nature of this tool. It was just: who
would keep Git running for OSP? Because the problem is not the system in
itself, it’s the hosting platform. We didn’t find any hosted platform which
fitted our taste. The question was: do we set up our own server, and who is
going to take care of at. At this time Alex, Steph and Ivan were quite excited
about working with Git. And I was excited to use Subversion instead, but I
didn’t have to time to take care of setting it up and everything.
You decided not to use a hosted platform such as Gitorious or GitHub?
I guess we already had our own server and were hosting our own projects. But
Pierre you used online platforms to share code?
When I started developing my own projects it was kind of the end of
SourceForge. 2 I was looking for a tool more in the Free Software tradition.
2
SourceForge is a web based source code repository. It was the first platform to offer this
service for free to Open Source projects.
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There was gna, and even though the platform was crashing all the time, I
felt it was in line with this purpose.
If I remember correctly, when we decided between Git and Subversion,
Pierre, you were also not really for it because of the personality of its main
developer, Linus Torvalds. I believe it was the community aspect of Git that
bothered you.
Well Git has been written to help Linus Torvalds receive patches for the
Linux kernel; it is not aimed at collaborative writing. It was more about
making it convenient for Linus. And I didn’t see a point in making my
practice convenient for Linus. I was already using Subversion for a while
and it was really working great at providing an environment to work together with a lot of people and check out different versions. Anything you
expect from a versioning system was there, all elements for collaborative
work were there. I didn’t see the point to change for something that didn’t
feel as comfortable with, culturally. This question of checking out different
directories of repositories was really important to me. At this time (Git has
evolved a lot) it was not possible to do that. There were other technical
aspects I was quite keen of. I didn’t see why to go for Git which was not
offering the same amount of good stuff.
But then there is this aspect of distribution, and that’s not in Subversion.
If some day somebody decides to want a complete copy of an OSP project,
including all it’s history, they would need to ask us or do something complicated to give it to them.
I was not really interested in this ‘spreading the whole repository’. I was
more concerned about working together on a specific project.
It feels like your habit of keeping things online has shifted. From making
an effort afterwards to something that happens naturally, as an integral
part of your practice.
It happened progressively. There is this idea that the Git repository is linked
to the website, which came after. The logic is to keep it all together and
linked, online and alive.
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That’s not really true ... it was the dream we had: once we have Git, we
share our files while working on them. We don’t need to have this effort
afterwards of cleaning up the sources and it will be shareable. But it is not
true. If we do not put an effort to make it shareable it remains completely
opaque. It requires still an investment of time. I think it takes about 10%
of time of the project, to make it readable from the outside afterwards.
Now, with the connection to our public website, you’re more conscious that all
the files we use are directly published. Before we had a Git web application that
allowed someone to just browse repositories, but it was not visual, so it was hard
to get into it. The Cosic project is a good example. Every time I want to show
the project to someone, I feel lost. There are so many files and you really don’t
know which ones to open.
Maybe, Eric, you can talk about ‘Visual Culture’?
Basically ‘Visual Culture’ is born out of this dream I talked about just now.
That turns out not to be true, but shapes our practice and helps us think
about licensing and structuring and all those interesting questions. I was
browsing through this Git interface that Stéphanie described, and thought
it was a missed opportunity, because here is this graphic design studio,
who publishes all their works, while they are working. Which has all kind
of consequences but if you can’t see it, if you don’t know anything about
computer programming, you have no clue on what’s going on. And also,
because it’s completely textual. And for example a .sla file, if you don’t know
about Open Source, if you don’t know about Scribus it could as well be
salad. It is clear that Git was made for text. It was the idea to show all the
information that is already there in a visual form. But an image is an image,
and type is a typeface, and it changes in a visual way. I thought it made
sense for us to do. We didn’t have anyone writing posts on our blog. But
we had all this activity in the Git repository.
It started to give some schematic view on our practice, and renders the current
activity visible, very exciting. But it is also very frustrating because we have lots
of ideas and very little time to implement them. So the ‘Visual Culture’ project
is terribly late on the ball comparing to our imagination.
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Take by example the foundry. Or the future potential of the ‘Iceberg’ folders. Or
our blog that is sometimes cruelly missing. We have ways to fill all these functions
with ‘Visual Culture’ but still no time to do it!
In a way you follow established protocols on how Open Source code is
usually published. There should be a license, a README file ... But OSP
also decided to add a special folder, which you called ‘Iceberg’. This is a
trick to make your repository more visual?
Yeah, because even if something is straightforward to visualise, it helps if
you can make a small render of it. But most of the files are a accumulation
of files, like a webpage. The idea is that in the ‘Iceberg’ folder, we can put a
screenshot, or other images ...
We wanted the files that are visible, to be not only the last files added. We wanted
to be able to show the process. We didn’t want it to be a portfolio and just show
the final output. But we wanted to show errors and try-outs. I think it’s not only
related to Git, but also to visual layout. When you want to share software, we
say release early, release often, which is really nice. But it’s not enough to just
release, because you need to make it accessible to other people to understand what
they are reading. It’s like commenting your code, making it ... I don’t want to
say ‘clean’ ... legible, using variable names that people can understand. Because,
sometimes when we code just for ourselves I use French variables so that I’m sure
that it’s not word-protected by the programming language. But then it is not
accessible to many people. So stuff like that.
You have decided to use a tool that’s deeply embedded in the world of
F/LOSS. So I’ve always seen your choice for Git both as a pragmatic
choice as well as a fan choice?
Like as fans of the world of Open Source?
Yes. By using this tool you align yourself, as designers, with people that
develop software.
I’m not sure, I join Pierre on his feelings towards Linus Torvalds, even
though I have less anger at him. But let’s say he is not someone I especially
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like in his way of thinking. What I like very much about Git is the distributed aspect. With it you can collaborate without being aligned together.
While I think Linus Torvalds idea is very liberal and in a way a bit sad, this
idea that you can collaborate without being aligned, without going through
this permission system, is interesting. With Scribus for example, I never
collaborated on it, it’s such a pain to got through the process. It’s good and
bad. I like the idea of a community which is making a decision together, at
the same time it is so hard to enter this community that you just don’t want
to and give up.
How does it feel, as a group of designer-developers, to adopt workflows,
ways of working, and also a vocabulary that comes from software development?
On the one hand it’s maybe a fan act. We like this movement of F/LOSS
development which is not always given the importance it has in the cultural
world. It’s like saying hey I find you culturally relevant and important. But
there’s another side to it. It’s not just a distant appropriation, it’s also the fact
that software development is such a pervasive force. It’s so much shaping
the world, that I feel I also want to take part in defining what are these
procedures, what are these ways of sharing, what are these ways of doing
things. Because I also feel that if I ask someone from another field as
a cultural actor, and take and appropriate these mechanisms and ways of
doing, I will be able to influence what they are. So there is the fan act, and
there’s also the act of trying to be aware of all the logic contained in these
actions.
And from another side, in the world of graphic design it is also a way to
affirm that we are different. And that we’re really engaged in doing this
and not only about designing nice pictures. That we really develop our own
tools.
It is a way to say: hey, we’re not a kind of politically engaged designers with
a different political goal each next half month, and than we do a project
about it. It really impacts our ecosystem, we’re serious about it.
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It’s true that, before we started to use Git, people asked: So you’re called
Open Source Publishing, but where are your sources? For some projects you
could download a .zip file but it was always a lot of trouble, because you needed
to do it afterwards, while you were already doing other projects.
Collaboration started to become a prominent part of the work; working
together on a project. Rather than, oh you do that and when you are finished
you send the file over and I will continue. It’s really about working together on
a project. Even if you work together in the same space, if you don’t have a
system to share files, it’s a pain in the ass.
After using it for a few years, would you say there are parts of in Git
where you do not feel at home?
In Git, and in versioning systems in general, there is that feeling that the
latest version is the best. There is an idea of linearity, even though you can
have branches, you still have an idea of linearity in the process.
Yes, that’s true. We did this workshop Please computer let me design, the first
time was in a French school, in French, and the second time for a more European
audience, in English. We made a branch, but then you have the default branch the English one - you only see that one, while they are actually on the same level.
So the convention is to always show the main branch, the ‘master’?
In a way there is no real requirement in Git to have a branch called ‘master’.
You can have a branch called ‘English’ and a branch called ‘French’. But
it’s true that all the visualization software we know (GitHub or Gitorious
are ways to visualize the content of a Git repository), you’ll need to specify
which is the branch that is shown by default. And by default, if you don’t
define it, it is ‘master’.
For certain types of things such as code and text it works really well, for
others, like you’re making a visual design, it’s still very hard to compare
differences. If I make a poster for example I still make several files instead of
branches, so I can see them together at once, without having to check-out
another branch. Even in websites, if I want to make a layout, I’ll simply make
a copy of the HTML and CSS, because I want to be able to test out and
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compare them. It might be possible with branches, it’s just to complicated.
Maybe the tools to visualize it are not there ... But it’s still easier to make
copies and pick the one you like.
It’s quite heavy to go back to another version. Also working collaboratively is
actually quite heavy. For example in workshops, or the ‘Balsamine’ project ... we
were working together on the same files at the same time, and if you want to share
your file with Git you’ll have to first add your file, then commit and pull and
push, which is four commands. And every time you commit you have to write
a message. So it is quite long. So while we were working on the .css for ‘Visual
Culture’, we tried it in Etherpad, and one of us was copying the whole text file
and committing.
So you centralized in the end.
It’s more about third-party visual software. Let’s say Etherpad for example,
it’s a versioning system in itself. You could hook into Git through Etherpad
and each letter you type could be a commit. And it would make nonsense
messages but at the same time it would speed up the process to work together. We can imagine the same thing with Git (or any other collaborative
working system) integrated into Inkscape. You draw and every time you save
... At some point Subversion was also a WebDav server, it means that for
any application it was possible to plug things together. Each time you would
save you file it would make a commit on the server. It worked pretty well
to bring new people into this system because it was just exactly the same as
the OpenOffice, it was an open WebDav client. So it was possible to say to
OpenOffice that you, where you save is a disk. It was just like saving and it
was committing.
I really agree. From the experience of working on a typeface together in
Git with students, it was really painful. That’s because you are trying to
do something that generates source code, a type design program generates
source code. You’re not writing it by hand, and if you then have two versions
of the type design program, it already starts to create conflicts that are quite
hard. It’s interesting to bring to models together. Git is just an architecture
on how to start your version, so things could hook into it.
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For example with Etherpad, I’ve looked into this API the other day, and
working together with Git, I’m not sure if having every Etherpad revision
directly mapped to a Git revision would makes sense if you work on a project
... but at the same time you could have every saved revision mapped to a
Git revision. It’s clear Git is made for asynchronous collaboration process.
So there is Linus in his office, there are patches coming in from different
people. He has the time also to figure out which patch needs to go where.
This doesn’t really work for the Etherpad-style-direct-collaboration. For
me it’s cool to think about how you could make these things work together.
Now I’m working on this collaborative font editor which does that in some
sort of database. How would that work? It would not work if every revision
would be in the Git. I was thinking you could save, or sort of commit, and
that would put it in a Git repository, this you can pull and push. But if
you want to have four people working together and they start pulling, that
doesn’t work on Git.
I never really tried Sparkleshare, that could maybe work? Sparkleshare is making
a commit message every time you save a document. In a way it works more like
Dropbox. Every time you save it’s synchronized with the server directly.
So you need to find a balance between the very conscious commits you
make with Git and the fluidness of Etherpad, where the granularity is
much finer. Sparkleshare would be in between?
I think it would be interesting to have this kind of Sparkleshare behaviour, but
only when you want to work synchronously.
So you could switch in and out of different modes?
Usually Sparkleshare is used for people who don’t want to get to much involved
in Git and its commands. So it is really transparent: I send my files, it’s synchronized. I think it was really made for this kind of Dropbox behaviour. I think
it would make sense only when you want to have your hands on the process. To
have this available only when you decide, OK I go synchronous. Like you say,
if you have a commit for every letter it doesn’t make sense.
It makes sense. A lot of things related to versions in software development
is meant to track bugs, to track programming choices.
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I don’t know for you ... but the way I interact with our Git repository since we
started to work with it ... I almost never went into the history of a project. It’s
just, it really never happened to go back into this history, to check out an old
version.
I do!
Some neat feature of Git is the dissect command. To find where it broke.
You can top from an old revision that you know that works and then track
down, like checkout, track down the bug.
Can you give a concrete example, where that would be useful, I mean,
not in code.
Not code, okay. That I don’t know.
In a design, like visual design, I think it never happens. It happens on websites,
on tools. Because there is a bug, so you need to come back to see where it broke.
But for a visual design I’m not sure.
It’s true, also because as you said before, with .svg files or .sla files we often
have several duplicates. I sometimes checkout those. But it’s true it’s often
related to merge problems. Or something, you don’t know what to do, so
you’ll just check-out, to go back to an earlier version.
It would be interesting for me to really look at our use of Git and map some
kind of tool on top of a versioning system. Because it’s not even versioning,
it is also a collaborative workflow, and to see what we mean. Just to use
maybe some feature of Git or whatever to provide the services we need and
really see what we exactly work with. And, this kind of thing where we
want to see many versions at the same time, to compare seems important.
Well it’s the kind of thing that could take advantage of a versioning system,
to build.
It is of course a bit strange that if you want to see different versions next
to each other you have to go back in time. It’s a kind of paradox, no?
But then you can’t see them at the same time
Exactly, no.
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Because there is no way to visualize your trip back in history.
Well I think, something you could all have some interesting discussion
about, is the question of exchange. Because now we are talking about the
individual. We’ve talked how it’s easier to contribute to Git based projects
but to be accepted into an existing repository someone needs to say okay,
I want it, which is like SVN. What is easier, is to publish you’re whole
Git repository online, with the only difference from the the first version,
is that you added your change, but it means that in proposing a change
you are already making a new cultural artifact. You’re already putting a new
something there. I find this to be a really fascinating phenomena because
it has all kinds of interesting consequences. Of course we can look at it
the way of, it’s the cold and the liberal way of doing things. Because the
individual is at the center of this, because you are on your own. It’s your
thing in the first place, and then you can see if it maybe becomes someone
else’s thing too. So that has all kinds of coldness about it and it leads to
many abandoned projects and maybe it leads to a decrease of social activity
around specific projects. But there’s also an interesting part of it, where it
actually resembles quite well how culture works in the first place. Because
culture deals with a lot redundancy, in the sense that we can deal with many
kinds of very similar things. We can have Akzidenz Grotesk, Helvetica and
the Akkurat all at the same time, and they have some kind of weird cultural
lineage thing going on in between them.
Are there any pull requests for OSP?
We did have one.
Eric is right to ask about collaboration with others, not only how to work
internally in a group.
That’s why GitHub is really useful. Because it has the architecture to exchange
changes. Because we have our own server it’s quite private, it’s really hard to
allow anyone to contribute to fonts for example. So we had e-mails: Hey here’s
a new version of the font, I did some glyphs, but also changed the shape of
the A. There we have two different things, new glyphs is one thing, we could say
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we take any new glyph. But changing the A, how do you deal with this? There’s
a technical problem, well not technical ...
An architectural problem?
Yeah, we won’t add everyone’s SSH-key to the server because it will be endless
to maintain. But at the same time, how do you accept changes? And then, who
decides what changes will be accepted?
For the foundry we decided to have a maintainer for each font project.
It’s the kind of thing we didn’t do well. We have this kind of administrative
way of managing the server. Well it’s a lot of small elements that all together
make it difficult. Let’s say at some point we start to think maybe we need to
manage our repositories, something a bit more sophisticated then Gitolite. So we
could install something like Gitorious. We didn’t do it but we could imagine
to rebuild a kind of ecosystem where people have their own repositories and
do anything we can imagine on this kind of hosting service. Gitorious is a
Free Software so you can deploy it on your own server. But it is not trivial
to do.
Can you explain the difference between Gitorious and GitHub?
Gitorious is first a free version, it’s not a free version of Git but GitHub. One
is free and one is not.
Meaning you can not install GitHub on your own server.
Git is a storage back-end, and Gitorious or GitHub are a kind of web application to interact with the repository and to manage them. And GitHub
is a program and a company deploying these programs to offer both a commercial service and a free-of-charge service. They have a lot of success with
the free service Git in a sense. And they make a lot of money at providing
the same service, exactly the same, just it means that you can have private
space on the server. It’s quite convenient, because the tools are really good
to manage repositories. And Gitorious I don’t exactly know what is their
business model, they made all their source code to run the platform Free
Software. It means they offer a bit less fancy features.
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A bit less shiny?
Yeah, because they have less success and so less money to dedicate to development of the platform. But still it’s some kind of easy to grasp web interface
management, repositories manager. Which is quite cool. We could do that,
to install this kind of interface, to allow more people to have their repositories on the OSP-server. But here comes the difficult thing: we would need
a bit more resources to run the server to host a lot of repositories. Still this
moment we have problems sometimes with the server because it’s not like
a large server. Nobody at OSP is really a sysadmin, and has time to install
and setup everything nicely etcetc. And we also would have to work on the
gitorious web application to make it a bit more in line with our visual universe. Because now it’s really some kind of thing we cannot associate with
really.
Do you think ‘Visual Culture’ can leverage some of the success of GitHub?
People seem to understand and like working this way.
Well, it depends. We also meet a lot of people who come to GitHub and say,
I don’t understand, I don’t understand anything of this! Because of it’s huge
success GitHub can put some extra effort in visualization, and they started
to run some small projects. So they can do more than ‘Visual Culture’ can
do.
And is this code available?
Some of their projects are Open Source.
Some of their projects are free. Even if we have some things going on in
‘Visual Culture’, we don’t have enough manpower to finalize this project.
The GitHub interface is really specific, really oriented, they manage to do
things like show fonts, show pictures, but I don’t think they can display
.pdf. ‘Visual Culture’ is really a good direction, but it can become obsolete
by the fact that we don’t have enough resource to work on it. GitHub starts
to cover a lot of needs, but always in their way of doing things, so it’s a
problem.
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I’m very surprised ... the quality of Git is that it isn’t centralized, and nowadays everything is becoming centralized in GitHub. I’m also wondering
whether ... I don’t think we should start to host other repositories, or maybe
we should, I don’t know.
Yeah, I think we should
You do or you don’t want to become a hosting platform?
No. What I think is nice about GitHub is of course the social aspect around
sharing code. That they provide comments. Which is an extra layer on top
of Git. I’m having fantasies about another group like OSP who would use
Git and have their own server, instead of having this big centralized system.
But still have ways to interact with each other. But I don’t know how.
It would be interesting if it’s distributed without being disconnected.
If it was really easy to setup Git, or a versioning server, that would be
fantastic. But I can remember, as a software developer, when I started to
look for somewhere to host my code it was no question to setup my own
server. Because of not having time, no time to maintain, no time to deploy
etcetc. At some point we need hosting-platforms for ourselves. We have
almost enough to run our own platform. But think of all the people who
can’t afford it.
But in a way you are already hosting other people’s projects. Because
there are quite a few repositories for workshops that actually not belong
to you.
Yeah, but we moved some of them to GitHub just to get rid of the pain of
maintaining these repositories.
We wanted the students to be independent. To really have them manage
their own projects.
GitHub is easier to manage then our own repository which is still based on
a lot of files.
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For me, if we ever make this hosting platform, it should be something else then
our own website. Because, like you say, it’s kind of centralized in the way we use
it now. It’s all on the Constant server.
Not anymore?
No, the Git repositories are still on the Constant server.
Ah, the Git is still. But they are synced with the OSP server. But still, I can
imagine it would be really nice to have many instances of ‘Visual Culture’
for groups of people running their own repositories.
It feels a bit like early days of blogging.
It would be really, really nice for us to allow other people to use our services.
I was also thinking of this, because of this branching stuff. For two reasons,
first to make it easier for people to take advantage of our repository. Just
like branching our repository would be one click, just like in Gitorious or
GitHub. So I have an account and I like this project and I want to change
something, I just click on it. You’re branched into your own account and
you can start to work with it. That’s it, and it would be really convenient
for people who would like to work with our font files etc. And once we
have all these things running on our server we can think of a lot of ideas to
promote our own dynamic over versioning systems. But now we’re really a
bit stuck because we don’t have the tools we would like to have. With the
repositories, it’s something really rigid.
It is interesting to see the limits of what actually can happen. But it is
still better than the usual (In)design practices?
We would like to test GitMX. We don’t know much about it, but we would
like to use it for the pictures in high-resolution, .pdfs. We thought about it
when we were in Seoul, because we were putting pictures on a gallery, and
we were like ah, this gallery. We were wondering, perhaps if GitMX works
well, perhaps it can be separated into different types of content. And then
we can branch them into websites. And perhaps pictures of the finalized
work. In the end we have the ‘Iceberg’ with a lot of ‘in-progress’-pictures,
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but we don’t have any portfolio or book. Again because we don’t care much
about this, but at the end we feel we miss it a bit.
A narration ...
... to have something to present. Each time we prepare a presentation, we
need to start again to find back the tools and files, and to choose what we
want to send for the exhibition.
It’s really important because at some point, working with Git, I can remember telling people ...
Don’t push images!
I remember.
The repository is there to share the resources. And that’s really where it
shines. And don’t try to put all your active files in it. At some point we miss
this space to share those files.
But an image can be a recipe. And code can be an artifact. For me the
difference is not so obvious.
It is not always so clear. Sometimes the cut-off point is decided by the weight of
the file, so if it is too heavy, we avoid Git. Another is: if it is easy to compile, leave
it out of Git. Sometimes the logic is reversed. If we need it to be online even if
not a source, but simply we need to share it, we put it on the Git. Some commits
are also errors. The distinction is quite organic until now, in my experience. The
closer the practice gets to code, the more clean the versioning process is.
There is also a kind of performative part of the repository. Where a
commit counts as a proof of something ...
When I presented the OSP’s website, we had some remarks like, ah it’s good we
can see what everybody has done, who has worked.
But strangely so far there were not many reactions from partners or clients
regarding the fact that all the projects could be followed at any stage. Even budget
wise ... Mostly, I think, because they do not really understand how it works.
And sometimes it’s true, it came to my mind, should we really show our website
to clients? Because they can check whether we are working hard, or this week
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we didn’t do shit ... And it’s, I think it’s really based on trust and the type of
collaboration you want with your client. Actually collaboration and not a hierarchical relationship. So I think in the end it’s something that we have to work
on. On building a healthy relationship, that you show the process but it’s not
about control. The meritocracy of commits is well known, I think, in platforms
like GitHub. I don’t think in OSP this is really considered at all actually.
It supports some self-time tracking that is nuanced and enriched by e-mail,
calendar events, writing in Etherpads. It gives a feeling of where is the activity
without following it too closely. A feeling rather than surveillance or meritocracy.
I know that Eric ... because he doesn’t really keep track of his working hours. He
made a script to look into his commit messages to know when he worked on a
project. Which is not always truthful. Because sometimes you make a commit on
some files that you made last week, but forgot to commit. And a commit is a
text message at a certain time. So it doesn’t tell you how much time you spent on
the file.
Although in the way you decided to visualize the commits, there is a sense
of duration between the last and the commit before. So you have a sense
of how much time passed in between. Are there ways you sometimes
trick the system, to make things visible that might otherwise go missing?
In the messages sometimes, we talk about things we tried and didn’t work.
But it’s quite rare.
I kind of regret that I don’t write so much on the commits. At the beginning
when we decided to publish the messages on the homepage we talked about
this theater dialogue and I was really excited. But in the end I see that I
don’t write as much as I would like.
I think it’s really a question of the third-party programs we use. Our
messages are like a dialogue on the website. But when you write
a commit message you’re not at all in this interface. So you don’t answer
to something. If we would have the same kind of interface we have on the
website, you would realize you can answer to the previous commit message.
You have this sort of narrative thread and it would work. We are in the
commit
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middle, we have this feeling of a dialogue on one side, but because when
you work, you’re not on the website to check the history. It’s just basically, it
would be about to make things really in line with what we want to achieve.
I commit just when I need to share the files with someone else. So I wait
until the last moment.
To push you mean?
No, to commit. And then I’ve lost track of what I’ve done and then I just
write ...
But it would be interesting, to look at the different speeds of collaboration. They might need each another type of commit message.
But it’s true, I must admit that when I start working on a project I don’t read the
last messages. And so, then you lose this dialogue as you said. Because sometimes
I say, Ludi is going to work on it. So I say, OK Ludi it’s your turn now,
but the thing is, if she says that to me I would not know because I don’t read the
commit messages.
I suppose that is something really missing from the Git client. When you
you update your working copy to synchronize with the server it just
says files change, how many changes there were. But doesn’t give you the
story.
pull,
That’s what missing when you pull. It should instead of just showing which files
have changed, show all the logs from the last time you pulled.
Your earlier point, about recipes versus artifacts. I have something to add
that I forgot. I would reverse the question, what the versioning system
considers to be a recipe is good, is a recipe. I mean, in this context ‘a
recipe’ is something that works well within the versioning system. Such as
the description of your process to get somewhere. And I can imagine it’s
something, I would say the Git community is trying to achieve that fact.
Make it something that you can share easily.
But we had a bit of this discussion with Alex for a reader we made. It is going to
be published, so we have the website with all the texts, and the texts are all under
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a free license. But the publisher doesn’t want us to put the .pdfs online. I’m quite
okay with that, because for me it’s a condition that we put the sources online. But
if you really want the .pdf then you can clone the repository and make them
yourself in Scribus. It’s just an example of not putting the .pdf, but you have
everything you need to make the .pdf yourself. For me it’s quite interesting to say
our sources are there. You can buy the book but if you want the .pdf you have
to make a small effort to generate it and then you can distribute it freely. But I
find it quite interesting to, of course the easiest way would be the .pdf but in this
case we can’t. Because the publisher doesn’t want us to.
But that distinction somehow undervalues the fact that layout for example
is not just an executed recipe, no? I mean, so there is this kind of grey
area in design that is ... maybe not the final result, but also not a sort of
executable code.
We see it with ‘Visual Culture’, for instance, because Git doesn’t make it easy
to work with binaries. And the point of ‘Visual Culture’ is to make .jpegs
visible and all the kind of graphical files we work with. So it’s like we don’t
know how to decide whether we should put for instance .pdfs in the Git
repository online. Because on the one hand it makes it less manageable with
Git to work with. But on the other hand we want to make things visible on
the website.
But it’s also storage-space. If you want to clone it, if you want people to clone
it also you don’t want a 8 gigabyte repository.
I don’t know because it’s not really what OSP is for, but you can imagine, like
Dropbox has been made to easily share large files, or even files in general.
We can imagine that another company will set up something, especially
graphic designers or the graphic industry. The way GitHub did something
for the development industry. They will come up with solutions for this
very problem.
I just want to say that I think because we’re not a developer group, at the start the
commit messages were a space where you would throw all your anger, frustration.
And we first published a Git log in the Balsamine program, because we saw that.
This was the first program we designed with ConTeXt. So we were manipulating
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code for layout. The commit messages were all really funny, because Pierre and
Ludi come from a non-coding world and it was really inspiring and we decided
to put it in the publication. Then we kind of looked, Ludi says two kind of bad
things about the client, but it was okay. Now I think we are more aware that it’s
public, we kind of pay attention not to say stuff we don’t mean to ...
It’s not such an exciting space anymore as in the first half year?
It often very formal and not very, exciting, I think. But sometimes I put
quite some effort to just make clear what I’m trying to share.
And there are also commits that you make for yourself. Because sometimes, even
if you work on a project alone, you still do a Git project to keep track, to have a
history to come back to. Then you write to yourself. I think it’s also something
else. I’ve never tried it.
It’s a lot to ask in a way, to write about what you are doing while you are
doing it.
I think we should pay more attention to the first commit of a project, and
the last. Because it’s really important to start the story and to end it. I speak
about this ‘end’ because I feel overflowed by all these not-ended projects, I’m
quite tired of it. I would like us to find a way to archive projects which are
not alive any more. To find a good way to do it. Because the list of folders
is still growing, and in a way it is okay but a lot of projects are not active.
But it’s hard to know when is the last commit. With the Balsamine project it’s
quite clear, because it’s season per season. But still, we never know when it is the
last one. The last one could be solved by the ‘Iceberg’, to make the last snapshots
and say okay now we make the screenshots of the latest version. And then you close
it ... We wanted that the last one was Hey, we sent the .pdfs to the printer.
But actually we had to send it back another time because there was a mistake.
And then the log didn’t fit on the page anymore.
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At the Libre Graphics Meeting 2008, OSP sat down with
Chris Lilley on a small patch of grass in front of the
Technical University in Wroclaw, Poland. Warmed up by
the early May sun, we talked about the way standards are
made, how ‘specs’ influence the work of designers, programmers and managers and how this process is opening up to voices from outside the W3C. Chris Lilley is
trained as a biochemist, and specialised in the application
of biological computing. He has been involved with the
World Wide Web Consortium since the 1990s, headed the
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) working group and currently looks after two W3C activity areas: graphics, including PNG, CGM, graphical quality, and fonts, including font formats, delivery, and availability of font software.
I would like to ask you about the way standards are made ... I think there’s a
relation between the way Free, Libre and Open Source software works, and
how standards work. But I am particularly interested in your announcement
in your talk today that you want to make the process of defining the SVG
standard a public process?
Right. So, there’s a famous quote that says that standards are like sausages.
Your enjoyment of them is improved by not knowing how they’re made. 1
And to some extent, depending on the standards body and depending on
what you’re trying to standardize, the process can be very messy. If you
were to describe W3C as a business proposition, it has got to fail. You’re
taking companies who all have commercial interests, who are competing and
you’re putting them in the same room and getting them to talk together and
agree on something. Oddly, sometimes that works! You can sell them the
idea that growing the market is more important and is going to get them
more money. The other way ... is that you just make sure that you get the
managers to sign, so that their engineers can come and discuss standards,
1
Laws are like sausages. It’s better not to see them being made. Otto von Bismarck, 1815–1898
135
and then you get the engineers to talk and the managers are out of the way.
Engineers are much more forthcoming, because they are more interested in
sharing stuff because engineers like to share what they’re doing, and talk
on a technical level. The worst thing is to get the managers involved, and
even worse is to get lawyers involved. W3C does actually have all those
three in the process. Shall we do this work or not is a managerial level that’s
handled by the W3C advisory committee, and that’s where some people
say No, don’t work on that area or We have patents or This is a bad idea or
whatever. But often it goes through and then the engineers basically talk
about it. Occasionally there will be patents disclosed, so the W3C also has
a process for that. The first things are done are the ‘charters’. The charter
says what the group is going to work on a broad scope. As soon as you’ve got
your first draft, that further defines the scope, but it also triggers what it’s
called an exclusion opportunity, which basically gives the companies I think
ninety days to either declare that they have a specific patent and say what it’s
number is and say that they exclude it, or not. And if they don’t, they’ve just
given a royalty-free licence to whatever is needed to implement that spec.
The interesting thing is that if they give the royalty-free licence they don’t
have to say which patents they’re licencing. Other standards organizations
build up a patent portfolio, and they list all these patents and they say what
you have to licence. W3C doesn’t do that, unless they’ve excluded it which
means you have to work around it or something like that. Based on what
the spec says, all the patents that have been given, are given. The engineers
don’t have to care. That’s the nice thing. The engineers can just work away,
and unless someone waves a red flag, you just get on with it, and at the end
of the day, it’s a royalty-free specification.
But if you look at the SVG standard, you could say that it’s been quite a
bumpy road 2 ... What kind of work do you need to do to make a successful
standard?
Firstly, you need to agree on what you’re building, which isn’t always firm
and sometimes it can change. For example, when SVG was started the idea
was that it would be just static graphics. And also that it would be animated
2
using scripts, because with dynamic HTML and whatever, this was ’98, we
were like: OK, we’re going to use scripting to do this. But when we put it
out for a first round of feedback, people were like No! No, this is not good
enough. We want to have something declarative. We don’t want to have to write
a script every time we want something to move or change color. Some of the
feedback, from Macromedia for example was like No, we don’t think it should
have this facility, but it quickly became clear why they were saying that and
what technology they would rather use instead for anything that moved or
did anything useful ... We basically said That’s not a technical comment, that’s
a marketing comment, and thank you very much.
Wait a second. How do you make a clear distinction between marketing and
technical comments?
People can make proposals that say We shouldn’t work on this, we shouldn’t
work on that, but they’re evaluated at a technical level. If it’s Don’t do it
like that because it’s going to break as follows, here I demonstrate it then that’s
fine. If they’re like Don’t do it because that competes with my proprietary
product then it’s like Thanks for the information, but we don’t actually care.
It’s not our problem to care about that. It’s your problem to care about
that. Part of it is sharing with the working group and getting the group
to work together, which requires constant effort, but it’s no different from
any sort of managerial or trust company type thing. There’s this sort of
encouragement in it that at the end of the day you’re making the world a
better place. You’re building a new thing and people will use it and whatever.
And that is quite motivating. You need the motivation because it takes a lot
longer than you think. You build the first spec and it looks pretty good and
you publish it and you smooth it out a bit, put it out for comments and you
get a ton of comments back. People say If you combine this with this with this
then that’s not going to work. And you go Is anyone really going to do that? But
you still have to say what happens. The computer still has to know what
happens even if they do that. Ninety percent of the work is after the first
draft, and it’s really polishing it down. In the W3C process, once you get
to a certain level, you take it to what is euphemistically called the ‘last call’.
This is a term we got from the IETF. 3 It actually means ‘first call’ because
3
The Internet Engineering Task Force, http://www.ietf.org/
137
you never have just one. It’s basically a formal round of comments. You log
every single comment that’s been made, you respond to them all, people can
make an official objection if you haven’t responded to the comment correctly
etcetera. Then you publish a list of what changes you’ve made as a basis of
that.
What part of the SVG standardization process would you like to make public?
The part that I just said has always been public. W3C publishes specifications on a regular basis, and these are always public and freely available.
The comments are made in public and responded to in public. What hasn’t
been public has been the internal discussions of the group. Sometimes it
can take a long time if you’ve got a lot of comments to process or if there’s a
lot of argumentation in the group: people not agreeing on the direction to
go, it can take a while. From the outside it looks like nothing is happening.
Some people like to follow this at a very detailed level, and blog about it,
and blablabla. Overtime, more and more working groups have become public. The SVG group just recently got recharted and it’s now a public group.
All of its minutes are public. We meet for ninety minutes twice a week on
a telephone call. There’s an IRC log of that and the minutes are published
from that, and that’s all public now. 4
Could you describe such a ninety minute meeting for us?
There are two chairs. I used to be the chair for eight years or so, and then
I stepped down. We’ve got two new chairs. One of them is Erik Dahlström
from Opera, and one of them is Andrew Emmons from Bitflash. Both
are SVG implementing companies. Opera on the desktop and mobile, and
Bitflash is just on mobile. They will set out an agenda ahead of time and
say We will talk about the following issues. We have an issue tracker, we have
an action tracker which is also now public. They will be going through the
actions of people saying I’m done and discussing whether they’re actually
done or not. Particular issues will be listed on the agenda to talk about
and to have to agree on, and then if we agree on it and you have to change
the spec as a result, someone will get an action to change that back to the
4
spec. The spec is held into CVS so anyone in the working group can edit
it and there is a commit log of changes. When anyone accidentally broke
something or trampled onto someone else’s edit, or whatever - which does
happen - or if it came as the result of a public comment, then there will be
a response back saying we have changed the spec in the following way ... Is
this acceptable? Does this answer your comment?
How many people do take part in such a meeting?
In the working group itself there are about 20 members and about 8 or
so who regularly turn up, every week for years. You know, you lose some
people over time. They get all enthusiastic and after two years, when you
are not done, they go off and do something else, which is human nature.
But there have been people who have been going forever. That’s what you
need actually in a spec, you need a lot of stamina to see it through. It is a
long term process. Even when you are done, you are not done because you’ve
got errata, you’ve got revisions, you’ve got requests for new functionalities
to make it into the next version and so on.
On the one hand you could say every setting of a standard is a violent process,
some organisation forcing a standard upon others, but the process you describe
is entirely based on consensus.
There’s another good quote. Tim Berners Lee was asked why W3C works
by consensus, rather than by voting and he said: W3C is a consensus-based
organisation because I say so, damn it. 5 That’s the Inventor of the Web,
you know ... (laughs) If you have something in a spec because 51% of the
people thought it was a good idea, you don’t end up with a design, you end
up with a bureaucratic type decision thing. So yes, the idea is to work by
consensus. But consensus is defined as: ‘no articulated dissent’ so someone
can say ‘abstain’ or whatever and that’s fine. But we don’t really do it on
a voting basis, because if you do it like that, then you get people trying to
5
Consensus is a core value of W3C. To promote consensus, the W3C process requires Chairs
to ensure that groups consider all legitimate views and objections, and endeavor to resolve
them, whether these views and objections are expressed by the active participants of the
group or by others (e.g., another W3C group, a group in another organization, or the general
public). World Wide Web Consortium. General Policies for W3C Groups, 2005. [Online; accessed 30.12.2014]
139
make voting blocks and convince other people to vote their way ... it is much
better when it is done on the basis of a technical discussion, I mean ... you
either convince people or you don’t.
If you read about why this kind of work is done ... you find different arguments. From enhancing global markets to: ‘in this way, we will create a
better world for everyone’. In Tim Berners-Lee’s statements, these two are
often mixed. If you for example look at the DIN standards, they are unambiguously put into the world as to help and support business. With Web
Standards and SVG, what is your position?
Yes. So, basically ... the story we tell depends on who we are telling it to and
who is listening and why we want to convince them. Which I hope is not as
duplicitous as it may sound. Basically, if you try to convince a manager that
you want 20% time of an engineer for the coming two years, you are telling
them things to convince them. Which is not untrue necessarily, but that is
the focus they want. If you are talking to designers, you are telling them how
that is going to help them when this thing becomes a spec, and the fact that
they can use this on multiple platforms, and whatever. Remember: when
the web came out, to exchange any document other than plain text was extremely difficult. It meant exchanging word processor formats, and you had
to know on what platform you were on and in what version. The idea that
you might get interoperability, and that the Mac and the PC could exchange
characters that were outside ASCII was just pie in the sky stuff. When we
started, the whole interoperability and cross-platform thing was pretty novel
and an untested idea essentially. Now it has become pretty much solid. We
have got a lot of focus on disabled accessibility, and also internationalization
which is if you like another type of accessibility. It would be very easy for
an organisation like W3C, which is essentially funded by companies joining it, and therefore they come from technological countries ... it would be
very easy to focus on only those countries and then produce specifications
that are completely unusable in other areas of the world. Which still does
sometimes happen. This is one of the useful things of the W3C. There is
the internationalization review, and an accessibility review and nowadays also
a mobile accessible review to make sure it does not just work on desktops.
Some organisations make standards basically so they can make money. Some
140
of the ISO 6 standards, in particular the MPEG group, their business model
is that you contribute an engineer for a couple of years, you make a patent
portfolio and you make a killing off licencing it. That is pretty much to keep
out the people who were not involved in the standards process. Now, W3C
takes quite an opposite view. The Royalty-Free License 7 for example, explicitly says: royalty-free to all. Not just the companies who were involved
in making it, not just companies, but anyone. Individuals. Open Source
projects. So, the funding model of the W3C is that members pay money,
and that pays our salaries, basically. We have a staff of 60 odd or so, and
that’s where our salaries come from, which actually makes us quite different
from a lot of other organisations. IETF is completely volunteer based so
you don’t know how long something is going to take. It might be quick, it
might be 20 years, you don’t know. ISO is a national body largely, but the
national bodies are in practice companies who represent that nation. But in
W3C, it’s companies who are paying to be members. And therefore, when
it started there was this idea of secrecy. Basically, giving them something
for their money. That’s the trick, to make them believe they are getting
something for their money. A lot of the ideas for W3C came from the
X Consortium 8 actually, it is the same people who did it originally. And
there, what the meat was ... was the code. They would develop the code and
give it to the members of the X Consortium three months before the public
got it and that was their business benefit. So that is actually where our ‘three
month rule’ comes from. Each working group can work for three months
but then they have to go public, have to publish. ‘The heartbeat rule’, we
call it now. If you miss several heartbeats then you’re dead. But at the same
time if you’re making a spec and you’re growing the market then there’s a
need for it to be implemented. There’s an implementation page where you
encourage people to implement, you report back on the implementations,
6
7
8
International Standards for Business, Government and Society International Organization for
Standardization (ISO), http://www.iso.org
Overview and Summary of W3C Patent Policy
http://www.w3.org/2004/02/05-patentsummary.html
The purpose of the X Consortium was to foster the development, evolution, and maintenance of the
X Window System, a comprehensive set of vendor-neutral, system-architecture neutral,
network-transparent windowing and user interface standards.
http://www.x.org/wiki/XConsortium
141
you make a test suite, you show that every feature in the spec that there’s
a test for ... at least two implementations pass it. You’re not showing that
everyone can use it at that stage. You’re showing that someone can read the
spec and implement it. If you’ve been talking to a group of people for four
years, you have a shared understanding with them and it could be that the
spec isn’t understandable without that. The implementation phase lets you
find out that people can actually implement it just by reading the spec. And
often there are changes and clarifications made at that point. Obviously one
of the good ways to get something implemented is to have Open Source
people do it and often they’re much more motivated to do it. For them it’s
cool when it is new, If you give me this new feature it’s great we’ll do it rather
than: Well that doesn’t quite fit into our product plans until the next quarter
and all that sort of stuff. Up until now, there hasn’t really been a good way
for the Open Source people to get involved. They can comment on specs
but they’re not involved in the discussions. That’s something we’re trying
to change by opening up the groups, to make it easier for an Open Source
group to contribute on an ongoing basis if they want to. Right from the
beginning part, to the end where you’re polishing the tiny details in the
corner.
I think the story of web fonts shows how an involvement of the Open Source
people could have made a difference.
When web fonts were first designed, essentially you had Adobe and Apple
pushing one way, Bitstream pushing the other way, both wanting W3C to
make their format the one and only official web format, which is why you
ended up with a mechanism to point to fonts without saying what format
was required. And than you had the Netscape 4, which pointed off to a
Bitstream format, and you had IE4 which pointed off to this Embedded
Open Type (EOT) format. If you were a web designer, you had to have two
different tools, one of which only worked on a Mac, and one of which only
worked on PC, and make two different fonts for the same thing. Basically
people wouldn’t bother. As Håkon 9 mentioned the only people who do
actually use that right now really, are countries where the local language
9
is not well provided for by the Operating Systems. Even now, things like
WindowsXP and MacOSX don’t fully support some of the Indian languages.
But they can get it into web pages by using these embedded fonts. Actually
the other case where it has been used a lot, is SVG, not so much on the
desktop though it does get used there but on mobiles. On the desktop
you’ve typically got 10 or 20 fonts and you got a reasonable coverage. On a
mobile phone, depending on how high or low ended it is, you might have
a single font, and no bold, and it might even be a pixel-based font. And
if you want to start doing text that skews and swirls, you just can’t do that
with a pixel-based font. So you need to download the font with the content,
or even put the font right there in the content just so that they can see
something.
I don’t know how to talk about this, but ... envisioning a standard before
having any concrete sense of how it could be used and how it could change the
way people work ... means you also need to imagine how a standard might
change, once people start implementing it?
I wouldn’t say that we have no idea of how it’s going to work. It’s more a
case that there are obvious choices you can make, and then not so obvious
choices. When work is started, there’s always an idea of how it would fit in
with a lot of things and what it could be used for. It’s more the case that
you later find that there are other things that you didn’t think of that you
can also use it for. Usually it is defined for a particular purpose and than
find that it can also do these other things.
Isn’t it so that sometimes, in that way, something that is completely marginal,
becomes the most important?
It can happen, yes.
For me, SVG is a good example of that. As I understood it, it was planned
to be a format for the web. And as I see it today, it’s more used on the
desktop. I see that on the Linux desktop, for theming, most internals are
using SVG. We are using Inkscape for SVG to make prints. On the other
hand, browsers are really behind.
143
Browsers are getting there. Safari has got reasonably good support. Opera
has got very good support. It really has increased a lot in the last couple
of years. Mozilla Firefox less so. It’s getting there. They’ve been at it
for longer, but it also seems to be going slower. The browsers are getting
there. The implementations which I showed a couple of days ago, those
were mobile implementations. I was showing them on a PC, but they were
specially built demos. Because they’re mobile, it tends to move faster.
But you still have this problem that Internet Explorer is a slow adopter.
Yes, Internet Explorer has not adopted a lot of things. It’s been very slow
to do CSS. It hasn’t yet done XHTML, although it has shipped with an
XML parser since IE4. It hasn’t done SVG. Now they’ve got their own
thing ... Silverlight. It has been very hard to get Microsoft on board and
getting them doing things. Microsoft were involved in the early part of
SVG but getting things into IE has always been difficult. What amazes me
to some extent, is the fact that it’s still used by about 60-70% of people.
You look at what IE can do, and you look at what all the other browsers
can do, and you wonder why. The thing is ... it is still a break and some
technologies don’t get used because people want to make sure that everyone
can see them. So they go down to the lowest common denominator. Or
they double-implement. Implement something for all the other browsers,
and implement something separate for IE, and than have to maintain two
different things in parallel, and tracking revisions and whatever. It’s a nightmare. It’s a huge economic cost because one browser doesn’t implement the
right web stuff. (laughing, sighing)
My question would be: what could you give us as a kind of advice? How
could we push this adoption where we are working? Even if it only is the
people of Firefox to adopt SVG?
Bear in mind that Firefox has this thing of Trunk builds and Branch builds
and so on. For example when Firefox 3 came out, well the Beta is there.
Suddenly there’s a big jump in the SVG stuff because all the Firefox 2 was
on the same branch as 1.5, and the SVG was basically frozen at that point.
The development was ongoing but you only saw it when 3 came out. There
were a bunch of improvements there. The main missing features are the
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animation and the web fonts and both of those are being worked on. It’s
interesting because both of those were on Acid 3. Often I see an acceleration
of interest in getting something done because there’s a good test. The Acid
Test 10 is interesting because it’s a single test for a huge slew of things all at
once. One person can look at it, and it’s either right or it’s wrong, whereas
the tests that W3C normally produces are very much like unit tests. You
test one thing and there’s like five hundred of them. And you have to go
through, one after another. There’s a certain type of person who can sit
through five hundred test on four browsers without getting bored but most
people don’t. There’s a need for this sort of aggregative test. The whole
thing is all one. If anything is wrong, it breaks. That’s what Acid is designed
to do. If you get one thing wrong, everything is all over the place. Acid 3
was a submission-based process and like a competition, the SVG working
group was there, and put in several proposals for what should be in Acid 3,
many of which were actually adopted. So there’s SVG stuff in Acid 3.
So ... who started the Acid Test?
Todd Fahrner designed the original Acid 1 test, which was meant to exercise
the tricky bits of the box-model in CSS. It ended like a sort Mondrian
diagram, 11 red squares, and blue lines and stuff. But there was a big scope
for the whole thing to fall apart into a train wreck if you got anything
wrong. The thing is, a lot of web documents are pretty simple. They got
paragraphs, and headings and stuff. They weren’t exercising very much the
model. Once you got tables in there, they were doing it a little bit more. But
it was really when you had stuff floated to one side, and things going around
or whatever, and that had something floated as well. It was in that sort of
case where it was all breaking, where people wouldn’t get interoperability.
It was ... the Web Standards Project 12 who proposed this?
Yes, that’s right.
10
11
12
The Acid 3 test: http://acid3.acidtests.org is comprehensive in comparison to more detailed,
but fragmented SVG tests:
http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/WG/wiki/Test_Suite_Overview#W3C_Scalable_Vector_Graphics_.28SVG.29_Test
Acid Test Gallery http://moonbase.rydia.net/mental/writings/box-acid-test/
The Web Standards Project is a grassroots coalition fighting for standards which ensure simple,
affordable access to web technologies for all http://www.webstandards.org/
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It didn’t come from a standards body.
No, it didn’t come from W3C. The same for Acid 2, Håkon Wium Lie was
involved in that one. He didn’t blow his own trumpet this morning, but
he was very much involved there. Acid 3 was Ian Hickson, who put that
together. It’s a bit different because a lot of it is DOM scripting stuff. It
does something, and then it inquires in the DOM to see if it has been done
correctly, and it puts that value back as a visual representation so you can
see. It’s all very good because apparently it motivates the implementors to
do something. It’s also marketable. You can have a blog posting saying we
do 80% of Acid Test. The public can understand that. The people who are
interested can go Oh, that’s good.
It becomes a mark of quality.
Yes, it’s marketing. It’s like processor speed in PCs and things. There are
so much technology in computers, so than what do you market it on? Well
it’s got that clock speed and it’s got this much memory. OK, great, cool.
This one is better than that one because this one’s got 4 gigs and that one’s
got 2 gigs. It’s a lot of other things as well, but that’s something that the
public can in general look at and say That one is better. When I mentioned
the W3C process, I was talking about the engineers, managers. I didn’t talk
about the lawyers, but we do have a process for that as well. We have a patent
advisory group conformed. If someone has made a claim, and it’s disputed
then we can have lawyers talking among themselves. What we really don’t
have in that is designers, end-users, artists. The trick is to find out how to
represent them. The CSS working group tried to do that. They brought in
a number of designers, Jeff Veen 13 and these sort of people were involved
early on. The trouble is that you’re speaking a different language, you’re
not speaking their language. When you’re having weekly calls ... Reading a
spec is not bedtime reading, and if you’re arguing over the fine details of a
sentence ... (laughing) well, it will put you to sleep straight away. Some of
the designers are like: I don’t care about this. I only want to use it. Here’s what
I want to be able to do. Make it that I can do that, but get back to me when it’s
done.
13
Jeff Veen was a designer at Wired magazine, in those days.
http://adaptivepath.com/aboutus/veen.php
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That’s why the idea of the Acid Test is a nice breed between the spec and
the designer. When I was seeing the test this morning, I was thinking
that it could be a really interesting work to do, not to really implement it
but to think about with the students. How would you conceive a visual
test? I think that this could be a really nice workshop to do in a university
or in a design academy ...
It’s the kind of reverse-reverse engineering of a standard which could help
you understand it on different levels. You have to imagine how wild you
can go with something. I talk about standards, and read them - not before
going to bed - because I think that it’s interesting to see that while they’re
quite pragmatic in how they’re put together, but they have an effect on the
practice of, for example, designers. Something that I have been following with
interest is the concept of separating form and content has become extremely
influential in design, especially in web design. Trained as a pre-web designer,
I’m sometimes a bit shocked by the ease with which this separation is made.
That’s interesting. Usually people say that it’s hard or impossible, that you
can’t ever do it. The fact that you’re saying that it’s easy or that it comes
naturally is interesting to me.
It has been appropriated by designers as something they want. That’s why it’s
interesting to look at the Web Standards Project where designers really fight
for a separation of content and form. I think that this is somehow making
the work of designers quite ... boring. Could you talk a bit about how this is
done?
It’s a continuum. You can’t say that something is exactly form or exactly
presentation because there are gradations. If you take a table, you’ve already
decided that you want to display the material in a tabular way. If it’s a real
table, you should be able to transpose it. If you take the rows and columns,
and the numbers in the middle then it should still work. If you’ve got
‘sales’ here and if you’ve got ‘regions’ there, then you should still be able to
transpose that table. If you’re just flipping it 90 degrees then you are using
it as a layout grid, and not as a table. That’s one obvious thing. Even then,
deciding to display it as a tabular thing means that it probably came from a
much bigger dataset, and you’ve just chosen to sum all of the sales data over
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one year. Another one: you have again the sales data, you could have it as pie
chart, but you could also have it as a bar chart, you could have it in various
other ways. You can imagine that what you would do is ship some XML
that has that data, and then you would have a script or something which
would turn it into an SVG pie chart. And you could have a bar chart, or you
could also say show me only February. That interaction is one of the things
that one can do, and arguably you’re giving it a different presentational form.
It’s still very much a gradation. It’s how much re-styleability remains. You
can’t ever have complete separation. If I’m describing a company, and [1]
I want to do a marketing brochure, and [2] I want to do an annual report
for the shareholders, and [3] I want to do an internal document for the
engineering team. I can’t have the same content all over those three and just
put styling on it. The type of thing I’m doing is going to vary for those
audiences, as will the presentation. There’s a limit. You can’t say: here’s the
überdocument, and it can be styled to be anything. It can’t be. The trick is
to not mingle the style of the presentation when you don’t need to. When
you do need to, you’re already halfway down the gradient. Keep them as far
apart as you can, delay it as late as possible. At some point they have to be
combined. A design will have to go into the crafting of the wording, how
much wording, what voice is used, how it’s going to fit with the graphics
and so on. You can’t just slap random things together and call it design,
it looks like a train wreck. It’s a case of deferment. It’s not ever a case of
complete separation. It’s a case of deferring it and not tripping yourself up.
Just simple things like bolds and italics and whatever. Putting those in as
emphasis and whatever because you might choose to have your emphasized
words done differently. You might have a different font, you might have a
different way of doing it, you might use letter-spacing, etc. Whereas if you
tag that in as italics then you’ve only got italics, right? It’s a simple example
but at the end of the day you’re going to have to decide how that is displayed.
You mentioned print. In print no one sees the intermediate result. You see
ink on paper. If I have some Greek in there and if I’ve done that by actually
typing in Latin letters on the keyboard and putting a Greek font on it and
out comes Greek, nobody knows. If it’s a book that’s being translated, there
might be some problems. The more you’re shipping the electronic version
around, the more it actually matters that you put in the Greek letters as
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Greek because you will want to revise it. It matters that you have flowing
text rather than text that has been hand-ragged because when you put in
the revisions you’re going to have to re-rag the entire thing or you can just
say re-flow and fix it up later. Things like that.
The idea of time, and the question of delay is interesting. Not how, but when you
enter to fine-tune things manually. As a designer of books, you’re always facing
the question: when to edit, what, and on what level. For example, we saw this
morning 14 that the idea of having multiple skins is really entering the publishing
business, as an idea of creativity. But that’s not the point, or not the complete
point. When is it possible to enter the process? That’s something that I think we
have to develop, to think about.
The other day there was a presentation by Michael Dominic Kostrzewa 15
that shocked me. He is now working for Nokia, after working for Novell
and he was explaining how designers and programmers were fighting each
other instead of fighting the ‘real villain’, as he said, who were the managers. What was really interesting was how this division between content
and style was also recouping a kind of political or socio-organizational divide within companies where you need to assign roles, borders, responsibilities to different people. What was really frightening from the talk was
that you understood that this division was encouraging people not to try
and learn from each other’s practice. At some point, the designer would
come to the programmer and say: In the spec, this is supposed to be like this
and I don’t want to hear anything about what kind of technical problems you
face.
Designers as lawyers!
Yes ... and the programmer would say: OK, we respect the spec, but then
we don’t expect anything else from us. This kind of behaviour in the end,
blocks a lot of exchange, instead of making a more creative approach
possible.
14
15
Andy Fitsimon: Publican, the new Open Source publishing tool-chain (LGM 2008)
http://media.river-valley.tv/conferences/lgm2008/quicktime/0201-Andy_Fitzsimon.html
Michael Dominic Kostrzewa. Programmers hell: working with the UI designer (LGM 2008)
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I read about (and this is before skinning became more common) designers
doing some multimedia things at Microsoft. You had designers and then
there were coders. Each of them hated the other ones. The coders thought
the designers were idiots who lived in lofts and had found objects in their
ears. The designers thought that the programmers were a bunch of socially
inept nerds who had no clue and never got out in sunlight and slept in their
offices. And since they had that dynamic, they would never explain to each
other ( ... )
(policeman arrives)
POLICEMAN:
Do you speak English?
Yes.
POLICEMAN:
You must go from this place because there’s a conference.
Yes, we know. We are part of this conference (shows LGM badge).
POLICEMAN:
We had a phone call that here’s a picnic. I don’t really see a picnic ...
We’re doing an interview.
POLICEMAN:
It looks like a picnic, and professors are getting nervous. You must go sit
somewhere else. Sorry, it is the rules. Have a nice day!
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At the Libre Graphics Meeting 2008, OSP picks up a conversation that Harrison allegedly started in a taxi in Montreal, a year
earlier. We meet font designer and developer Dave Crossland
in a noisy food court to speak about his understanding of the
intertwined histories of typography and software, and the master in type design at the Department of Typography at the
University of Reading. Since the interview, a lot has happened.
Dave finished his typeface Cantarell and moved on to consult
the Google Web Fonts project, commissioning new typefaces
designed for the web. He is also currently offering lectures on
typeface design with Free Software.
Harrison (H)
1, 2.
Ludivine Loiseau (LL)
and now all:
Dave Crossland (DC)
Hello Dave.
Hellooo ...
Alright!
Well, thank you for taking a bit of time with us for the interview. First
thing is maybe to set a kind of context of your situation, your current situation.
What you’ve done before. Why are you setting fonts and these kind of things.
H
Oh yes, yeah. Well, I take it quite far back, when I was a teenager. I
was planning to do computer science university studying like mathematics
and physics in highschool. I needed some work experience. I decided I
didn’t want to work with computers. So I dropped maths and physics and
I started working at ... I mean I started studying art and design, and also
socio-linguistics in highschool. I was looking at going to Fine Arts but I
wasn’t really too worried about if I could get a job at the end of it, because
I could get a job with computers, if I needed to get a job So I studied that
at my school for like a one year course, after my school. A foundation year,
and the deal with that is that you study all the different art and design disciplines. Because in highschool you don’t really have the specialities where you
specifically study textile or photography, not every school has a darkroom,
schools are not well equipped.
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You get to experience all these areas of design and in that we studied graphic
design, motion graphics and I found in this a good opportunity to bring together the computer things with fine arts and visual arts aspects. In graphic
design in my school it was more about paper, it had nothing to do with
computers. In art school, that was more the case. So I grew into graphic
design.
Ordering coffee and change of background music: Oh yeah, African beats!
So, yes. I was looking at graphic design that was more computer based than
in art school. I wasn’t so interested in like regular illustration as a graphic
design. Graphic design has really got three purposes: to persuade people,
that’s advertising; to entertain people, movie posters, music album covers,
illustration magazines; and there is also graphic design to inform people,
in England it’s called ‘information design’, in the US it’s called ‘information
architecture’ ... stucturing websites, information design. Obviously a big
part of that is typography, so that’s why I got interested in typography, via
information design. I studied at Ravensbourne college in London, what
I applied for was graphic information design. I started working at the IT
department, and that really kept me going to that college, I wasn’t so happy
with the direction of the courses. The IT department there was really really
good and I ended up switching to the interaction design course, because that
had more freedom to do the kind of typographic work I was intersted in.
So I ended up looking at Free Sofware design tools because I became frustrated by the limitations of the Adobe software which in the college was
using, just what everybody used. And at that point I realized what ‘software freedom’ meant. I’ve been using Debian since I was like a teenager,
but I hadn’t really looked to the depth of what Free Software was about. I
mean back in the nineties Windows wasn’t very good but probably at that
time 2003-2004, MacOSX came out and it was getting pretty nice to use.
I bought a Mac laptop without really thinking about it and because it was
a Unix I could use the software like I was used to do. And I didn’t really
think about the issues with Free Software, MacOSX was Unix so it was the
same I figured. But when I started to do my work I really stood against the
limitations of Adobe software, specifically in parallel publishing which is
when you have the same basic informations that you want to communicate
in different mediums. You might want to publish something in .pdf, on the
web, maybe also on your mobile phone, etc. And doing that with Adobe
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software back then was basically impossible. I was aware of Free Software
design tools and it was kind of obvious that even if they weren’t very pushed
by then they at least had the potential to be able to do this in a powerful
way. So that’s what I figured out. What that issue with Free Software really
meant. Who’s in control of the software, who decides what it does, who
decides when it’s going to support this feature or that feature, because the
features that I wanted, Adobe wasn’t planning to add them. So that’s how I
got interested in Free Software.
When I graduated I was looking for something that I could contribute in
this area. And one of the Scribus guys, Peter Linnell, made an important
post on the Scribus blog. Saying, you know, the number one problem
with Free Software design is fonts, like it’s dodgy fonts with incorrect this,
incorrect that, have problems when printed as well ... and so yeah, I felt
woa, I have a background in typography and I know about Free Software,
I could make contributions in fonts. Looking into that area, I found that
there was some postgraduate course you can study at in Europe. There’s
two, there is one at The Hague in The Netherlands and one at Reading.
They’re quite different courses in their character and in how much they cost
and how long they last for and what level of qualification they are. But
they’re both postgraduate courses which focus on typeface design and font
software development. So if you’re interesed in that area, you can really
concentrate for about a year and bring your skills up to a high professional
level. So I applied to the course at Reading and I was accepted there and
I’m currently studying there part time. I’m studying there to work on Free
Software fonts. So that’s the full story of how I ended up in this area.
Excellent! Last time we met, you summarized in a very relevant way the
history of font design software which is a proof by itself that everything is related
with fonts and this kind of small networks and I would like you to summarize it
again.
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Alright. In that whole journey of getting into this area of parallel publishing and automated design, I was asking around for people who
worked in that area because at that time not many people had worked in
parallel publishing. It’s a lot of a bigger deal now, especially in the Free
Software community where we have Free Software manuals translated into
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many languages, written in .doc and .xml and then transformed into print
and web versions and other versions. But back then this was kind of a new
concept, not all people worked on it. And so, asking around, I heard about
the department of typography at the university of Reading. One of the lecturers there, actually the lecturer of the typeface design course put me on
to a designer in Holland, Petr van Blokland. He’s a really nice guy, really
friendly. And I dropped him an e-mail as I was in Holland that year – just
dropped by to see him and it turned out he’s not only involved in parallel
publishing and automated design, but also in typedesign. For him there is
really no distinctions between type design and typography. It’s kind of like a
big building – you have the architecture of the building but you can also go
down into the bricks. It’s kind of like that with typography, the type design
is all these little pieces you assembly to create the typography out of . He’s
an award-winning typeface designer and typographer and he was involved
in the early days of typography very actively. He kind of explained me the
whole story of type design technology.
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So, the history of typography actually starts with Free Software, with Donald
Knuth and his TeX. The TeX typesetting system has its own font software
or font system called Metafont. Metafont is a font programming language,
and algebraic programming language describing letter forms. It really gets
into the internal structure of the shapes. This is a very non-visual programming approach to it where you basically use this programming language to
describe with algebra how the shapes make up the letters. If you have a
capital H, you got essentially 3 lines, two verticals stands and a horizontal
crossbar and so, in algebra you can say that you’ve got one ratio whitch is
the height of the vertical lines and another ratio which is the width between
them and another ratio which is the distance between the top point and the
middle point of the crossbar and the bottom point. By describing all of that
in algebra, you really describe the structure of that shape and that gives you
a lot of power because it means you can trace a pen nib objects over that
skeleton to generate the final typeform and so you can apply variations, you
can rotate the pen nib – you can have different pen nib shapes And you can
have a lot of different typefaces out of that kind of source code. But that
approach is not a visual approach, you have to take it with a mathematical
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mind and that isn’t something which graphic designers typically have as a
strong part of their skill set.
The next step was describing the outline of a typeface, and the guy who
did this was working, I believe, at URW. He invented a digital typography
system or typedesign program called Ikarus. The rumor is it’s called Ikarus
because it crashed too much. Peter Karow is this guy. He was the absolute
unknown real pioneer in this area. They were selling this proprietary software powered by a tablet, with a drawing pen for entering the points and it
used it’s own kind of spline-curve technology.
This was very expensive – it ran on DMS computers and URW was making
a lot of money selling those mini computers in well I guess late 70s and
early 80s. And there was a new small home computer that came out called
the Apple Macintosh. This was quite important because not only was it a
personal computer. It had a graphical user interface and also a printer, a laser
writer which was based on the Adobe PostScript technology. This was what
made desktop publishing happen. I believe it was a Samsung printer revised
by Apple and Adobe’s PostScript technology. Those three companies, those
three technologies was what made desktop publishing happen. Petr van
Blokland was involved in it, using the Ikarus software, developing it. And
so he ported the program to the Mac. So Ikarus M was the first font
editor for personal computers and this was taken on by URW but never
really promoted because the ... Mac costs not a lot money compared to those
big expensive computers. So, Ikarus M was not widely distributed. It’s
kind of an obvious idea – you know you have those innovative computers
doing graphic interfaces and laser printing and several different people had
several different ideas about how to employ that. Obviously you had John
Warnock within Adobe and at that point Adobe was a systems company,
they made this PostScript system and these components, they didn’t make
any user applications. But John Warnock – and this is documented in the
book on the Adobe story – he really pushed within the company to develop
Adobe Illustrator, which allowed you to interact with the edit PostScript
code and do vector drawings interactively. That was the kind of illustration
and graphic design which we mentioned earlier. That was the ... page layout
sort of thing and that was taking care of by a guy called Paul Brainerd,
whose company Aldus made PageMaker. That did similar kind of things
than Illustrator, but focused on page layout and typography, text layout
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rather than making illustrations. So you had Illustrator and PageMaker and
this was the beginning of the desktop publishing tool-chain.
When was it?
H
This is in the mid-eighties. The Mac came out in 1984
DC
Pierre Huyghebaert (PH)
Illustrator in 1986 I think.
Yeah. And then the Apple LaserWriter, which is I believe a Samsung
printer, came out in 1985, and I believe the first edition of Illustrator was in
1988 ...
DC
No, I think Illustrator 1 was in 1986.
PH
DC
H
OK, if you read the official Adobe story book, it’s fully documented 1 .
It’s interesting that it follows so quickly after the Macintosh.
Yes! That’s right. It all happened very quickly because Adobe and
Apple had really built with PostScript and the MacOS, they had the infrastructure there, they could build on top of. And that’s a common thing we
see played out over and over ... Things are developed quite slowly when they
are getting the infrastructure right, and then when the infrastructure is in
place you see this burst of activity where people can slot it together very
quickly to make some interesting things. So, you had this other guy called
Jim von Ehr and he saw the need for a graphical user interface to develop
fonts with and so he founded a small compagny called Altsys and he made a
program called Fontographer. So that became the kind of de-facto standard
font editing program.
DC
PH
used?
And before that, do you know what font design software Adobe designers
I don’t know. Basically when Adobe made PostScript for the Apple
LaserWriter then they had the core 35 PostScript fonts, which is about
a thousand families, 35 differents weights or variants of the fonts. And I
believe that those were from Linotype. Linotype developed that in collaboration with Adobe, I have no idea about what software they used, they
may have had their own internal software. I know that before they had
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Pamela Pfiffner. Inside the Publishing Revolution: The Adobe Story. Adobe Press, 2008
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Illustrator they were making PostScript documents by hand like TeX, programming PostScript sourcecode. It might have been in a very low tech way.
Because those were the core fonts that have been used in PostScript.
So you had Fontographer and this is yeah I mean a GUI application for
home computers to make fonts with. Fontographer made early 90s David
Carson graphic design posters. Because it meant that anybody could start
making fonts not only people that were in the type design guild. That all
David Carson kind of punk graphic design, it’s really because of Desktop
publishing and specifically because of Fontographer. Because that allowed
people to make these fonts. Previous printing technologies wouldn’t allow
you to make these kinds of fonts without extreme efforts. I mean a lot of the
effects you can do with digital graphics you can’t do without digital graphics
– air brushing sophisticated effects like that can be achieved but it’s really a
lot of efforts.
So going back to the guys from Holland, Petr has a younger brother called
Erik and he went to the college at the Royal Academie of design the KABK
in the Hague with a guy who is Just van Rossum and he’s the younger
brother of Guido van Rossum who is now quite famous because he’s the guy
who developed and invented Python. In the early 90s Jim von Ehr is developping Fontographer, and Fontographer 4 comes out and Petr and Just and
Erik managed to get a copy of the source code of Fontographer 3 which is the
golden version that we used, like Quark, that was what we used throughout
most of the 90s and so they started adding things to that to do scripting on
Fontographer with Python and this was called Robofog, and that was still
used until quite recently, because it had features no one has ever seen enywhere else. The deal was you had to get a Fontographer 4 license, and then
you could get a Robofont license, for Fontographer 3. Then Apple changed
the system architecture and that meant Fontographer 3 would no longer
run on Apple computers. Obviously that was a bit of a damn on Robofog.
Pretty soon after that Jim sold Fontographer to Macromedia. He and his
employes continued to develop Fontographer into Freehand, it went from a
font drawing application into a more general purpose illustration tool. So
Macromedia bought Altsys for Freehand because they were competing with
Adobe at that time. And they didn’t really have any interest in continuing
to develop Fontographer. Fonts is a really obscure kind of area. As a proprietary software company, what you are doing things to make a profit and if
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the market is too small to justify your investment then you’ll just not keep
developing the software. Fontographer shut at that point.
PH
I think they paid one guy to maintain it and answer questions.
Yeah. I think they even stop actively selling it, you had to ask them to
sell you a license. Fontographer has stopped at that point and there was no
actively developed font editor. There were a few Windows programs, which
were kind of shareware for developing fonts because in this time Apple and
Microsoft got fed up with paying Adobe’s extortion of PostScript licensing
fees. They developed their own font format called TrueType. There were
Windows font editing programs.
Yeah. I think they even stop actively selling it, you had to ask them to sell
you a license. Fontographer has stopped at that point and there was no actively developed font editor. There were a few Windows programs, which
were kind of shareware for developing fonts because in this time Apple and
Microsoft got fed up with paying Adobe’s extortion of PostScript licensing fees. They developed their own font format called TrueType. When
Fontographer stopped there was the question of which one will become the
predominant font editor and so there was Fontlab. This was developed by
a guy Yuri Yarmola, Russian originally I believe, and it became the primary
proprietary type design tool.
The Python guys from Holland started using Fontlab. They managed to
convince the Fontlab guys to include Python scripting support in Fontlab.
Python had become a major language, for doing this kind of scripting. So
Fontlab added in Python scripting. And then different type designers, font
developers started to use Python scripts to help them develop their fonts,
and a few of the guys doing that decided to join up and they created the
RoboFab project which took the ideas that had been developed for Robofob
and reimplemented them with Fontlab – so RoboFab. This is now a Free
Software package, under the MIT Python style licence. So it is a Free
Software licence but without copyleft. It has beeing developed as a collaborative project. If you’re interested in the development you can just join the
mailing list. It’s a very mature project and the really beautiful thing about
it that they developed a font object model and so in Python you have a very
clean and easily understandable object-oriented model of what a font is. It
makes it very easy to script things. This is quite exciting because that means
you can start to do things which are just not really visible with the graphic
design interface. The thing with those fonts is like there is a scale, it is like
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architecture. You’ve got the designer of the building and the designer of
the bricks. With a font it is the same. You have the designer who shapes
each letter and then you’ve got the character-spacing which makes what a
paragraph will look like. A really good example of this is if you want to do
interpolation, if you have a very narrow version of a font and a very wide one,
and you want to interpolate in different versions between those two masters
– you really want to do that in a script, and RoboFab makes this really easy
to do this within Fontlab. The ever important thing about RoboFab was
that they developed UFO, I think it’s the Universal Font Object – I’m not
sure what the exact name is – but it’s a XML font format which means that
you can interchange font source data with different programs and specifically
that means that you have a really good font interpolation program that can
read and write that UFO XML format and then you can have your regular
type design format font editor that will generate bitmap font formats that
you actually use in a system. You can write your own tool for a specific
task and push and pull the data back and forth. Some of these Dutch guys,
especially Erik has written a really good interpolation tool. So, as a kind
of thread in the story of font. Remember that time where Fontographer
was not developed actively then you have Georges Williams from California
who was interested in digital typography and fonts and Fontographer was
not being activelly developed and he found that quite frustrating so he said
like Well, I’ll write my own font editor. He wrote it from scratch. I mean
this is a great project.
LL
Can you tell us some details about your course?
DC
There are four main deliverables in the course, that you normally
do in one year, twelve months. The big thing is that you do a professional quality OpenType font, with an extended pan-european latin coverage in regular and italic, maybe bold. You also do a complex non-latin
in Arabic, Indic, maybe Cyrillic ... well not really Cyrillic because there are
problems to get a Cyrillic type experts from Russia to Britain ... or Greek,
or any script with which you have a particular background in. And so,
they didn’t mandate which software students can use, and I was already
used to FontForge, while pretty much all the other students were using
FontLab. This font development is the main thing. The second thing is
the dissertation, that goes up to 8,000 words, an academic master in typography dissertation. Then there is a smaller essay, that will be published
on http://www.typeculture.com/academic_resource/articles_essays/, and it’s
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a kind of a practice for writing the dissertation. Then you have to document
your working process throughout the year, you have to submit your working
files, source files. Every single step is documented and you have to write
a small essay describing your process. And also, of course, apart from the
type design, you make a font specimen, so you make a very nice piece of
design that show up your font in use, as commercial companies do. All that
takes a full intense year. For British people, the course costs about £3,000,
for people in the EU, it costs about £5,000 and about £10,000 for non-EU.
Have a look at the website for details, but yes, it’s very expensive.
LL
And did you also design a font?
Yes. But I do it part-time. Normally, you could do the typeface,
and the year after you do the dissertation. For personal reasons, I do the
dissertation first, in the summer, and next year I’ll do the typeface, I think
in July next year.
DC
LL
You have an idea on which font you’ll work?
Yes. The course doesn’t specify which kind of typeface you have to
work on. But they really prefer a textface, a serif one, because it’s the most
complicate and demanding work. If you can do a high quality serif text
typeface design, you can do almost any typeface design! Of course, lots of
students do also a sans serif typeface to be read at 8 or 9 points, or even
for by example dictionaries at 6 or 7 points. Other students design display
typefaces that can be used for pararaphs but probably not at 9 points ...
DC
It looks like you are asked to produce quite a lot of documents.
Are these documents published anywhere, are they available for other designers?
Femke Snelting (FS)
Yes, the website is http://www.typefacedesign.net and the teaching
team encourages students to publish their essays, and some people have
published their dissertation on the web, but it varies. Of course, being an
academic dissertation, you can request if from the university.
DC
I’m asking because in various presentations the figure of the ‘expert typographer’ came up, and the role Open Source software could have, to open up this
guild.
FS
Yeah, the course in The Hague is cheaper, the pound was quite high so
it’s expensive to live in Britain during the last year, and the number of people
able to produce high quality fonts is pretty small ... And these courses are
DC
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quite inaccessible for most of the people because of being so expensive, you
have to be quite commited to follow them. The proprietary font editing
software, even with a student discount, is also a bit expensive. So yes, Free
and Open Source software could be an enabler. FontForge allows anybody
to grab it on the Internet and start making fonts. But having the tools
is just the beginning. You have to know what you’re doing to a design a
typeface, and this is separate from font software techinques. And books
on the subject, there are quite a few, but none are really a full solution.
There www.typophile.org, a type design forum on the web, where you can
post preliminary designs. But of course you do not get the kind of critical
feedback as you can get on a masters course ...
FS
We talked to Denis Jacquerye from the DéjàVu project, and most of the
people who collaborate on the project are not type designers but people who are
interested in having certain glyphs added to a typeface. And we asked him if
there is some kind of teaching going on, to be sure that the people contributing
understand what they are doing. Do you see any way of, let’s say, a more open
way of teaching typography starting to happen?
Yeah, I mean, that the part of why the Free Software movement is
going to branch down into the Free Culture movement. There is that website Freedom Defined 2 that states that the principles of Free Software can
apply to all other kind of works. This isn’t shared by everybody in the Free
Software movement. Richard Stallman makes a clear difference between
three kind of works: the ones that function like software, encyclopedias,
dictionaries, text books that tell how to makes things, and text typefaces.
Art works like music and films, and text works about opinions like scientific papers or political manifestos. He believes that different kinds of rights
should apply for that different kind of works. There is also a different view
in which anything in a computer can be edited ought to be free like Free
Software. That is certainly a position that many people take in the Free
Software community. In the WikiMedia Foundation text books project,
you can see that when more and more people are involved in typeface design
from the Free Culture community, we will see more and more education
material. There will be a snowball effect.
DC
PH
2
Dave, we are running out of time ...
http://freedomdefined.org
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So just to finish about the FontForge Python scripting ... There is
Python embeded in FontForge so you can run scripts to control FontForge,
you can add new features that maybe would be specific to your font and then
in FontForge there is also a Python module which means that you can type
into a Python interpretor. You type import fontforge and if it doesn’t
give you an error then you can start to do FontForge functions, just like in
the RoboFab environment. And in the process of adding that George kind
of re-architectured the FontForge source code so instead of being one large
program, there is now a large C library, libfontforge, and then a small C
program for rendering and also the Python module, a binding or interface
to that C library. This means if you are an application programmer it is very
straightforward to make a new font editor in whatever language you want,
using whatever graphic toolkit you want. So if you’re a JDK guy or a GTK
guy or even if you’re on Windows or Mac OS X, you can make a font editor
that has all the functionality of FontForge. FontForge is a kind of engine to
make font editors. This is quite exciting because it means it’s pretty straight
forward for somebody to write a font editing program which is designed for,
say, beginners.
So, to come back to what we were just talking about in term of educational
materials to get people new to typeface design to be confident with themselves. Maybe they won’t be in that professional level yet, but they will be
pleased with their own work and happy to work in a user interface where
you feel like in 2006, you know, with nice icons nice windows; anti aliasing
and these kind of things.
I mean there’s nothing wrong with the FontForge interface. It is what it
is. But it scares a lot of people away, people say that they don’t like this. I
think it is too scary, too different. I think we are going to see some exciting
stuff in the next few years in the Free Software font editor space.
DC
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At the Libre Graphics Meeting 2008 in Wroclaw, just before
Michael Terry presents his project ingimp to an audience of
curious GIMP developers and users, we meet up to talk more
about ‘instrumenting GIMP’ and about the way Terry thinks
data analysis could be done as a form of discourse. Michael
Terry is a computer scientist working at the Human Computer
Interaction Lab of the University of Waterloo, Canada and his
main research focus is on improving usability in Open Source
software. We speak about ingimp, a clone of the popular image
manipulation programme GIMP, but with an important difference: ingimp allows users to record data about their usage in to
a central database, and subsequently makes this data available to
anyone. This conversation was also published in the Constant
publication Tracks in electr(on)ic fields.
Maybe we could start this conversation with a description of the ingimp project
you are developing and why you chose to work on usability for GIMP?
So the project is ‘ingimp’, which is an instrumented version of GIMP, it
collects information about how the software is used in practice. The idea is
you download it, you install it, and then with the exception of an additional
start up screen, you use it just like regular Gimp. So, our goal is to be as
unobtrusive as possible to make it really easy to get going with it, and then
to just forget about it. We want to get it into the hands of as many people
as possible, so that we can understand how the software is actually used in
practice. There are plenty of forums where people can express their opinions
about how GIMP should be designed, or what’s wrong with it, there are
plenty of bug reports that have been filed, there are plenty of usability issues
that have been identified, but what we really lack is some information about
how people actually apply this tool on a day to day basis. What we want
to do is elevate discussion above just anecdote and gut feelings, and to say,
well, there is this group of people who appear to be using it in this way,
these are the characteristics of their environment, these are the sets of tools
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they work with, these are the types of images they work with and so on, so
that we have some real data to ground discussions about how the software
is actually used by people. You asked me now why GIMP? I actually used
GIMP extensively for my PhD work. I had these little cousins come down
and hang out with me in my apartment after school, and I would set them
up with GIMP, and quite often they would always start off with one picture,
they would create a sphere, a blue sphere, and then they played with filters
until they got something really different. I would turn to them looking
at what they had been doing for the past twenty minutes, and would be
completely amazed at the results they were getting just by fooling around
with it. And so I thought, this application has lots and lots of power, I’d
like to use that power to prototype new types of interface mechanisms. So
I created JGimp, which is a Java based extension for the 1.0 GIMP series,
that I can use as a back-end for prototyping novel user interfaces. I think
that it is a great application, there is a lot of power to it, and I had already
an investment in its code base so it made sense to use that as a platform for
testing out ideas of open instrumentation.
What is special about ingimp, is the fact that the data you generate is made by
the software you are studying itself. Could you describe how that works?
Every bit of data we collect, we make available: you can go to the website,
you can download every log file that we have collected. The intent really
is for us to build tools and infrastructure so that the community itself can
sustain this analysis, can sustain this form of usability. We don’t want to
create a situation where we are creating new dependencies on people, or
where we are imposing new tasks on existing project members. We want to
create tools that follow the same ethos as Open Source development, where
anyone can look at the source code, where anyone can make contributions,
from filing a bug to doing something as simple as writing a patch, where
they don’t even have to have access to the source code repository, to make
valuable contributions. So importantly, we want to have a really low barrier
to participation. At the same time, we want to increase the signal-to-noise
ratio. Yesterday I talked with Peter Sikking, an information architect working for GIMP, and he and I both had this experience where we work with
user interfaces, and since everybody uses an interface, everybody feels they
are an expert, so there can be a lot of noise. So, not only did we want to
create an open environment for collecting this data, and analysing it, but we
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also want to increase the chance that we are making valuable contributions,
and that the community itself can make valuable contributions. Like I said,
there is enough opinion out there. What we really need to do is to better
understand how the software is being used. So, we have made a point from
the start to try to be as open as possible with everything, so that anyone can
really contribute to the project.
ingimp has been running for a year now. What are you finding?
I have started analysing the data, and I think one of the things that we
realised early on is that it is a very rich data set; we have lots and lots of
data. So, after a year we’ve had over 800 installations, and we’ve collected
about 5000 log files, representing over half a million commands, representing thousands of hours of the application being used. And one of the things
you have to realise is that when you have a data set of that size, there are so
many different ways to look at it that my particular perspective might not
be enough. Even if you sit someone down, and you have him or her use the
software for twenty minutes, and you videotape it, then you can spend hours
analysing just that twenty minutes of videotape. And so, I think that one of
the things we realised is that we have to open up the process so that anyone
could easily participate. We have the log files available, but they really didn’t
have an infrastructure for analysing them. So, we created this new piece of
software called ‘StatsJam’, an extension to MediaWiki, which allows anyone
to go to the website and embed SQL-queries against the ingimp data set
and then visualise those results within the Wiki text. So, I’ll be announcing
that today and demonstrating that, but I have been using that tool now for
a week to complement the existing data analysis we have done. One of the
first things that we realized is that we have over 800 installations, but then
you have to ask, how many of those are really serious users? A lot of people
probably just were curious, they downloaded it and installed it, found that it
didn’t really do much for them and so maybe they don’t use it anymore. So,
the first thing we had to do is figure out which data points should we really
pay attention too. We decided that a person should have saved an image,
and they should have used ingimp on two different occasions, preferably at
least a day apart, where they’d saved an image on both of the instances. We
used that as an indication of what a serious user is. So with that filter in
place, then the ‘800 installations’ drops down to about 200 people. So we
had about 200 people using ingimp, and looking at the data this represents
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about 800 hours of use, about 4000 log files, and again still about half a million commands. So, it’s still a very significant group of people. 200 people
is still a lot, and that’s a lot of data, representing about 11000 images they
have been working on, there’s just a lot.
From that group, what we found is that use of ingimp is really short and
versatile. So, most sessions are about fifteen minutes or less, on average.
There are outliers, there are some people who use it for longer periods of
time, but really it boils down to them using it for about fifteen minutes, and
they are applying fewer than a hundred operations when they are working on
the image. I should probably be looking at my data analysis as I say this, but
they are very quick, short, versatile sessions, and when they use it, they use
less than 10 different tools, or they apply less than 10 different commands
when they are using it. What else did we find? We found that the two
most popular monitor resolutions are 1280 by 1024 and 1024 by 768. So,
those represent collectively 60% of the resolutions, and really 1280 by 1024
represents pretty much the maximum for most people, although you have
some higher resolutions. So one of the things that’s always contentious
about GIMP, is its window management scheme and the fact that it has
multiple windows, right? And some people say, well you know this works
fine if you have two monitors, because you can throw out the tools on one
monitor and then your images are on another monitor. Well, about 10%
to 15% of ingimp users have two monitors, so that design decision is not
working out for most of the people, if that is the best way to work. These
are things I think that people have been aware of, it’s just now we have
some actual concrete numbers where you can turn to and say, now this is
how people are using it. There is a wide range of tasks that people are
performing with the tool, but they are really short, bursty tasks.
Every time you start up ingimp, a screen comes up asking you to describe what
you are planning to do and I am interested in the kind of language users invent
to describe this, even when they sometimes don’t know exactly what it is they are
going to do. So inventing language for possible actions with the software, has in
a way become a creative process that is now shared between interface designer,
developer and user. If you look at the ‘activity tags’ you are collecting, do you
find a new vocabulary developing?
I think there are 300 to 600 different activity tags that people register
within that group of ‘significant users’. I didn’t have time to look at all of
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them, but it is interesting to see how people are using that as a medium
for communicating to us. Some people will say, Just testing out, ignore this!
Or, people are trying to do things like insert HTML code, to do like a
cross-site scripting attack, because, you have all the data on the website, so
they will try to play with that. Some people are very sparse and they say
‘image manipulation’ or ‘graphic design’ or something like that, but then
some people are much more verbose, and they give more of a plan, This
is what I expect to be doing. So, I think it has been interesting to see how
people have adopted that and what’s nice about it, is that it adds a really nice
human element to all this empirical data.
I wanted to ask you about the data, without getting too technical, could
you explain how these data are structured, what do the log files look like?
So the log files are all in XML, and generally we compress them, because
they can get rather large. And the reason that they are rather large is that we
are very verbose in our logging. We want to be completely transparent with
respect to everything, so that if you have some doubts or if you have some
questions about what kind of data has been collected, you should be able to
look at the log file, and figure out a lot about what that data is. That’s how
we designed the XML log files, and it was really driven by privacy concerns
and by the desire to be transparent and open. On the server side we take
that log file and we parse it out, and then we throw it into a database, so
that we can query the data set.
Now we are talking about privacy ... I was impressed by the work you have done
on this; the project is unusually clear about why certain things are logged, and
other things not; mainly to prevent the possibility of ‘playing back’ actions so that
one could identify individual users from the data set. So, while I understand
there are privacy issues at stake I was wondering ... what if you could look at the
collected data as a kind of scripting for use? Writing a choreography that might
be replayed later?
Yes, we have been fairly conservative with the type of information that we
collect, because this really is the first instance where anyone has captured
such rich data about how people are using software on a day to day basis,
and then made it all that data publicly available. When a company does
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this, they will keep the data internally, so you don’t have this risk of someone outside figuring something out about a user that wasn’t intended to be
discovered. We have to deal with that risk, because we are trying to go about
this in a very open and transparent way, which means that people may be
able to subject our data to analysis or data mining techniques that we haven’t
thought of and extract information that we didn’t intent to be recording in
our file, but which is still there. So there are fairly sophisticated techniques
where you can do things like look at audio recordings of typing and the timings between keystrokes, and then work backwards with the sounds made
to figure out the keys that people are likely pressing. So, just with keyboard
audio and keystroke timings alone you can often give enough information
to be able to reconstruct what people are actually typing. So we are always
sort of weary about how much information is in there. While it might be
nice to be able to do something like record people’s actions and then share
that script, I don’t think that that is really a good use of ingimp. That said,
I think it is interesting to ask, could we characterize people’s use enough, so
that we can start clustering groups of people together and then providing a
forum for these people to meet and learn from one another? That’s something we haven’t worked out. I think we have enough work cut out for us
right now just to characterize how the community is using it.
It was not meant as a feature request, but as a way to imagine how usability
research could flip around and also become productive work.
Yes, totally. I think one of the things that we found when bringing people
into to assess the basic usability of the ingimp software and ingimp website,
is that people like looking at things like what commands other people are
using, what the most frequently used commands are, and part of the reason
that they like that, is because of what it teaches them about the application.
So they might see a command they were unaware of. So we have toyed with
the idea of then providing not only the command name, but then a link
from that command name to the documentation – but I didn’t have time to
implement it, but certainly there are possibilities like that, you can imagine.
Maybe another group can figure something out like that? That’s the beauty of
opening up your software plus data set of course. Well, just a bit more on what
is logged and what not ... Maybe you could explain where and why you put the
limit and what kind of use you might miss out on as a result?
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I think it is important to keep in mind that whatever instrument you use
to study people, you are going to have some kind of bias, you are going
to get some information at the cost of other information. So if you do a
video taped observation of a user and you just set up a camera, then you
are not going to find details about the monitor maybe, or maybe you are
not really seeing what their hands are doing. No matter what instrument
you use, you are always getting a particular slice. I think you have to work
backwards and ask what kind of things do you want to learn. And so the
data that we collect right now, was really driven by what people have done
in the past in the area of instrumentation, but also by us bringing people
into the lab, observing them as they are using the application, and noticing
particular behaviours and saying, hey, that seems to be interesting, so what
kind of data could we collect to help us identify those kind of phenomena,
or that kind of performance, or that kind of activity? So again, the data that
we were collecting was driven by watching people, and figuring out what
information will help us to identify these types of activities. As I’ve said,
this is really the first project that is doing this, and we really need to make
sure we don’t poison the well. So if it happens that we collect some bit of
information, that then someone can later say, Oh my gosh, here is the person’s
file system, here are the names they are using for the files or whatever, then it’s
going to make the normal user population weary of downloading this type
of instrumented application. This is the thing that concerns me most about
Open Source developers jumping into this domain, is that they might not
be thinking about how you could potentially impact privacy.
I don’t know, I don’t want to get paranoid. But if you are doing it, then
there is a possibility someone else will do it in a less considerate way.
I think it is only a matter of time before people start doing this, because
there are a lot of grumblings about, we should be doing instrumentation, someone just needs to sit down and do it. Now there is an extension out for Firefox
that will collect this kind of data as well, so you know ...
Maybe users could talk with each other, and if they are aware that this
type of monitoring could happen, then that would add a different social
dimension ...
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It could. I think it is a matter of awareness, really, so when we bring
people into the lab and have them go to the ingimp website, download and
install it and use it, and go check out the stats on the website, and then we
ask questions like, what kind of data are we collecting? We have a lengthy
concern agreement that details the type of information we are collecting and
the ways your privacy could be impacted, but people don’t read it.
So concretely ... what information are you recording, and what information are
you not recording?
We record every command name that is applied to a document, to an image.
Where your privacy is at risk with that, is that if you write a custom script,
then that custom script’s name is going to be inserted into a log file. And so
if you are working for example for Lucas or DreamWorks or something like
that, or ILM, in some Hollywood movie studio and you are using ingimp
and you are writing scripts, then you could have a script like ‘fixing Shrek’s
beard’, and then that is getting put into the log file and then people are
going to know that the studio uses ingimp. We collect command names,
we collect things like what windows are on the screen, their positions, their
sizes, we take hashes of layer names and file names. We take a string and
then we create a hash code for it, and we also collect information about how
long is this string, how many alphabetical characters, numbers, things like
that, to get a sense of whether people are using the same files, the same
layer names time and time again, and so on. But this is an instance where
our first pass at this, actually left open the possibility of people taking those
hashes and then reconstructing the original strings from that. Because we
have the hash code, we have the length of the string, all you have to do is
generate all possible strings of that length, take the hash codes and figure
out which hashes match. And so we had to go back and create a new
scheme for recording this type of information where we create a hash and
we create a random number, we pair those up on the client machine but
we only log the random number. So, from log to log then, we can track if
people use the same image names, but we have no idea of what the original
string was. There are these little ‘gotchas’, things to look out for, that I
don’t think most people are aware of, and this is why I get really concerned
about instrumentation efforts right now, because there isn’t this body of
experience of what kind of data should we collect, and what shouldn’t we
collect.
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As we are talking about this, I am already more aware of what data I would allow
to be collected. Do you think by opening up this data set and the transparent
process of collecting and not collecting, this will help educate users about these
kinds of risks?
It might, but honestly I think probably the thing that will educate people
the most is if there was a really large privacy error and that it got a lot of
news, because then people would become more aware of it because right
now – and this is not to say that we want that to happen with ingimp – but
when we bring people in and we ask them about privacy, Are you concerned
about privacy?, and they say No, and we say Why? Well, they inherently trust
us, but the fact is that Open Source also lends a certain amount of trust to
it, because they expect that since it is Open Source, the community will in
some sense police it and identify potential flaws with it.
Is that happening?
Are you in dialogue with the Open Source community about this?
No, I think probably five to ten people have looked at the ingimp code –
realistically speaking I don’t think a lot of people looked at it. Some of the
GIMP developers took a gander at it to see how could we put this upstream,
but I don’t want it upstream, because I want it to always be an opt-in, so
that it can’t be turned on by mistake.
You mean you have to download ingimp and use it as a separate program? It
functions in the same way as GIMP, but it makes the fact that it is a different
tool very clear.
Right. You are more aware, because you are making that choice to download
that, compared to the regular version. There is this awareness about that.
We have this lengthy text based consent agreement that talks about the data
we collect, but less than two percent of the population reads license agreements. And, most of our users are actually non-native English speakers,
so there are all these things that are working against us. So, for the past
year we have really been focussing on privacy, not only in terms of how we
collect the data, but how we make people aware of what the software does.
We have been developing wordless diagrams to illustrate how the software
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functions, so that we don’t have to worry about localisation errors as much.
And so we have these illustrations that show someone downloading ingimp,
starting it up, a graph appears, there is a little icon of a mouse and a keyboard on the graph, and they type and you see the keyboard bar go up, and
then at the end when they close the application, you see the data being sent
to a web server. And then we show snapshots of them doing different things
in the software, and then show a corresponding graph change. So, we developed these by bringing in both native and non-native speakers, having
them look at the diagrams and then tell us what they meant. We had to go
through about fifteen people and continual redesign until most people could
understand and tell us what they meant, without giving them any help or
prompts. So, this is an ongoing research effort, to come up with techniques
that not only work for ingimp but also for other instrumentation efforts, so
that people can become more aware of the implications.
Can you say something about how this type of research relates to classic usability
research and in particular to the usability work that is happening in Gimp?
Instrumentation is not new, commercial software companies and researchers
have been doing instrumentation for at least ten years, probably ten to
twenty years. So, the idea is not new but what is new, in terms of the
research aspects of this, is how do we do this in a way where we can make
all the data open? The fact that you make the data open, really impacts your
decision about the type of data you collect and how you are representing it.
And you need to really inform people about what the software does. But I
think your question is ... how does it impact the GIMP’s usability process?
Not at all, right now. But that is because we have intentionally been laying
off to the side, until we got to the point where we had an infrastructure,
where the entire community could really participate with the data analysis.
We really want to have this to be a self-sustaining infrastructure, we don’t
want to create a system where you have to rely on just one other person for
this to work.
What approach did you take in order to make this project self-sustainable?
Collecting data is not hard. The challenge is to understand the data, and I
don’t want to create a situation where the community is relying on only one
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person to do that kind of analysis, because this is dangerous for a number of
reasons. First of all, you are creating a dependency on an external party, and
that party might have other obligations and commitments, and might have
to leave at some point. If that is the case, then you need to be able to pass the
baton to someone else, even if that could take a considerate amount of time
and so on. You also don’t want to have this external dependency, because
of the richness in the data, you really need to have multiple people looking
at it, and trying to understand and analyse it. So how are we addressing
this? It is through this StatsJam extension to the MediaWiki that I will
introduce today. Our hope is that this type of tool will lower the barrier
for the entire community to participate in the data analysis process, whether
they are simply commenting on the analysis we made or taking the existing
analysis, tweaking it to their own needs, or doing something brand new.
In talking with members of the GIMP project here at the Libre Graphics
Meeting, they started asking questions like, So how many people are doing
this, how many people are doing this and how many this? They’ll ask me while
we are sitting in a café, and I will be able to pop the database open and say, A
certain number of people have done this, or, no one has actually used this tool at
all. The danger is that this data is very rich and nuanced, and you can’t really
reduce these kind of questions to an answer of N people do this, you have to
understand the larger context. You have to understand why they are doing
it, why they are not doing it. So, the data helps to answer some questions,
but it generates new questions. They give you some understanding of how
the people are using it, but then it generates new questions of, Why is this
the case? Is this because these are just the people using ingimp, or is this
some more widespread phenomenon? They asked me yesterday how many
people are using this colour picker tool – I can’t remember the exact name –
so I looked and there was no record of it being used at all in my data set. So
I asked them when did this come out, and they said, Well it has been there at
least since 2.4. And then you look at my data set, and you notice that most of
my users are in the 2.2 series, so that could be part of the reasons. Another
reason could be, that they just don’t know that it is there, they don’t know
how to use it and so on. So, I can answer the question, but then you have
to sort of dig a bit deeper.
You mean you can’t say that because it is not used, it doesn’t deserve any attention?
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Yes, you just can’t jump to conclusions like that, which is again why we
want to have this community website, which shows the reasoning behind
the analysis. Here are the steps we had to go through to get this result, so
you can understand what that means, what the context means, because if you
don’t have that context, then it’s sort of meaningless. It’s like asking, what
are the most frequently used commands? This is something that people
like to ask about. Well really, how do you interpret that? Is it the numbers
of times it has been used across all log files? Is it the number of people
that have used it? Is it the number of log files where it has been used at
least once? There are lots and lots of ways in which you can interpret this
question. So, you really need to approach this data analysis as a discourse,
where you are saying, here are my assumptions, here is how I am getting to
this conclusion, and this is what it means for this particular group of people.
So again, I think it is dangerous if one person does that and you become to
rely on that one person. We really want to have lots of people looking at it,
and considering it, and thinking about the implications.
Do you expect that this will impact the kind of interfaces that can be done for
GIMP?
I don’t necessarily think it is going to impact interface design, I see it
really as a sort of reality check: this is how communities are using the
software and now you can take that information and ask, do we want to
better support these people or do we ... For example on my data set, most
people are working on relatively small images for short periods of time,
the images typically have one or two layers, so they are not really complex
images. So regarding your question, one of the things you can ask is, should
we be creating a simple tool to meet these people’s needs? All the people are
is just doing cropping and resizing, fairly common operations, so should we
create a tool that strips away the rest of the stuff? Or, should we figure out
why people are not using any other functionality, and then try to improve
the usability of that? There are so many ways to use data I don’t really
know how it is going to be used, but I know it doesn’t drive design. Design
happens from a really good understanding of the users, the types of tasks
they perform, the range of possible interface designs that are out there, lots
of prototyping, evaluating those prototypes and so on. Our data set really
is a small potential part of that process. You can say, well according to this
data set, it doesn’t look like many people are using this feature, let’s not
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much focus too on that, let’s focus on these other features or conversely,
let’s figure out why they are not using them ... Or you might even look at
things like how big their monitor resolutions are, and say well, given the size
of the monitor resolution, maybe this particular design idea is not feasible.
But I think it is going to complement the existing practices, in the best
case.
And do you see a difference in how interface design is done in free software projects,
and in proprietary software?
Well, I have been mostly involved in the research community, so I don’t have
a lot of exposure to design projects. I mean, in my community we are always
trying to look at generating new knowledge, and not necessarily at how to
get a product out the door. So, the goals or objectives are certainly different.
I think one of the dangers in your question is that you sort of lump a lot
of different projects and project styles into one category of ‘Open Source’.
‘Open source’ ranges from volunteer driven projects to corporate projects,
where they are actually trying to make money out of it. There is a huge diversity of projects that are out there; there is a wide diversity of styles, there
is as much diversity in the Open Source world as there is in the proprietary
world. One thing you can probably say, is that for some projects that are
completely volunteer driven like GIMP, they are resource strapped. There is
more work than they can possibly tackle with the number of resources they
have. That makes it very challenging to do interface design, I mean, when
you look at interface code, it costs you 50% or 75% of a code base. That
is not insignificant, it is very difficult to hack and you need to have lots of
time and manpower to be able to do significant things. And that’s probably
one of the biggest differences you see for the volunteer driven projects, it
is really a labour of love for these people and so very often the new things
interest them, whereas with a commercial software company developers are
going to have to do things sometimes they don’t like, because that is what
is going to sell the product.
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In 2007, OSP met with venture communist Dmytri Kleiner
and his wife Franziska, 1 late at night in the bar Le Coq in
Brussels. Kleiner had just finished his lecture InfoEnclosure-2.0
at Verbindingen/Jonctions and we wanted to ask what his ideas
about peer production could mean for the practice of designers and typographers. Referring to Benjamin Tucker, Yochai
Benkler, Marcel Mauss and of course Karl Marx, Kleiner explains how to prevent leakage at the point of scarcity through
operating within a total system of worker owned companies.
Between fundamentals of media- and information economy, he
talks about free typography and what it has to do with nuts
and bolts, the problem of working with estimates and why the
people that develop Scribus should own all the magazines it
enables.
First of all we have to be clear, our own company is very small and
doesn’t actually earn enough money to sustain itself right now. We sustain
our company at this point by taking on other projects; for example we are
here for a project that has really little to do with Telekommunisten, where
we’re helping a recruiting company in Canada, I’m in the UK for a very different reason than Telekommunisten, doing independent software development for a private company. So we’re still self-funding our company. So we
haven’t yet got to a stage where our company can actually sustain itself from
our own peer production, which is our goal. But how we plan to realize
that goal, is through peer production. To start we can sketch out a simple economic model, to understand how the economics work. Economics
work with the so called factors of production: you have land, labour and
capital. Land is natural resources, that which occurs naturally, that which
nobody produces, that just sort exists. Land, electromagnetic frequencies,
everything which naturally exists. Labour is work, something that people
do. Capital is what happens when you apply labour to land, and you create
products. Some of these products have to be consumed, and some of those
products are to be used in further production, and that’s capital. So capital
1
editor for a German publishing company
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is the result of labour applied to land that create output that is used for
further production, and that’s tools, machines and so forth. This system
produces commodities which are consumed in the market. In this system
the dominating input in the production owns the final product, and all of
the actual value of the products is captured at that stage. So whoever sells
the product in the marketplace captures the full value of that product, the
full marginal value, or use value. All of the inputs to that process can never
make anymore than their own cost of reproduction, make their own subsistence cost. So if as a worker you’re selling your labour to somebody else
who owns the product, you’re never going to capture anymore than your
subsistence cost.
Could you make that sort of concrete?
Well, the reason that people need design is because there’s some product
that in the end requires design as an input. For instance, a simple case is
obviously a magazine, in which design is a major input. The value is always
going to be captured by the people selling the magazine. All of the inputs
to that magazine, including design, journalism, layout, administration, are
never going to capture more than their reproduction costs. So in order for
any group of workers to really capture the value of their labour, they have to
own the final product. Which means that they can’t just simply be isolated
in one field, like design. It means that the entire productive cycle has to be
owned collectively by the workers. The designers, together with the journalists, together with the administrators, have to own the magazine, otherwise
they can’t capture their full value. As a group of designers this is very difficult, because as a group of designers you’re only selling an input, you’re not
at the end owning a product. The only way to do this is by forming alliances
with other people, and not based on wages, not based on them giving you
an arbitrary amount of money for that input, which will never be higher
than reproduction cost, but based on owning together the final product. So
you contribute design, somebody else contributes journalism, somebody else
contributes administration and together you all own this magazine. Then
it is this magazine that is sold on the market that is your wage, the value
of the magazine on the market. That is the only way that you can capture
the marginal value of your labour. You have to sell the product, not the input, not labour. Marx talks about labour being itself a commodity, and that
means that you can never capture its marginal contribution of production,
you can only capture its reproduction cost. Which means what it would
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cost to sustain a designer. A designer needs to eat, a designer needs a place
to live, to have a certain lifestyle to fit in the design community and that’s
all you get by selling your labour. You won’t get anymore because there is
no reason for the owner of the product to give you anymore. The only way
you can get more is if you own the product itself, collectively with the other
labour inputs. And I know that’s a bad answer, nobody wants to hear that
answer.
Haha!
This estimate is at the start in the possibility. Because the whole point
of a creative project is that you’re doing something that hasn’t been done
before. And we have all struggled with this before. There’s two things you
don’t know at the beginning of a contract. The first is how long it will
take and the second is what the criteria of being finished will be. You don’t
know either of those two things, and, since you don’t, determining the value
upfront of that is a complete guess. Which means that, when you agree to a
fixed-price term, you are agreeing to take on yourself the risk of the delivery
of the project. So it’s a transfer of risks. Of course the people that are buying
your labour as commodity want to put that risk back on you. They don’t
want to take the risk so they make you do that, because they can’t answer
the question of how much does it cost and how long it will take. They want
a guarantee of a fixed price and they want you to take all the risk. Which is
very unfair because it’s their product in the end; the end product is owned
by them and not by you. It’s a very exploitative relationship to force you
to take the risk for capitalizing their product. It’s a bad relationship from
the beginning. If you’re good at estimating and you know your work and
your limits and the kind of work you can do, you can make that work, and
make a living by being good at this estimates; but still first of all you’re
taking all the risk unfairly, and second you can’t make anything more than a
living. While if we’re going to build any kind of movement for social change
with these new forms of organization, we have to accumulate. Because the
political power is an extension of economic power. So if we actually think
that our peer production communities are going to have political power and
ultimately change society, that can only happen to the degree that we can
accumulate. Which means capturing more than the reproduction costs of
our labour input, it means actually capturing the full value of our labour’s
products. The Benjamin Tucker quote I mentioned before is a good way to
keep it in mind. The natural wage of labour is its product. The natural wage
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of labour isn’t 40 an hour, it isn’t some arbitrary number. The natural wage
of labour is its product.
In our case the product is making phone calls. And we don’t offer our labour
in the form of software development, we are putting together a collective
that can do everything, develop a software and bring it to the market. It is
actually the consumer making telephone calls that will pay for it. As I said,
with it we are not actually making a sustainable living from it right now.
We are only building this. We are still making most of our sustenance by
selling our labour.
Yeah.
That’s where we are starting from. But because we are going for a
model where the end product is sold directly to the consumer, there is
not mediation. There is no capitalist owners that are buying our labour and
owning the product and then selling the product for it’s value to the market.
We are selling the product directly to the consumers of the product, so there
is nothing in-between. And all of the workers that contribute to the making
of this product, whether they are programmers or into administration or
designers, together own this product and own this company. If you’re not
selling the product, then what you’re selling is behavioural control. If you’re
not paying for the magazine directly, it is paid for with the money coming
from lobbyists or from advertisers that want to control the behaviour of the
people perceiving that media, by making them buy some things or vote in a
certain way or have a certain image of a certain state department or the role
of the state. In the economical model where the actual magazine isn’t being
sold, where the media is free, in the way television is free, the base of that
model is what Dallas Smythe calls ‘audience power’. Smythe is one of the
main writers about the politically economy of communications, and this is
sort of referred to in his ‘audience commodity’ thing, which is very degraded
and unfundamental discourse, but it’s related. ‘Audience power’, ultimately,
is just behavioural control. There is money to be made by changing the
behaviours of others. And this is the fundamental source of media funding,
sometimes it is commercials to sell an actual product by ads and sometimes
it is more subtle, like legitimizing a political system or getting people to
think favourably about a party or a state department or a government.
All the artists and the designers of the poster and the people that come to
the event, they have all kinds of motivations, use value. But the exchange
values, where the money comes from, the people buying the checks, what
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they are buying is behavioural control, is to be represented in this context.
Through their commercial or political or legitimation purposes. The state
has legitimation needs, the state needs to be something that is thought of as
positive by people. And it does this by funding things that give a legitimacy,
like art, culture, social services. What it is buying, is this legitimation. It is
behavioural control. When an advertiser sponsors an art show or an event
or a television program what they are buying is the chance to make people
buy their product. So it is not that every single person, every single artists
in the show was thinking about how to manipulate the audience. Not at all,
they are just making art ... But where the money comes from, what they
are actually selling on the market, is behavioural control. It is the so called
‘audience power’.
How does that change the work itself you think?
It changes the way you work, a lot. There are so many restrictions
and limitations when you work on this model, on capital finance, because
the medium is constantly subverted and subjugated by the mediation, the
mediation is the message to make it a catch phrase. If you know that your
art show is being funded by a certain agency, you’re going to avoid talking
critically about that agency, because obviously that is going to deny you
funding further on. It’s clear that the sources of funding affect the actual
message that is delivered at the end. It’s not possible to have SONY Records
sponsor an art show that then tells you how SONY is evil. It is very unlikely
that it is going to be funded again, maybe you can trick them once, but it’s
not going to be sustainable. We were joking before about how my use of
anarchist and socialist terminology actually gets the most flak from other
people in my own field. That’s because they are trying to portray what we
do in Free Software development and peer production as being unpolitical.
With my saying that no, it’s actually quite political, explaining why, they
feel like I’m blowing their cover. Like I’m almost outing them as being
leftist radicals and they don’t want this image because they actually think
they can fool this system. Which I think is delusional, I don’t think you
can fool this system. But that’s a very clear example how it does actually
change the context and change the message. Because you are always selfconscious of how you’re going to pay your rent and how you’re going to pay
your bills. It’s impossible to separate yourself from this context and if the
funding is coming from these directions you’re always going to self-censor
and it’s going to affect what you talk about in your choices that you make.
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What to present, what not to present, where to place the emphasis where
not to place the emphasis, it will always be modified by the context you are
producing in. And if what you’re being paid for is essentially to make people
like SONY or make people like the state then it’s going to change the way
you present what you are doing.
Yochai Benkler used the term ‘commons-based peer production’ and of
course took great pains to avoid talking about communism and try to limit
this only to information production. He’s very clear, for him this is not for
real material production. Because he’s a liberal lawyer, working for a major
university, in the states ... so this is how he presents his work.
But what this means, commons-based production, means that the instruments of production are actually collectively owned but controlled by the
direct producers, which means that nobody can actually earn money simply by owning the instruments of production. You can only earn money
by employing the instruments of production in actually making something.
So, commons-based peer production. You have common things like instruments of production, land and capital, they’re are commonly controlled and
commonly owned, and individual labour of peers is applied to that shared
commons and the results of that labour is then owned by the actual producers. None of that product is owned by the people who are simply owning
instruments of production. That is what is meant by commons-based peer
production. But that’s exactly what the anarchist and the socialist call communism. There is no actual difference. Communism in a text book example
is the state less, property-less society. And that’s what it means, commonsbased peer production is a neologism, a modern way of saying communism
because for political reasons, post-war rhetoric, these words are verboten
and you can’t say them. So people invent new words, but they’re saying
exactly the same things. The point is that producers require land and capital to produce. If certain private interest controls all of the access of direct
producers to land and capital, then those private interests can extract the
surplus value. Another great quote from Benjamin Tucker is whenever one
person earns without sweating ... ehm sorry, whenever one person earns without
sweating, another person sweats without earning and that’s fundamentally true.
If anybody is earning revenue simply by owning instruments of production,
that means that people actually producing are not capturing the value of
their labour. And that’s what commons-based peer production is. The idea
that we have a commons which is all of our property, nobody controls our
instruments of production, they’re all our property together. Each of us
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have our labour and we apply that to the commons and we produce something and whatever we produce, that is ours. It’s our own, provided that we
are not taking anything away from anybody else, provided that we are not
taking any exclusive control of the commons.
In the case of Free Software development, the Free Software itself is a commons. But things that you might make with Free Software are not part of
the commons, they’re your own. But the problem with software itself is
that because software is immaterial and therefore has no reproduction costs,
it can be reproduced with no costs, it also has no exchange value. So in
order to convert it to exchange value you always have to apply other forms of
property: land, capital, hard fixed property ... And so, as commons-based
peer producers in the Yochai Benkler world, we have our little internal communism, but we can neither live in it nor feed ourselves with it. So in order
to actually sustain ourselves, to actually capture our material subsistence, we
then have to deal with people that own land an capital; fixed, scarce properties, and we have no leverage in that negotiation. The only things we can
get back from the people that consume the output of our labour, is our
reproduction costs and nothing more, while they continue to capture and
accumulate the extra value. Again, how that applies to design is another
thing, I don’t think you can isolate one kind of worker from the overall
thing. The point is you have to think of where is the value coming from,
what are you really selling? Because you’re not really selling design, design
is an input. What are you really ...
What do you mean with ‘design is an input’?
Design is an input. The average consumer doesn’t buy design. Nobody
goes to a store and says I’d like a design. They only want the design because
they want another product that has design as an input of that product. If
you’re making beer and you need a label, you find a designer to make the
label. But what you’re selling is beer, you’re not selling design. So you always
have to think about what are you really selling. What is the actual product
that people is exchanging for, what is the source for the exchange value.
And once you identify the source of the exchange value, you have to figure
out how to create a direct relationship with all the other producers that are
involved in the production cycle.
...
Seems incredibly difficult ...
If it was easy then capitalism would have been overthrown centuries ago
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... You’re now owning a magazine already with a couple of people. The
next person asks you to design a beer label ...
You have to own the beer factory!
... And I think next you should own the paper company that makes ...
And then you need people and say I know how to make design, I need
some people who know how to make beer. So then we have a beer factory.
And then you need people who drink the beer! Who’s going to make the
people that drink the beer?
Haha.
But wait, there must be a little bit of difference, a modified option to
this. For example ...
In the scenario of commons-based peer production it’s not that the designers have to own the beer factory, it’s just that there can’t be any capitalist
in the middle that owns the land, it’s enough if the designers and the beer
makers both own the land together and the capital together ...
So if the beer company is also worker-owned and you come to an arrangement ... Isn’t it the idea of shares? Applying labour and therefore having shares on something ...
Yes, but it has to be equal. Shares in a capitalist system are unequal.
That’s the idea of copy-far-left. It’s the idea of a public license that allows
free use for non-alienated forms of production and denies free use for alienated forms of production. In the case of software, for instance, which is
not the greatest application of copy-far-left, but is a good example to understand, the software would be usable by a workers’ cooperative for free
but a private corporation employing wage labour and private capital couldn’t
use it for free. They would have to either not use it at all or negotiate a
different set of terms under which they could use it. So the question is
how do we remove coercive property relationships. If you really have a situation of commons-based peer production, or communism, where there is
no state, no property, the instruments of production are collectively owned,
people just work together in a very kind of free way, than it could certainly
work. But that’s not the world we are living in, so we have to be defensive
of our commons and how we produce in order for it to grow. We have
to think about where the exchange value is and think about where the use
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value crosses into exchange value and make sure that the point is within our
boundary. If we can do that, that’s enough. If we have a worker-owned
design collective that works with a worker-owned beer company, that’s as
good as together owning a beer company. But only if they also live on land
and apartments that are also worker-owned, because otherwise the landlord will simply capture value; you have to look for the point of leakage.
Even with a workers’ design company and a workers’ beer company living
in Brussels renting from capitalist, then the people that own the apartment
and the land will simply capture all the surplus value. The surplus value
will always leak at the point of scarcity, so the system has to be complete,
what Marcel Mauss calls a ‘total system’. It has to be a total system, if it
is not, if the entire cycle of production doesn’t go through commons-based
peer production hands, then it’s going to leak at the first point of scarcity.
Then whoever privately controls the one scarce resource through which all
this cycle of production goes through, will capture all the surplus value.
Again, back to our very basic model. The price of anything is its reproduction cost, so the price of something that is immaterial is zero. So, since
the beginning of mechanical reproduction, property-based interest groups
have tried to create artificial barriers to production. When you have artificial
barriers to reproduction the immaterial assets start to behave like material
assets; this is where copyright and intellectual property come from. It’s
the desire of property groups, to make immaterial assets behave price-wise
the same as material assets, the only way to do that is creating barriers to
reproduction.
Typography obviously comes from this culture, like a lot of other media
culture. There is rules about how you can reproduce it, and it creates
the opportunity for the owners of these things to capture exchange value.
Because the reproduction costs are no longer zero, because of artificial costs
of reproduction. But in certain things the capitalists are not homogeneous,
there’s not just one group of capitalists. There is many different capitalists.
Even though some make their living from typography, many more capitalists make their living by using typography, so with typography as an input.
From the point of view of those capitalists, the ones trying to restrict the
reproduction of typography are a problem. So if they can hire their own
staff and develop free typography with other companies, they’re not selling
typography, that’s just an input for them. Like for standardized nuts and
bolts, one time this was true too, bolt-makers would make their nuts and
bolt not fit, in the sense that if you wanted to use a nut from one company
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and a bolt from another you couldn’t do so. They tried to create a barrier
from this, but since the nuts and bolts industry is not the biggest in capital,
because capital itself need nuts and bolts, the other companies got together
and said wait a minute, let’s just have standardized nuts and bolts, we don’t
want to make our money from nuts and bolts, we want to make our money
off-stream, from the product we make from nuts and bolts. Typography
falls into the same system. I imagine most of the people that are creating
free typography work for companies and they have their salary paid by companies that use typography, not companies that sell typography. Companies
that actually use typography in other production, whether it’s publishing or
whatever else they’re making, so the reproduction costs of the typographers
is paid for by not controlling the typography itself, but by employing it in
production and using it in another field. The people that are still trying
to hold on to typography as a product, as an end product that they capture
from intellectual property, are being pushed out.
In other things this is not just the case. If you look at the amount of money
that publishing companies spend on QuarkXpress, that’s not really a big
deal. From their point of view, they can hire some programmers and they
can make their own QuarkXpress and work with five other publishing companies, but the amount of money that they spend on QuarkXpress overall,
isn’t that high ...
Haha.
So the same economy of scale doesn’t apply. This is why commercial
software is still hanging on in these niche markets where there isn’t a broad
enough market. It’s not a broad enough input so that freedom is supported
by the users of it. Typography is a very general input. It’s like a nut or
a bolt, while QuarkXpress is pretty specific. Franziska was saying that in
her publishing company all they really need is two copies, or maybe one
even, of the software, and the whole company can work with it. They
just go to the computer with it when they need to do the layout, overall
it’s not a huge cost. They don’t need it every time they publish a book.
Whether if they had to pay for the font they used and every time they
wanted to use a different font, and they had to pay for it again, that would
be a problem, so they’d rather use a free font, and if that means hiring
somebody to drop the pixels down for a new font once and then having it
free forever, it can all make sense. That’s why typography is different from
software. And so the Scribus project has gone really far but the reason
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it’s obscure is because except from the ideological case, they don’t have a
business case they can make for the publishers. Because for publishers they
want a piece of software that works and if it costs 400$ once, who cares.
It doesn’t really affect their business model. You have to make the case for
the publishers that if you form an association of all the publishers and you
together develop some new Free Software to do publishing, that would be
better and cheaper and faster. Then maybe eventually this case would be
made and something like this would exist, but it’s not like an operating
system or a web browser, that is really used everywhere all the time, and
would be really inconvenient to pay for every time. If companies had to pay
every single time they put a web browser on their computer, that would be
very inconvenient for them. Even Microsoft doesn’t dare to charge money
for Internet Explorer, cos they know people would just say Fuck off. They’re
not going to buy it. In more obscure areas, like publishing, 3D animation,
film and video, it doesn’t make so much of a difference. In those business
models, for instance 3D animation, one of the biggest companies is Pixar.
They make the movies! They don’t make the software, they go all the way
through the process and they make the movie! So they completely own
everything. For that reason it makes sense for them, since they capture the
full value of their product in the end, because they make the movies, that
their software enables them to make. And this would be a good model
for peer production as well, except obviously they’re a capitalist organization
and they exploit wage labour. But basically if Scribus really wanted to have a
financial base, the people that develop Scribus would have to own a magazine
that is enabled by Scribus. And if they can own the magazine that Scribus
enables then they can capture enough of that value to fund the development
of Scribus, and it would actually develop very quickly and be very good,
because that’s actually a total system. So right from the software to the
design, to the journalism, to the editing, to the sale, to the capture of the
value of the end consumer. But because it doesn’t do that, they’re giving
Free Software away ... To who? Where is the value captured? Where is the
use value transferred into exchange value? It’s this point that you have to get
all the way to, and if you don’t make it all the way there, even if you stop a
mile short, in that mile all of the surplus value will be sucked out.
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This conversation took place in Montreal at the last day of
the Libre Graphics Meeting 2011. In the panel How to
keep and make productive libre graphics projects?, Asheesh
had responded rather sharply to a remark from the audience that only a very small number of women were
present at LGM: Bringing the problem back to gender is
avoiding the general problem that F/LOSS has with social
inclusion. Another good reason to talk to him were the
intriguing ‘Interactive training missions’ that he had been
developing as part of the OpenHatch.org project. I wanted
to know more about the tutorials he develops; why he decided to work on ‘story manuals’ that explain how to report a bug or how to work with version control. Asheesh
Laroia is someone who realizes that most of the work
that makes projects successful is hidden underneath the
surface. He volunteered his technical skills for the UN
in Uganda, the EFF, and Students for Free Culture, and
is a developer on the Debian team. Today, he lives in
Somerville, MA. He speaks about his ideas to audiences
at international F/LOSS conferences.
The interactive training missions are really linked to the background of
the OpenHatch project itself. I started working on it because to my mind,
one of the biggest reasons that people do not participate in Free Software
projects, is that they either don’t know how or don’t feel included. There is
a lot you have to know to be a meaningful contributor to Free Software and
I think that one of the major obstacle for getting that knowledge, and I am
being a bit sloppy with the use of the term maybe, is how to understand a
conversation on a bug-tracker for example. This is not something you run
into in college, learning computer science or any other discipline. In fact,
it is an almost anti-academic type of knowledge. Bug tracker conversations
201
are ‘just people talking’, a combination of a comment thread on a blog and
actual planning documents. There’s also tools like version control, where
close to no one learns about in college. There is something like the culture
of participating in mailing lists and chatting on IRC ... what people will
expect to hear and what people are expecting from you.
For people like me that have been doing all these things for years, it feels
very natural and it is very easy to forget all the advantages I have in this
regard. But a lot of the ways people get to the point where I am now
involves having friends that help out, like Hey, I asked what I thought was a
reasonable question on this mailing list and I did not get any answer or what
they said wasn’t very helpful. At this stage, if you are lucky, you have a friend
that helps you stay in the community. If you don’t, you fall away and think
I’m not going to deal with this, I don’t understand. So, the training missions
are designed to give you the cultural experience and the tool familiarity in an
automated way. You can stay in the community even when you don’t have a
friend, because the robot will explain you what is going on.
So how do you ‘harvest’ this cultural information? And how do you bring it into
your tool?
There is some creative process in what I call ‘writing the plot’; this is very
linear. Each training mission is usually between three and fifteen minutes
long so it is OK to have them be linear. In writing the plot, you just imagine
what would it take a new contributor to understand not only what to do, but
also what a ‘normal community member’ would know to do. The different
training missions get this right to different extents.
How does this type of knowledge form, you think? Did you need to become a kind
of anthropologist of Free Software? How do you know you teach the right thing?
I spend a lot of time both working with and thinking about new contributions to Free Software. Last September I organized a workshop to teach
computer science students how to get involved in Open Source. And I have
also been teaching interpersonally, in small groups, for ten or eleven years.
So I use the workshops to test the missions and than I simply ask what
works. But it is tough to evaluate the training missions through workshops
because the workshops are intended to be more interpersonal. I definitely
had positive feedback, but we need more, especially from people that have
been two or three years involved in the Free Software community, because
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they understand what it feels like to be part of a community but they may
still feel somewhat unsure about whether they have everything and still remember what was confusing to learn.
I wasn’t actually asking about how successful the missions are in teaching the
culture Free Software ... I wanted to know how the missions learn from this
culture?
So far, the plots are really written by me, in collaboration with others. We
had one more recent contribution on Git written by someone called Mark
Freeman who is involved in the OpenHatch project. It did not have so
much community discussion but it was also pretty good from the start. So
I basically try to dump what is in my head?
I am asking you about this, thinking about a session we once organized at
Samedies, a woman-and-Free-Software group from Brussels. We had invited
someone to come talk to us about using IRC on the command-line and she was
discussing etiquette. She said: On IRC you should never ask permission before
asking a question. This was the kind of cultural knowledge she was teaching us
and I was a bit puzzled ... you could also say that this lack of social interfacing
on IRC is a problem. So why replicate that?
In Debian we have a big effort to check the quality of packages and maintaining that quality, even if the developer goes away. It is called the ‘Debian
QA project’ and there’s an IRC channel linked to that called #debian-qa.
Some of the people on that channel like to say hello to each other and
pay attention when other people are speaking, and others said stop with all
the noise. So finally, the people that liked saying hello moved to another
channel: #debian-sayhi.
Meaning the community has made explicit how it wants to be spoken to?
The point I am trying to make here, is that I am agreeing to part of what
you are saying, that these norms are actually flexible. But what I am further
saying, is that these norms are actually being bent.
I would like to talk about the new mission on bug reporting you said you were
working on, and how that is going. I find bug reports interesting because if
they’re good, they mix observation and narration, which asks a lot from the
imagination of both the writer and the reader of the report; they need to think
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themselves in each others place: What did I expect that would happen? What
should have happened? What could have gone wrong? Would you say your
interactive training missions are a continuation of this collective imaginary work?
A big part of that sort of imagination is understanding the kinds of things
that could be reasonable. So this is where cultural knowledge comes in. If
you program in C or even if you just read about C, you understand that
there is something called ‘pointers’ and something called ‘segfaults’ and if
your program ends in that way, that is not a good thing and you should
report a bug. This requires an imagination on the side of the person filing
the bug. The training missions give people practice in seeing these sorts of
things and understand how they could work. To build a mental model, even
if it is fuzzy, that has enough of the right components so they can enter in
discussion and imagine what happened.
Of course when there are real issues such as groping at conferences, or
making people feel unwelcome because they are shown slides of half-naked
people that look like them ... that is actually a gender issue and that needs
to be addressed. But the example I gave was: Where are the Indians, where
are the Asians in our community? This is still a confusing question, but not
awkward.
Why is it not awkward?
(laughs) As I am an Indian person ... you might not be able to tell from the
transcription?
It is an easy thing to do, to make generalizations of categories of people
based on visible characteristics. Even worse, is to make generalizations about
all individual people in that class. It is really easy for people in the Free
Software community to subconsciously think there are no women in the
room ‘because women don’t like to program’, while we know that is really
not true. I like to bring up the Indian people as an example because there
are obviously a bunch of programmers in India ... the impression that they
can’t program, can’t be the reason they are excluded.
But in a way that is even more awkward?
Well, maybe I don’t feel it is that awkward because I see how to fix it, and I
even see how to fix both problems at the same time.
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In Free Software we are not hungry for people in the same way that corporate
hiring departments are. We limp along and sometimes one or two or three
people join our project per year as if by magic and we don’t know how and
we don’t try to understand how. Sometimes external entities such as Google
Summer of Code cause many many more show up at the doorstep of our
projects, but because they are so many they don’t get any skills for how to
grow. When I co-ran this workshop at the computer science department at
the University of Pennsylvania on how to get involved in Open Source, we
were flooded with applicants. They were basically all feeling enthusiastically
about Open Source but confused about how to get involved. 35% of the
attendees were women, and if you look at the photos you’ll see that it wasn’t
just women we were diverse on, there were lots of types of people. That’s
a kind of diversity-neutral outreach we need. It is a self-empowerment
outreach: ‘you will be cooler after this, we teach you how to do stuff ’ and
not ‘we need you to do what we want you to do’, which is the hiring-kind
of outreach.
And why do you think Free Software doesn’t usually reach out in this way? Why
does the F/LOSS community have such a hard time becoming more diverse?
The F/LOSS community has problems getting more people and being more
diverse. To me, those are the same problems. If we would hand out flyers
to people with a clear message saying for example: here is this nice vector
drawings program called Inkscape. Try it out and if you want to make it even
better, come to this session and we’ll show you how. If you send out this
invitation to lots of people, you’ll reach more of them and you’ll reach more
diverse people. But the way we do things right now, is that we leave notes
on bug trackers saying: help wanted. The people that read bug trackers, also
know how to read mailing lists. To get to that point, they most likely had
help from their friends. Their friends probably looked like them, and there
you have a second or third degree diversity reinforcement problem. But
leaving gender diversity and race diversity aside, it is such a small number of
people!
So, to break that cycle you say there is a need to externalize knowledge ... like
you are doing with the OpenHatch project and with your project ‘Debian for
Shy People’? To not only explain how things technically work, but also how they
function socially?
205
I don’t know about externalizing ... I think I just want to grow our community. But when I feel more radical, I’d say we should just not write ‘How
to contribute’ pages anymore. Put a giant banner there instead saying: This
is such a fun project, come hang out with us on IRC ... every Sunday at 3PM.
Five or ten people might show up, and you will be able to have an individual
conversation. Quickly you’ll cross a boundary ... where you are no longer
externalizing knowledge, but simply treat them as part of your group.
The Fedora Design Bounties are a big shining example for me. Maírín Duffy
has been writing blog posts about three times a year: We want you to join
our community and here is something specific we want you to do. If you get it
right, the prize is that you are part of our community. The person that you get
this way will stick around because he or she came to join the community.
And not because you sent a chocolate cake?
Not for the chocolate cake, and also not for the 5000$ that you get over
the course of a Google summer of code project. So, I question whether it
is worth spending any time on a wiki-page explaining ‘How to contribute’
when instead you could attract people one by one, with a 100% success-rate.
Writing a ‘How to contribute’ page does force teams to reflect on what it takes to
become part of their community?
Of course that is true. But compared to standing at a job-fair talking to
people about their resume, ‘How to contribute’ pages are like anonymous,
impersonal walls of text that are not meant to create communication necessarily. If we keep focusing on communicating at this scale, we miss out on
the opportunity to make the situation better for individual people that are
likely to help us.
I feel that the Free Software community is quite busy with efficiency. When you
emphasize the importance of individual dialogue, it sounds like you propose a
different angle, even when this in the end has the desired effect of attracting more
loyal and reliable contributors.
It is amazing how valuable patience is.
You talked about Paul, the guy that stuck around on the IRC channel saying hi
to people and than only later started contributing patches after having seen two
or three people going through the process. You said: If we had implied that this
206
person would only be welcome when he was useful ... we would have lost
someone that would be useful in the future.
The obsession with usefulness is a kind of elitism. The Debian project
leader once made this sort of half-joke where he said: Debian developers
expect new Debian contributors to appear as fully formed, completely capable
Debian developers. That is the same kind of elitism that speaks from You
can’t be here until you are useful. By the way, the fact that this guy was some
kind of cheerleader was awesome. The number of patches we got because
he was standing there being friendly, was meaningful to other contributors,
I am sure of it. The truth is ... he was always useful, even before he started
submitting patches. Borrowing the word ‘useful’ from the most extreme
code-only definition, in the end he was even useful by that definition. He
had always been useful.
So it is an obsession with a certain kind of usefulness?
Yes.
It is nice to hear you bring up the value of patience. OSP uses the image of a
frog as their logo, a reference to the frog from the fairy tale ‘The frog and the
princess’. Engaging with Free Software is a bit like kissing a frog; you never know
whether it will turn into a prince before you have dared to love it! To OSP
it is important not to expect that things will go the way you are used to ... A
suspension of disbelief?
Or hopefulness! I had a couple of magic moments ... one of the biggest
magic moments for me was when I as a high school student e-mailed the
Linux kernel list and than I got a response! My file system was broken,
and fsck-tools were crashing. So I was at the end of what I could do and
I thought: let’s ask these amazing people. I ended up in a discussion with
a maintainer who told me to submit this bug-report, and use these dump
tools ... I did all these things and compiled the latest version from version
control because we just submitted a patch to it. By the end of the process
I had a working file system again. From that moment on I thought: these
magic moments will definitely happen again.
If you want magic moments, than streamlining the communication with your
community might not be your best approach?
207
What do you mean by that?
I was happy to find a panel on the program of LGM that addressed how this
community could grow. But than I felt a bit frustrated by the way people were
talking about it. I think the user and developer communities around Libre
Graphics are relatively small, and all people actually ask for, is dialogue. There
seems to be lots of concern about how to connect, and what tools to use for that.
The discussion easily drifts into self-deprecating statements such as ‘our website is
not up-to-date’ or ‘we should have a better logo’ or ‘if only our documentation
would be better’. But all of this seems more about putting off or even avoiding
the conversation.
Yes, in a way it is. I think that ‘conversations’ are the best, biggest thing
that F/LOSS has to offer its users, in comparison with proprietary software.
But a lot of the behavioral habits we have within F/LOSS and also as people
living in North America, is derived from what we see corporations doing.
We accept this as our personal strategies because we do not know any alternatives. The more I say about this, the more I sound like a hippie but I
think I’ll have to take the risk (laughs).
If you go to the Flash website, it tells you the important things you need to
know about Flash, and than you click download. Maybe there is a link to a
complex survey that tries to gather data en masse of untold millions of users.
I think that any randomly chosen website of a Libre Graphics project will
look similar. But instead it could say when you click download or run the
software ... we’re a bunch of people ... why don’t you come talk to us on IRC?
There are a lot people that are not in the conversation because nobody ever
invited them. This is why I think about diversity in terms of outreach, not
in terms of criticizing existing figures. If in some alternate reality we would
want to build a F/LOSS community that exists out of 90% women and
10% men, I bet we could do it. You just start with finding a college student
at a school that has a good Computer Science program ... she develops a
program with a bunch of her friends ... she puts up flyers in other colleges
... You could do this because there are relatively so little programmers in
the world busy with developing F/LOSS that you can almost handpick the
diversity content of your community. Between one and a thousand ... you
could do that. There are 6 million thousand people on this planet and the
amount of people not doing F/LOSS is enormous. Don’t wring your hands
about ‘where are the women’. Just ask them to join and that will be that!
208
Tying the story to data
In the summer of 2010, Constant commissioned artist and
researcher Evan Roth to develop a work of his choice, and
to make the development process available in some way.
He decided to use a part of his fee as prize-money for
The GML-Recorder Challenge, inviting makers to propose an Open Source device ‘that can unobtrusively record
graffiti motion data during a graffiti writer’s normal practice in the city’. In three interviews that took place in
Brussels and Paris within a period of one and a half years,
we spoke about the collaborative powers of the GMLstandard, about contact points between hacker and graffiti
cultures and the granularity of gesture.
Based on conversations between Evan Roth (ER), Femke
Snelting (FS), Peter Westenberg (PW), Michele Walther
(MW), Stéphanie Villayphiou (SV), John Haltiwanger (JH)
and momo3010.
Brussels, July 2010
ER
FS
So what should we talk about?
Can you explain what GML stands for?
GML stands for Graffiti Markup Language 1 . It is a very simple fileformat designed for amateur programmers. It is a way to store graffiti
motion data. I started working with graffiti writers, combining graffiti
and technology back in New York, in 2003. In graduate school, my thesis
ER
1
Graffiti Markup Language (.gml) is a universal, XML based, open file format designed to
store graffiti motion data (x and y coordinates and time). The format is designed to maximize
readability and ease of implementation, even for hobbyist programmers, artists and graffiti
writers. http://www.graffitimarkuplanguage.com
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Tying the story to data
was on graffiti analysis, and writing software that could capture their
gestures, to archive motion data from graffiti writers. Back than I was
saving the data in an x-y-time array, I was calling them .graph files and I
sensed there was something interesting about the data, the visualization
of motion data but I had never opened up the project at that time.
About a year ago I released the second part of the project, of which the
source code was open but the dataset wasn’t. In conversation with a
friend of mine named Theo 2 , who also collaborated with me on the
L.A.S.E.R. Tag project 3 , he brought up the .graph file again and how
we could bring back the file format as a way to connect all these different applications. Graffiti Analysis 4 , L.A.S.E.R. Tag, EyeWriter 5 ... so I
worked with Theo Watson, Chris Sugrue 6 and Jamie Wilkinson 7 and
other people to develop Graffiti Markup Language. It is a simple set of
guidelines, basically an .xml file format that saves x-y-time data but does
it in a way that is very specifically related to graffiti so there’s a drip tag
and there’s tags related to the size of the brush and to how many strokes
you have: is it one stroke or two strokes or three strokes.
The main idea is: How do you archive the motion of graffiti and not just
the way graffiti looks. There are a lot of people photographing graffiti,
making documentaries etc. but there hasn’t been a way to archive graffiti
in ways of code yet.
FS
What do you mean, ‘archive in terms of code’?
There hasn’t been a programmatic way to archive graffiti. So this
is like taking a gesture and trying to boil it down to a set of coordinate
points that people can either upload or download. It is a sort of midpoint
between writers and hackers. Graffiti writers can download the software
and have how-to guides for how to do this, they can digitize their tags
ER
2
3
4
5
6
7
Theo Watson http://www.theowatson.com
In its simplest form, L.A.S.E.R. Tag is a camera and laptop setup, tracking a green laser
point across the face of a building and generating graphics based on the laser’s position which
then get projected back onto the same building with a high power projector.
http://graffitiresearchlab.com/projects/laser-tag
Graffiti Analysis is a digital graffiti blackbook designed for documenting more than just ink.
http://graffitianalysis.com
The EyeWriter is a low-cast eyetracking system originally designed for paralyzed graffiti artist
TEMPT. The EyeWriter system uses inexpensive cameras and Open Source computer vision
software to track the wearer’s eye movements. http://www.eyewriter.org
Chris Sugrue http://csugrue.com
Jamie Wilkinson http://www.jamiedubs.com
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Tying the story to data
and upload it to an open database. The 000000book-site 8 hosts all this
data and some people are writing software for this.
So there are three parts: the GML-standard, software to record and
play and than there is the data itself – all of it is ‘open’ in some way. Could
you go through each of them and talk about how they produce uploads and
downloads?
FS
Right. It starts with Graffiti Analysis. It is software written in C++
using OpenFrameworks, an Open Source platform designed by artists for
visual applications. Right now you can download the recorder app and
from that you can generate your own .gml files. And from there you can
upload these files into the playback app. In the beginning that was the
only Open Source side of the project. Programmers could also make new
applications based on the software, which also happened.
Last night we met Stéphane Buellet 9 who is developing a calligraphy
analysis project and he used Graffiti Analysis as a starting point. I find it
exciting when that happens but more often people take the file-format as
a starting point, and use it as a jumping-off point for making their own
work.
Second was the database. We had this file-format that we loosely defined.
I worked with Jamie to develop the 000000book site. It is pretty nutsand-bolts but you can click ‘upload’ and click on your own .gml files and
it will playback in the browser. People have developed their own playback
mechanisms, which are some of the first Open Source collaborations that
happened around .gml files. There is a user account and you can upload
files; people have made image renderers, there are people that have made
Flash players, SVG players. Golan Levin has developed an application
that converts a .gml file into an auto-CAD format. The 000000book site
is basically where graffiti writers connect to developers.
In the middle between Graffiti Analysis and database is the Graffiti Markup
Language, that I think will have its own place on the web. But sometimes
ER
8
9
http://000000book.com. Pronounced: ‘Black Book’: ‘A black book is a graffiti artist’s
sketchbook. Often used to sketch out and plan potential graffiti, and to collect tags from
other writers. It is a writer’s most valuable property, containing all or a majority of the
person’s sketches and pieces. A writer’s sketchbook is carefully guarded from the police and
other authorities, as it can be used as material evidence in a graffiti vandalism case and link a
writer to previous illicit works.’
Wikipedia. Glossary of graffiti — wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 2014. [Online; accessed 5.8.2014]
Stéphane Buellet, Camera Linea http://www.chevalvert.fr/portfolio/numerique/camera-linea
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Tying the story to data
I see it as one project. One of my interests is in archiving graffiti and all
of these things are ways of doing that. It is interesting how these three
things work together. In terms of an OS development model it has been
producing results I haven’t seen when I just released source code.
FS
How do you do that, develop a standard for graffiti?
We started by looking at Graffiti Analysis and L.A.S.E.R. Tag, the
apps that were using graffiti motion data. From those two projects I had a
lot of experience of meeting graffiti writers as a userbase. When you meet
with them, they tell you right away what pieces of the software they think
are missing. So from talking with them we developed a lot of features
that now are in GML like brushes, drips, line-thickness. Some people
had single line tags and some people had multi-line tags so that issue
came up because GML tracks both drawing and non-drawing motion so
we knew that we needed in the file format to talk about pen up and pen
down. I was interested in the connection points between lines also.
We tried to keep it very stripped down. From the beginning we knew
that people that would participate as developers or anonymous contributors were not going to be the same people that would develop a Linux
core. They are students, people just getting into programming or visual
programming. We wanted people to be able to double-click a .gml file
and than everything should verbally make sense so it is Begin stroke.
End stroke. Anyone with basic programming skills should be able to
figure out what’s going on.
ER
Did you have any moment where you had to decide: this does not belong
to graffiti or: this might be more for calligraphy tracking?
FS
The only thing that has to be in there is the format in x-y time
scenario with some information on drawing and not drawing, everything
else is bonus. So if you load an .xml file structured like that, compliant
apps will load it in. On top of that, there are features that some apps
will want and others not. Keywords are, for example, a functionality that
we are still developing applications for. It is there but we are looking for
how to use it.
ER
FS
Did you ever think about this standard as a way to define a discipline?
(laughs) I think in the beginning it was a very functional conversation.
We were having apps running this data and I don’t think we were thinking
ER
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Tying the story to data
of defining graffiti when we were writing the format. But looking back,
it is interesting to think about it.
Graffiti has a lot of privacy issues related to it too, right? So we did
discuss about what it would mean to start recording geo-located data.
There are different interests in graffiti. There is an interest in visuals and
in deconstructing characters. Another group is interested in it, because
it is a sport and more of a performance art. For this type of interest, it
is more important to know exactly where and when it happened because
it is different on a rooftop in New York to a studio in the basement of
someones house. But if someone realizes this data resulted from an illegal
action, and wanted to tie it back to someone, than it starts to be like
a surveillance camera. What happens when someone is caught with a
laptop with all this data?
FS
Your desire to archive, is it also about producing new work?
I see graffiti writers as hackers. They use the city in the same way
as hackers are using computer systems. They are finding ways of using
a system to make it do things that it wasn’t intended to do. I am not
sure graffiti writers see it this way, but I am in this position where I have
friends that are hackers, playing around with digital structures online.
Other friends are into graffiti writing and to me those two camps are
doing the most interesting things right now, but these are two communities that hardly overlap. One of the interests I have is making these
two groups of people hang out more. I was physically the person bridging these two groups; I was the nerd person meeting the graffiti writers
talking to them about software and having this database.
Now it is not about my personal collection anymore, it is making a handshake between two communities; making them run off with each other
and having fun as opposed to me having to be there all the time to make
introductions.
ER
Is GML about the distribution of signature? I mean: The gestures of
a specific person can now be reproduced by a larger community. How does
that work?
FS
This is an interesting conversation we should have with the graffiti
writers. A tag might be something they have been writing for more than
25 years and that will be very personal to them and the way they write
this is because they’ve written it a million times. So at the one hand it
ER
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Tying the story to data
is super-personal, but on the other hand a lot of graffiti writers have no
problem sharing this data. To them it is just another tag. They feel like,
I have written this tag a billion times and so when you want to keep one of
them, it is no big deal.
I don’t think the conversation has gotten as involved as it could have.
You set something in motion and cross your fingers hoping that everyone
plays nice and things go well and so far that is what has been happening.
But you are dealing with people that are uploading something that is super
personal to them and I’d be curious to see what happens in the future.
The graffiti taxonomy project that I have been doing involves a lot of
photos of graffiti. It is a visual studies based on characters, I am shooting
thousands of photos of graffiti and I don’t have an opportunity to meet
with all these writers to ask them if it is OK. So I get e-mails from writers
once in a while saying Hey, you used a photograph of one of my tags and
usually it is them feeling out where my intentions are and where I am
coming from.
It has taken a long time to gain the trust of the community I am working with. Usually when I am able to explain what I am doing and that
everything is released openly and meant to be completely free, so far at
least the people I have managed to talk toare OK with it and understand
it. Initially when people see something they’ve made being used by other
people, a lot of times it can be a point where a red flag is raised and I am
assuming there are more red flags going to go up.
FS
If you upload a .gml file, can you insert a licence?
Not yet. Right now there is not even a ‘private mode’ on the
000000book site. If you upload, everything is public. There is a lot of
interesting issues with respect to the licence that I have been reluctant to
deal with yet. Once you start talking too much about it, you will scare
off people on either side of the fence. I think that will have to happen at
some point but for now I have decided to refer to it as an ‘open database’
and I hope that people will play nicely, like I said.
ER
FS
But just imagine, what kind of licence would you need?
It might make more sense to go for a media-related licence than for
a code licence. Creative Commons licences would lend themselves easily
for this. People could choose non-commercial or pure public domain.
Does that make sense?
ER
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Tying the story to data
Well, yes but if you look at the objects that people share, we’re much
closer to code than to a video file?
FS
is?
ER
Functionally it is code. But would a graffiti writer know what GPL
I am interested in the apprentice-system you were talking about earlier.
Like a young writer learning from someone else they admire. The GML
notation of x-y-time might help someone to learn as well. But would you
ever really copy someone else’s tag?
PW
One of the reasons I think graffiti writing has this history of apprenticeship is because you don’t really have a chance to learn otherwise. You
don’t turn on the TV and see someone else doing it. You only see how it
is being written if you see other people actually do it. That was one of the
original reasons I started doing graffiti research because, having met with
graffiti writers. I thought: it is a dance, it is as much about motion as
it is about how the final image is constructed. You can come to a much
better understanding about how it is made as opposed to just seeing a
photograph of it.
ER
If you want to learn from the person writing, you would need to see
more than just the trace of a pen?
PW
Someones tag might look completely different if they had six seconds
to make it, they make different decisions. In the first version of the
Graffiti Analysis project, I had one camera recorder tracking the pen and
another camera behind the hand and another so you could see the full
body. But there was something about tracking just the pen tip that I
liked. It is an easier point of entry for dealing with the motion data than
having three different video feeds.
ER
Maybe it is more about metadata? Not a question of device or application, but about space for a comment.
FS
Maybe in the keywords there will be something like: Rooftop.
Brooklyn. Arrested.
The most interesting part is often the stories that people tell afterward
anyway. So it is an interesting idea, how to tie the story to the data.
It is a design problem too. Historically graffiti has been documented
many times by outsiders. The movie Style Wars 10 is a good example of
ER
10
Style Wars. Tony Silver, 1983. http://www.stylewars.com
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Tying the story to data
this epic documentary that was made by outsiders that became insiders.
Also, the people that have been documenting most of the graffiti are not
necessarily graffiti writers.
Graffiti has a history with documentarians entering into their community and playing a role but sharing the stories is something writers do
internally, not as much to outsiders. How do you figure out a way to get
graffiti writers to document their stories into the .gml files themselves,
or is it going to take outsiders? How does the format facilitate that?
Do you think the availability of a project like GML can have an impact
on the way graffiti is learned? If data becomes available in a community
that operates traditionally through apprenticeships and person-to-person
sharing, what does it do?
FS
I am interested in Open Source culture being influenced by graffiti,
and I am interested in Open Source culture influencing graffiti as well.
On a big picture I would love it if the graffiti community got interested
in these ideas and had more of a skill-sharing-knowledge-base.
KATSU 11 , someone I worked with in New York, has acquireda lot of
knowledge about how to make tools for graffiti and he initially wasn’t
so much into sharing them, because graffiti writers tend to save that
knowledge for themselves so that their tags are always bigger and better (laughs). Talking to him I think I convinced him to write tutorials on
how to make some of these tools. On the street art side there is Mark
Jenkins 12 , he has this technique of making 3D objects that exist within
the city and we had a lot of conversations too.
There are many ways tech circles and Open Source circles can come together with people that are making things outside, with their hands. I
think graffiti can learn from that. In the end people would be making
more things outside which would be a good thing.
ER
In a way typography has a similar culture of apprenticeship. Some
people enjoy spreading knowledge, and others resist in the name of quality
control.
FS
Interesting. I think the work I am doing is such a tangent! In general,
for something that is decidedly against the rules, the culture of writing
graffiti often has a rigid structure. To people in that community what
ER
11
12
KATSU http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=graffiti+katsu
Mark Jenkins tapesculptures http://tapesculpture.org
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Tying the story to data
I do is a blip on their radar. I am honored when I get to meet graffiti
writers and they are interested in what I am doing but I don’t think it
will change anything in what is in some ways a very strict system.
And I don’t want that either. I like the fact that they found a way to make
spraypaint and markers change the way each city in the world looks. They
have the tools they need. Digital projectors will not change that. Graffiti
writers still like to see their names projected at big scales in new ways but
it is not something they really need (laughs).
And the other way around? How does graffiti have an influence on
Open Source communities?
FS
For the people on the technology side, it is an easy jump. To think
about hacking software systems and than about making things outside.
I see that with the Free Art and Technology Group 13 that I help run.
When they start thinking about projects in the city, it takes little to come
up with great ideas. I also see that in the class I teach, Urban Hacking.
There is already a natural overlap.
ER
FS
What connects the two?
It is really about the idea of hacking. The first assignment in the
class is not to make anything, but simply to identify systems in the city.
What are elements that repeat. Trying to find which ones you can slip
into. It has been happening in graffiti forever. Graffiti in New York in
the eighties was to me a hack, a way to have giant paintings circulating in
the city ... There is a lot of room to explore there.
ER
Your experience with the Blender community 14 did not sound like an
easy bridge?
FS
Recently I released a piece of software that translates a .gml file and
translates it into a .stl file, which is a common 3D format. So you can
basically take a graffiti gesture and import it into software like Blender.
I used Blender because I wanted to highlight this tool, because I want
these communities to talk to each other.
So I was taking a tag that was created in the streets of Vienna and pulling
it into Blender and in the end I was exporting it to something that could
ER
13
14
The Free Art and Technology (F.A.T.) Lab is an organization dedicated to enriching the
public domain through the research and development of creative technologies and media.
Release early, often and with rap music. http://fffff.at
Blender is a free Open Source 3D content creation suite. http://www.blender.org/
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Tying the story to data
be 3D printed, to become something physical. The video that I posted intentionally showed online showed screenshots from Blender and it ended
up on one of the bigger community sites. I only saw it when my cousin,
who is a big Blender user, e-mailed me the thread. There is about a hundred dedicated Blender users discussing the legitimacy of graffiti in art
and how their tools are used 15 ; pretty interesting but also pretty conservative.
FS
Why do you think the Blender community responded in that way?
It doesn’t surprise me that much. Graffiti is hard to accept, especially
when we are talking about tags. So the only reason we might be slightly
surprised by hearing people in the Open Source community react that
way, is because intellectual property doesn’t translate always to physical
property. Writing your name on someone’s door is something people universally don’t like. I understand. For me the connection makes sense but
just because you make Open Source doesn’t mean you’ll be interested in
graffiti or street art or vice versa. I think if I went to a Blender conference
and gave a talk where I explained sort of where I see these things overlap,
I could make a better case than the three minute video they reacted to.
ER
What about Gesture Markup Language instead of Graffiti Markup
Language?
FS
Essentially GML records x-y-time data. If you talk about what it
functionally does, it is probably more related to gesture than it is to graffiti. There is nothing at the core specifically related to graffiti. I am
interested in branding it in relation to graffiti and to get people to talk
about Open Source where it is traditionally not talked about. To me
that is interesting. It is a way to get people excited about open data, and
popularizing ideas about Open Source.
ER
FS
Would you be OK if it would get more popular in non-graffiti circles?
I am super excited when I see it used in bizarre places. I’ll keep using
it for graffiti, but someone e-mailed me that they were upset that it only
tracks one point. There hasn’t been a need to track multiple tags at once.
They wanted to use it to track juggling, but how to track multiple balls
in the air? I keep calling it Graffiti Markup Language because I think it
is a good story.
ER
We haven’t really entered into that. Why would you need a licence
on a file format?
ER
FS
It would prevent that anyone could own the standard.
That sounds good. Actually it would be interesting for the project, if
someone would try to licence it. Legal things matter, but for the things I
do, I am most of all interested in getting the idea across.
ER
I am interested in the way GML stems from a specific practice. How
it is different and similar to large, legal, commercial, global standardization practices. Related, how can GML connect to other standard practices?
Could it be RDF compliant?
FS
PW
Gesture recognition to help out the police?
Or maps of places that are in need of some graffiti? How to link GML
to other types of data?
FS
It is hard for me to imagine something. But one thing is interesting
for example, how GML is used in the EyeWriter project. It has not
so much to do with gesture, but more with how you would draft in a
computer. TEMPT is plotting points, so the time data might not be so
interesting but because it is in the same format, the community might
pick it up and do something with it. All the TEMPT data he writes with
his eyes and it is uploaded to the 000000book site automatically. That
allowed another artist called Benjamin Gaulon 16 who I now know, but
didn’t know at the time, to use it with his Print Ball project. He took the
tag data from a paralyzed graffiti writer in Los Angeles and painted it on
a wall in Dublin. Eye-movement translated into a paint-ball gun ... that
is the kind of collaboration that I hope GML can be the middle-point
for. If that happens, things can start to extrapolate on either end.
ER
You talked about posting a wish-list and being surprised that your
wishes were fulfilled within weeks. Why do you think that a project like
EyeWriter, even if it interests a lot of people, has a hard time gathering
collaborators, while something much more general like GML seems to be
more compelling for people to contribute to?
FS
16
Benjamin Gaulon, Print Ball
http://www.eyewriter.org/paintball-shooting-robot-writes-tempt1-tag
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Tying the story to data
I’ll answer that in a second, but you reminded me of something
else: because EyeWriter was GML based, a lot of the collaborations
that happened with people outside of the project were GML related,
not EyeWriter related. So we did have artists like Ben and Golan take
data drawn by TEMPT and do completely different things which made
TEMPT a collaborator with them in a way. The software allowed him to
share his work in a format that allowed other people to work with him.
The wish-list came out of the fact that I was working on a graffiti related
project that had a lot of use but not a lot of innovation. Not so many
people were using it in ways I wasn’t expecting, which is something you
always hope of course. By saying: Here’s the things I really would like to
happen, things started to happen. I have been surprised how that drove
momentum. Something similar I hope will happen to the work we will
do together in the next months too!
ER
FS
What are you planning to do?
We are planning to make a dedicated community page for the graffiti
markup language which is one of the three points of the triangle. The
second step would be a new addition to the wish-list, a challenge with a
prize associated to it which seems funny. The project I’d like to concentrate on is making the data collection easier so that graffiti writers can be
more active in the upload sense. Taking the NASA development model:
Can you get into orbit on this budget?
ER
How is that different from the way you record graffiti motion at the
moment?
FS
If I go out with a graffiti writer, I’m stuck standing with a laptop and
a camera facing the wall and then the graffiti writer needs to have a really
bright light attached to the writing device which is a bit counter-intuitive
when you are trying to do something without being seen (laughs). It
could be infrared by the way, that could be the first step but then security
cameras would still pick it up. The design I am focusing momentum on is
a system that’s easier. A system that can work without me there, without
having to have a laptop there. The whole idea is that it would be a natural
way to get good data, to document graffiti without a red-head holding a
laptop following you around the whole time!
ER
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Tying the story to data
Paris, December 2010
FS
How is it to be the sole jury member?
I tried to get another jury-member on there actually. Do you know
Limor Fried? She runs Adafruit Industries. 17 I really like her work. She
works with her partner Phil Torrone who runs Make Blog. 18 I invited
her to be the second jury-member because she makes Open Source hardware kits; this is her full-time thing. She is very smart and has a lot of
background in making DIY kits that people actually build. She is also
very straightforward and very busy, so she wrote back and said: this is
too much work. No.
So ... yeah, I am the only jury member. Hmmm.
ER
SV
Is the contest already over?
It is not over. It was easy to launch; I tried to coincide it with the
launch of the website and there were a couple of things going on at the
same time. The launch helped spread the word about this file format, and
people making projects, and vice versa.
ER
Did you have any proposals that came close to meeting the challenge?
Did you consider giving out the prize?
FS
No.
There are a couple of people that got really close. The interesting thing
that is happening with the challenge is something that is also happening
to other high barrier projects: You end up speaking to the people you already work with the most. I have a hard time figuring out to some extent
what is really happening, but the things I hear, of people making progress,
is people that are close to me. It reminds me of the EyeWriter project
where people that are to dip their toes into this, are already in the friend
group, or one level removed. They are pretty high level programmers.
I didn’t really think that actual money would be such an incentive but
more that it would make the challenge feel serious, more in the sense
of an organization that has some kind of club behind it. If you solved
one of the design problems by the Mozilla community you could receive
ER
kudo’s from the community, but if you solved one of my projects, you
don’t really get kudo’s from my community, do you?
Having the money associated makes it this big thing. At Ars Electronica
and so on, it got people talking about it and so it is out there. That
part worked. Beyond that it has been a bit hard to keep the momentum.
Friends and colleagues send me ideas and ask me to look at things, but
people I don’t know are hard to follow; I don’t think they are publishing
their progress. There is a hackerspace in Porto that has been working on
it, so I see on their blog and Twitter that they are having meetings about
this and are working on it.
Don’t you think having only one prize produces a kind of exclusivity? It
seems logical not to publish your notes?
FS
ER Maybe. Kyle 19 has been thinking up ways to do it and I know he
wanted to use an optical mouse, and then this a friend Michael 20 has been
using sensors, and he ran into a software problem but had the hardware
problem more or less solved. And then Kyle, a software expert, has been
running into hardware problems and so I kind of introduced them to each
other over e-mail so I don’t know if they are working on it together.
FS
Would you consider splitting the prize?
I don’t care, but I don’t know if the candidates would consider splitting the prize! I know Michael has already spent a lot of money because
he has been buying Arduinos and other hardware. He wants to make
a cheap version to solve the problem and then make another one that
costs 150 on top of the price limitation to make it easier to use. He is
spending a bunch of money so even if he wins, it is going to get him only
out of the hole and he will not have much left.
Actually, Golan 21 had an idea for an iPhone app that he wants to make
but I am not sure it solves it.
ER
FS
Why don’t you think his app will solve it?
He is really interested in making something where you do not need
to meet with the graffiti writer. His idea was that if you could take a
photo of it on the wall, and then with your finger you guide it for how it
ER
19
20
21
Kyle McDonald http://kylemcdonald.net
Michael Auger http://lm4k.com
Golan Levin http://www.flong.com
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was written. It has an algorithm for image processing and that combined
with your best guess of how it was written would be backed out in motion
data. But it is faked data.
FS
That it is really interesting!
Yes it is and I would love it if he would make it but I am not going to
let him win with it (laughs). I understand why he wants to do it; especially
if you are not inside the graffiti community, your only experience is what
you see on the wall and you don’t know who these people are and it is
going to be almost impossible to ever get data for those tags. If you don’t
have access to that community you are never going to get the tag of the
person that you really want. I like the idea that he is thinking about
getting some data from the wall as opposed to getting it from the hand.
ER
Learning by copying. Nowhere near solving the challenge, but interesting. OSP 22 we were discussing about the way designers are invited into
Open Source Software by way of contest. Troy James Sobotka 23 got angry
and wrote: We want to be part of this community, we don’t want to compete
for it.
FS
With the EyeWriter project, we were thinking a lot about that; how
to spur development. I think I would not have done a competition with
the EyeWriter. Making it fun, that is what makes it happen. If it would
be a really serious amount of money, with people scraping at each other,
fighting each other ...
For me, the fact that there is prize money makes something that is already
ridiculous in itself even more funny. To have prize money for such a small
community of people that are interested in coding and in graffiti. I’m not
seriously thinking that we can spur development with this kind of money.
To use the EyeWriter as an example, we’ve had money infusions from
awards mostly and we had to think about how we could use that money
to get from point A to point B. That’s also a project where we had very
ER
22
23
OSP (Open Source Publishing) is a graphic design collective that uses only Free, Libre and
Open Source software. http://ospublish.constantvzw.org
The very notion of Libre / Free software holds cooperation and community with such high regard
you would think that we would be visionary leaders regarding the means and methods we use to
collaborate. We are not. We seem to suffer from a collision of unity with diversity. How can we
more greatly create a world of legitimate discussion regarding art, design, aesthetic, music, and other
such diverse fields when we are so stuck on how much more consistent a damn panel looks with tripe
22 pixel icons of a given flavour?
http://www.librescope.com/975/spec-work-and-contests-part-two
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Tying the story to data
definable design goals of what we wanted to reach, especially between the
first version and where we are now with the second version.
FS
How did that work?
We are not talking about a ton of money here, 10 to 20.000 , and
we tried to get as far as we could. We got almost no work done between
the meetings in LA but if we flew in, it was OK to take a week out of
our schedules and really hammer at it. We were trying to think how we
could do the same thing for people that we wanted to work with and who
we had met in conferences. So that is how we thought of spending that
money.
The other way we use money in the EyeWriter project is that we buy
people kits. We know a few people that are interested in hacking on it
but they don’t have the hardware. Not that they are so expensive, but
Zach wants to buy twenty or thirty unpackaged kits and he has interns
working with him in New York helping to build them. So we have these
systems ready so as soon as someone wants to get hacking on it, we can
mail them a working system that they can just plug in and they don’t
have to waste their time ordering all these parts from all these websites
all over China. And when they are done, they just send it back.
ER
You talked about some things in the challenge that worked and some
that didn’t.
FS
I think the forum is the obvious thing that did not work. I have
friends working on OpenFrameworks, it is headed primarily by Zach and
Theo. When you see that forum, it is very involved. It is a deep system,
with many different libraries and lots of code flying around. GML is really
not large enough.
I think what makes sense for this project is when I post news about the
project, I see it ripple in Google Alerts. For people working on it, having
a place where these things show up is already a lot. The biggest success
is the project space, to see all the projects happening.
ER
FS
What happened on the site since we talked?
A project I like, is kml2gml 24 for example. It is done by a friend from
Tokyo. He was gathering GPS data riding his bike around various cities,
and building up a font based on his path. I like projects like this, where
ER
someone takes a work that is already done and just writes an application
to convert the data into another format. To see him riding his bike played
back in GML was really nice. It is super low barrier to entry, he already
did all the hard work. I like that there is now a system for piping very
different kinds of data through GML.
FS
But it could also work the other way around?
Yeah. This is maybe a tangent but depending on how someone solves
the GML challenge ... I was discussing this with Mike (the person that is
developing the sensor based version). He was thinking that if you would
turn on his system, and leave it on for a whole night of graffiti writing,
you would have the gestural data plus the GPS data. You could make
a .gml file that is tracking you down the street, and zoom in when you
start making the tag. Also you would get much more information on
3D movement, like tilt and when the pen is picking up and going down.
Right now all I am getting is a 2D view through video data. I am really
keeping my fingers crossed. But he ran into trouble though.
ER
FS
Like what?
I have my doubts about using these kind of sensors, because ‘drift’ is
a problem. When you start using these sensors too long, it tends to move
a little bit. I think he is working within a 0.25 inch margin of error right
now, which is right on the edge. If you are recording someone doing a
big piece, this is not going to ruin my day too much but if you record a
little tag than it is a problem.
The other problem is that you need to orient the system before you start
tagging. It needs to know what is up and down, you have to define your
plane of access. I don’t really understand this 100% but he thinks he can
still fit it all within the ten second calibration requirement, he’s thinking
that each time you come to a wall, you tap once, you tap twice and tap a
third time to define what plane you are writing on and that calibrates the
3D space. Once you have that calibration done, you can start writing. It
is not as easy as attaching a motion sensor. The problem is hard.
ER
So you need to touch the wall before writing on it, feeling out the
playing field before starting! It is like working on a tablet; to move from
actual movement to instruction; navigation blends into the action of drawing
itself.
FS
ER
I like that!
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Tying the story to data
SV
The guy using the iPhone did not use it as a sensor at all?
Theo was interested in using the iPhone to record motion data in
GML, but also to save the coordinates so you could try it into a Google
Earth or something but he had trouble with the sensitivity of the sensor.
Maybe it is better now but you needed to draw on a huge scale for one
letter. You could not record anything small.
ER
But it could be nice if you could record with a device that is less conspicuous.
FS
I know. I have just been experimenting with mounting cameras on
spray-cans. A tangent to GML, but related. It is not data, but video.
ER
What do you think is the difference between recording video, and
recording data? You mentioned that you wanted to move away from documentation the image to capture movement. Video is somehow indirect
data?
FS
Video is annoying in that it is computationally expensive. In Brazil 25
I have been using the laptop but the data is not very precise.
Kyle thinks he might be able to back out GML data from videos. This
might solve the challenge, depending on how many cameras you need and
how expensive they are. But so far I have not heard back from him. He
said it needs three different cameras all looking at the wall. I mean: talk
about computationally expensive! He likes video-processing, he knows
some Open Source software that can look for similar things and knows
how to relate them. To me it seems more difficult than it needs to be
(laughs).
ER
It is both overcomplicated and beautiful, trying to reverse engineer
movement from the image.
FS
I am getting more into video myself. I get more enjoyment from capturing the data than from the projections, like what most people associate
with my work.
ER
FS
Why is it so much more interesting to capture, rather than to project?
In part because it stays new, I’ve been doing those projections for a
while now and I know what happens at these events. For a while it was
very new, we just did it with friends, to project on the Brooklyn bridge
ER
25
Graffiti Analysis: Belo Horizonte, Brazil 2010 http://vimeo.com/16997642
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Tying the story to data
for example. Now it has turned into these events where everyone knows
in advance, instead of just showing up at at a certain time ate a set corner.
It has lost a lot of its magic and power.
Michele and I have done so many of these projections and we sort of
know what to expect from it, what questions people will ask. When I
meet with graffiti writers, that almost always feels new to me. When we
went to Brazil, we intentionally tried to not project anything but to spend
as much time as possible with writers. Going out with graffiti writers to
me always feels right.
FS Is the documentation an excuse to be taken along, or is the act of
documenting itself interesting to you?
To me documentation is interesting. I don’t know where all of this
is going right now, I am just trying to get the footage; I put these pieces
together showing all this movement but I don’t really know what the final
project is. It is more about collecting data so I am interested in having
video, audio and GML that can be synced up, and the sound from these
microphones is something to do something with later. This is research
for me. I like the idea of having all this data related to a 10 second gesture.
I am thinking that in the future we can do interesting things with it. I
am even thinking about how the audio could be used as a signal to tell
you what is drawing and what is not drawing. It is a really analog way of
doing it, but in that way you don’t need a button where you are getting
true and false statements for what is drawing and what is not drawing;
you can just tell by the sound:
tfffpt ... tfffpt.
ER
FS
You can hear the space, and also the surface.
I got started doing this because I love graffiti and this is a way to
get closer to it again. Like getting back out to the streets and having
very personal relationships to the graffiti writers and talking to them,
and having them give feedback. I think that is how the whole challenge
started. It didn’t start because I was projecting, but because I was out on
the street and testing the capture, having graffiti writers nearby when it
is happening. It feels like things are progressing that way.
ER
Are you thinking of other ways of capturing? You talk about capturing
movement, but do you also archive other elements? Do you take notes,
pictures? What happens to the conversations you are having?
FS
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Tying the story to data
I have been missing out on that piece. It is a small amount of time
we have, and I am already trying to get so much. I am setting up a
camera that shoots straight video from a tripod, I am capturing from the
laptop and I am also screencasting the application, my head is spinning.
One reason I screwed up this footage in the beginning is because with all
these things going on I forget to turn on some things. Maybe someone
will solve this challenge.
ER
FS
Are you actually an embedded anthropologist?
In the back of my head I am thinking this will become a longer documentary. I like to experiment with documentation, whether that is in
code or with video. I do think that there is this interesting connection
between documentation and graffiti and how these two things overlap.
I am always thinking about documentation. The graffiti writer that was
in Vienna 26 showed me a video that was amazing. It was him and a
friend going out on a sunny day at 15:30 in the afternoon with two head
mounted cameras, bombing an entire train and you hear the birds singing
and you only experience it by these two videos that are linked. There are
interesting constraints: your hands are already full, you don’t want peoples’ faces on camera so the head-mounted cameras were smart. Unless
you walk in front of a mirror (laughs).
ER
FS
Is it related to the dream of ‘self documenting code’?
I like that. Even doing the challenge is in a way a reflection on this,
how I am fighting to get GML back to the streets somehow, it has a
natural tendency to get closer to the browser, to the screen, and my job
is to get it back to the street. It is so sexy and fun and flashy and that is
important too. My job is to keep the graffiti influence on it as large as the
other part.
ER
FS
ER
Is any of this reflected in the standard itself?
I haven’t looked at the standard for a while now.
I was thinking again about live coding and notation. Simon Yuill 27
describes notation as a shared space that allows collaboration but also defines
the end of a collaboration.
FS
26
27
momo3010 http://momo1030.com
Simon Yuill. All problems of notation will be solved by the masses. Mute Magazine, 2008
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Tying the story to data
Maybe using an XML-like structure was a bad idea? Maybe if I had
started with a less code-based set of rules? If the files were raw video,
it would encourage people to go outside more often? By picking XML
I am defining where the thing heads in a way. I think I am OK in the
role of fighting that tendency. It is not just a problem in GML but with a
lot of work I have been doing with graffiti and technology and even way
back with Graffiti Analysis, before GRL (Graffiti Research Lab), the idea
was always to keep the research very close to the people doing graffiti. I
was intentionally working with people bombing a lot and not with graffiti
celebrities. I wanted to work with who’s tag was on my mailbox, who’s
tag do I see a million times when I walk down the street. Since then
a lot has happened, like with more popular projects such as L.A.S.E.R.
Tag, and it goes almost always further away from graffiti. Maybe that is
a function of technology. Technology, or the way it is now, will always
drift towards entertainment uses, commercial uses.
ER
Do you think a standard can be subversive? You chose XML because it
is accessible to amateur programmers. But it is also a very formal standard,
and so the interface between graffiti writers and hackers is written in the
language of bureaucracy.
FS
ER (laughs) I thought that there was something funny with that. People
that know XML and the web, they get the joke that something so rigid
and standardized is connected to writing your name on the wall. But to
be honest, it was really just a pragmatic choice.
It reminds me of an interview 28 with François Chastanet who wrote a
book 29 about tagging in Los Angeles. He explains that the Gothic lettering
is inspired by administrative papers!
SV
I am wondering whether you’re thinking about the standard itself as
a space for hacking?
FS
Graffiti is somehow coded in-itself. Do you mean it would be interesting
to think how GML could be coded in a way for graffiti writers, not for
coders?
There would be more space for that when more people start to program at
a younger age? When it is more common knowledge. If I would start to do
ER
28
29
Interview with François Chastanet http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayPcaGVKJHg
François Chastanet, Cholo writing: Latino gang graffiti in Los Angeles. Dokument, 2009
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Tying the story to data
that now, I would quickly lose my small user-base. I love that idea though;
the way XML is programmed fits very much to the way you program for the
web. But what if it was playing more with language, starting from graffiti
which is very coded?
When I was in college, I was always thinking about how to visualize
motion in print. I was looking for ways people had developed languages
for different ways of writing.
ER
Maybe you could look at the Chinese methods for teaching writing,
because the order of the strokes is really important. If you make the stroke
from bottom to top, and not from top to bottom, it is wrong.
SV
A friend in Hong Kong, MC Yan, loves the Graffiti Analysis project
because it shows the order in which he is writing and he likes to play
with that. So he writes words in different order than people are used to
and so it changes the meaning. People can not only watch the final result,
but also the order which is an interesting part of the writing process. The
brush, the angle, direction: depicting motion!
In the beginning of the Graffiti Analysis Research project I was very
against projection, because I felt that was totally against the idea of graffiti. I was presenting all of these print ideas and the output would be
pasted back into the city because I was against making an impermanent
representation of the data. In the end Zach said, you are just fighting this
because you have a motion project and you want to project motion and
then I said alright, I’ll do a test. And the tests were so exciting that I felt
OK with it.
ER
In what way does GML bridge the gap between digital drawing and
hand writing? Could you see a sort of computer-aided graffiti? Could you
see computation enter graffiti?
FS
Yeah. When you are in a controlled environment, in a studio, it is
easy but the outdoors part always trips me up. That is why the design
constraints get interesting, playing in real time with what someone is
writing. I think graffiti writers would be into that too. How to develop
a style that is unique enough to stand out in an existing canon is already
hard enough. This could give someone an edge.
ER
I think the next challenge I’d like to run is about recreating the data
outside. I’ve been thinking about these helicopters with embedded wireless
ER
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Tying the story to data
camera’s, have you seen them? The obvious thing to me would be uploading
a .gml file to one of these helicopters that is dripping paint on a rooftop.
Scale is so important, so going bigger is always going to be better.
Gigantic rooftop tags could be a way to tie it back to the city, give it a
reason? I am thinking of ways to get an edge back to the project. The
GML-challenge is already a step into that direction; it is not about the
prettiest screensaver. To ask people to design something that is tying back
to what graffiti is, which is in a way a crime.
I think fixing the data capture is the right place to start, the next one could
be about making marks in the city. Like: the first person to recreate this
GML-tag on the roof of this building, that would be fun. The first person
that could put this ‘Hello World’ tag onto the Brooklyn bridge and get a
photo of it gets the prize. That would get us back to the question of how
we leave marks on the surface of the city.
When you capture data of an individual writer in a certain standard,
it ends up as typography?
FS
That’s another trend that happens when designers look at graffiti, and
I’ve fallen into this too sometimes, you want to be able to make fonts out of
it. People have done this actually; there’s a project in New York where they
met with pretty influential graffiti writers and asked them to write in boxes,
the whole alphabet, and I think there’s something interesting there.
The alphabet that you saw the robot write was drawn by TEMPT with the
EyeWriter and what he did was a little bit smarter than other attempts by
graffiti writers to make fonts. He intentionally picked a specific style, the
Cholo style, and the format is very tall, vertically oriented, angled. That
style is less about letter connections and pen-flow. What graffiti has developed into, and especially tags, is very much about how it is written and
the order of the letters. When TEMPT picked this style he made a smart
decision that a lot of people miss when you make a font, you miss all the
motions and the connections.
ER
What if a programmer could put this data in a font, and generate
alternating connections?
SV
ER That kind of stuff is interesting. It would help graffiti writers to design
tags maybe?
To get my feet wet, I designed a tag once, and it was so not-fun to write!
I was thinking about a tag that would look different and that would fit
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Tying the story to data
into corners, I was interested in designing something that wasn’t curved;
that would fit the angles of the city, hard edges. So I had forgotten all
my research about drafting and writing. I think I stopped writing in part
because the tag I picked wasn’t fun o write. For a font to work like writing,
it is not just about possible connections between lines. You’d need another
level in the algorithm, the way the hand likes to move.
It would be a good algorithm to dream up. It was beautiful to see a
robot write TEMPT’s letters by the way.
FS
When TEMPT saw the robot writing for the first time, his reaction was
all about the order of how the letters were constructed. The order is I think
defined by the way he dropped the points in with the EyeWriter software.
When he was writing with his eyes, he ended up writing in the same way
as he would have written with his hands. When he saw the video with the
robot, it freaked him out because he was like: That’s how my hand moved
when I did that tag!
ER
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Tying the story to data
The Graffiti Markup Field Recorder
challenge
An easily reproducible DIY device that can unobtrusively record graffiti motion data during a graffiti writer’s normal practice in the city. 30
Project Description and Design Requirements:
–
The GML Field Recorder Challenge is a DIY hardware and software solution for unobtrusively recording graffiti motion data during a graffiti writer’s
normal practice in the city. The winning project will be an easy to follow
instruction set that can be reproduced by graffiti writers and amateur technologists. The goal is to create a device that will document a night of graffiti
bombing into an easily retrievable series of Graffiti Markup Language (.gml)
files while not interfering with the normal process of writing graffiti. The
solution should be easy to produce, lightweight, cheap, secure, and require
little to no setup and calibration. The winning design solution will include
the following requirements listed below:
Material costs for the field device must not exceed 300
300 even felt expensive to me. How can this be a tool that is really
accessible? If it goes over a certain price point, it is not the kind of thing
that people can afford to make. It is a very small community, a lot of the
people that are going to have enough interest to build this are not going
to have a background in engineering, and are probably not even a part of
the maker scene that we know. The audience here might not be people
that are hanging out on Instructables. I wanted to make sure that the
price point meant that people could comfortably take a gamble to make
something for the first time. But I also did not want to make it so small
that the design would be impossible.
ER
30
GML-recorder challenge as published on:
http://www.graffitimarkuplanguage.com/challenges
237
.
Tying the story to data
–
Computers and equipment outside of the 300
can be used
for non-field activities (such as downloading and manipulating data captured in-field), but at the time of
capture a graffiti writer should have no more than 300
worth of equipment on him or herself.
I was trying to think of how the challenge could be gamed ... I did not
want to get into a situation where we were getting stressed out because some
smart hacker found a hole in the brief, and bought a next generation iPhone
that somehow just worked. I didn’t want to force people to buy expensive
equipment. This line was more about covering our own ass.
ER
–
The graffiti writer must be able to activate the recording function alone (i.e., without assistance from anyone else).
FS
Are you going to be out of work soon?
Thinking selfishly, I screw up on documentation a lot because I have
too many hats. When I’m going out doing this, I am carrying a laptop, a
calibration set up, I also have one video-camera on me that is just documenting, I have another one on a tripod, and I am usually screen capturing
the software as it processes the video-footage because it tells another story.
I screw up because I forget to hit stop or record. If the data-capture just
works, I can go have fun getting good video-footage.
ER
What if it had to be operated by more than one person? It is nice
how the documentation now turns the act of writing into a performancefor-one.
FS
If you record alone, the data becomes more interesting and mysterious,
right? I mean, no one else has seen it. Something captured very privately,
than gets potentially shared publicly and turned into things that are very
different. I also thought: you don’t want to be dependent on someone else.
It is a lot to ask, especially if you are doing something illegal.
ER
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Tying the story to data
–
Any setup and/or calibration should be limited to 10
seconds or less.
This came out of me dealing with the current system. It feels wrong
that it takes ten to fifteen minutes to get it running. Graffiti is not meant
to be that way. This speaks to the problem of the documentation infringing on the writing process, which ideally wouldn’t happen. The longer
the set-up takes, the more it is going to influence the actual writing. It is
supposed to be a fly on the wall.
ER
FS
ER
–
Does it scale? Does a larger piece allow longer callibration -time?
That’s true. But I think this challenge is really about recording tags.
All hardware should be able to be easily concealed within
a coat with large pockets.
A hack to get around that would have been to design a jacket with ten
gallon pockets!
I put it there again, to make the device not be intrusive. A big part of graffiti
writing is about gaining entry and you limit where you can go depending on
how much equipment you have. How bulky it is, what walls you can get up,
what holes you can get through.
ER
–
The winning solution should be discrete and not draw
any added attention to the act of graffiti writing.
ER It’s part of the same issue, but this one also came out from me going
out and trying to capture with a system where it requires you to attach
a flashlight to a graffiti implement. I didn’t want anyone solving the
problem and then, Step one is: ‘Attach a police siren to a spraypaint can’
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Tying the story to data
–
The resulting solution should be able to record at least
10 unique GML tags of approximately 10 seconds each in
length in one session without the need for connecting
to or using additional equipment.
I wasn’t thinking this was going to be an issue in terms of memorystorage, but maybe in terms of memory management. I did not want the
graffiti writer to behave as if he was on vacation with a camera that could take
only three photos. I wanted to make sure they were not making decisions
on what they were writing based and how much memory they had.
ER
–
All data recorded using the field recorder should be
saved in a secure and non-incriminating fashion.
(laughs) If I had to do that one again, I would have put that in Bonus
category actually. That’s a difficult question to ask. What does secure
mean? It seems a bit unfair, because it doesn’t fit in to the way graffiti is
currently documented. There’s not a lot of graffiti writers that currently
are shooting encrypted photos and videos, right?
But whatever bizarre format comes out from the sensor will help. I don’t
think that the NYPD will have time or make the effort to parse it. They’d
just have a file with a bunch of numbers. Time stamped GPS coordinates
would be more dangerous.
ER
FS
What would count as proof?
In most cases it is hard to convict someone on the basis of a photo
of a tag that you would tie to another tag. For good reasons, because if it
is a crew name for example, all of a sudden you are pinning one tag on a
person that could have been written by twenty people. This came up in
a trial in DC when an artist named BORF got arrested. He had written
his name everywhere, completely crushed DC and his trial was a big deal.
This issue came up and they argued that BORF was a collective, not an
individual. Who knows if that’s true, there were a lot of people around
him, but how do you really know?
ER
FS
GML could help balance the load?
You mean it would not be just the image of a tag but more like signing
at the bank?
ER
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Tying the story to data
I mean that if you copy and distribute your data, the chance is small
that you can link it to an individual.
FS
–
The winning design will have some protection in the event
that the device falls into the wrong hands.
This again should probably have been a bonus item. Wouldn’t it be
awesome if you could go home and log in and flip a one to a zero and the
evidence goes up in smoke?
One graffiti writer friend told me: If the police comes, just smash the camera
as hard as you can! It’s a silly idea, but it shows that they are thinking
about it.
ER
FS
ER
–
Edible SD cards?
That would be a good idea!
Data should be able to be captured from both spray cans
and markers.
ER
FS
Yes.
Are you prepared for tools that do not exist yet?
That was kind of what I was thinking there. Markers are about direct
contact, spraypaint is in free space. If it works in those two situations, you
should theoretically be able to tie it to anything, even outside of graffiti. If
it was too much about spraypaint, it would be harder for someone to strap
it to a skateboard.
ER
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Tying the story to data
–
System should be able to record writing on various surfaces and materials.
It is something you can easily forget about. When you are developing
something in the studio and it works well against a white wall, and than
when you go out in the city than you realize that brick is a really weird
surface. Or even writing on glass, or on metal or on other reflecting
surfaces that could screw up your reading. It is there as a reminder for
people that are not thinking about graffiti that much. The street and the
studio are so different.
ER
–
Data should be captured at 30 points per second minimum.
I was assuming that lots of people were going to use cameras, and
I wanted to make sure they were taking enough data points. With other
capturing methods it is probably not such a problem. Even at 30 points per
seconds you can start to see the facets if you zoom in, so anything less is not
ideal.
ER
–
The recording system should not interfere with the writer s
movements in anyway (including writing, running and climbing).
So this is where Muharrem is going to run into trouble. His solution
interferes. Not that much if you are just working in front of your body
space. But the way most writers write is that they are shuffling their feet
a lot, moving down the wall. Should it have said: Graffiti writer should
retain access to feet functionality? This point should be at the top almost.
ER
To me it feels strange, your emphasis on the tool blending into the
background. You could also see Muharrem’s solution as an enhancing device,
turning the writer into a tapdancer?
FS
I want to have on record: I love his solution! There’s a lot in his
design that is ‘making us more aware’ of what’s happening in the creation
of a tag. One thing that he is doing that is not in the specs, is that he is
ER
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Tying the story to data
logging strokes, like up and down. When you watch him using it, you
can see a little light going from red to green when the fingers goes on
and off the spraypaint can. When you watch graffiti, it is too small of a
movement to even notice but when you are seeing that, it adds another
level of understanding of how they are writing.
–
All motion data should be saved using the current GML
standard 31 .
FS
–
Obvious.
All aspects of the winning design should be able to be
reproduced by graffiti writers and amateur technologists.
It wouldn’t be exciting if only ten people can make this thing. This
tool should not be just for people that can make NASA qualified soldering
connections. Ideally it should not have any soldering. I always thought of
a soldering iron like a huge barrier point. I’m all for duct-taped electrical
connections.
ER
There’s nothing about weather-resistant in the challenge. You’re not
thinking about rain, are you?
FS
A lot of paint stops working in rain too.
I think what you get from this brief though is that the whole impetus for
this project is about me trying to steer the ship that clearly wants to go
into another direction, back to my interest in what graffiti is rather than
anything that people might find aesthetically pleasing. It is not about
‘graffiti influenced visuals’.
ER
31
http://graffitimarkuplanguage.com/spec
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Tying the story to data
–
All software must be released Open Source.
All hard-
ware must include clear DIY instructions/tutorials.
All
media must be released under an Open Content licence that
promotes collaboration (such as a Free Art License or
Creative Commons ShareAlike License).
I didn’t want it to be too specific, but there had to be some effort into
making it open.
ER
–
The recording must be an unobtrusive process, allowing the graffiti writer to concentrate solely on the act
of writing (not on recording).
The act of recording should
not interfere with the act of graffiti writing.
I’ve been through situations where the process gets so confusing that
you can’t keep your head straight and juggle all the variables. Your eyes
and ears are supposed to tell you about who’s coming around the corner.
Is there traffic coming or a train? There are so many other things you
need to pay attention to rather than: Is this button on?
The whole project is about getting good data. As soon as you force people
to think too much about the capture process, I think it influences when
and how they are writing.
ER
Bonus, but not required:
–
Inclusion of date, time and location saved in the .gml
file.
Yes. Security-wise that is questionable, but the nerd in me would just
love it. You could get really interesting data about a whole night of writing.
You could see a bigger story than just that of a single tag. How long did it
take to gain entry? How long were they hiding in the bushes? These things
get back to graffiti as a performance art rather than a form of visual art.
ER
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Tying the story to data
Paris, November 2011
Last time we had contact we discussed how to invite Muharrem to
Brussels 32 . But now on the day of the deadline, it seems there are new
developments?
FS
ER I think in terms of the actual challenge, the main update is that since
we extended the deadline and made another call, I got an e-mail right on
the deadline today from Joshua Noble 33 with a very solid and pretty smart
proposal that seems to solve (maybe unfortunately for Muharrem) a bit
more of the design spec. It does it for cheaper and does it in a way that I
think is going to be easier to make also.
His design solution is using an optical mouse and he changed the sensors
so it has a stronger LED. He uses a modified lens on top of a plastic lens
that comes on top of a mouse, so that it can look at a surface that is a set
distance away. It has another sensor that looks at pitch, tilt and orientation,
but he is using that only to orient, the actual data gets recorded through the
mouse. It can get very high resolution, he is looking at up to a millimeter I
guess.
FS
Muharrem’s solution seems less precise?
I think he gets away with more because his solution is only for spraypaint
and once you are writing on that scale, even if you are off a few centimeters,
it might not ruin the data. If you look at the data he is getting, it actually
looks very good. I don’t think he has any numbers on the actual resolution
he is getting but if you were using his system with a pen, I think it would
be a different case. I like a lot of his solution too, it is an interesting hack.
It is funny that two of the candidates for the prize are both mouse hacks.
One is hacking a mechanical mouse and the other an optical mouse.
ER
FS
JH
It goes from drawing on a screen, to drawing on a wall?
And back again!
Yes. When I first was working on graffiti related software, the whole
reason I was building Graffiti Analysis as a capture application was beER
32
33
By early October 2011 no winning design-solution had been entered, besides a proposal from
Muharem Yildirim that came more than halfway. We decided to use the prize money to fly
Muharrem from Phoenix (US) to Brussels (BE) and document his project in a worksession as
part of the Verbindingen/Jonctions 13 meetingdays. http://www.vj13.constantvzw.org
Joshua Noble http://www.thefactoryfactory.com/gmlchallenge/
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Tying the story to data
cause I did not want to hand graffiti writers a mouse (laughter). I had
done all this research into graffiti and started to be embedded in the
community and I knew enough about the community that if you were
going to ask them to take part in something that was already weird, you
could not give them a mouse and expect any respect on the other end
of that conversation. They respect their tools, so the reason I was using camera-input was because I wanted to have a flexible system where
they could bring in anything and I could attach a device to it. Now I am
coming back to mice finally.
Now the deadline has passed, do you think the passage from wishlist to
contest worked out?
FS
I think it was a good experiment, I am not sure how clever it was. To
take a piece of culture that a lot of people don’t even look at, or look at
it and think it is trash, to invest all this time and research and software
expertise into it makes people think about the graffiti practice and what
it actually is. The cash prize does something similar. It attaches weight
to something that most people don’t even care about. Even having the
name of an organization like Constant attached to it is showing that I am
really serious about this. In that sense it is different than a wishlist.
I just read the Linus Torvalds 34 biography, and I liked his idea that ‘fun’
is part of innovation, right? In a programming sense, it is scratching a
personal itch. The attachment of a prize is more to underline the fun
aspect than anything else.
ER
I am still puzzled about GML and how it is at the one hand stimulating
collaboration and sharing, and than it comes back to the proud individual
that wants to show off. It is kind of funny actually that now two people are
winning the prize.
FS
ER
I understand what you mean.
Also in F/LOSS, under the flag of ‘Open’ and ‘Free’ there is a lot of
competition. Do you feel that kind of tension in your work?
FS
Even ‘Open’ and ‘Free’ are in competition!
In a project like White-Glove Tracking for example, the most popular
video I had not made and it did not have my name on it but personally I
ER
34
Torvalds, Linus; David Diamond (2001). Just For Fun: The Story of an Accidental
Revolutionary. New York, New York, United States: HarperCollins.
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Tying the story to data
still felt a part of it. I think when you are working in open systems, you
take pride when a project has wings. It is maybe even a selfish act. It is
the story of me receiving some art-finding and realizing that I am not the
best toolmaker for the job. Who ever manages to win the prize gets all
the glory, but I’m still going to feel awesome about it.
I have been reading the interview that Kyle McDonald did with Anton
Marini 35 and at some point he talks about being OK with sharing code and
libraries, but when it is too much of a personal style, then it is hard to share.
FS
Yes, I thought that was an interesting point. I’ve been in similar conversations on listservs with artists in the OpenFrameworks, Processing
and visual programming communities. What are the open pieces? It
makes sense to share libraries, but if I make a print from a piece of code,
do I then have to share the exact source and app for how that exact print
was made? What does it mean when I am investing money in a print, and
it is a limited series but I’m sharing the code? The art world is still based
on scarcity and we’re interested in computers that are copy-machines.
I see both sides of the argument and I am still trying to see how I fit
into it. It gets trickier when you are asked to release a piece rather than
a tool. If you are an Open Source artist and you make a toolset, that is
easier to share because people use that to make their own things. But
then an artist gets asked: how come I can’t get the file of that print? I
think that is a really hard question.
ER
FS
But isn’t the tool often the piece, and vice versa?
I agree. And I haven’t solved that question yet. Lately I’ve been a lot
less excited about running workshops for example. A lot of the people
that want to take part in the workshops are actually the opposition. Often
they own a club and they want to install a cool light-show or they are into
viral marketing. I never know which way to go with that. It depends on
what side of the curve of frustration I am on at that moment.
ER
Earlier you brought up the contrast between people that were more
visually invested and others that are more interested in the performance
aspect. I wanted to hear a bit more about the continuum in the culture and
how GML fits into that?
JH
35
Anton Marini: Some personal projects of mine, for example specific effects and ‘looks’ that I have a
personal attachment to, I don’t release
https://github.com/kylemcdonald/SharingInterviews/blob/master/antonmarini.markdown
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Tying the story to data
My focus has been on tags, this one portion of graffiti. I do think
there could be cool uses for more involved pieces. It would be great if
someone else would come in and do that, because it is a part of graffiti that
I haven’t studied that much. I would not even be able to write a specssheet for it; it requires a lot of different things when you paint these
super-involved murals, when you have an hour or more time on your
hands a lot more things come into play. Color, nozzles, nozzle changes
and so on.
ER
JH
Z-axis becomes important?
Yes, and your distance from the wall, a lot of other things my brain
isn’t wrestling with. I think tags are always fundamental, even if they are
painting murals that take three days to paint, somewhere in their graffiti
education they start with the tags. You’re still going to be judged by the
community based on how you sign your name on the blackbook.
Graffiti is funny because it is almost conservative in terms of how a successful graffiti writer is viewed and it is reflected in how graffiti is in
some way similar in the world. In some way it is a let down, to travel
from Brooklyn to Paris to Brussels and it looks all the same but I think it
stems from the fact that the community is so tight-knit. But at the end
of the day it comes back to the tag always.
In terms of the performance, in a tag the relationship between form and
function is really tight. The way your hand moves and how the tag actually looks on the wall is dictated by the gesture you are making. A piece
where you have three hours, that tight synchronization isn’t there. With
a tag, every letter looks the way it does because that’s how it needs to be
drawn, because it needs to be connected to this other letter. There’s a
lot of respect for writers that do oneliners, and even if your tag has more
than one line, a good graffiti writer has often a one line version. If you
don’t have to pick up the pen it is a really economical stroke.
ER
JH
It is almost like hacking the limitations of gesture.
It is a very specific design requirement. How to write a name that is
interesting to think about and to look at, you have to do it in 5 seconds,
you have to do it in one line, you have to do it on each type of surface.
On top of that, you have to do it a million times, for twenty years.
ER
In Seattle they call a piece that stays up for a longer time a ‘burner’. I
was connecting that to an archival practice of ephemera. It is a self-agreed
JH
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Tying the story to data
upon archival process, and it means that the piece will not be touched, even
for years.
ER Graffiti has an interesting relationship to archiving. On the one hand,
many graffiti writers think: Now that tag’s done, but I’ve got another
million of them. While others do not want people painting over them,
the city or other graffiti writers. Also if a tag has been up there for a few
years, it acquires more reverence and it is even worse when it is painted
over.
But I think that GML is different, it is really more similar to a photo of
the tag. It is not trying to be the actual thing.
FS
Once a tag is saved in GML, what can be done with the data?
I am myself reluctant to take any of these tags that I’ve collected and
do anything with it at all without talking closely to whoever’s tag it is,
because it is such an intimate thing. In that sense it is strange to have
an open data repository and to be so reluctant to use it in a way that is
looking at anyone too specifically.
The sculpture I’ve been working on is an average from a workshop; sixteen different graffiti writers merged into one. I don’t want to take advantage of any one writer. But this has nothing to do with the licence,
it is totally a different topic. If someone uploads to the 000000book site,
legally anyone should be able to do anything that they can do under the
Creative Commons licence that’s on the site but I think socially within
the community, it is a huge thing.
ER
There must be some social limits to referentiality. Like beat jacking for
DJs or biting rhymes for MCs, there must be a moment where you are not
just homaging, but stealing a style.
JH
I’ve seen cases where both parties have been happy, like when Yamaguchi
Takahiro used some GML data from KATSU and piped it into Google
Maps, so he was showing these big KATSU tags all over the earth which
was a nice web-based implementation. I think he was doing what a graffiti writer does naturally: Get out there and make the tag bigger but in
different ways. He is not taking KATSU-data from the database without
shining light back on him.
ER
GML seems very inspired by the practice of Free Software, but at the
same time it reiterates the conventional hierarchies of who are supposed to
FS
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Tying the story to data
use what ... in which way ... from who. For me the excitement with open
licences is that you can do things without asking permission. So, usage
can develop even if it is not already prescribed by the culture. How would
someone like me, pretty far removed from graffiti culture ever know what I
am entitled to do?
I have my reasons for which I would and would not use certain pieces
of data in certain contexts, but I like the fact that it is open for people
that might use it for other things, even if I would not push some of those
boundaries myself.
ER
Even when I am sometimes disappointed by the actual closedness of
F/LOSS, at least in theory through its licensing and refusal to limit who is
entitled and who’s not, it is a liberating force. It seems GML is only half
liberating?
FS
I agree. I think the lack of that is related to the data. The looseness of
its licence makes it less of an invitation in a sense. If the people that put
data up there would sit down and really talk about what this means, when
they would really walk through all the implications of what it means to
public domain a piece, that would be great. I would love that. Then you
could use it without having to worry about all the morality issues and
people’s feelings. It would be more free.
I think it would be good to do a workshop with graffiti writers where
beyond capturing data, you reserve an hour after the workshop to talk to
everybody about what it would mean to add an open licence. I’ve done
workshops with graffiti writers and I talked to everyone: Look, I am
going to upload this tag up to this place where everyone can download them
after the workshop, cool? And they go cool. But still, even then, do I really
feel comfortable that they understand what they’ve gotten into? Even if
someone has chosen a ShareAlike licence, I would be nervous I think.
Maybe I am putting too much weight on it. People outside Free Software
are already used to attaching Creative Commons licences to their videos.
Maybe I am too close to graffiti. I still hold the tag as primal!
ER
It is interesting to be worried about copyright on something that is
illegal, things you can not publicly claim ownership of.
JH
Would you agree that standards are a normalizing practice, that in a
way GML is part of a legalizing process?
FS
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Tying the story to data
For that to happen, a larger community would have to get involved. It
would need to be Gesture Markup Language, and a community other than
graffiti writers would need to get involved.
ER
FS
ER
Would you be interested in legalizing graffiti?
No. That’s why I stopped doing projections.
Not legal forms of graffiti, but more like the vision of KRS-One of
the Hip Hop city, 36 where graffiti would obviously be legal. Does that
fundamentally change the nature of graffiti?
JH
To me it is just not graffiti anymore. It is just painting. It changes what
it is. For me, its power stems from it being illegal. The motion happens
because it is illegal.
ER
In a sense, but there is also the calligraphic aspect of it. In Brooklyn,
a lot of the building owners say: yeah, throw it up and those are some
of the craziest pieces I know of, not from a tag-standpoint, but more as
complex graffiti visuals.
JH
I am always for de-criminalization. I don’t think anyone should go to
jail over a piece of paint that you could cover over in 5 seconds. And that
KRS-One city you mentioned would be cool to see.
ER
It is his Temple of Hip Hop, the idea to build a city of Hip Hop
where the entire culture can be there without any external repression.
It’s an utopian ideal obviously.
JH
Of course I would like to see that. If nothing else, you would totally
level the playing field between us and the advertisers. The only ones that
would get up messages in the city would be the ones with more time on
their hands.
ER
At the risk of stretching coherency, Hip Hop and Free Software
are both global insurgent subcultures that have emerged from being kind
of thrown away as fads and then become objects of pondering in multinational boardrooms. So I was hoping to open you up to riff on that:
zooming out, GML is a handshake point between these two cultures, but
GML is a specific thing within this larger world of F/LOSS and graffiti
JH
36
KRS-One Master Teacher. AN INTRODUCTION TO HIP HOP .
http://www.krs-one.com/#!temple-of-hip-hop/c177q
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Tying the story to data
in the larger world of hiphop. What other types of contact points might
there be? Do you see any similarities and differences?
For me, even beyond technology and beyond graffiti it all boils down to
this idea of the hack that is really a phenomenon that has been going on
forever. It’s taking this system that has some sort of rigidity and repeating
elements and flipping it into doing something else. I see this in Hip Hop,
of course. The whole idea of sampling, the whole idea of turning a playback
device into a musical instrument, the idea of touching the record: all of
these things are hacks. We could go into a million examples of how graffiti
is like hacker culture.
In terms of that handshake moment between the two communities, I think
that is about realizing that its not about the code and in some sense its not
about the spraypaint. There’s this empowering idea of individual small actors
assuming control over systems that are bigger than themselves. To me, that’s
the connection point, whether its Hip Hop or rap or programming.
The similarities are there. I think there are huge differences in those communities too. One of them is this idea of the hustler from Hip Hop: the
idea of hustling doesn’t have anything to do with the economy of giftgiving. The idea that Jay-Z has popularized in Hip Hop and that rap music
and graffiti have at their core has to do with work ethic, but there’s also a
kind of braggadocio about making it yourself and attaining value yourself
and it definitely comes back to making money in the end. The idea of being
‘self-made’ in a way is empowering but I think that in the Open Source
movement or the Free Software movement the idea of hustling does not apply. It’s not that people don’t hustle on a day to day basis. You disagree with
me?
ER
It’s interesting because the more you were talking, the more I was
not sure of whether you were speaking about Hip Hop or Free Software
or maybe even more specifically the Open Source kind of ideological development. You have people like David Hannemeier Hansson who developed Ruby on Rails and basically co-opted an entire programming
language to the point where you can’t mention Ruby without people
thinking of his framework. He’s a hustler du jour: this guy’s been in
Linux Journal in a fold-out spread of him posing with a Lamborghini or
something. Talk about braggadocio! You get into certain levels or certain
dynamics within the community where its really like pissing contests.
JH
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Tying the story to data
I like that, I think there’s something there. At the instigation of the
Open Source Initiative, though: like Linus ‘pre-stock option’, sitting in his
bedroom not seeing the sun for a year and hacking and nerding out. To me
they are so different, the idea of making this thing just for fun with a kind
of optimistic view on collaboration and sharing. I know it can turn into
money, I know it can turn into fame, I know it can turn into Lamborghinis
but I feel like where its coming from is different.
ER
I agree, that’s clearly a distinction between the two. They are not
coming from the same thing. But for me its also interesting to think
about it in terms that these are both sort of movements that have at times
been given liberational trappings, people have assigned liberatory powers
to these movements. Statistically the GPL is considerably more popular
than the Open Source licences, but I don’t know if you sat everybody
down and took a poll which side they would land on, whether they were
more about making money than they were about sharing. Are people
writing blogposts because they really want to share their ideas or because
they want to show how much cooler they are?
JH
You’re totally right and I think people in this scene are always looking
for examples of people making money, succeeding, good things coming to
people for reasons that aren’t just selflessness. People that are into Open
Source usually love to be able to point to those things, that this isn’t some
purely altruistic thing.
ER
Maybe you could take some of the hustle and turn it into something
in the Free Software world, mix and match.
JH
ER I think this line of inquiry is an interesting one that could be the
subject of a documentary or something. These communities that seem very
different until you start finding things that at their core really really similar.
It would be so interesting to have a cribs moment with some gangsta
or rapper who came from that, and he’s sort of showing off his stuff and
he has this machismo about him. Not necessarily directly mysognistic
but a macho kind of character and then take a nerd and have them do the
same.
JH
FS
Would they really be so different?
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Tying the story to data
Obviously some rappers and some nerds, I mean that’s one of the
beauties – I mean its a global movement, you can’t help but have diversity
– but if we’re just speaking in generalizations?
JH
FS
There’s a lot of showing off in F/LOSS too.
Yeah, and there’s a lot of chauvinism. And when you said that selfmade thing, that’s the Free Software idea number one.
JH
ER
I think that part is a direct connection.
And they’re coming from two completely different strata, from a
class-based analysis which is absent from a lot of discussion. Even on
that level, how to integrate them to me is a political question to some
degree.
JH
ER
FS
ER
FS
Right.
Will any features of GML ever be deprecated?
Breaking currently existing software? I hope not.
Basically I’m asking for your long-term vision?
When the spec was being made of course it wasn’t just me, it was a
group of people debating these things and of course nobody wants things
to break. The idea was that we tried to get in as many things as we could
think of and have the base stay kind of what it was with the idea that you
could add more stuff into it. It’s easy enough to do, of course its not a
super-rigid standard. If you look at what the base .gml file is, the minimum
requirements for GML to compile, its so so stripped down. As long as it
just remains time/x-y-z, I don’t think that’s going to change, no.
But I’m also hoping that I’m not gonna be the main GML developer. I’m
already not, there’s already people doing way more stuff with it than I am.
ER
FS
How does it work when someone proposes a feature?
ER They just e-mail me (laughs). But right now there hasn’t been a ton
of that because it’s such a simple thing, once you start cramming too much
into it it starts feeling wrong. But all its gonna take is for someone to make
a new app that needs something else and then there will be a reason to
change it but I think the change will always be adding, not removing.
254
The following text is a transcription of a talk by and conversation with Denis Jacquerye in the context of the Libre
Graphics Research Unit in 2012. We invited him in the
context of a session called Co-position where we tried to
re-imagine layout from scratch. The text-encoding standard Unicode and moreover Denis’ precise understanding of the many cultural and political path-dependencies
involved in the making of it, felt like an obvious place
to start. Denis Jacquerye is involved in language technology, software localization and font engineering. He’s
been the co-lead of the DéjàVu Font project and works
with the African Network for Localization (ANLoc) to remove language limitations that exist in today’s technology.
Denis currently lives in London.This text is also available
in Considering your tools. 1 A shorter version has been published in Libre Graphics Magazine 2.1.
This presentation is about the struggle of some people to use typography
in their languages, especially with digital type because there is quite a complex set of elements that make this universe of digital type. One of the
basic things people do when they want to use their languages, they end up
with these type of problems down here, where some characters are shown,
some aren’t, sometimes they don’t match within the font. Because one font
has one of the character they need and then another one doesn’t. Like
for example when a font has the capital letter but not the corresponding
lowercase letter. Users don’t really know how to deal with that, they just
try different fonts and when they’re more courageous, they go online and
find how to complain about those to developers – I mean font designers or
engineers. And those people try to solve those problems as well as they
can. But sometimes it’s pretty hard to find out how to solve them. Adding
missing characters is pretty easy but sometimes you also have language re-
1
Considering your tools: a reader for designers and developers http://reader.lgru.net
261
quirements that are very complex. Like here for example, in Polish, you
have the ogonek, which is like a little tail that shows that a vowel is nasalized. Most fonts actually have that character, but for some languages, people
are used to have that little tail centred which is quite rare to see in a font.
So when font designers face that issue, they have to make a choice rather
they want to go with one tradition or another, and if they want to go one
way they’re scattered to those people. Also you have problems of spacing
things differently, like a stacking of different accents – called diacritics or
diacritical marks. Stacking this high up often ends up on the line above, so
you have to find a solution to make it less heavy on a line, and then in some
languages, instead of stacking them, they end up putting them side by side,
which is yet another point where you have to make a choice.
But basically, all these things are based on how type is represented on computers. You used to have simple encodings like ASCII, the basic Western
Latin alphabet where each character was represented by bytes. The character could be displayed with different fonts, with different styles, they could
not meet the requirements of different people. And then they made different encodings because they were a lot of different requirements and it’s
technically impossible to fit them all in ASCII.
Often they would start with ASCII and then add the specific requirements
but soon they ended up having a lot of different standards because of all the
different needs. So one single byte of representation would have different
meanings and each of these meanings could be displayed differently in fonts.
But old webpages are often using old encodings. If your browser is not
using the right encoding you would have jibbish displayed because of this
chaos of encodings. So in the late eighties, they started thinking about
those problems and in the nineties they started working on Unicode: several
companies got together and worked on one single unifying standard that
would be compatible with all the pre-used standards or the new coming
ones.
Unicode is pretty well defined, you have a universal code point to represent to identify a character, and then that character can be displayed with
different glyphs depending on the font or the style selected. With that
framework, when you need to have the proper character displayed, you have
to go the code point in a font editor, change the shape of the character and
it can be displayed properly. Then sometimes there’s just no code point for
the character you need because it hasn’t been added, it wasn’t in any existing
262
standard or nobody has ever needed it before or people who needed it just
used old printers and metal type.
So in this case, you have to start to deal with the Unicode organization itself.
They have a few ways to communicate like the mailing list, the public, and
recently they also opened a forum where you can ask questions about the
characters you need as you might just not find them.
In most operating systems, you have a character map application where you
can access all the characters, either all the characters that exist in Unicode or
the ones available in the font you’re using. And it’s quite hard to find what
you need, as it’s most of the time organized with a very restrictive set of
rules. Characters are just ordered in the way they’re ordered within Unicode
using their code point order: for example, capital A is 41, and then B is 42,
etc. The further you go in the alphabet the further you go in the Unicode
blocks and tables, and there is a lot of different writing systems ... Moreover
because Unicode is sort of expanding organically – work is done on one
script, and then on another, then coming back to previous scripts to add
things – things are not really in a logical or practical order. Basic Latin is all
the way up there, and more far, you have Latin Extended A, (Conditional)
Extended Latin, Latin Extended B, C and D. Those are actually quite far
apart within Unicode, and each of them can have a different setup: for
example, here you have a capital letter that is just alone, and here you have
a capital letter and a lowercase letter. So when you know the character you
want to use, sometimes you would find the uppercase letter but you’d have
to keep looking for the corresponding lowercase.
Basically when you have a character that you can’t find, people from the
mailing list or the forum can tell you if it would be relevant to include it
in Unicode or not. And if you’re very motivated, you can try to meet the
inclusion criterias. But for a proper inclusion, there has to be a formal
proposal using their template with questions to answer, you also have to
provide proof that the characters you want to add are actually used or how
they would be used.
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The criterias are quite complicated because you have to make sure that this is
not a glyphic variant (the same character but represented differently). Then
you also have to prove the character doesn’t already exist because sometimes
you just don’t know it’s a variant of another one; sometimes they just want
to make it easier and claim it’s a variant of another one even though you
don’t agree. For example, making sure it’s not just a ligature as sometimes
ligatures are used as a single character, sometimes they exist for aesthetic
reasons. Eventually you have to provide an actual font with the character so
that they can use it in their documentation.
How long does it take usually?
It depends as sometimes they accept it right away if you explain your request
properly and provide enough proof, but they often ask for revisions to the
proposals and then it can be rejected because it doesn’t meet the criterias.
Actually those criterias have changed a bit in the past. They started with
Basic Latin and then added special characters which were used: here for example is the international phonetic alphabet but also all the accented ones ...
As they were used in other encodings and that Unicode initially wanted to
be compatible with everything that already exists, they added them. Then
they figured they already had all those accented characters from other encodings so they’re also going to add all the ones they know are used even
though they were not encoded yet. They ended up with different names because they had different policies at the beginning instead of having the same
policy as now. They added here a bunch of Latin letters with marks that
were used for example in transcription. So if you’re transcribing Sanskrit for
example, you would use some of the characters here. Then at some point
they realized that this list of accented characters would get huge, and that
there must be a smarter way to do this. Therefore they figured you could
actually use just parts of those characters as they can be broken apart: a
base letter and marks you add to it. You may have a single character that
can be decomposed canonically between the letter B and a colon dot above,
and you have the character for the dot above in the block of the diacritical
marks. You have access to all the diacritical marks they thought were useful
at some point. At that point, when they realized they would end up having
thousands of accented characters they figured with this way where we can
have just any possibility, so from now on, they’re just going to say if you
want to have an accented character that hasn’t been encoded already, just
264
use the parts that can represent it. Then in 1996, some people for Yoruba,
a spoken language in Nigeria, made a proposal to add the characters with
diacritics they needed and Unicode just rejected the proposal as they could
compose those characters by combining existing parts.
Weren’t the elements they needed already in the toolbox?
Yes, the encoding parts are there, meaning it can be represented with
Unicode but the software didn’t handle them properly so it made more
sense to the Yoruba speakers to have it encoded it in Unicode.
So you could type, but you’d need to type two characters of course?
Yes, the way you type things is a big problem. Because most keyboards
are based on old encodings where you have accented characters as single
characters, so when you want to do a sequence of characters, you actually
have to type more, or you’d have to have a special keyboard layout allowing
you to have one key mapped to several characters. So that’s technically
feasible but it’s a slow process to have all the possibilities. You might have
one whic is very common so developers end up adding it to the keyboard
layouts or whatever applications they’re using, but not when other people
have different needs.
There is a lot of documentation within Unicode, but it’s quite hard to find
what you want when you’re just starting, and it’s quite technical. Most of it
is actually in a book they publish at every new version. This book has a few
chapters that describe how Unicode works and how characters should work
together, what properties they have. And all the differences between scripts
are relevant. They also have special cases trying to cater to those needs that
weren’t met or the proposals that were rejected. They have a few examples
in the Unicode book: in some transcription systems they have this sequence
of characters or ligature; a t and a s with a ligature tie and then a dot above.
So the ligature tie means that t and s are pronounced together and the dot
above is err ... has a different meaning (laughs). But it has a meaning! But
because of the way characters work in Unicode, applications actually reorder
it whatever you type in, it’s reordered so that the ligature tie ends up being
moved after the dot. So you always have this representation because you
have the t, there should be the dot, and then there should be the ligature tie
and then the s. So the t goes first, the dot goes above the t, the ligature tie
goes above everything and then the s just goes next to the t. The way they
265
explain how to do this is supposed to do the t, the ligature tie, and then a
special diacritical mark that prevents any kind of reordering, then you can
add the dot and then you can do the s. So this kind of use is great as you
have a solution, it’s just super hard because you have to type five characters
instead of ... well ... four (laughs). But still, most of the libraries that are
rendering fonts don’t handle it properly and then even most fonts don’t
plan for it. So even if the fonts did anyway the libraries wouldn’t handle it
properly. Then there are other things that Unicode does: because of that
separation between accents and characters and then the composition, you
can actually normalize how things are ordered. This sequence of characters
can be reordered into the pre-composed one with a circumflex or whatever;
you have combining marks in the normalized order. All these things have
to be handled in the libraries, in the application or in the fonts.
The documentation of Unicode itself is not prescriptive, meaning that the
shape of the glyphs are not set in stone. So you can still have room to
have the style you want, the style your target users want. For example
if we have different glyphs: Unicode has just one shape and it’s the font
designer’s choice to have different ones. Unicode is not about glyphs, it’s
really about how information is represented, how it’s displayed. Or you have
two characters displayed as a ligature: it is actually encoded as one character
because of previous encodings. But if ever it would be a new case, Unicode
wouldn’t stake the ligature as a single character.
266
So all this information is really in a corner there. It’s quite rare to find fonts
that actually use this information to provide to the needs of the people who
need specific features. One of the way to implement all those features is
with TrueType OpenType and there are also some alternatives like Graphite
which is a subset of a TrueType OpenType font. But then, you need your
applications to be able to handle Graphite. So eventually the real unique
standard is TrueType Opentype. It’s pretty well documented and very technical because it allows to do many things for many different writing systems.
But it’s slow to update so if there’s a mistake in the actual specifications of
OpenType, it takes a while before they correct it and before that correction shows up in your application. It’s quite flexible and one of the big
issue it that it has its own language code system, meaning that some identified languages just can’t be identified in OpenType. One of the features in
OpenType is managing language environment. If I’m using Polish, I’d want
this shape; if I’m using Navajo, I’d want this shape. That’s very cool because you can make just one font that’s used by Polish speakers and Navajo
speakers without them worrying about changing fonts as long as they specify the language they’re using. But you can’t use this feature for languages
which aren’t in the OpenType specifications as they have their own way of
describing languages than Unicode. It’s really frustrating because, you can
find all the characters in Unicode, not organized in a practical way: you have
to look all around the tables to find the characters that may be used by one
language, and then you have to look around for how to actually use them.
It is a real lack of awareness within the font designer community. Because
even when they might add all the characters you need, they might just not
add the positioning, so for example you have a ... when you combine with a
circumflex, it doesn’t position well because most of the font designers still
work with the old encoding mindset when you have one character for one
accentuated letter. Sometimes they just think that following the Unicode
blocks is good enough. But then you have problems where, as you can see
in the Basic Latin charts at the beginning, the capital is in one block and
its lowercase in a different block. And then they just work on one block,
they just don’t do the other one because they don’t think it’s necessary, but
yet, two blocks of the same letter are there, so it would make sense to have
both. It’s hard because there’s very few connections between the Unicode
world, people working on OpenType libraries, font designers and the actual
needs of the users.
267
At the beginning of the presentation you went for the code point of the characters,
all your characters are subtitled by their code points; it’s kind of the beauty of
Unicode to name everything, every character.
Those names are actually quite long. One funny thing about this. Unicode
has the policy of not changing the names of the characters, so they have an
errata where they realized that oh, we shouldn’t have named this that, so here’s
the actual name that makes sense, and the real name is wrong.
Pierre refers to the fact that in the character mappings that each of the glyphs
also has a description. And those are sometimes so abstract and poetic that
this was a start of a work from OSP, the Dingbats Liberation Fest, to try
to re-imagine what shapes would belong to those descriptions. So ‘combining
dot above’ that’s the textual description of the code point. But of course there
are thousands of them so they come up with the most fantastic gymnastics ...
So when people come in a project like DéjàVu, they have to understand
all that to start contributing. How does this training, teaching, learning
process takes place?
Usually most people are interested in what they know. They have a specific
need and they realize they can add it to DéjàVu, so they learn how to play
with FontForge. After a while, what they’ve done is good and we can use
it. Some people end up adding glyphs they’re not familiar with. For example we had Ben doing Arabic: it was mostly just drawing and then asking
for feedback on the mailing list; then we got some feedback, we changed
some things, eventually released it, getting more feedback (laughs) because
more people complained ... So it’s a lot of just drawing what you can from
resources you can find. It’s often based on other typefaces therefore sometimes you’re just copying mistakes from other typefaces ... So eventually it’s
just the feedback from the users that’s really helpful because you know that
people are using it, trying it, and then you know how to make it better.
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(Type) designer Pedro Amado is amongst many other things
initiator of TypeForge 1 , a website dedicated to the development
of ‘collaborative type’ with Open Source tools. While working
as design technician at FBAUP 2 , he is about to finish a MA
with a paper on collaborative methods for the creation of art
and design projects. When I e-mailed him in 2006 about open
font design and how he sees that developing, he responded with
a list of useful links, but also with:
Developing design teaching based on
Open Source is one of my goals, because
I think that is the future of education.
This text is based on the conversation about design, teaching
and software that followed.
You told me you are employed as ‘design technician’ ... what does that
mean?
It means that I provide assistance to teachers and students in the Design
Department. I implemented scanning/printing facilities for example, and
currently I develop and give workshops on Digital Technologies – software
is a BIG issue for me right now! Linux and Open Source software are slowly
entering the design spaces of our school. For me it has been a ‘battle’ to
find space for these tools. I mean – we could migrate completely to OSS
tools, but it’s a slow progress. Mainly because people (students) need (and
want) to be trained in the same commercial applications as the ones they
will encounter in their professional life.
How did Linux enter the design lab? How did that start?
It started with a personal curiosity, but also for economical reasons. Our
school can’t afford to acquire all the software licenses we’d like. For example, we can’t justify to pay approx. 100 x 10 licenses, just to implement
1
2
http://www.typeforge.net/
http://www.fba.up.pt/
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the educational version of Fontlab on some of our computers; especially because this package is only used by a part of our second year design students.
You can image what the total budget will be with all the other needs ... I
personally believe that we can find everything we need on the web. It’s a
matter of searching long enough! So this is how I was very happy to find
Fontforge. An Open Source tool that is solid enough to use in education
and can produce (as far as I have been able to test) almost professional results in font development. At first I couldn’t grasp how to use it under X 3
on Windows, so one day I set out to try and do it on Linux ... and one thing
lead to another ...
What got you into using OSS? Was it all one thing leading to another?
Uau ... can’t remember ... I believe it had to do with my first experiences
online; I don’t think I knew the concept before 2000. I mean I’ve started
using the web (IRC and basic browsing) in 1999, but I think it had to do
with the search of newer and better tools ...
I think I also started to get into it around that time. But I think I was
more interested in copyleft though, than in software.
Oh ... (blush) not me ... I got into it definitely for the ‘free beer’ aspect!
By 2004 I started using DTP applications on Linux (still in my own time)
and began to think that these tools could be used in an educational context,
if not professionally. In the beginning of 2006 I presented a study to the
coordinator of the Design Department at FBAUP, in which I proposed to
start implementing Open Source tools as an alternative to the tools we were
missing. Blender for 3D animation, FontForge for type design, Processing
for interactive/graphic programming and others as a complement to proprietary packages: GIMP, Scribus and Inkscape to name the most important
ones. I ran into some technical problems that I hope will be sorted out
soon; one of the strategies is to run these software packages on a migration
basis – as the older computers in our lab won’t be able to run MacOS 10.4+,
we’ll start converting them to Linux.
3
Cygwin/X is a port of the X Window System to the Cygwin API layer for the Microsoft
Windows family of operating systems
Cygwin/x: X windows – on windows! http://x.cygwin.com/, 2014. [Online; accessed 5.8.2014]
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I wanted to ask you about the relation between software and design.
To me, economy, working process, but also aesthetics are a product of
software, and at the same time software itself is shaped through use. I
think the borders between software and design are not so strictly drawn.
It’s funny you put things in that perspective. I couldn’t agree more.
Nevertheless I think that design thinking prevails (or it should) as it must
come first when approaching problems. If the design thinking is correct,
the tools used should be irrelevant. I say ‘should’ because in a perfect environment we could work within a team where all tools (software/hardware)
are mastered. Rarely this happens, so much of our design thinking is still
influenced by what we can actually produce.
Do you mean to say that what we can think is influenced by what we
can make? This would work for me! But often when tools are mastered,
they disappear in the background and in my opinion that can become a
problem.
I’m not sure if I follow your point. I agree with the border between design
and software is not so strict nevertheless, I don’t agree with economy, process
and aesthetics are a product of software. As you’ve come to say what we think
is influenced by what we can make ... this is an outside observation ...
A technique is produced inside a culture,
therefore one s society is conditioned by
it s techniques. Conditioned, not determined 4
Design, like economics and software, is a product of culture. Or is it
the other way around? The fact is that we can’t really tell what comes first.
Culture is defined by and defines technology. Therefore it’s more or less
simple to accept that software determines (and is determined) by it’s use.
This is an intricate process ... it kind of goes roundabout on itself ...
4
Pierre Lévy. Cyberculture (Electronic Mediations). University Of Minnesota Press, 2001
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And where does design fit in in your opinion? Or more precisely:
designers?
Design is a cultural aspect. Therefore it does not escape this logic. Using
a practical standpoint: Design is a product of economics and technology.
Nevertheless the best design practices (or at least the one’s that have endured
the test of time) and the most renowned designers are the one’s that can
escape the the economic and technological boundaries. The best design
practices are the ones that are not products of economics and technology
... they are kind of approaching a universal design status (if one exists). Of
course ... it’s very theoretical, and optimistic ... but it should be like this ...
otherwise we’ll stop looking for better or newer solutions, and we’ll stop
pushing boundaries and design as technology and other areas will stagnate.
On the other hand, there is a special ‘school’ of thought manifested through
some of the Portuguese Design Association members, saying that the design
process should lead the process of technological development. Henrique
Cayate (I think it was in November last year) said that design should lead the
way to economy and technology in society. I think this is a bit far fetched ...
Do you think software defines form and/or content? How is software
related to design processes?
I think these are the essential questions related to the use of OSS. Can
we think about what we can make without thinking about process? I believe
that in design processes, as in design teaching, concepts should be separated
from techniques or software as much as possible.
To me, exactly because techniques and software are intertwined, software matters and should offer space for thinking (software should therefore not be separated from design). You could also say: design becomes
exceptionally strong when it makes use of its context, and responds to it
in an intelligent way. Or maybe I did not understand what you meant by
being ‘a product of ’. To me that is not necessarily a negative point.
Well ... yes ... that could be a definition of good design, I guess. I think
that as a cultural produce, techniques can’t determine society. It can and
will influence it, but at the same time it will also just happen. When we talk
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about Design and Software I see the same principle reflected. Design being
the ‘culture’ or society and software being the tools or techniques that are
developed to be used by designers. So this is much the same as Which came
first? The chicken, or the egg? Looking at it from a designers (not a software
developers) point of view, the tools we use will always condition our output.
Nevertheless I think it’s our role as users to push tools further and let developers know what we want to do with them. Whether we do animation on
Photoshop, or print graphics on Flash that’s our responsibility. We have to
use our tools in a responsible way. Knowing that the use we make of them
will eventually come back at us. It’s a kind of responsible feedback.
Using Linux in a design environment is not an obvious choice. Most
designers are practically married to their Adobe Suite. How come it is
entering your school after all?
Very slowly! Linux is finally becoming valuable for Design/DTP area as
it has been for long on the Internet/Web and programming areas. But you
can’t expect GIMP to surpass Photoshop. At least not in the next few years.
And this is the reality. If we can, we must train our students to use the
best tools available. Ideally all tools available, so they won’t have problems
when faced with a tool professionally. The big question is still, how we
besides teaching students theory and design processes (with the help of free
tools), help them to become professionals. We also have to teach them
how to survive a professional relationship with professional tools like the
Adobe Suite. As I am certain that Linux and OSS (or F/LOSS) will be
part of education’s future, I am certain of it’s coexistence along side with
commercial software like Adobe’s. It’s only a matter of time. Being certain
of this, the essential question is: How will we manage to work parallel in
both commercial and free worlds?
Do you think it is at all possible to ‘survive’ on other tools than the
ones Adobe offers?
Well ... I seem not to be able to dedicate myself entirely to these new
tools ... To depend solely on OSS tools ... I think that is not possible, at
least not at this moment. But now is the time to take these OSS tools
and start to teach with them. They must be implemented in our schools.
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I am certain that sooner or later this will be common practice throughout
European schools.
Can you explain a bit more, what you mean by ‘real world’?
Being a professional graphic designer is what we call the ‘real world’ in
our school. I mean, having to work full time doing illustration, corporate
identity, graphic design, etc., to make a living, deliver on time to clients and
make a profit to pay the bills by the end of the month!
Do you think OSS can/should be taught differently? It seems selfteaching is built in to these tools and the community around it. It means
you learn to teach others in fact ... that you actually have to leave the
concept of ‘mastering’ behind?
I agree. The great thing about Linux is precisely that – as it is developed
by users and for users – it is developing a sense of community around it, a
sense of given enough eyeballs, someone will figure it out.
Well, that does not always work, but most of the time ...
I believe that using Open Source tools is perfect to teach, especially
first year students. Almost no one really understands what the commands
behind the menus of Photoshop mean, at least not the people I’ve seen in
my workshops. I guess GIMP won’t resolve this matter, but it will help
them think about what they are doing to digital images. Especially when
they have to use unfamiliar software. You first have to teach the design
process and then the tool can be taught correctly, otherwise you’ll just be
teaching habits or tricks. As I said before, as long as design prevails and not
the tool/technique, and you teach the concepts behind the tools in the right
way, people will adapt seamlessly to new tools, and the interface will become
invisible!
Do you think this means you will need to restructure the curriculum?
I imagine a class in bugreporting ... or getting help online ...
mmhh ... that could be interesting. I’ve never thought about it in that
way. I’ve always seen bugreporting and other community driven activities
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as part of the individual aspect of working with these tools ... but basically
you are suggesting to implement an ‘Open Source civic behavior class’ or
something like that?
Ehm ... Yes! I think you need to learn that you own your tools, meaning
you need to take care of them (ie: if something does not work, report)
but at the same time you can open them up and get under the hood ...
change something small or something big. You also need to learn that
you can expect to get help from other people than your tutor ... and that
you can teach someone else.
The aspect of taking responsibility, this has to be cultivated – a responsible use of these tools. About changing things under the hood ... well this I
think it will be more difficult. I think there is barely space to educate people to hack their own tools let alone getting under the hood and modifying
them. But you are right that under the OSS communication model, the
peer review model of analysis, communication is getting less and less hierarchical. You don’t have to be an expert to develop new or powerful tools or
other things ... A peer-review model assumes that you just need to be clever
and willing to work with others. As long as you treat your collaborators
as peers, whether or not they are more or less advanced than you, this will
motivate them to work harder. You should not disregard their suggestions
and reward them with the implementations (or critics) of their work.
How does that model become a reality in teaching? How can you
practice this?
Well ... for example use public communication/distribution platforms
(like an expanded web forum) inside school, or available on the Internet;
blog updates and suggestions constantly; keep a repository of files; encourage the use of real time communication technologies ... as you might have
noticed is almost the formula used in e-learning solutions.
And also often an argument for cutting down on teaching hours.
That actually is and isn’t true. You can and will (almost certainly) have
less and less traditional classes, but if the teachers and tutors are dedicated,
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they will be more available than ever! This will mean that students and
teachers will be working together in a more informal relationship. But it
can also provoke an invasion of the personal space of teachers ...
It is hard to put a border when you are that much involved. I am
just thinking how you could use the community around Open Source
software to help out. I mean ... if the online teaching tools would be
open to others outside the school too, this would be the advantage. It
would also mean that as a school, you contribute to the public domain
with your classes and courses.
That is another question. I think schools should contribute to public
domain knowledge. Right now I am not sharing any of the knowledge
about implementing OSS on a school like ours with the community. But
if all goes well I’ll have this working by December 2006. I’m working on
a website where I can post the handbooks for workshops and other useful
resources.
I am really curious about your experiences. However convinced I am
of the necessity to do it, I don’t think it is easy to open education up to
the public, especially not for undergraduate education.
I do have my doubts too. If you look at it on a commercial perspective,
students are paying for their education ... should we share the same content
to everyone? Will other people explore these resources in a wrong way?
Will it really contribute to the rest of the community? What about profit?
Can we afford to give this knowledge away for free, I mean, as a school this
is almost our only source of income? Will the prestige gained, be worth
the possible loss? These are important questions that I need to think more
about.
OK, I will be back with you in 6 month to find out more! My last question ... why would you invest time and energy in OSS when you think
good designers should escape economical and technological boundaries?
If we invest energy on OSS tools now, we’ll have the advantage of already
being savvy by the time they become widely accepted. The worst case scenario would be that you’ve wasted time perfecting your skills or learned a
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new tool that didn’t become a standard ... How many times have we done
this already in our life? In any way, we need to learn concepts behind
the tools, learn new and different tools, even unnecessary ones in order to
broaden our knowledge base – this will eventually help us think ‘out of the
box’ and hopefully push boundaries further [not so much as escaping them].
For me OSS and its movement have reached a maturity level that can prove
it’s own worth in society. Just see Firefox – when it reached general user
acceptance level (aka ‘project maturity’ or ‘development state’), they started
to compete directly with MS Internet Explorer. This will happen with the
rest (at least that’s what I believe). It’s a matter of quality and doing the
correct broadcast to the general public. Linux started almost as a personal
project and now it’s a powerhouse in programming or web environments.
Maybe because these are areas that require constant software and hardware
attention it became an obvious and successful choice. People just modified it
as they needed it done. Couldn’t this be done as effectively (or better) with
commercial solutions? Of course. But could people develop personalized
solutions to specific problems in their own time frame? Probably not ... But
it means that the people involved are, or can resource to, computer experts.
What about the application of these ideas to other areas? The justice department of the Portuguese government (Ministério da Justiça) is for example
currently undergoing a massive informatics (as in the tools used) change –
they are slowly migrating their working platform to an Open Source Linux
distribution – Caixa Mágica (although it’s maintained and given assistance
by a commercial enterprise by the same name). By doing this, they’ll cut
costs dramatically and will still be able to work with equivalent productivity
(one hopes: better!). The other example is well known. The Spanish region of Estremadura looked for a way to cut costs on the implementation
of information technologies in their school system and developed their own
Linux Distro called Linex – it aggregates the software bundle they need,
and best of all has been developed and constantly tweaked by them. Now
Linux is becoming more accessible for users without technical training, and
is in a WYSIWYG state of development, I really believe we should start
using it seriously so we can try and test it and learn how we can use in in
our everyday life (for me this process has already started ... ). People aren’t
stupid. They’re just ‘change resistant’. One of the aspects I think that will
get peoples’ attention will be that a ‘free beer’ is as good as a commercial
one.
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August 2006. One of the original co-conspirators of the
OSP adventure is the Brussels graphiste going under the
name Harrisson. His interest in Open Source software
flows with the culture of exchange that keeps the offcentre music scene alive, as well as with the humanist
tradition persistingly present in contemporary typography. Harrisson’s visual frame of reference is eclectic and
vibrant, including modernist giants, vernacular design,
local typographic culture, classic painting, drawing and
graffiti. Too much food for one conversation.
FS
H
FS
H
FS
H
You could say that ‘A typeface is entirely derivative’, but others argue, that maybe
the alphabet is, but not the interpretations of it.
The main point of typography and ownership today is that there is a blurred
border between language and letters. So: now you can own the ‘shape’ of
a letter. Traditionally, the way typographers made a living was by buying
(more or less expensive) lead fonts, and with this tool they printed books
and got paid for that. They got paid for the typesetting, not for the type.
That was the work of the foundries. Today, thanks to the digital tools, you
can easily switch between type design, type setting and graphic design.
What about the idea that fonts might be the most ‘pirated’ digital object possible?
Copying is much more difficult when you’ve got lead type to handle!
Yes, digitalisation changed the rules. Just as .mp3 changed the philosophy
of music. But in typography, there is a strange confrontation between this
flux of copied information, piracy and old rules of ownership from the past.
Do you think the culture of sharing fonts changed? Or: the culture of distributing
them? If you look at most licences for fonts, they are extremely restrictive. Even
99% of free fonts do not allow derivative works.
The public good culture is paradoxically not often there. Or at least the
economical model of living with public good idea is not very developed.
While I think typography, historically, is always seen as a way to share
knowledge. Humanist stuff.
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The art and craft of typeface design is
currently headed for extinction due to the
illegal proliferation of font software,
piracy, and general disregard for proper
licensing etiquette. 1
H
FS
H
FS
Emigré ... Did they not live
from the copyrights of fonts?!
You are right.
They are
like a commercial record company. Can you imagine what
would happen if you would
open up the typographic trade
– to ‘Open Source’ this economy? Stop chasing piracy and
allow users to embed, study,
copy, modify and redistribute
typefaces?
Well we are not that far from
this in fact. Every designer
has at least 500 fonts on their
computer, not licenced, but
copied because it would be impossible to pay for!
Even the distribution model of fonts is very peer-to-peer as well. The reality
might come close, but font licences tell a different story.
I believe that we live in an era where
anything that can be expressed as bits
will be. I believe that bits exist to
be copied. Therefore, I believe that any
business-model that depends on your bits
not being copied is just dumb, and that
lawmakers who try to prop these up are like
governments that sink fortunes into protecting people who insist on living on the
sides of active volcanoes. 2
1
2
http://redesign.emigre.com/FAQ.php
Cory Doctorow in http://craphound.com/bio.php
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H
FS
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FS
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FS
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FS
I am not saying all fonts should be open, but it is just that it would be interesting
when type designers were testing and experimenting with other ways of developing
and distributing type, with another economy.
Yes, but fonts have a much more reduced user community than music or
bookpublishing, so old rules stay.
Is that it? I am surprised to see that almost all typographers and foundries take the
‘piracy is a crime’ side on this issue. While typographers are early and enthusiastic
adopters of computer technology, they have not taken much from the collaborative
culture that came with it.
This is the ‘tradition’ typography inherited. Typography was one of the
first laboratories for fractioning work for efficiency. It was one of the first
modern industries, and has developed a really deep culture where it is not
easy to set doubts in. 500 years of tradition and only 20 years of computers.
The complexity comes from the fact it is influenced by a multiple series of
elements, from history and tradition to the latest technologies. But it is
always related to an economic production system, so property and ‘secretsof-the-trade’ have a big influence on it.
I think it is important to remember how the current culture of (not) sharing fonts
is linked to its history. But books have been made for quite a while too.
Open Source systems may be not so much influencing distribution, licences
and economic models in typography, but can set original questions to this
problematic of digital type. Old tools and histories are not reliable anymore.
Yes. with networked software it is rather obvious that it is useful to work together.
I try to understand how this works with respect to making a font. Would that
work?
Collaborative type is extremely important now, I think. The globalisation of
computer systems sets the language of typography in a new dimension. We
use computers in Belgium and in China. Same hardware. But language is
the problem! A French typographer might not be the best person to define
a Vietnamese font. Collaborativity is necessary! Pierre Huyghebaert told me
he once designed an Arabic font when he was in Lebanon. For him, the
font was legible, but nobody there was able to read it.
But how would you collaborate than? I mean ... what would be the reason for
a French typographer to collaborate with one from China? What would that
bring? I’m imagining some kind of hybrid result ... kind of interesting.
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H
FS
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FS
H
Again, sharing. We all have the idea that English is the modern Latin,
and if we are not careful the future of computers will result in a language
reductionism.
What interest me in Open Source, is the potential for ‘biodiversity’.
I partially agree, and the Open Source idea contradicts the reductionist
approach by giving more importance to local knowledge. A collaboration
between an Arabic typographer and a French one can be to work on tools
that allow both languages to co-exist. LaTeX permits that, for example.
Not QuarkXpress!
Where does your interest in typography actually come from?
I think I first looked at comic books, and then started doodling in the
margins of schoolbooks. As a teenager, I used to reproduce film titles such
as Aliens, Terminator or other sci-fi high-octane typographic titles.
Basically, I’m a forger! In writing, you need to copy to understand. Thats an
old necessity. If you use a typeface, you express something. You’re putting
drawings of letters next to each other to compose a word/text. A drawing
is always emotionally charged, which gives color (or taste) to the message.
You need to know what’s inside a font to know what it expresses.
FS
H
How do you find out what’s inside?
By reproducing letters, and using them. A Gill Sans does not have the same
emotional load as a Bodoni. To understand a font is complicated, because
it refers to almost every field in culture. The banners behind G.W. Bush
communicate more than just ‘Mission Accomplished’. Typefaces carry a
‘meta language’.
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FS
H
FS
H
It is truly embedded content
Exactly! It is still very difficult to bridge the gap between personal emotions
and programming a font. Moreover, there are different approaches, from
stroke design to software that generates fonts. And typography is standardisation. The first digital fonts are drawn fixed shapes, letter by letter,
‘outstrokes’. But there is another approach where the letters are traced by
the computer. It needs software to be generated. In Autocad, letters are
‘innerstroke’ that can vary of weight. Letterrors’ Beowolf 3 is also an example of that kind of approach. interesting way to work, but the font depends
on the platform it goes with. Beowolf only works on OS9. It also set the
question of copyright very far. It’s a case study in itself.
So it means, the font is software in fact?
Yes, but the interdependence between font
and operating systems is very strong, contrary to a fixed format such as TrueType.
For printed matter, this is much more
complicated to achieve. There are inbetween formats, such as Multiple Master
Technology for example. It basically
means, that you have 2 shapes for 1 glyph,
and you can set an ‘alternative’ shape between the 2 shapes. At Adobe they still do
not understand why it was (and still is) a
failure ...
3
Beowolf by Just van Rossum and Erik van Blokland (1989)
Instead of recreating a fixed outline or bitmap, the Randomfont redefines its outlines every
time they are called for. http://letterror.com/writing/is-best-really-better
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The Metapolator Uinverse by Simon Egli (2014)
FS
H
FS
I really like this idea ... to have more than one master. Imagine you own one
master and I own the other and than we adjust and tweak from different sides.
That would be real collaborative type! Could ‘multiple’ mean more than one you
think?
It is a bit more complicated than drawing a simple font in Fontographer or
Fontforge. Pierre told me that the MM feature is still available in Adobe
Illustrator, but that it is used very seldomly. Multiple Master fonts are also
a bit complicated to use. I think there were a lot of bugs first, and then you
need to be a skilled designer to give these fonts a nice render. I never heard
of an alternative use of it, with drawing or so. In the end it was probably
never a success because of the software dependency.
While I always thought of fonts as extremely cross media. Do you remember which
classic font was basically the average between many well-known fonts? Frutiger?
292
H
FS
H
FS
Fonts are Culture Capsules! It was Adrian Frutiger. But he wasn’t the only
one to try ... It was a research for the Univers font I think. Here again we
meet this paradox of typography: a standardisation of language generating
cultural complexity.
Univers. That makes sense. Amazing to see those examples
together. It seems digital typography got stuck at some
point, and I think some of the ideas and practices that are
current in Open Source could help break out of it.
Yes of course. And it is almost virgin space.
In 2003 the Danish government released ‘Union’, a
font that could be freely used for publications concerning
Danish culture. I find this an intrigueing idea, that a font
could be seen as some kind of ‘public good’.
Univers by Adrian Frutiger (1954)
Union by Morten Rostgaard Olsen (2003)
H
FS
H
I am convinced that knowledge needs to be open ...
(speaking as the son of a teacher here!). One medium
for knowledge is language and its atoms are letters.
But if information wants to be free, does that mean that
design needs to be free too? Is there information possible
without design?
This is why I like books. Because it’s a mix between
information and beauty – or can be. Pfff, there is nothing without design
... It is like is there something without language, no?
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One of the things that is notable about
OSP is that the problems that you encounter
are also described, appearing on your blog.
This is something unusual for a company attempting to produce the impression of an
efficient solution . Obviously the readers
of the blog only get a formatted version
of this, as a performed work? What s the
thinking here?"
This interview about the practice of OSP was carried out by
e-mail between March and May 2008. Matthew Fuller writes
about software culture and has a contagious interest in technologies that exceed easy fit solutions. At the time, he was
David Gee reader in Digital Media at the Centre for Cultural
Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London, and had
just edited Software Studies, A Lexicon, 1 and written Media
Ecologies: Materialist Energies in Art and Technoculture 2 and
Behind the Blip: Essays on the Culture of Software. 3
OSP is a graphic design agency working solely with Open Source software. This
surely places you currently as a world first, but what exactly does it mean in
practice? Let’s start with what software you use?
There are other groups publishing with Free Software, but design collectives
are surprisingly rare. So much publishing is going on around Open Source
and Open Content ... someone must have had the same idea? In discussions
about digital tools you begin to find designers expressing concern over the
fact that their work might all look the same because they use exactly the
same Adobe suite and as a way to differentiate yourself, Free Software could
soon become more popular. I think the success of Processing is related
to that, though I doubt such a composed project will ever make anyone
seriously consider Scribus for page layout, even if Processing is Open Source.
1
2
3
Matthew Fuller. Software Studies: A Lexicon. The MIT Press, 2008
Matthew Fuller. Media Ecologies: Materialist Energies in Art and Technoculture.
The MIT Press, 2007
Matthew Fuller. Behind the Blip: Essays on the culture of software. Autonomedia, 2003
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OSP usually works between GIMP, 4 Scribus 5 and Inkscape 6 on Linux distributions and OSX. We are fans of FontForge, 7 and enjoy using all kinds
of commandline tools, psnup, ps2pdf and uniq to name a few.
How does the use of this software change the way you work, do you see some
possibilities for new ways of doing graphic design opening up?
For many reasons, software has become much more present in our work; at
any moment in the workflow it makes itself heard. As a result we feel a bit
less sure of ourselves, and we have certainly become slower. We decided to
make the whole process into some kind of design/life experiment and that
is one way to keep figuring out how to convert a file, or yet another discussion with a printer about which ‘standard’ to use, interesting for ourselves.
Performing our practice is as much part of the project as the actual books,
posters, flyers etc. we produce.
One way a shift of tools can open up new ways of doing graphic design, is
because it makes you immediately aware of the ‘resistance’ of digital material. At the point we can’t make things work, we start to consider formats,
standards and other limitations as ingredients for creative work. We are
quite excited for example about exploring dynamic design for print in SVG,
a by-product of our battle with converting files from Scalable Vector Format
into Portable Document Format.
Free Software allows you to engage on many levels with the technologies
and processes around graphic design. When you work through it’s various
interfaces, stringing tools together, circumventing bugs and/or gaps in your
own knowledge, you understand there is more to be done than contributing
code in C++. It is an invitation to question assumptions of utility, standards
and usability. This is exactly the stuff design is made of.
Following this, what kind of team have you built up, and what new competencies
have you had to develop?
The core of OSP is five people 8 , and between us we mix amongst others typography, layout, cartography, webdesign, software development, drawing,
4
5
6
7
8
image manipulation
page layout
vector editing
font editor
Pierre Huyghebaert, Harrisson, Yi Jiang, Nicolas Malevé and me
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programming, open content licensing and teaching. Around it is a larger
group of designers, a mathematician, a computer scientists and several Free
Software coders that we regularly exchange ideas with.
It feels we often do more unlearning than learning; a necessary and interesting skill to develop is dealing with incompetence – what can it be else than
a loss of control? In the mean time we expand our vocabulary so we can fuel
conversations (imaginary and real life) with people behind GIMP, Inkscape,
Scribus etc.; we learn how to navigate our computers using commandline
interfaces as well as KDE, GNOME and others; we find out about file formats and how they sometimes can and often cannot speak to each other;
how to write manuals and interact with mailing lists. The real challenge is
to invent situations that subvert strict divisions of labour while leaving space
for the kind of knowledge that comes with practice and experience.
Open fonts seem to be the beginnings of a big success, how does it fit into the
working practices of typographers or the material with which they work?
Type design is an extraordinary area where Free Software and design naturally meet. I guess this area of work is what kernel coding is for a Linux
developer: only a few people actually make fonts but many people use them
all the time. Software companies have been inconsistent in developing proprietary tools for editing fonts, which has made the work of typographers
painfully difficult at times. This is why George Williams decided to develop
FontForge, and release it under a BSD license: even if he stops being interested, others can take over. FontForge has gathered a small group of fans
who through this tool, stay into contact with a more generous approach to
software, characters and typefaces.
The actual material of a typeface has since long migrated from poisonous
lead into sets of ultra light vector drawings, held together in complicated
kerning systems. When you take this software-like aspect as a startingpoint,
many ways to collaborate (between programmers and typographers; between
people speaking different languages) open up, as long as you let go of the
uptight licensing policies that apply to most commercial fonts. I guess the
image of the solitary master passing on the secret trade to his devoted pupils
does not sit very well with the invitation to anyone to run, copy, distribute,
study, change and improve. How open fonts could turn the patriarchal guild
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system inside out that has been carefully preserved in the closed world of
type design, is obviously of interest as well.
Very concretely, computer-users really need larger character sets that allow
for communication between let’s say Greek, Russian, Slovak and French.
These kinds of vast projects are so much easier to develop and maintain in
a Free Software way; the DéJàVu font project shows that it is possible to
work with many people spread over different countries modifying the same
set of files with the help of versioning systems like CVS.
But what it all comes down to probably ... Donald Knuth is the only person
I have seen both Free Software developers and designers wear on their Tshirts.
The cultures around each of the pieces of software are quite distinct. People
often lump all F/LOSS development into one kind of category, whereas even in
the larger GNU/Linux distros there is quite a degree of variation, but with the
smaller more specialised projects this is perhaps even more the case. How would
you characterise the scenes around each of these applications?
The kinds of applications we use form a category in themselves. They are
indeed small projects so ‘scene’ fits them better than ‘culture’. Graphics
tools differ from archetypal Unix/Linux code and language based projects
in that Graphical User Interfaces obviously matter and because they are used
in a specialised context outside its own developers circle. This is interesting because it makes F/LOSS developer communities connect with other
disciplines (or scenes?) such as design, printing and photography.
A great pleasure in working with F/LOSS is to experience how software
can be done in many ways; each of the applications we work with is alive
and particular. I’ll just portray Scribus and Inkscape here because from the
differences between these two I think you can imagine what else is out there.
The Scribus team is rooted in the printing and pre-press world and naturally
their first concern is to create an application that produces reliable output.
Any problem you might run in to at a print shop will be responded to
immediately, even late night if necessary. Members of the Scribus team are
a few years older than average developers and this can be perceived through
the correct and friendly atmosphere on their mailing list and IRC channel,
and their long term loyalty to this complex project. Following its more
industrial perspective, the imagined design workflow built in to the tool is
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linear. To us it feels almost pre-digital: tasks and responsibilities between
editors, typesetters and designers are clearly defined and lined up. In this
view on design, creative decisions are made outside the application, and the
canvas is only necessary for emergency corrections. Unfortunately for us,
who live of testing and trying, Scribus’ GUI is a relatively underdeveloped
area of a project that otherwise has matured quickly.
Inkscape is a fork of a fork of a small tool initially designed to edit vector
files in SVG format. It stayed close to its initial starting point and is in a way
a much more straightforward project than Scribus. Main developer Bryce
Harrington describes Inkscape as a relatively unstructured coming and going
of high energy collective work much work is done through a larger group of
people submitting small patches and it’s developers community is not very
tightly knit. Centered around a legible XML format primarily designed
for the web, Inkscape users quickly understand the potential of scripting
images and you can find a vibrant plug in culture even if the Inkscape code
is less clean to work with than you might expect. Related to this interest
in networked visuals, is the involvement of Inkscape developers in the Open
Clip Art project and ccHost, a repository system wich allows you to upload
images, sounds and other files directly from your application. It is also no
surprise that Inkscape implemented a proper print dialogue only very late,
and still has no way to handle CMYK output.
There’s a lot of talk about collaboration in F/LOSS development, something
very impressive, but often when one talks to developers of such software there is
a lot to discuss about the rather less open ways in which power struggles over the
meaning or leadership of software projects are carried out by, for instance, hiding
code in development, or by only allowing very narrowly technical approaches to
development to be discussed. This is only one tendency, but one which tends to
remain publicly under-discussed. How much of this kind of friction have you
encountered by acting as a visible part of a new user community for F/LOSS?
I can’t say we feel completely at home in the F/LOSS world, but we have not
encountered any extraordinary forms of friction yet. We have been allowed
the space to try our own strategies at overcoming the user-developer divide:
people granted interviews, accepted us when we invited ourselves to speak
at conferences and listened to our stories. But it still feels a bit awkward,
and I sometimes wonder whether we ever will be able to do enough. Does
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constructive critique count as a contribution, even when it is not delivered
in the form of a bug report? Can we please get rid of the term ‘end-user’?
Most discussions around software are kept strictly technical, even when
there are many non-technical issues at stake. We are F/LOSS enthusiasts
because it potentially pulls the applications we use into some form of public
space where they can be examined, re-done and taken apart if necessary; we
are curious about how they are made because of what they (can) make you
do. When we asked Andreas Vox, a main Scribus developer whether he saw
a relation between the tool he contributed code to, and the things that were
produced by it, he answered: Preferences for work tools and political preference
are really orthogonal. This is understandable from a project-management
point of view, but it makes you wonder where else such a debate should take
place.
The fact that compared to proprietary software projects, only a very small
number of women is involved in F/LOSS makes apparent how openness
and freedom are not simple terms to put in practice. When asked whether
gender matters, the habitual answer is that opportunities are equal and from
that point a constructive discussion is difficult. There are no easy solutions,
but the lack of diversity needs to be put on the roadmap somehow, or as a
friend asked: Where do I file a meta-bug?
Visually, or in terms of the aesthetic qualities of the designs you have developed
would you say you have managed to achieve anything unavailable through the
output of the Adobe empire?
The members of OSP would never have come up with the idea to combine
their aesthetics and skills using Adobe, so that makes it difficult to do a
‘before’ and ‘after’ comparison. Or maybe we should call this an achievement
of Free Software too?
Using F/LOSS has made us reconsider the way we work and sometimes this
is visible in the design we produce, more often in the commissions we take
on or the projects we invest in. Generative work has become part of our
creative suite and this certainly looks different than a per-page treatment;
also deliberate traces of the production process (including printing and prepress) add another layer to what we make.
Of all smaller and larger discoveries, the Spiro toolkit that Free Software
activist, Ghostscript maintainer, typophile and Quaker Raph Levien devel302
ops, must be the most wonderful. We had taken Bézier curves for granted,
and never imagined how the way it is mathematically defined would matter
that much. Instead of working with fixed anchor points and starting from
straight lines that you first need to bend, Spiro is spiral-based and vectors
suddenly have a sensational flow and weight. From Pierre Bézier writing his
specification as an engineer for the Renault car factory to Levien’s Spiro,
digital drawing has changed radically.
You have a major signage project coming up, how does this commission map across
to the ethics and technologies of F/LOSS?
We are right in the middle of it. At this moment ‘The Pavilion of Provisionary
Happiness’ celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Belgian World Exhibition,
is being constructed out of 30.000 beer crates right under the Brussels’
Atomium. That’s a major project done the Belgian way.
We have developed a signage system, or actually a typeface, which is defined
through the strange material and construction work going on on site. We
use holes in the facade that are in fact handles of beer crates as connector
points to create a modular font that is somewhere between Pixacao graffiti
and Cuneiform script. It is actually a play on our long fascination with
engineered typefaces such as DIN 1451; mixing universal application with
specific materials, styles and uses – this all links back to our interest in Free
Software.
Besides producing the signage, OSP will co-edit and distribute a modest
publication documenting the whole process; it makes legible how this temporary yellow cathedral came about. And the font will of course be released
in the public domain.
It is not an easy project but I don’t know how much of it has to do with
our software politics; our commissioners do not really care and also we have
kept the production process quite simple on purpose. But by opening our
sources, we can use the platform we are given in a more productive way; it
makes us less dependent because the work will have another life long after
the deadline has passed.
On this project, and in relation to the seeming omnipresence in F/LOSS of the
idea that this technology is ‘universal’, how do you see that in relation to fonts,
and their longer history of standards?
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That is indeed a long story, but I’ll give it a try. First of all, I think the idea
of universal technology appears to be quite omnipresent everywhere; the
mix-up between ubiquitousness and ‘universality’ is quickly made. In Free
Software this idea gains force only when it gets (con)fused with freedom
and openness and when conditions for access are kept out of the discussion.
We are interested in early typographic standardization projects because their
minimalist modularity brings out the tension between generic systems and
specific designs. Ludwig Goller, a Siemens engineer wo headed the Committee
for German Industry Standards in the 1920s stated that For the typefaces of
the future neither tools nor fashion will be decisive. His committee supervised
the development of DIN 1451, a standard font that should connect economy of use with legibility, and enhance global communication in service of
the German industry. I think it is no surprise that a similar phrasing can be
found in W3C documents; the idea to unify the people of the world through
a common language re-surfaces and has the same tendency to negate materiality and specificity in favour of seamless translation between media and
markets.
Type historian Ellen Lupton brought up the possibility of designing typographic systems that are accessible but not finite nor operating within a
fixed set of parameters. Although I don’t know what she means by using the
term ‘open universal’, I think this is why we are attracted to Free Software:
it has the potential to open up both the design of parameters as well as their
application. Which leads to your next question.
You mentioned the use of generative design just now. How far do you go into
this? Within the generative design field there seem to be a couple of tendencies, one
that is very pragmatic, simply about exploring a space of possible designs through
parametric definition in order to find, select and breed from and tweak a good
result that would not be necessarily imaginable otherwise, the other being more
about the inefible nature of the generative process itself, something vitalist. These
tendencies of not of course exclusive, but how are they inflected or challenged in
your use of generative techniques?
I feel a bit on thin ice here because we only start to explore the area and we
are certainly not deep into algorithmic design. But on a more mundane level
... in the move from print to design for the web, ‘grids’ have been replaced by
‘templates’ that interact with content and context through filters. Designers
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have always been busy with designing systems and formats, 9 but stepped in
to manipulate singular results if necessary.
I referred to ‘generative design’ as the space opening up when you play
with rules and their affordances. The liveliness and specificity of the work
results from various parameters interfering with each other, including the
ones we can get our hands on. By making our own manipulations explicit,
we sometimes manage to make other parameters at play visible too. Because
at the end of the day, we are rather bored by mysterious beauty.
One of the techniques OSP uses to get people involved with the process and the
technologies is the ‘Print Party’, can you say what that is?
‘Print Parties’ are irregular public performances we organise when we feel
the need to report on what we discovered and where we’ve been; as antiheroes of our own adventures we open up our practice in a way that seems
infectious. We make a point of presenting a new experiment, of producing
something printed and also something edible on site each time; this mix of
ingredients seems to work best. ‘Print Parties’ are how we keep contact with
our fellow designers who are interested in our journey but have sometimes
difficulty following us into the exotic territory of BoF, Version Control and
GPL3.
You state in a few texts that OSP is interested in glitches as a productive force in
software, how do you explain this to a printer trying to get a file to convert to the
kind of thing they expect?
Not! Printing has become cheap through digitization and is streamlined to
the extreme. Often there is literally no space built in to even have a second
look at a differently formatted file, so to state that glitches are productive
is easier said than done. Still, those hickups make processes tangible, especially at moments you don’t want them to interfere.
For a book we are designing at the moment, we might partially work by
hand on positive film (a step now also skipped in file-to-plate systems). It
makes us literally sit with pre-press professionals for a day and hopefully we
can learn better where to intervene and how to involve them into the process.
To take the productive force of glitches beyond predictable aesthetics, means
9
it really made me laugh to think of Joseph Müller Brockman as vitalist
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most of all a shift of rhythm – to effect other levels than the production
process itself. We gradually learn how our ideas about slow cooking design
can survive the instant need to meet deadlines. The terminology is a bit
painful but to replace ‘deadline’ by ‘milestone’, and ‘estimate’ by ‘roadmap’
is already a beginning.
One of the things that is notable about OSP is that the problems that you encounter are also described, appearing on your blog. This is something unusual
for a company attempting to produce the impression of an efficient ‘solution’.
Obviously the readers of the blog only get a formatted version of this, as a performed work? What’s the thinking here?
‘Efficient solutions’ is probably the last thing we try to impress with, though
it is important for us to be grounded in practice and to produce for real
under conventional conditions. The blog is a public record of our everyday
life with F/LOSS; we make an effort to narrate through what we stumble
upon because it helps us articulate how we use software, what it does to us
and what we want from it; people that want to work with us, are somehow
interested in these questions too. Our audience is also not just prospective
clients, but includes developers and colleagues. An unformatted account,
even if that was possible, would not be very interesting in that respect; we
turn software into fairytales if that is what it takes to make our point.
In terms of the development of F/LOSS approaches in areas outside software,
one of the key points of differentiation has been between ‘recipes’ and ‘food’, bits
and atoms, genotype and phenotype. That is that software moves the kinds of
rivalry associated with the ownership and rights to use and enjoy a physical object
into another domain, that of speed and quality of information, which network
distribution tends to mitigate against. This is also the same for other kinds of
data, such as music, texts and so on. (This migration of rivalry is often glossed
over in the description of ‘goods’ being ‘non-rivalrous’.) Graphic Design however
is an interesting middle ground in a certain way in that it both generates files of
many different kinds, and, often but not always, provides the ‘recipes’ for physical
objects, the actual ‘voedingstof ’, such as signage systems, posters, books, labels and
so on. Following this, do you circulate your files in any particular way, or by
other means attempt to blur the boundary between the recipe and the food?
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We have just finished the design of a font (NotCourier-sans), a derivative of
Nimbus Mono, which is in turn a GPL’ed copy of the well known Courier
typeface that IBM introduced in 1955. Writing a proper licence for it,
opened up many questions about the nature of ‘source code’ in design, and
not only from a legalist perspective. While this is actually relatively simple
to define for a font (the source is the object), it is much less clear what it
means for a signage system or a printed book.
One way we deal with this, is by publishing final results side by side with ingredients and recipes. The raw files themselves seem pretty useless once the
festival is over and the book printed, so we write manuals, stories, histories.
We also experiment with using versioning systems, but the softwares available are only half interesting to us. Designed to support code development,
changes in text files can be tracked up to the minutest detail but unless you
are ready to track binary code, images and document layouts function as
black boxes. I think this is something we need to work on because we need
better tools to handle multiple file formats collaboratively, and some form
of auto-documentation to support the more narrative work.
On the other hand, manuals and licences are surprisingly rich formats if you
want to record how an object came into life; we often weave these kinds
of texts back into the design itself. In the case of NotCourierSans we will
package the font with a pdf booklet on the history of the typeface – mixing
design geneology with suggestions for use.
I think the blurring of boundaries happens through practice. Just like
recipes are linked in many ways to food, 10 design practice connects objects
to conditions. OSP is most of all interested in the back-and-forth between
those two states of design; rendering their interdepence visible and testing
out ways of working with it rather than against it. Hopefully both the food
and the recipe will change in the process.
10
tasting, trying, writing, cooking
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This brief interview with Ludivine Loiseau and Pierre Marchand
from OSP was made in December 2012 by editor and designer
Manuel Schmalstieg. It unravels the design process of Aether9,
a book based on the archives of a collaborative adventure exploring the danger zones of networked audio-visual live performance. The text was published in that same publication.
Can you briefly situate the collective work of Open Source Publishing
(OSP)?
OSP is a working group producing graphic design objects using only
Libre and/or Open Source software. Founded in 2006 in the frame of the
arts organisation Constant 1 , the OSP caravan consists today of a dozen
individuals of different backgrounds and practices.
Since how long are you working as a duo, and as a team in OSP?
3 to 4 years.
And how many books have you conceived?
As a team, it’s our first ‘real’ book. We previously worked together on a
somewhat similar project of archive exploration, but without printed material in
the end. 2
Similar in the type of content or in the process?
The process: we developed scripts to ‘scrap’ the project archives, but it’s output
was more abstract; we collected the fonts used in all the files and produced a graph
from this process. These archives weren’t structured, so the exploration was less
linear.
You rapidly chose TeX/ConTeXt as a software environment to produce
this book. Was it an obvious choice given the nature of the project, or did you
hesitate between different approaches?
The construction of the book focused on two axes/threads: chronology
and a series of ‘trace-route’ keywords. Within this approach of reading and
navigation using cross-references, ConTeXt appeared as an appropriate tool.
1
2
The world of TeX 3 is very intriguing, in particular for graphic designers.
It seems to me that it is always a struggle to push back the limits of what is
‘intended’ by the software.
ConTeXt is a constant fight! I wouldn’t say the same about other TeX
system instances. With ConTeXt, we found ourselves facing a very personal
project, because composition decisions are hardcoded to the liking of the package
main maintainer. And when we clash with these decisions, we are in the strange
position of using a tool while not agreeing with its builder.
As a concrete example, we could mention the automatic line spacing
adjustments. It was a struggle to get it right on the lines that include
keywords typeset with our custom ‘traced’ fonts. ConTeXt tried to do better,
and was increasing the line height of those words, as if it wanted to avoid
collisions.
Were you ever worried that what you wanted to obtain was not doable?
Did you reject some choices – in the graphic design, the layout, the structure
– because of software limitations?
Yes. Opting for a two column layout appeared to be quite tough when
filling in the content, as it introduced many gaps. At some point we decided
to narrow the format on a single column. To obtain the two columns
layout in the final output, the whole book was recomposed during the pdfconstruction, through OSPImpose.
This allowed us to make micro adjustments in the end of the production
process, while introducing new games, such as shifting the images on double pages.
What is OSPImpose?
It’s a re-writing of a pdf imposition software that I wrote a couple years ago
for PoDoFo.
Again regarding ConTeXt: this system was used for other OSP works
– notably for the book Verbindingen/Jonctions 10; Tracks in electr(on)ic
fields. 4 Is it currently the main production tool at OSP?
It’s more like an in-depth initiation journey!
But it hasn’t become a standard in our workflow yet. In fact, each
new important book layout project raises each time the question of the
3
4
a software written in 1978 by Donald Knuth
distinguished by the Fernand Baudin Prize 2009
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tool. Scribus and LibreOffice (spreadsheet) are also part of our book making
toolbox.
During our work session with you at Constant Variable, we noticed
that it was difficult to install a sufficiently complete TeX/ConTeXt/Python
environment to be able to generate the book. Is Pierre’s machine still the only
one, or did you manage to set it up on other computers?
Now we all have similar setups, so it’s a generalized generation. But it’s true
that this represented a difficulty at some times.
The source code and the Python scripts created for the book are publicly
accessible on the OSP Git server. Would these sources be realistically reusable? Could other publication projects use parts of the code ? Or, without
any explicit documentation, would it be highly improbable?
Indeed, the documentation part is still on the to-do list. Yet a large part
of the code is quite directly reusable. The code allows to parse different types
of files. E-mails and chat-logs are often found in project archives. Here the
Python scripts allows to order them according to date information, and will
automatically assign a style to the different content fields.
The code itself is a documentation source, as much on concrete aspects, such
as e-mail parsing, than on a possible architecture, on certain coding motives, etc.
And most importantly, is consists in a form of common experience.
Do you think you will reuse some of the general functions/features of
archive parsing for other projects ?
Hard to say. We haven’t anything in perspective that is close to the Aether9
project. But for sure, if the need of such treatment comes up again, we’ll retrieve
these software components.
Maybe for a publication/compilation of OSP’s adventures.
Have there been ‘revelations’, discoveries of unsuspected Python/ConText
features during this development?
I can’t recall having this kind of pleasure. The revelation, at least from
my point of view, happened in the very rich articulation of a graphical intention enacted in programming objects. It remains a kind of uncharted territory,
exploring it is always an exciting adventure.
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Three fonts are used in the book: Karla, Crimson and Consola Mono.
Three pretty recent fonts, born in the webfonts contexts I believe. What
considerations brought you to this choice?
Our typographical choices and researches lead us towards fonts with
different style variations. As the textual content is quite rich and spreads
on several layers, it was essential to have variation possibilities. Also, each
project brings the opportunity to test new fonts and we opted for recently
published fonts, indeed published, amongst others, on the Google font directory. Yet Karla and Crimson aren’t fonts specifically designed for a web
usage. Karla is one of the rare libre grotesque fonts, and it’s other specificity
it that it includes Tamil glyphs.
Apart from the original glyphs specially created for this book, you drew the
Ç glyph that was missing to Karla ... Is it going to be included to its official
distribution?
Oh, that’s a proposal for Jonathan Pinhorn. We haven’t contacted him
yet. For the moment, this cedilla has been snatched from the traced variant
collections.
Were there any surprises when printing? I am thinking in particular of
your choice of a colored ink instead of the usual black, or to the low res quality
(72dpi) of most of the images.
At the end of the process, the spontaneous decision to switch to blue ink was
a guaranteed source of surprise. We were confident that it wouldn’t destroy the
book, and we surely didn’t take too many risks since we were working with low
res images. But we weren’t sure how the images would react to such an offense. It
was an great surprise to see that it gave the book a very special radiance.
What are your next projects?
We are currently operating as an invited collective at the Valence Academy
of Fine Arts in the frame of a series of workshops named ‘Up pen down’.
We’re preparing a performance for the Balsamine theatre 5 on the topic of
Bootstrapping. In April we will travel as a group to Madrid to LGRU 6 and
LGM 7 . We also continually work on ‘Co-position”’, a project for building
a post-gutenberg typographical tool.
5
6
7
http://www.balsamine.be/
http://lgru.net/
the international Libre Graphics Meeting: http://libregraphicsmeeting.org/2013/
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Performing Libre Graphics
In April 2014 I traveled from Leipzig to the north of
Germany to meet with artist Cornelia Sollfrank. It was
right after the Libre Graphics Meeting, and the impressions from the event were still very fresh. Cornelia had
asked me for a video interview as part of Giving what you
don’t have, 1 a series of conversations about what she refers
to as ‘complex copyright-critical practices’. She was interested in forms of appropriation art that instead of claiming
some kind of ‘super-user’ status for artists, might provide
a platform for open access and Free Culture not imaginable elsewhere. I’ve admired Cornelia’s contributions to
hacker culture for long. She pioneered as a cyberfeminist
in the 1990s with the hilarious and intelligent net-art piece
Female Extension 2 , co-founded Old Boys Network 3 and
developed seminal projects such as the Net Art Generator.
The opportunity to spend two sunny spring days with her
intelligence, humour and cyberfeminist wisdom could not
have come at a better moment.
What is Libre Graphics?
Libre Graphics is quite a large ecosystem of software tools; of people, people
that develop these tools but also people that use these tools; practices, like
how do you work with them, not just how do you make things quickly and
in an impressive way, but also how these tools might change your practice;
and cultural artifacts that result from it. It is all these elements that come
together, I would call Libre Graphics. The term ‘libre’ is chosen deliberately.
1
2
3
It is slightly more mysterious than the term ‘free’, especially when it turns up
in the English language. It sort of hints that there is something different,
something done on purpose. And it is also a group of people that are
inspired by Free Software culture, by Free Culture, by thinking about how
to share both their tools, their recipes and the outcomes of all this. Libre
Graphics goes in many directions. But it is an interesting context to work
in, that for me has been quite inspiring for a few years now.
The context of Libre Graphics
The context of Libre Graphics is multiple. I think that I am excited about
it and also part of why it is sometimes difficult to describe it in a short
sentence. The context is design, and people that are interested in design, in
creating visuals, animation, videos, typography ... and that is already multiple contexts, because each of these disciplines have their own histories,
and their own types of people that get touched by them. Then there is
software, people that are interested in the digital material. They say, I am
excited about raw bits and the way a vector gets produced. And that is a
very, almost formal, interest in how graphics are made. Then there is people that do software. They’re interested in programming, in programming
languages, in thinking about interfaces, and thinking about ways software
can become a tool. And then there are people that are interested in Free
Software. How can you make digital tools that can be shared, but also,
how can that produce processes that can be shared. Free Software activists
to people that are interested in developing specific tools for sharing design
and software development processes, like Git or Subversion, those kind of
things. I think the multiple contexts are really special and rich in Libre
Graphics.
Free Software culture
Free Software culture, and I use the term ‘culture’ because I am interested
in, let’s say, the cultural aspect of it, and this includes software. For me
software is a cultural object. But I think it is important to emphasize this,
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because it easily turns into a technocentric approach, which I think is important to stay away from. Free Software culture is the thinking that, when
you develop technology, and I am using technology in the sense that it is
cultural as well to me, deeply cultural, you need to take care as well of sharing the recipes, for how this technology has been developed. This produces
many different other tools, ways of working, ways of speaking, vocabularies, because it changes radically the way we make and the way we produce
hierarchies. It means for example, if you produce a graphic design artifact,
that you share all the source files that were necessary to make it; but you
also share as much as you can, descriptions or narrations of how it came to
be, which does include maybe how much was paid for it, where difficulties
were in negotiating with the printer; and what elements were included, because a graphic design object is usually a compilation of different elements;
what software was used to make it, and where it might have resisted. The
consequences of taking the Free Software culture serious in a design context, means that you care about all these different layers of the work, all the
different conditions that actually made the work happen.
Free Culture
The relationship from Libre Graphics to Free Culture is not always that
explicit. For some people it is enough to work with tools that are released
under a GPL, an open content licence. And there it stops. Even their work
will be released under proprietary licences. For others, it is important to
make the full circle and to think about what the legal status is of the work
they release. That is the more general one. Then, Free Culture, we can use
that very loosely, as in ‘everything that is circulating under conditions that
it can be reused and remade’. That would be my position. Free Culture
is of course also referred to a very specific idea of how that would work,
namely Creative Commons. For myself Creative Commons is problematic, although I value the fact that it exists and has really created a broader
discussion around licences in creative practices. I value that. For me the distinction Creative Commons makes for almost all the licences they promote,
between commercial and non-commercial work, and as a consequence, between professional and amateur work, I find that very problematic. Because
I think one of the most important elements of Free Software culture for me,
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is the possibility for people from different backgrounds, with different skill
sets, to actually engage with the digital artifacts they’re surrounded with.
By making this lazy separation between commercial and non-commercial,
which especially in the context of the web as it is right now, is not really
easy to hold up, seems really problematic. It creates an illusion of clarity
that I think actually makes more trouble than clarity. So I use Free Culture
licences, I use licences that are more explicit about the fact that anyone can
use whatever I produce in any context. Because I think that is where the
real power is of Free Software culture. For me Free Software licences and
all the licences that are around it, because I think there is many different
types and that is interesting, is that they have a viral power built in. So if
you apply a Free Software licence to, for example, a typeface, it means that
someone else, even someone else you don’t know, has the permission and
doesn’t have to ask for a permission, to reuse the typeface, to change it, to
mix it with something else, to distribute it and to sell it. That is one part,
that is already very powerful. But the real secret of such a licence is, that
once this person re-releases the typeface, it means that they need to keep
that same licence and it propagates across the network and that is where it
is really powerful.
Free tools
It is important to use tools that are released under conditions that allow
me to look further than its surface. For many reasons. There is an ethical
reason. It is very problematic I think, as a friend explained last week, to feel
that you’re renting a room in a hotel. That is often the way practitioners
nowadays relate to their tools. They have no right to move the furniture.
They have no right to invite friends to their hotel room. They have to check
out at eleven, etc. it is a very sterile relationship to the tools. That is one
part. The other is that there is little way to come into contact with the
cultural aspects of the tools. Some things that I suspected before starting
to use Free Software tools for my practice, but has been already for almost
ten years, continuously exciting, is the whole, let’s say, all the other elements
around it. The way people organize themselves in conferences, mailing lists,
the kinds of communication that happens, the vocabularies, the histories,
the connections between different disciplines ... And all that is available to
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look at, to work with, to come into contact with; to speak to people that do
these tools and ask them, why is it like this and not like that. And that to
me seems obvious that artists want to have that kind of layered relationship
with their tools, and not just only accept whatever comes out of next door
shop. I have a very different, almost different physical experience of these
tools, because I can enter on many levels. That makes them part of my
practice, not just means to an end. I really can take them into my practice.
That I find interesting, as an artist and as a designer.
Artifacts
The outcomes of this type of practice are different, or at least, let’s say, in
the kind of work I make, try to make and the people I like to work with.
There is obviously also groups of people that would like to do Hollywood
movies with those tools. That is kind of interesting, that that happens.
For me somehow the technological context or conditions that made a work
possible, will always occur in the final result. So, that is one part. And
the other is that the product is never the end. It means that in whatever
way source materials will be released, will be made available, it means that
a product is always the beginning of another product, either by me or by
other people. I think that is two things that you can always see in the kind
of works we make when we do libre-graphics-my-style. When we make a
book, for example, what is already different, is when we start the process, it
is not yet defined what tool we will use. There is a whole array of tools you
can choose from. I mean, books are basically text on paper, and there are
many ways to arrive at that output. For one book we did a few years ago,
we decided for the first time, because we had never used this tool before,
to use TeX, a typesetting system that is developed by Donald Knuth in the
context of academic publishing. That has been around as an almost mythological solution for a perfect typesetting. We were curious about whether
we could use that system that is developed in a very specific context for an
art catalog that we wanted to make. We had to learn how to use this tool,
which meant that we somehow had to learn the vocabulary, understand its
sort of perspective; things that were possible or not, get used to the kind of
humor that is quite terrible in these manuals; accept that certain things that
we thought would be easy, were actually not easy at all; and then understand
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how we could use the things that were popping up or not working or that
were different, how we could use them in our advantage. The final result
is a book that is slightly strange, because there are some mistakes that have
been left in, deliberately or by accident sometimes. The book contains an
extensive description of how it was made. Both visually, like it explains the
technical details of how it was made, but also the description of that learning
process. Another example of how tools, practice and outcomes are somehow
connected, but also the whole politics around it, because often these projects
are also ways of teasing out; ways licences, practice and tools somehow interact, is a project called ‘Sans Guilt’. It is a play with the ‘Gill Sans’ which
is a famous classic typeface that is claimed to be owned by a company called
Monotype. But according to our understanding, they have no right to actually claim this typeface as such. But through their communication they do
so. OSP was invited to work in an art academy in London, where they had
a lead version. And we decided to play with the typeface. The typeface OSP
released has many different versions, not versions as in bold, light etc. but
it has different levels of ‘licencing risk’. One is a straight scan of the prints
that were made at that workshop. Another version is more guilty, in the
sense that it is an extraction from a .pdf using the Monotype Gill. Another
is a redrawn version that takes the matrix, the spacing of a Monotype Gill,
but combines it with a redrawn example. All different variations of this font
touch on different elements of licencing problems that might occur with
typefaces. We sent our experiment to Monotype, because we wanted to hear
from them what they thought. After a few months we received a letter from
a lawyer saying, would you please identify yourself. We decided to write
back as we are, which is, 25 people from 20 different countries with stable
and unstable addresses. This long list probably made that we never heard
anything again, and ‘Sans Guilt’ is still available from our website under an
open font licence. What the is important, the typeface is different, in the
sense that the specimen is not much about showing off how beautiful it will
look in any context, but has the description of the process, the motivation
of why we did it, the letter we sent to Monotype, the response we got, ...
The whole packaging of the font becomes then a way of speaking about all
these layers that are in our practice.
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Libre fonts
A very exciting part of Libre Graphics is the Libre Font movement, which
is strong and has been strong for a long time. Fonts are the basic building
blocks of how graphics come to life. When you type something, it is there.
And the fact that that part of the work is free, is important on many levels.
Things you often don’t think about when you speak English and you stay
within a limited character set, is that, when you live in let’s say India, the
language you speak is not available as a digital typeface, meaning that when
you want to produce a book in the tools that are available or publish it
online, your language has no way of expressing itself. That has to do with
commercial interests, laws, ways the technical infrastructure has been built.
By understanding that it is important that you can express yourself in the
language and with the characters you need, it is also obvious that that part
needs to be free. Fonts are also interesting because they exist on many
levels. They exist in your system; they’re almost software because they’re
quite complicated objects; they appear in your screen, they are when you
print a document; they are there all the time. We consider the alphabet as
a totally accessible and available and a universal right to have the alphabet
at our disposal. So it is about ‘freeing the A’, you know. That’s quite a
beautiful energy. I think that has made the Libre Font movement very
strong. Something that has happened the last years and brings up new
problems and potential areas to work on, is fonts available for the web.
Web fonts have really exploded the amount of free fonts available. Before,
fonts were always, let’s say, when they were used, tied to a document, and
there was some kind of fantasy about that you could hold them, you could
somehow contain them, licence them and keep them in check. With the
web that idea has gone. And many people have decided to liberate their
fonts to be able to make them usable for a website. Because if you think
about it, if you use a font on a website, it means that it has to be able to
travel everywhere. Everyone has to be able to look at what the font does,
but it is not just an output. It is not just an endpoint. The font is active,
it means it is available. In theory, any font that appears on the web is both
display and program. By displaying the page, you need to run the font.
That means the font needs to be available as a source and as a result. That
means you have to publish your font. This has really created a big boom in
the last few years in Free Fonts, because that is the easiest way to deal with
that problem: allow people to download these fonts, but in a way that keeps
authorship clear, that keeps genealogy clear, and also propagates then the
possibility of making new fonts based on someone else’s work.
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Free artifacts / open standards
It took me a while to figure this out. For me it was obvious that if you would
use Free Software, you would produce free artifacts. It seems obvious, but it
is not at all the case. There is full-fledged commercial production happening
with these tools. But one thing that keeps the results, the outcomes of these
projects freer than most commercial tools, is that there is really an emphasis
on open document formats. That is extremely important, because first of
all, it is very obvious that the documents that you produce with the tool,
should not belong to the software vendor. They are yours. And to be able
to own your own documents, you need to be able to inspect how they’re
produced. I know many tragic stories of designers that lost documents
because they could never open them again. There is really an emphasis
and a lot of work on making sure that the documents produced from these
tools remain ‘inspectable’, are documented, that either you can open them
in another tool or could develop a tool to have these files available for you.
It is really part and parcel of Free Software culture, that you care about that
what generates your artifact, but also the materiality of your artifact. Open
standards are important. Or maybe let’s say it is is important that file formats
are documented and can be understood. What is interesting to see is that in
this whole Libre Graphics world there is also a strong tradition of reverse
engineering, document activism, I would call it. They claim: documents need
to be free, and we will risk breaking the law to be able to understand how nonfree documents actually are constructed. They are really working on trying to
understand non-free documents, to be able to read them and to be able to
develop tools for them, that they can be reused and remade. The difference
between a free and a non-free document is that, for example, an InDesign
file, which is the result of a commercial product, there is no documentation
available of how this file works. This means that the only way to open the
document, is with that particular program. It means there is a connection
between that what you’ve made and the software you used to produce it. It
also means that if the software updates or the licence runs out, you will not
have access to your own file. It means it is fixed. You can never change it
and you can never allow anyone else to change it. An open document format
has documentation. That means that not only the software that created it,
is available, and in that way you can understand how it was made, but also
there is independent documentation available that whenever a project, like
a software, doesn’t work anymore, or is too old to be run, or you don’t have
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it available, you have other ways of understanding the document and being
able to open it and reuse and remake it. What is important, is that around
these open formats, you see a whole ecosystem exists of tools to inspect, to
create, to read, to change, to manipulate these formats. I think it is very
easy to see how around InDesign files this culture does not exist at all.
Sharing practise / re-learn
This way of working changes the way you learn, and therefore the way you
teach. And as many of us have understood the relation between learning
and practice, we’ve all been somehow involved in education. Many of us are
teaching in formal design or art education. And it is very clear how those
traditional schools are really not fit for the type of learning and teaching that
needs to happen around Libre Graphics. One of the problems we run into, is
the fact that validation systems are really geared towards judging individuals.
And our type of practice is always multiple. It is always about things that
happen with many people. And it is really difficult to inspire students to
work that way, and at the same time know that at the end of the day, they’ll
be judged on what they produced as an individual. In traditional education
there is always a separation between teaching technology and practice. You
have, in different ways, you have the studio practice, and then you have the
workshops. And it is very difficult to make conceptual connections between
the two. We end up trying to make that happen, but it is clearly not made
for that. And then there is the problem of hierarchies between tutor and
student, that are hard to break in formal education, just because the setup is,
even in very informal situations, that someone comes to teach and someone
else comes to be taught. And there is no way to truly break that hierarchy,
because that is the way a school works. For years we are thinking about how
to do teaching differently or how to do learning differently, and last year, for
the first time, we organized a summer school. Just like a kind of experiment
to see if we could learn and teach differently. The title, the name of the
school is Relearn. Because the sort of relearning for yourself but also to
others, through teaching learning, has become really a good methodology,
it seems.
If I say ‘we’, that’s always a bit uncomfortable, because I like to be clear about
who that is, but when I’m speaking here, there is many ‘wes’ in my mind.
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There is a group of designers called OSP. They have started in 2006 with
the simple decision to not use any proprietary software anymore for their
work. And from that this whole set of questions and practices and methods developed. Right now, that’s about twelve people working in Brussels,
having a design practice. I am lucky to be honory member of this group.
I’m in close contact with them, but I’m not actively working with the design
group. Another ‘we’, an overlapping ‘we’, is Constant, an association for
arts and media active in Brussels since 1996. Or 1997 maybe. Our interest
is more in mixing Copyleft thinking, Free Software thinking and feminism.
In many ways that intersects with OSP but they might phrase it in a different way. Another ‘we’ is the Libre Graphics community, which is even a
more uncomfortable ‘we’. Because it includes engineers that would like to
conquer the world ... and small hyper intelligent developers that creep out
of their corners to talk about the very strange worlds they’re creating. Or
typographers that care about universal typefaces, or ... I mean there is many
different people that are involved in that world. I think for this conversation, the ‘wes’ are: OSP, Constant and the Libre Graphics community,
whatever that is.
Libre Graphics annual meeting Leipzig 2014
We worked on a Code of conduct, which is something that seems to appear
in Free Software or tech conferences more and more. It comes a bit from
US context. We have started to understand that the fact that Free Software
is free, doesn’t mean that everyone feels welcome. For long there have been
and there still are large problems with diversity in this community. The
excitement about freedom has led people to think that people that were not
there would probably not want to be there and therefore had no role to be
there. For example, the fact that there are not a lot of women active in Free
Software, a lot less than in proprietary software, which is quite painful if
you think about it. It has to do with this sort of cyclical effect of because
women are not there, they will probably not be interested, and because they’re
not interested, they might not be capable or feel capable of being active. So they
might not belong. There is also a very brutal culture of harassment, of
racist and sexist language, of using imagery that is let’s say unacceptable,
and that needs to be dealt with. Over the last two years I think, documents
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like Codes of conduct have started to come up from feminists that are active
in this world, like Geek feminism or the Ada initiative, as a way to deal
with this. And what it does, is it describes ... it is slightly pompous, in the
sense that it describes your values. But it is a way to acknowledge the fact
that these communities have a problem with harassment, first. That they
explicitly say we want diversity, which is important. That it gives very clear
and practical guidelines for what someone that feels harassed can do, who
he or she can speak to, and what will be the consequences. Meaning that
it takes away the burden, at least as much as possible, from someone that is
harassed to defend actually the gravity of the case.
Art as integrative concept
For me calling myself an artist is useful, is very useful. I’m not busy with
let’s say, the constitutional art context. That doesn’t help me, at all. But
what does help me is the figure of the artist, the kinds of intelligences that
I sort of project on myself and I use from others and my colleagues, before
and contemporary. Because it allows me to not have too many ... to be able
to define my own context and concepts, without forgetting practice. And I
think art is one of the rare places that allows this. Not only allows it, but
actually rigorously asks for it. It is really wanting me to be explicit about my
historical connections, my way of making, my references, my choices, that
are part of the situation I build. And the figure of the artist is a very useful
toolbox in itself. And I think I use it, more than I would have thought. It
allows me to make these cross connections in a productive way.
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The making of Conversations was on many levels a process of dialogue, between people, processes, and systems.
Xavier Klein and Christoph Haag were as much involved
in editorial decisions as they were in creating an experimental platform that would allow us to produce a publication in a way true to the content of the conversations
it would contain. In August 2014 we discussed the ideas
behind their designs and the status of the systems they
were developing for the book that you are reading right
now.
I wanted to ask you Xavier, how did you end up in Germany?
It’s a long story, so I’ll make it short. I benefit from the Leonardo program, a
scholarship to do an internship abroad. So I searched for graphic design studios
that use Open Source and Free Software. I asked OSP first, but they said No.
I didn’t know LAFKON at this time, and a friend told me: Hey there is this
graphic design studio in Germany, so I asked and they said Yes. So I was
happy. ( laughs)
How did you start working on this book?
I thought it would be nice to have a project during Xavier’s stay in Augsburg
with a specific outcome. Something going beyond pure experimentation.
So I asked Constant if there were any projects that need to be worked on.
And I’m really happy with the Conversations publication, because it is a
good mixture. There is the technical experiment, how you would approach
something like this using Free Software. And there is the editing side.
To read all these opinions and reflections. It’s really interesting from the
content side, at least for me – I don’t dare to speak for Xavier. So that’s
basically how it started.
You developed a constellation of tools that together are producing the book.
Can you explain what the elements are, how this book is made?
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We decided in the beginning to use Etherpad for the editing. A lot of
documentation during Constant events was done with Etherpad and I found
its very direct access to editing quite inspiring. Earlier this year we prepared a
workshop for the Libre Graphics Meeting, where we’d have a transformation
from Etherpad pages to a printable .pdf. The idea was to somehow separate
the content editing and the rendering. Basically I wanted to follow some
kind of ‘pull logic’. At a certain point in the process, there is an interface
where you can pull out something without the need to interfere too much
with the inner workings of this part. There is the stable part, the editing on
the Etherpad, and there is something, that can be more experimental and
unstable which transforms the content to again a stable, printable version. I
tried to create a custom markdown dialect, meant to be as simple as possible.
It should reduce to some elements, the elements that are actually needed.
For example if we have an interview, what is required from the content side?
We have text and changing speakers. That’s more or less the most important
informations.
So on the first level, we have this simple format and from there the transformation process starts. The idea was to have a level, where basically anybody,
who knows how to use a text editor, can edit the text. But at the same
time it should have more layers of complexity. It actually can get quite
complex during the transformation process. But it should always have this
level, where it’s quite simple. So just text and for example this one markup
element for ok now the speaker changes.
In the beginning we experimented with differents tools, basically small
scripts to perform all kinds of layout task. Xavier for example prepared a
hotglue2svg converter. After that, we thought, why don’t we try to connect different approaches? Not only the very strict markdown to TeX to
.pdf transformations, but to think about, under which circumstances you
would actually prefer a canvas-based approach. What can you do on a canvas
that you can’t do or is much harder with a markup language.
It seems you are developing an adhoc markup language? Is that related to
what you wrote in the workshop description for Operating Systems: 1 Using
operating systems as a metaphor, we try to imagine systems that are both
structured and open?
Yes. The idea was to have these connected/disconected parts. So you have
the part where the content is edited in collaboration and you have the transformer script running separately on the individuals’ computers. For me this
1
http://libregraphicsmeeting.org/2014/program/
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solved in a way the problem of stability. You can use a quite elaborated,
reliable software like Etherpad and derive something from it without going
to its inner workings. You just pull the content from it, without affecting
the software too much. And you have the part, where it can get quite experimental and unreliable, without affecting all collaborators. Because the
process runs on your own computer and not on the server.
The markup concept comes from the documentation of a video streaming
workshop in Linz. There we wanted to have the possibility to write the
documentation collaboratively during the workshop and we needed also to
solve problems like How about the inclusion of images? That is where the first
markup element came from, which basically just was was a specific line of
text, which indicates ‘here should be this/that image’. If this specific line
appears in the text during the transformation process, it triggers an action
that will look for a specific file in the repository. If the image exists, it will
write the matching macro command for LaTeX. If the image is not in the
repository, it will do nothing. The idea was, that the creation of the .pdf
should happen anyway, e.g. although somebody’s repository might be not at
the latest state and a missing image would prevent LaTeX from rendering
the document. It should also ignore errors, for example if someone mistypes
the name of image or the command. It should not stop the process, but
produce a different output, e.g. without the image.
Why do you think the process should not stop when there’s an error? Why is
that so important?
For me it was important to ensure some kind of feedback, even if there might
be ‘errors’ in the output. Not just ‘not work’. It can be really frustrating,
when the first thing you have to do, is to find and solve a problem – which
can be quite hard with this sort of unprofessional scripts – before there’s is
happening anything at all. So at a certain point, at least something should
appear, even if it’s not necessarily the way it was originally intended. Like
a tolerance for errors, which would even produce something, that maybe
different from what you expected. But it should produce ‘something’.
You imagine a kind of iterative development that we know from working with
code, that allows you to keep differents versions, that keeps flowing in a way.
For example, this specific markup format. It’s basically markdown and
I wanted some more elements, like footnotes and the option to include
citations and comments. I find it quite handy, when you write software,
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that you have the possibility to include comments that are not part of the
actual output, but part of the working process. I also enjoy this while
writing text (e.g. with LaTeX), because I can keep comments or previous
versions or drafts. So I really have my working version and transform this
to some kind of output.
But back to the etherpash workshop. Commands are basically comments
that will trigger some action, for example the inclusion of a graphic or
changing the font or anything. These commands are referenced in a separate
file, so everybody can have different versions of the commands on their own
machine. It would not affect the other people. For example, if you wanted
to have a much more elaborated GRAFIK command, you could write it and
use it within your transformer of the document or you could introduce new
commands, that are written on the main pad, but would be ignored for
other people, because they have a different reference file. Does this make
sense?
Yes. In a way, there are a lot of grey zones. There are elements that are
global and elements that are local; elements can easily go parallel and none
of the commands actually has always the same output, for everyone.
They can, but they do not need to. You can stick to the very basic version
that comes directly from the repository. You could use this version to create
a .pdf in the ‘original’ way, but you can easily change it on different levels.
You can change the Bash commands that are triggered by the transformer
script, you can work on the LaTeX macros or change the script itself. I
found it quite important to have different levels of complexity. You may go
deeper, but you do not necessarily have to. The Etherpad content is the very
top level. You don’t have to install a software on your computer, you can
just open up a browser and edit the text. So this should make the access to
collaboration easier. Because for a lot of experimental software you spend a
lot of time to get it even running. Most often you have a very steep learning
curve and I found it interesting, to separate this learning curve in a way. So
you have different layers and if you really want to reconfigure on a deep level,
you can, but you do not necessarily have to.
I guess you are talking about collaboration across different levels of complexity, where different elements can transform the final outcome. But if you
take the analogy of CSS, or let’s say a Content Management System that
generates HTML, you could say that this also creates divisions of labour. So
rather than making collaboration possible, it confines people to to different
336
files. How do you think your systems invite people to take part in different
levels? Are these layers porous at all? Can they easily slip between different
roles, let’s say an editor, a typographer and a programmer?
Up to a certain extent it’s like a division of labour. But if you call it a
separation of tasks, it makes definitely sense for me. It can be quite hard, if
you have to take over responsability for everything at the same time. So it
makes sense for me, also for collaboration, to offer this separation. Because
it can be good to have the possibility not to have to deal with the whole
system and everything at the same time. You should be able to do so, but
you should not necessarily have to. I think this is important, because a lot
of frustration regarding Free Software systems comes from the necessity to
go to the deep level at an early stage. I mean it’s an interesting problem.
The promise of convenience is quite hard, because most times is does not
really work. And it’s also fine that it doesn’t really work. At the same time
it’s frightening for people to get into it and so I think, it’s good to do this
step by step and also to have an easy top level opportunity to go into, for
example, programming. This is also a thing I became really interrested in.
The principle of the commandline to ‘extend usage into programming’. 2
You do not have to have a development environment and then you compile
software and then you have software, but you have this flexible interface for
your daily tasks. If you really need to go a deeper level, you can, at least with
Free Software. But you don’t have to ... compile your kernel every time.
Not every time! What I find interesting about your work is that you prefer not
to conceal any layers. References, commands, markup hints at the existence
of other layers, and the potential to go somewhere else. I wanted you to ask
about your fascination or interest in something ‘old school’ as Bash scripting.
Why is it so interesting?
Maybe at first point, it’s a bit of a fascination for the obscure. That normally,
as a graphic designer you wouldn’t think of using the commandline for your
work. When I started to use GNU/Linux, I’d try to stay away from the terminal. Which is basically, as I realised pretty soon, not possible. 3 At some
point, Bash scripting became really fascinating, because of the possibility to
use automation to correct or add functionalities. With the commandline
it’s easy to automate repetitive tasks, e.g. you can write a small script that
2
3
Florian Cramer. (echo echo) echo (echo): Command Line Poetics, 2007
let’s say hard
337
creates a separate .svg file for each layer in a .svg file 4 , convert this separated .svg files to .pdf files 5 and combine the .pdf files to a multipage
.pdf 6 . Just by collecting commands you’d normally type on your commandline interface. So in this case, automation helps to work around a missing
multipage support in inkscape. Not by changing the application itself, but
by plugging something ‘on top’ of it. I like to think of the Bash as glue
between different applications. So if we have a look now at the setup for
the conversations publication, we may see that Bash makes it really easy to
develop own configurations and setups. I actually thought about prefering
the word ‘setup’ to ‘writing software’ ...
Are you saying you prefer setup ‘over’ configuration?
Setup or configuration of software ‘over’ actually writing software. Because
for me it’s often more about connecting different applications. For example,
here we have a browser-based text editor, from which the content is automatically pulled and transformed via text-transform tools and then rendered
as a .pdf. What I find interesting, is that the scripts in between may actually be not very stable, but connect two stables parts. One is the Etherpad,
where the export function is taken ‘as is’ and you’ve got the final state of a
.pdf. In between, I try to have this flexible thing, that just needs to work
at this moment, in my special case. I mean certain scripts may reach quite
an amount of stability, but not necessarily. So it’s very good to have this
fixed state at the end.
You mean the .pdf?
I mean the .pdf, because ... These scripts are quite personal software and
so I don’t really think about other users beside me. For me it’s a whole
different subject to go to the usability level. That’s maybe also a cause for
the open state of the scripts. It would not make much sense – if I want to
have the opportunity for other people to make use of these things – to have
black boxes. Because for this, they are much too fragile. They can be taken
over, but there is no promise of ... convenience? 7 And it’s also important
for myself, because the setups are really tailored to a specific use case and
4
5
6
7
using sed, stream editor for filtering and transforming text
using inkscape on the commandline
using pdftk
... distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without
even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
PURPOSE. Free Software Foundation. GNU General Public License, 2007
338
therefore more or less temporary. So I need to be able to read and adapt
them myself.
I know that you usually afterwards you provide a description of how the collage
was made. You publish the scripts, and sketches and intermediary outcomes.
So it seems that usability is more in how you give access to the process rather
than the outcome. Or would you say that software is the outcome?
Actually for me the process is the more interesting part of the work. A lot of
the projects are maybe more like a proof of concept, than finished pieces of
software. I often reuse parts of these setups or software pieces, so it’s more
collections of ‘How to do something’ then really a finished thing, that’s now
suitable to produce this or that.
I’m just wondering, looking at your designs, if you would like that layering,
this unstability to be somehow legible in the .pdf or the printed object?
I don’t think that this unstability is really legible. Because in the process
there’s a certain point where definitive decisions are taken. It’s also part of
the concept. You make decisions and that make the final state of the object
what it is. And if you want to get back to the more flexible part, then you
would really have to get back. So I don’t actually think that it is legible in
the final output, on the first sight, that it is based on a very fluid working
process. And for me that’s quite ok. It’s also important for me – because
I tend not to do so – to take a decision at a certain point. But that’s not
necessarily the ultimate decision and therefore it’s also important to keep
the option open to redefine ... ‘the thing’.
What you’re saying, is that you can be decisive in your design decisions because
the outcome could also be another. You could always regenerate the .pdf
with other decisions.
Yes. For example, I would regenerate the .pdf with the same decisions,
another person maybe would take different decisions. But that’s one step
before the final object. For example, if we do not talk about the .pdf, but
we actually talk about the book, then it’s very clear, that there are decisions,
that need to be taken or that have been taken. And actually I like the feeling
of convenience when things get finished. They are done. Not configurable
forever.
( laughs) That’s convenient, if things get done!
339
For this specific book, you have made a few decisions, for example your selection of fonts is particular.
Xavier, can you say something about the typography of Conversations?
Huuumn yep, for the typographic decisions ... in the beginning we searched for
fancy fonts, but in a way came back to use very classic fonts, respectively one classic
font. So the Junicode 8 for the text and the OCR-A 9 for anything else. Because
we decided to focus on testing different ways of layouting and use the fonts as a
way to keep a certain continuity between the parts. We thought this can be more
interesting, than to show that we can find a lot of beautiful, fancy fonts.
So in the beginning, we thought about having a different font for every
speaker, but sooner or later we realised that it would be good to have something that keeps the whole thing together. Right now, this are the two
fonts. The Junicode, which is a font for medievalists, and the OCR-A,
which is a optical character recognition font from the early age of computer technology. So the hypothesis was, to have this combination – a very
classical typeface inspired by the 16th century and a typeface optimized for
machine reading – that maybe will produce an interesting clash of two different approaches. While at the same time providing a continuous element
throughout the book. But that still has to be proven in the final layout.
I find it interesting that both fonts in their own way are somehow conversational. They are both used in situations where one system needs to talk to
another.
Yeah, definitely in a way. They are both optimised for a special usage, which,
by the way, isn’t the usage of our case. One for the display of medieval
texts, where you have to have lot of different signs and ligatures and ... that’s
the Junicode. The other one, the OCR-A, is optimized to be legible by
machines. So that are two different directions of conversation. And they’re
both Free and Open Source fonts ...
And for the layout? How are the divider pages going to be constructed?
For the divider pages, it’s an application ‘Built with Processing’, done by
Benjamin 10 . In a way, it’s a different approach, because it’s a software with
an extensive Graphical User Interface, with a lot of options. So it’s different
8
9
10
http://junicode.sourceforge.net/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ocr-a-font/
Stephan
340
from the very modular, connective approach. There we decided to have this
software, which is directly controlled by the controller, the person who uses
it. And again, there is this moment of definitive decision. Ok, this is exactly
how I want the title pages to look. And then they are put in a fixed state.
At the same time, the software will be part of the repository, to be usable
as a tool. So it’s a very ... not a ‘very classic’ ... approach. To write ‘your’
software for ‘your’ very specific use case. In a more monolithic way ...
Just to add this. In this custom markdown dialect, I decided at a point
to include a command, which is INCLUDEPAGES, where you can provide
a .pdf file via an url to be included in the document. So the .pdf may
be stored anywhere, as long as it is accessible over the internet. I found
this an interesting opportunity for collaboration. Because if somebody does
not want to stick to the grid given by the LaTeX configuration or to this
kind of working in general, this person could create a .pdf, store it online,
reference it and the file will be included. This can be a very disconnected
way of contributing to the final book. And that’s also a thing we’re now
trying to test ourselves. Because in the beginning we developed a lot of
different little scripts, for example the hotglue2svg converter. And right
now we’re trying to extend this. For example, to create one interview in
Scribus and include the .pdf made with Scribus. To also test ourselves
different approaches.
This book will be both a collage and have a overall, predefined structure
provided by the lay-out engine?
I’m trying to make pragmatic use of the functionalities of LaTeX, which is
used for the final compiling of the .pdf. So for example, also ready-made
.pdf files included into the final document are referenced in the table of
contents.
Can you explain that again ?
Separate .pdfs, that are included into the final document will be referenced
in the table of contents. We can still make use of the automatic generation
of page numbers in the table of contents, so there it goes together. There
are certain borders, for example since the .pdfs are more like finished documents, indexing will probably not work. Because even if you can extract
references from the .pdf, I didn’t find a way until now, how to find out the
page number in a reliable way. There you also realise, that you can do much
more with the plain text sources than you can do with a finished document.
341
But I think that’s ok. In this case you wouldn’t to have a keyword reference
to the .pdf, while it’s still in the table of contents ...
What if someone would want to use one of these interviews for something else?
How could this book becoming source for an another publication?
That’s also an advantage of the quite simple source format on the Etherpad.
It can be easily converted to e.g. simple markdown, just by a little script.
I found this quite important – because at this point we’re putting quite an
amount of work into the preparation of the texts – to have it not in a format
that is not parseable. I really wanted to keep the documents transformable
in a easy way. So now you could just have a ~fiveliner, that will pull the text
from the Etherpad and convert it to simple markdown or to HTML.
Wonderful.
If you have a more or less clean source format, then it’s in most cases easy
to convert it to different formats. For example, the Evan Roth interview,
you provided as a ConTeXt file. So with some text manipulation, it was
easy to do the transformation to our Etherpad markup. And it would be
harder if the content is stored as an Open Office document, but still feasible.
.pdf in a way is the worst case, because it’s much harder to extract usable
content again, depending on the creator. So I think it’s important to keep
the content in a readable and understandable source format.
Xavier, what is going to happen next?
Right now, I’m the guy who tests on Scribus, Inkscape. But I don’t know if it’s
the answer to your question.
I was just curious because you have a month to work on this still, so I was
wondering ... are there other things you are testing or trying ?
Yeah, I think I want to finish the hotglue2svg.sh, I mean it’s my first
Bash program, I want to raise my baby. ( laughs) But right now I’m trying to
find different ways of layouts. The first one is the one with the big squares, the
big unicode characters and all the arrows. So it’s very complicated, but it’s the
attempt to find an another way to express a conversation in text.
Can you say more about that ?
Because in the beginning, my first try was to keep the ‘life’ of a conversation in
the text with some things, like indentation or with graphic things, like the choice
342
of the unicode characters. If this can be a way to express a conversation. Because
it’s hard to it with programming stuff so we’re using GUI based software.
It’s a bit coming to the question, what you are doing differently, if you work
with a direct visual feedback. So you don’t try to reduce the content to get
it through a logical structure. Because that’s in a way how the markdown
to LaTeX transformation is doing it. You set certain rules, that may be in
special cases soft rules, but you really try to establish a logical structure and
have a set of rules and apply them. For me, it’s also an interesting question.
If you think of grid based graphic design, where you try to introduce a set
of rules in the beginning and then to keep for the rest of the project, that’s
in a way a very obvious case for computation. Where you just apply a set of
rules. With this application of rules you are a lot confronted in daily graphic
design. And this is also a way of working you learn during your studies.
Stick to certain logical or maybe visual grids. And so now the question is:
What’s the difference if you do a really visual layout. Do you deal differently
with the content, does it make sense, or if you’re just always coming back
to a certain grid, then you might as well do it by computation. So that’s
something that we wanted to find out. What advantage do you really gain
from having a canvas-based approach throughout the layout process.
In a way the interviews are very similar, because it’s always peoples speaking,
but at the same time each of the conversations is slightly different. So in what
way is the difference between them made legible, through the same set of rules
or by making specifics rules for each of them?
If you do the layout by hand you can take decisions that would be much
harder to translate to code. For example, how to emphasize certain part
of the text or the speaker. You’re much closer to the interpretation of the
content? You’re not designing the ruleset but you are really working on the
visual design of the content ... The point why it’s interesting to me is because
working as a designer you get quite often reduced to this visual design of the
content, at the same it may make sense in a lot of cases. So it’s a evaluation
of these different approaches. Do you design the ruleset or do you design
the final outcome? And I think it has both advantages and disadvantages.
343
Colophon
In conversation with: Agnes Bewer, Alexandre Leray, An Mertens, Andreas Vox, Asheesh
Laroia, Carla Boserman,Christina Clar, Chris Lilley, Christoph Haag, Claire Williams, Cornelia
Sollfrank, Dave Crossland, Dmytry Kleiner, Denis Jacquery, Dmytri Kleiner, Eleanor Greenhalgh,
Eric Schrijver, Evan Roth, Femke Snelting, Franziska Kleiner, George Williams, Gijs de Heij,
Harrisson, Ivan Monroy Lopez, John Haltiwanger, John Colenbrander, Juliane De Moerlooze,
Julien Deswaef, Larisa Blazic, Ludivine Loiseau, Manuel Schmalstieg, Matthew Fuller, Michael
Murtaugh, Michael Terry, Michele Walther, Miguel Arana Catania, momo3010, Nicolas Malevé,
Pedro Amado, Peter Westenberg, Pierre Huyghebaert, Pierre Marchand, Sarah Magnan, Stéphanie
Vilayphiou, Tom Lechner, Urantsetseg Ulziikhuu, Xavier Klein
Concept, development and design: Christoph Haag, Xavier Klein, Femke Snelting
Editorial team: Thomas Buxó, Loraine Furter, Maryl Genc, Pierre Huyghebaert, Martino Morandi
Transcriptions: An Mertens, Boris Kish, Christoph Haag, Femke Snelting, George Williams, Gijs
de Heij, ginger coons, Ivan Monroy Lopez, John Haltiwanger, Ludivine Loiseau, Martino Morandi,
Pierre Huyghebaert, Urantsetseg Ulziikhuu, Xavier Klein
Chapter opener: Built with petter by Benjamin Stephan
-> http://github.com/b3nson/petter
Tools: basename, bash, bibtex, cat, Chromium, cp, curl, dpkg, egrep, Etherpad, exit,
ftp, gedit, GIMP, ghostscript, Git, GNU coreutils, grep, ImageMagick, Inkscape, Kate, man,
makeindex, meld, ne, pandoc, pdflatex, pdftk, Processing, python, read, rev, Scribus,
sed, vim, wget
Fonts: Junicode by Peter S. Baker, OCR-A by John Sauter
Source Files:
Texts, fonts and pdf: http://conversations.tools
Software: https://github.com/lafkon/conversations
Published by: Constant Verlag (Brussels, January 2015)
ISBN: 9789081145930
Copyright (C) Constant 2014
Copyleft: This work is free. You may copy, distribute and modify
it according to the terms of the Free Art License (see appendix)
This publication is made possible by the Libre Graphics Community, through the financial support
from the European Commission (Libre Graphics Research Unit) and the Flemish authorities.
Free Art License 1.3. (C) Copyleft Attitude, 2007. You can make reproductions and distribute this license verbatim (without any changes). Translation: Jonathan Clarke, Benjamin
Jean, Griselda Jung, Fanny Mourguet, Antoine Pitrou. Thanks to framalang.org
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Constant
Mondotheque: A Radiated Book
2016
P.1
Mondotheque::a
radiated
book/
un
livre
irradiant/
een
irradiërend
boek
P.2
P.3
Index
• Mondotheque::a radiated book/un livre irradiant/een
irradiërend boek
◦ Property:Person (agents + actors)
◦ EN Introduction
◦ FR Préface
◦ NL Inleiding
• Embedded hierarchies
◦ FR+NL+EN A radiating interview/Un entrevue irradiant/Een irradiërend gesprek
◦ EN Amateur Librarian - A Course in Critical Pedagogy TOMISLAV MEDAK &
MARCELL MARS (Public Library project)
◦ FR Bibliothécaire amateur - un cours de pédagogie critique TOMISLAV MEDAK
& MARCELL MARS
◦
◦
◦
◦
◦
EN
A bag but is language nothing of words MICHAEL MURTAUGH
A Book of the Web DUSAN BAROK
EN
The Indexalist MATTHEW FULLER
NL
De Indexalist MATTHEW FULLER
FR
Une lecture-écriture du livre sur le livre ALEXIA DE VISSCHER
EN
• Disambiguation
◦ EN An experimental transcript SÎNZIANA PĂLTINEANU
◦ EN+FR LES UTOPISTES and their common logos/et leurs logos communs
DENNIS POHL
◦
◦
◦
EN
X = Y DICK RECKARD
Madame C/Mevrouw C FEMKE SNELTING
EN
A Pre-emptive History of the Google Cultural Institute GERALDINE
EN+NL
JUÁREZ
◦
◦
FR
EN
Une histoire préventive du Google Cultural Institute GERALDINE JUÁREZ
Special:Disambiguation
• Location, location, location
◦ EN From Paper Mill to Google Data Center SHINJOUNG YEO
◦ EN House, City, World, Nation, Globe NATACHA ROUSSEL
◦ EN The Smart City - City of Knowledge DENNIS POHL
◦ FR La ville intelligente - Ville de la connaissance DENNIS POHL
◦ EN The Itinerant Archive
• Cross-readings
◦ EN Les Pyramides
◦ EN Transclusionism
◦ EN Reading list
◦ FR+EN+NL Colophon/Colofon
Last
Revision:
2·08·2016
P.4
P.5
Property:Person
Meet the cast of historical, contemporary and fictional people that populate La
Mondotheque.
Unknown man,Andrew
Warden Boyd Carnegie
Rayward, Françoise
Levie, Alex Wright
André CanonneArni Jonsson , Barack ObamaBernard Otlet Bernard Otlet, Bernard Otlet, Bill Echikson
Sauli Niinistö
Patrick
Patrick
Lafontaine Lafontaine
Bill Echikson, Delphine JenartDelphine Jenart,
Elio Di Rupo Unknown man,Elio Di Rupo, Elio Di Rupo, Elio Di Rupo, Sylvia Van
Delphine Jenart
Nooka Kiili ,
Elio Di Rupo, Sylvia Van Sylvia Van Thierry GeertsPeteghem, Elio
Joyce Proot
Roi Albert II, Peteghem
Peteghem
Di Rupo, JeanJean-Claude
Paul Deplus
Marcourt
Elio Di Rupo, Elio Di Rupo, Elio Di Rupo, Elio Di Rupo Alexander De Elio Di Rupo, Nicolas Sarkozy,
Eric E. SchmidtErnest de Potter
Thierry Geerts,Guy Quaden , Rudy Demotte
Croo, Elio Di Unknown man,Eric E. Schmidt
Unknown man Yves Vasseur
Rupo
Roi Albert II,
Jean-Claude
Marcourt
Evgeny
Rodionov
P.6
Stéphanie
Alexia de Visscher,
Femke Snelting,Robert M. Nicolas Malevé,
Stéphanie
Stéphanie
François
Manfroid, Femke
Michael Murtaugh,
Dennis Pohl, Ochshorn, JanMichael
Manfroid, Femke
Manfroid, Femke
Schuiten
Snelting, Dick Femke Snelting,Alexia de
Gerber , FemkeMurtaugh, Alexia
Snelting, Natacha
Snelting, Natacha
Reckard
Sînziana
Visscher, Andre
Snelting, Marcell
de Visscher, Roussel, Dick Roussel, Dick
Castro
Mars, Sebastian
Femke Snelting,Reckard
Reckard
Păltineanu, Nicolas
Luetgert , Donatella
Sînziana
Malevé
Portoghese Păltineanu
P.7
Gustave AbeelsHarm Post
Henri La
Fontaine
Henri La
Fontaine
Henri La
Fontaine
Mathilde Lhoest,
Henri La
Henri La
Fontaine
Fontaine
Igor PlatounoffWilhelmina
Coops, Igor
Platounoff
Annie Besant, Jean François Jean Otlet Jr. Bill Echikson, Jean-Paul Deplus
Annie Besant, Louis Masure,Unidentified Woman,
Marcel Flamion
Jean Delville Fueg
Jean-Paul Deplus
Jiddu
Mademoiselle Poels,
Mademoiselle Poels
Krishnamurti Mademoiselle de
Bauche
Marie-Louise Paul Otlet, Paul Otlet
Philips
Madame Taupin
, Pierre
Bourgeois
Paul Otlet
Wilhelmina Paul Otlet
Coops, Paul
Otlet
Marie Van Paul Otlet, Cato
Paul Otlet, Cato
Mons , Paul van Nederhasselt
van Nederhasselt
Otlet
Unidentified Wilhelmina Paul Otlet
Woman, Paul Coops, Paul
Otlet
Otlet
Paul Otlet
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Paul Otlet
, Paul Otlet, Jean
Delville
Unidentified Paul Otlet
Woman, Paul
Otlet, Georges
Lorphèvre
P.8
Paul Otlet
P.9
Cato van
Le Corbusier, Paul Otlet,
Nederhasselt, Paul
Paul Otlet, Georges
Otlet
Hélène de
Lorphèvre
Mandrot
Unidentified Paul Otlet, Henri
Paul Otlet
Woman, Jean La Fontaine,
Delville, Paul Mathilde Lhoest
Otlet, Henri La
Fontaine
Unidentified Unidentified Paul Otlet, Unidentified Paul Otlet,
Woman, Paul Woman, Paul Mathilde La Woman, W.E.B.
Unidentified
Otlet
Otlet, GeorgesFontaine , Henri
Du Bois, Paul Woman
Lorphèvre
La Fontaine Otlet, Henri La
Fontaine, Jean
Delville
Paul Panda, Unidentified Paul Otlet
Unidentified Woman, Paul
Woman, HenriOtlet
La
Fontaine, Cato van
Nederhasselt, Paul
Otlet, W.E.B. Du
Bois, Blaise Diagne
, Mathilde Lhoest
Unidentified Woman,
Sebastien
Paul Otlet, Cato
Delneste
van
Nederhasselt, Georges
Lorphèvre, André
Colet, Thea Coops,
Broese van Groenou
Introduction
This Radiated Book started three years ago with an e-mail from the Mundaneum archive
center in Mons. It announced that Elio di Rupo, then prime minister of Belgium, was about
to sign a collaboration agreement between the archive center and Google. The newsletter
cited an article in the French newspaper Le Monde that coined the Mundaneum as 'Google
on paper' [1]. It was our first encounter with many variations on the same theme.
The former mining area around Mons is also where Google has installed its largest
datacenter in Europe, a result of negotiations by the same Di Rupo[2]. Due to the re-branding
of Paul Otlet as ‘founding father of the Internet’, Otlet's oeuvre finally started to receive
international attention. Local politicians wanting to transform the industrial heartland into a
home for The Internet Age seized the moment and made the Mundaneum a central node in
their campaigns. Google — grateful for discovering its posthumous francophone roots — sent
chief evangelist Vint Cerf to the Mundaneum. Meanwhile, the archive center allowed the
company to publish hundreds of documents on the website of Google Cultural Institute.
While the visual resemblance between a row of index drawers and a server park might not
be a coincidence, it is something else to conflate the type of universalist knowledge project
imagined by Paul Otlet and Henri Lafontaine with the enterprise of the search giant. The
statement 'Google on paper' acted as a provocation, evoking other cases in other places
where geographically situated histories are turned into advertising slogans, and cultural
infrastructures pushed into the hands of global corporations.
An international band of artists, archivists and activists set out to unravel the many layers of
this mesh. The direct comparison between the historical Mundaneum project and the mission
of Alphabet Inc[3] speaks of manipulative simplification on multiple levels, but to de-tangle its
implications was easier said than done. Some of us were drawn in by misrepresentations of
the oeuvre of Otlet himself, others felt the need to give an account of its Brussels' roots, to reinsert the work of maintenance and caretaking into the his/story of founding fathers, or joined
out of concern with the future of cultural institutions and libraries in digital times.
We installed a Semantic MediaWiki and named it after the Mondotheque, a device
imagined by Paul Otlet in 1934. The wiki functioned as an online repository and frame of
reference for the work that was developed through meetings, visits and presentations[4]. For
Otlet, the Mondotheque was to be an 'intellectual machine': at the same time archive, link
generator, writing desk, catalog and broadcast station. Thinking the museum, the library, the
encyclopedia, and classificatory language as a complex and interdependent web of relations,
Otlet imagined each element as a point of entry for the other. He stressed that responses to
P.12
P.13
displays in a museum involved intellectual and social processes that where different from
those involved in reading books in a library, but that one in a sense entailed the other. [5]. The
dreamed capacity of his Mondotheque was to interface scales, perspectives and media at the
intersection of all those different practices. For us, by transporting a historical device into the
future, it figured as a kind of thinking machine, a place to analyse historical and social
locations of the Mundaneum project, a platform to envision our persistent interventions
together. The speculative figure of Mondotheque enabled us to begin to understand the
situated formations of power around the project, and allowed us to think through possible
forms of resistance. [6]
The wiki at http://mondotheque.be grew into a labyrinth of images, texts, maps and semantic
links, tools and vocabularies. MediaWiki is a Free software infrastructure developed in the
context of Wikipedia and comes with many assumptions about the kind of connections and
practices that are desirable. We wanted to work with Semantic extensions specifically
because we were interested in the way The Semantic Web[7] seemed to resemble Otlet's
Universal Decimal Classification system. At many moments we felt ourselves going down
rabbit-holes of universal completeness, endless categorisation and nauseas of scale. It made
the work at times uncomfortable, messy and unruly, but it allowed us to do the work of
unravelling in public, mixing political urgency with poetic experiments.
This Radiated Book was made because we wanted to create a moment, an incision into that
radiating process that allowed us to invite many others a look at the interrelated materials
without the need to provide a conclusive document. As a salute to Otlet's ever expanding
Radiated Library, we decided to use the MediaWiki installation to write, edit and generate
the publication which explains some of the welcome anomalies on the very pages of this
book.
The four chapters that we propose each mix fact and fiction, text and image, document and
catalogue. In this way, process and content are playing together and respond to the specific
material entanglements that we encountered. Mondotheque, and as a consequence this
Radiated book, is a multi-threaded, durational, multi-scalar adventure that in some way
diffracts the all-encompassing ambition that the 19th century Utopia of Mundaneum stood
for.
Embedded hierarchies addresses how classification systems, and the dream of their universal
application actually operate. It brings together contributions that are concerned with
knowledge infrastructures at different scales, from disobedient libraries, institutional practices
of the digital archive, meta-data structures to indexing as a pathological condition.
Disambiguation dis-entangles some of the similarities that appear around the heritage of Paul
Otlet. Through a close-reading of seemingly similar biographies, terms and vocabularies it relocates ambiguity to other places.
Location, location, location is an account of geo-political layers at work. Following the
itinerant archive of Mundaneum through the capital of Europe, we encounter local, national
and global Utopias that in turn leave their imprint on the way the stories play out. From the
hyperlocal to the global, this chapter traces patterns in the physical landscape.
Cross-readings consists of lists, image collections and other materials that make connections
emerge between historical and contemporary readings, unearthing possible spiritual or
mystical underpinnings of the Mundaneum, and transversal inclusions of the same elements in
between different locations.
The point of modest operations such as Mondotheque is to build the collective courage to
persist in demanding access to both the documents and the intellectual and technological
infrastructures that interface and mediate them. Exactly because of the urgency of the
situation, where the erosion of public institutions has become evident, and all forms of
communication seem to feed into neo-liberal agendas eventually, we should resist
simplifications and find the patience to build a relation to these histories in ways that makes
sense. It is necessary to go beyond the current techno-determinist paradigm of knowledge
production, and for this, imagination is indispensable.
Paul Otlet, design for Mondotheque (Mundaneum archive center, Mons)
Last
Revision:
2·08·2016
1. Jean-Michel Djian, Le Mundaneum, Google de papier, Le Monde Magazine, 19 december 2009
P.14
P.15
2. « À plusieurs
reprises, on a eu chaud, parce qu’il était prévu qu’au moindre couac sur ce point, Google arrêtait tout » Libre Belgique, 27 april
2007
3. Sergey and I are seriously in the business of starting new things. Alphabet will also include our X lab, which incubates new
efforts like Wing, our drone delivery effort. We are also stoked about growing our investment arms, Ventures and Capital, as
part of this new structure. Alphabet Inc. will replace Google Inc. as the publicly-traded entity (...) Google will become a whollyowned subsidiary of Alphabet https://abc.xyz/
4. http://mondotheque.be
5. The Mundaneum is an Idea, an Institution, a Method, a Body of workmaterials and Collections, a Building, a Network. Paul
Otlet, Monde (1935)
6. The analyses of these themes are transmitted through narratives -- mythologies or fictions, which I have renamed as "figurations"
or cartographies of the present. A cartography is a politically informed map of one's historical and social locations, enabling the
analysis of situated formations of power and hence the elaboration of adequate forms of resistance Rosi Braidotti, Nomadic
Theory (2011)
7. Some people have said, "Why do I need the Semantic Web? I have Google!" Google is great for helping people find things, yes!
But finding things more easily is not the same thing as using the Semantic Web. It's about creating things from data you've
complied yourself, or combining it with volumes (think databases, not so much individual documents) of data from other sources
to make new discoveries. It's about the ability to use and reuse vast volumes of data. Yes, Google can claim to index billions of
pages, but given the format of those diverse pages, there may not be a whole lot more the search engine tool can reliably do.
We're looking at applications that enable transformations, by being able to take large amounts of data and be able to run models
on the fly - whether these are financial models for oil futures, discovering the synergies between biology and chemistry researchers
in the Life Sciences, or getting the best price and service on a new pair of hiking boots. Tim Berners-Lee interviewed in
Consortium Standards Bulletin, 2005 http://www.consortiuminfo.org/bulletins/semanticweb.php
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P.21
Embedded
hierarchies
P.26
P.27
A
radiating
interview/
Un
entrevue
irradiant/
Een
irradiërend
gesprek
Stéphanie Manfroid and Raphaèle Cornille are responsible for the
Mundaneum archives in Mons. We speak with them about the relationship
between the universe of Otlet and the concrete practice of scanning, meta-data
and on-line publishing, and the possibilities and limitations of their work with
Google. How to imagine a digital archive that could include the multiple
relationships between all documents in the collection? How the make visible
the continuous work of describing, maintaining and indexing?
EN
The interview is part of a series of interviews with Belgian knowledge
institutions and their vision on digital information sharing. The voices of Sylvia
Van Peteghem and Dries Moreels (Ghent University), Églantine Lebacq and
Marc d'Hoore (Royal library of Belgium) resonate on the following pages.
We hear from them about the differences and similarities in how the three
institutions deal with the unruly practice of digital heritage.
The full interviews with the Royal Library of Belgium and Ghent University
Library can be found in the on-line publication.
• RC = Raphaèle Cornille (Mundaneum archive center, responsable des collections
iconographiques)
• SM = Stéphanie Manfroid (Mundaneum archive center, responsable des archives)
• ADV = Alexia de Visscher
• FS = Femke Snelting
Mons, 21 avril 2016
PAS MAL DE CHOSES À FAIRE
ADV : Dans votre politique de numérisation, quelle infrastructure d’accès envisagez-vous et
pour quel type de données et de métadonnées ?
RC : On numérise depuis longtemps au Mundaneum, depuis 1995. À l’époque, il y avait
déjà du matériel de numérisation. Forcément pas avec les même outils que l’on a aujourd’hui,
on n’imaginait pas avoir accès aux bases de données sur le net. Il y a eu des évolutions
techniques, technologiques qui ont été importantes. Ce qui fait que pendant quelques années
on a travaillé avec le matériel qui était toujours présent en interne, mais pas vraiment avec un
plan de numérisation sur le long terme. Juste pour répondre à des demandes, soit pour nous,
parce qu’on avait des publications ou des expositions ou parce qu’on avait des demandes
extérieures de reproductions.
L’objectif évidemment c’est de pouvoir mettre à la disposition du public tout ce qui a été
numérisé. Il faut savoir que nous avons une base de données qui s’appelle Pallas[1] qui a été
soutenue par la Communauté Française depuis 2003. Malheureusement, le logiciel nous
pose pas mal de problème. On a déjà tenté des intégrations d’images et ça ne s’affiche pas
toujours correctement. Parfois on a des fiches descriptives mais nous n’avons pas l’image qui
correspond.
SM : Les archives soutenues par la Communauté française, mais aussi d’autres centres, ont
opté pour Pallas. C’est ainsi que ce système permettait une compréhension des archives en
Belgique et en Communauté française notamment.
L’idée c’est que les centres d’archives utilisent tous un même système. C’est une belle
initiative, et dans ce cadre là, c’était l’idée d’avoir une plateforme générale, où toutes les
sources liées aux archives publiques, enfin les archives soutenues par la Communauté
Française - qui ne sont pas publiques d’ailleurs - puissent être accessibles à un seul et même
endroit.
RC : Il y avait en tout cas cette idée par la suite, d’avoir une plate-forme commune, qui
s’appelle numériques.be[2]. Malheureusement, ce qu’on trouve sur numeriques.be ne
correspond au contenu sur Pallas, ce sont deux structures différentes. En gros, si on veut
diffuser sur les deux, c’est deux fois le travail.
En plus, ils n’ont pas configuré numérique.be pour qu’il puisse être moissonné par
Europeana[3]. Il y a des normes qui ne correspondent pas encore.
SM : Ce sont des choix politiques là. Et nous on dépend de ça. Et nous, nous dépendons de
choix généraux. Il est important que l’on comprenne bien la situation d'centre d’archives
comme le nôtre. Sa place dans le paysage patrimoniale belge et francophone également.
Notre intention est de nous situer tant dans ce cadre qu’à un niveau européen mais aussi
international. Ce ne sont pas des combinaisons si aisées que cela à mettre en place pour ces
différents publics ou utilisateurs par exemple.
RC : Soit il y a un problème technique, soit il y a un problème d’autorisation. Il faut savoir
que c’est assez complexe au niveau des métadonnées, il y a pas mal de choses à faire. On a
pendant tout un temps numérisé, mais on a généré les métadonnées au fur et à mesure, donc
il y aussi un gros travail à réaliser par rapport à ça. Normalement, pour le début 2017 on
envisagera le passage à Europeana avec des métadonnées correctes et le fait qu’on puisse
verser des fichiers corrects.
C’est assez lourd comme travail parce que nous devons générer les métadonnées à chaque
fois. Si vous prenez le Dublin Core[4], c’est à chaque fois 23 champs à remplir par document.
On essaye de remplir le maximum. De temps en temps, ça peut être assez lourd quand
même.
LA VIE DE LA PIÈCE
FS : Pouvez-vous nous parler du détail de la lecture des documents d’Otlet et de la rédaction
de leur description, le passage d’un document « Otletien » à une version numérisée ?
P.30
P.31
RC : Il faut déjà au minimum avoir un inventaire. Il faut
que les pièces soient numérotées, sinon c’est un peu
difficile de retracer tout le travail. Parfois, ça passe par
une petite phase de restauration parce qu’on a des
documents poussiéreux et quand on scanne ça se voit.
Parfois, on doit faire des mises à plat, pour les journaux
par exemple, parce qu’ils sont pliés dans les boîtes. Ça
prend déjà un petit moment avant de pouvoir les
numériser. Ensuite, on va scanner le document, ça c’est la
partie la plus facile. On le met sur le scanner, on appuie
sur un bouton, presque.
Si c’est un manuscrit, on ne va pas pouvoir océriser. Par
contre, si c’est un document imprimé, là, on va l’océriser
en sachant qu’il va falloir le revérifier par la suite, parce
qu’il y a toujours un pourcentage d’erreur. Par exemple,
dans les journaux, en fonction de la typographie, si vous
avez des mots qui sont un peu effacés avec le temps, il
faut vérifier tout ça. Et puis, on va générer les
métadonnées Dublin Core. L’identifiant, un titre, tout ce
qui concerne les contributeurs : éditeurs, illustrateurs,
imprimeurs etc . c’est une description, c’est une
indexation par mots clefs, c’est une date, c’est une
localisation géographique, si il y en a une. C’est aussi,
faire des liens avec soit des ressources en interne soit des
ressources externes. Donc par exemple, moi si je pense à
une affiche, si elle a été dans une exposition si elle a été
publiée, il faut mettre toutes les références.
From Voor elk boek is een gebruiker:
SVP: Wij scannen op een totaal
andere manier. Bij Google gaat het
om massa-productie. Wij kiezen zelf
voor kleinere projecten. We hebben
een vaste ploeg, twee mensen die
voltijds scannen en beelden
verwerken, maar daarmee begin je
niet aan een project van 250.000
boeken. We doen wel een scan-ondemand of selecteren volledige
collecties. Toen we al onze
2.750.000 fiches enkele jaren
geleden door een externe firma lieten
scannen had ik medelijden met de
meisjes die de hele dag de
invoerscanner bedienden. Hopeloos
saai.
From X = Y:
According to the ideal image
described in "Traité", all the tasks of
collecting, translating, distributing,
should be completely automatic,
seemingly without the necessity of
human intervention. However, the
Mundaneum hired dozens of women
to perform these tasks. This humanrun version of the system was not
considered worth mentioning, as if it
was a temporary in-between phase
that should be overcome as soon as
possible, something that was staining
the project with its vulgarity.
SM : La vie de la pièce.
RC : Et faire le lien par exemple vers d’autres fonds, une autre lettre… Donc, vous avez
vraiment tous les liens qui sont là. Et puis, vous avez la description du fichier numérique en
lui-même. Nous on a à chaque fois quatre fichiers numériques : Un fichier RAW, un fichier
Tiff en 300 DPI, un JPEG en 300 DPI et un dernier JPE en 72 DPI, qui sont en fait les
trois formats qu’on utilise le plus. Et puis, là pareil, vous remettez un titre, une date, vous
avez aussi tout ce qui concerne les autorisations, les droits… Pour chaque document il y a
tout ces champs à remplir.
SM : Face à un schéma d’Otlet, on se demandait parfois ce que sont tous ces gribouillons.
On ne comprend pas tout de suite grand chose.
FS : Qui fait la description ? Plusieurs personnes ou quelqu’un qui travaille seul ?
RC : Ça demande quand même une certaine discipline, de la concentration et du temps pour
pouvoir le faire bien.
RC : Généralement c’est quelqu’un seul qui décrit. Là c’est un texte libre, donc c’est encore
assez facile. Maintenant quand vous devez indexer, il faut utiliser des Thesaurus existants, ce
qui n’est pas toujours facile parce que parfois ce sont des contraintes, et que ce n’est pas tout
à fait le vocabulaire que vous avez l’habitude d’utiliser.
SM : On a rencontré une firme, effectivement, quelqu’un qui pensait qu’on allait pouvoir
automatiser la chaîne de description des archives avec la numérisation y compris. Il ne
comprenait pas que c’était une tâche impossible. C’est une tâche humaine. Et franchement,
toute l’expérience qu’on peut avoir par rapport à ça aide énormément. Je ne pense pas, là
maintenant, qu’un cerveau humain puisse être remplacé par une machine dans ce cadre. Je
n’y crois pas.
UNE MÉTHODE D’INDEXATION STANDARDISÉE
FS : Votre travail touche très intimement à la pratique d’Otlet même. En fait, dans les
documents que nous avons consultés, nous avons vus plusieurs essais d’indexation, plusieurs
niveaux de systèmes de classement. Comment cela se croise-t-il avec votre travail de
numérisation ? Gardez-vous une trace de ces systèmes déjà projetés sur les documents euxmêmes ?
SM : Je crois qu’il y a deux éléments. Ici, si la question portait sur les étapes de la
numérisation, on part du document lui-même pour arriver à un nommage de fichier et il y a
une description avec plusieurs champs. Si finalement la pièce qui est numérisée, elle a sa
propre vie, sa propre histoire et c’est ça qu’on comprend. Par contre, au départ, on part du
principe que le fond est décrit, il y a un inventaire. On va faire comme si c’était toujours le
cas, ce n’est pas vrai d’ailleurs, ce n’est pas toujours le cas.
Et autre chose, aujourd’hui nous sommes un centre d’archives. Otlet était dans une
conception d’ouverture à la documentation, d’ouverture à l’Encyclopédie, vraiment quelque
chose de très très large. Notre norme de travail c’est d’utiliser la norme de description
générale des archives[5], et c’est une autre contrainte. C’est un gros boulot ça aussi.
On doit pouvoir faire des relations avec d’autres éléments qui se trouvent ailleurs, d’autres
documents, d’autres collections. C’est une lecture, je dirais presque en réseau des documents.
Évidemment c’est intéressant. Mais d’un autre côté, nous sommes archivistes, et c’est pas
qu’on n’aime pas la logique d’Otlet, mais on doit se faire à une discipline qui nous impose
aussi de protéger le patrimoine ici, qui appartient à la Communauté Française et qui donc
doit être décrit de manière normée comme dans les autres centres d’archives.
P.32
P.33
C’est une différence de dialogues. Pour moi ce n’est pas un détail du tout. Le fait que par
exemple, certains vont se dire « vous ne mettez pas l’indice CDU dans ces champs » ... vous
n’avez d’ailleurs pas encore posé cette question … ?
ADV : Elle allait venir !
SM : Aujourd’hui on ne cherche pas par indice CDU, c’est tout. Nous sommes un centre
d’archives, et je pense que ça a été la chance pour le Mundaneum de pouvoir mettre en
avant la protection de ce patrimoine en tant que tel et de pouvoir l’ériger en tant que
patrimoine réel, important pour la communauté.
RC : En fait la classification décimale n’étant pas une méthode d’indexation standardisée,
elle n’est pas demandée dans ces champs. Pour chaque champ à remplir dans le Dublin
Core, vous avez des normes à utiliser. Par exemple, pour les dates, les pays et la langue vous
avez les normes ISO, et la CDU n’est pas reconnue comme une norme.
Quand je décris dans Pallas, moi je mets l’indice CDU. Parce que les collections
iconographiques sont classées par thématique. Les cartes postales géographiques sont
classées par lieu. Et donc, j’ai à chaque fois l’indice CDU, parce que là, ça a un sens de le
mettre.
FS : C’est très beau d’entendre cela mais c’est aussi tragique dans un sens. Il y a eu tellement
d’efforts faits à cette époque là pour trouver un standard ...
UN AXE DE COMMUNICATION
SM : La question de la légitimité du travail d’Otlet se place sur un débat contemporain qui
est amené sur la gestion des bases de données, en gros. Ça c’est un axe qui est de
communication, ce n’est pas le seul axe de travail de fond dans nos archives. Il faut distinguer
des éléments et la politique de numérisation, je ne suis pas en train de vouloir dire : « Tiens,
on est dans la gestion de méga-données chez nous. »
Nous ne gérons pas de grandes quantités de données. Le Big Data ne nous concerne pas
tout à fait, en terme de données conservées chez nous. Le débat nous intéresse au même titre
que ce débat existait sous une autre forme fin du 19e siècle avec l’avènement de la presse
périodique et la multiplication des titres de journaux ainsi que la diffusion rapide d’une
information.
RC : Le fait d’avoir eu Paul Otlet reconnu comme père de l’internet etcetera, d’avoir pu le
rattacher justement à des éléments actuels, c’était des sujets porteurs pour la communication.
Ça ne veut pas dire que nous ne travaillons que là dessus. Il en a fait beaucoup plus que ça.
C’était un axe porteur, parce qu’on est à l’ère de la numérisation, parce qu’on nous demande
de numériser, de valoriser. On est encore à travailler sur les archives, à dépouiller les
archives, à faire des inventaires et donc on est très très loin de ces réflexions justement Big
Data et tout ça.
FS : Est-il imaginable qu’Otlet ait inventé le World Wide Web ?
SM : Franchement, pour dire les choses platement : C’est impossible, quand on a un regard
historique, d’imaginer qu’Otlet a imaginé… enfin il a imaginé des choses, oui, mais est-ce
que c’est parce que ça existe aujourd’hui qu’on peut dire « il a imaginé ça » ?. C’est ce qu’on
appelle de l’anachronisme en Histoire. Déontologiquement, ce genre de choses un historien
ne peut pas le faire. Quelqu’un d’autre peut se permettre de le faire. Par exemple, en
communication c’est possible. Réduire à des idées simples est aussi possible. C’est même un
avantage de pouvoir le faire. Une idée passera donc mieux.
RC : Il y a des concepts qu’il avait déjà compris.
From Voor elk boek is een gebruiker:
Maintenant, en fonction de l’époque, il n’a pas pu tout
Dus in de 19e eeuw wou Vander
mettre en place mais, il y a des choses qu’il avait
Haeghen een catalogus, en Otlet een
comprises dès le départ. Par exemple, standardiser les
bibliografie. En vandaag heeft Google
alles samen met de volledige tekst
choses pour pouvoir les changer. Ça il le comprend dès
erbij die dan nog op elk woord
le départ, c’est pour ça, la rédaction des fiches, c’est
doorzoekbaar is. Dat is de droom van
standardisé, vous ne pouvez pas rédiger n’importe
zowel Vander Haeghen als Otlet
méér dan verder zetten. Vanuit die
comment. C’est pour ça qu’il développe la CDU, il faut
gedachte zijn wij vanzelfsprekend
un langage qui soit utilisable par tous. Il imagine avec les
meegegaan. We hebben aan de
Google onderhandelaars gevraagd:
moyens de communications qu’il a à l’époque, il imagine
waarom doet Google dit? Het
déjà un moment pouvoir les combiner, sans doute parce
antwoord was: “Because it's in the
qu’il a vu un moment l’évolution des techniques et qu’il
heart of the founders”. Moesten wij de
idealen van Vander Haeghen en
pense pouvoir aller plus loin. Il pense à la
Otlet niet als voorbeeld hebben
dématérialisation quand il utilise des microfilms, il se dit
gehad, dan was er misschien twijfel
« attention la conservation papier, il y a un soucis. Il faut
geweest, maar nu niet.
conserver le contenu et donc il faut le passer sur un autre
support ». D’abord il va essayer sur des plaques
photographiques, il calcule le nombre de pages qu’il peut mettre sur une plaque et voilà. Il
transforme ça en autre support.
Je pense qu’il a imaginé des choses, parce qu’il avait cette envie de communiquer le savoir,
ce n’est pas quelqu’un qui a un moment avait envie de collectionner sans diffuser, non. C’était
toujours dans cette idée de diffuser, de communiquer quelques soient les personnes, quelque
soit le pays. C’est d’ailleurs pour ça qu’il adapte le Musée International, pour que tout le
monde puisse y aller, même ceux qui ne savaient pas lire avaient accès aux salles et
pouvaient comprendre, parce qu’il avait organisé les choses de telles façons. Il imagine à
chaque fois des outils de communication qui vont lui servir pour diffuser ses idées, sa pensée.
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Qu’il ait imaginé à un moment donné qu’on puisse lire des choses à l’autre bout du monde ?
Il a du y penser, mais maintenant, techniquement et technologiquement, il n’a pas pu
concevoir. Mais je suis sûre qu’il avait envisagé le concept.
CELUI QUI FAIT UN PEU DE TOUT, IL LE FAIT UN PEU
MOINS BIEN
SM : Otlet, à son époque, a par moments réussi à se faire détester par pas mal de gens,
parce qu’il y avait une sorte de confusion au niveau des domaines dans lesquels il exerçait. À
la fois, cette fascination de créer une cité politique qui est la Cité Mondiale, et le fait de
vouloir mélanger les genres, de ne pas être dans une volonté de standardisation avec des
spécialistes, mais aussi une volonté de travailler avec le monde de l’industrie, parce que c’est
ce qu’il a réussi. C’est un réel handicap à cette époque là parce que vous avez une
spécialisation dans tous les domaines de la connaissance et finalement celui qui fait un peu de
tout, il le fait un peu mal moins bien. Dans certains milieux ou après une lecture très
superficielle du travail mené par Otlet, on comprend que le personnage bénéficie d’un a
priori négatif car il a mélangé les genres ou les domaines. Par exemple, Otlet s’est attaqué à
différentes institutions pour leur manque d’originalité en terme de bibliographie. La
Bibliothèque Royale en a fait les frais. Ça peut laisser quelques traces inattendues dans
l’histoire. L’héritage d’Otlet en matière bibliographique n’est pas forcément mis en évidence
dans un lieu tel que la bibliothèque nationale. C’est on le comprend difficile d’imaginer une
institution qui explique certains engagements de manière aussi personnalisée ou
individualisée. On va plutôt parler d’un service et de son histoire dans une période plus
longue. On évite ainsi d’entrer dans des détails tels que ceux-là.
Effectivement, il y a à la fois le Monsieur dans son époque, la vision que les scientifiques vont
en garder aujourd’hui et des académiques. Et puis, il y a la fascination de tout un chacun.
Notre travail à nous, c’est de faire de tout. C’est à la fois de faire en sorte que les archives
soient disponibles pour le tout un chacun, mais aussi que le scientifique qui a envie d’étudier,
dans une perspective positive ou négative, puisse le faire.
ON EST PAS DANS L’OTLETANEUM ICI !
FS : Le travail d’Otlet met en relation l’organisation du savoir et de la communication.
Comment votre travail peut-il, dans un centre d’archives qui est aussi un lieu de rencontre et
un musée, être inspiré - ou pas - par cette mission qu’Otlet s’était donné ?
SM : Il y a quand même un chose qui est essentielle, c’est qu’on est pas dans l’Otletaneum
ici, on n’est pas dans la fondation Otlet.
Nous sommes un centre d’archives spécialisé, qui a conservé toutes les archives liées à une
institution. Cette institution était animée par des hommes et des femmes. Et donc, ce qui les
animaient, c’était différentes choses, dont le désir de transmission. Et quand à Otlet, on a
identifié son envie de transmettre et il a imaginé tous les moyens. Il n’était pas ingénieur non
plus, il ne faut pas rire. Et donc, c’est un peu comme Jules Verne, il a rêvé le monde, il a
imaginé des choses différentes, des instruments. Il s’est mis à rêver à certaines choses, à des
applications. C’est un passionné, c’est un innovateur et je pense qu’il a passionné des gens
autour de lui. Mais, autour de lui, il y avait d’autres personnes, notamment Henri La
Fontaine, qui n’est pas moins intéressant. Il y avait aussi le Baron Descamps et d’autres
personnes qui gravitaient autour de cette institution. Il y avait aussi tout un contexte
particulier lié notamment à la sociologie, aux sciences sociales, notamment Solvay, et voilà.
Tout ceux qu’on retrouve et qui ont traversé une quarantaine d’années.
Aujourd’hui, nous sommes un centre d’archives avec des supports différents, avec cette
volonté encyclopédique qu’ils ont eu et qui a été multi supports, et donc l’œuvre phare n’a
pas été uniquement Le Traité de Documentation. C’était intéressant de comprendre sa
genèse avec les visites que vous aviez fait, mais il y d’autres fonds, notamment des fonds liés
au pacifisme, à l’anarchisme et au féminisme. Et aussi tout ce département iconographique
avec ces essais un peu particuliers qui ne sont pas super connus.
Donc on n’est pas dans l’Otletaneum et nous ne sommes pas dans le sanctuaire d’Otlet.
ADV : La question est plutôt : comment s’emparer de sa vision dans votre travail ?
SM : J’avais bien compris la question.
En rendant accessible ses archives, son patrimoine et en participant à la meilleure
compréhension à travers nos efforts de valorisation : des publications, visites guidées mais
aussi le programme d’activités qui permettent de mieux comprendre son travail. Ce travail
s’effectue notamment à travers le label du Patrimoine Européen mais aussi dans le cadre de
Mémoire du Monde[6].
RC : Ce n’est pas parce que Otlet a écrit que La Fontaine n’a pas travaillé sur le projet. Ce
n’était pas du tout les mêmes personnalités.
SM : On est sur des stéréotypes.
ADV : Otlet a tout de même énormément écrit ?
SM : Otlet a beaucoup synthétisé, diffusé et lu. Il a été un formidable catalyseur de son
époque.
RC : C’est plutôt perdre la pensée d’Otlet en allant dans un seul sens, parce que lui il voulait
justement brasser des savoirs, diffuser l’ensemble de la connaissance. Pour nous l’objectif
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c’est vraiment de pouvoir tout exploiter, tous les sujets, tous les supports, toutes les
thématiques… Quand on dit qu’il a préfiguré internet, c’est juste deux schémas d’Otlet et on
tourne autour de deux schémas depuis 2012, même avant d’ailleurs, ces deux schémas A4.
Ils ne sont pas grands.
SM : Ce qui n’est pas juste non plus, c’est le caractère réducteur par lequel on passe quand
on réduit le Mundaneum à Otlet et qu’on ne réduit Otlet qu’à ça. Et d’un autre côté, ce que
je trouve intéressant aussi, c’est les autres personnalités qui ont décidé de refaire aussi le
monde par la fiche et là, notre idée était évidemment de mettre en évidence toutes ces
personnes et les compositions multiformes de cette institution qui avait beaucoup d’originalité
et pas de s’en tenir à une vision « La Fontaine c’est le prix Nobel de la paix, Otlet c’est
monsieur Internet, Léonie La Fontaine c’est Madame féminisme, Monsieur Hem Day[7] c’est
l’anarchiste … » On ne fait pas l’Histoire comme ça, en créant des catégories.
RC : Je me souviens quand je suis arrivée ici en 2002 : Paul Otlet c’était l’espèce de savant
fou qui avait voulu créer une cité mondiale et qui l’avait proposée à Hitler. Les gens avaient
oublié tout ce qu’il avait fait avant.
Vous avez beaucoup de bibliothèques qui aujourd’hui encore classent au nom de la CDU
mais ils ne savent pas d’où ça vient. Tout ce travail on l’a fait et ça remettait, quand même,
les choses à leur place et on l’a ouvert quand même au public. On a eu des ouvertures avec
des différents publics à partir de ce moment là.
SM : C’est aussi d’avoir une vision globale sur ce que les uns et les autres ont fait et aussi de
ce qu’a été l’institution, ce qui est d’ailleurs l’une des plus grosse difficulté qui existe. C’est de
s’appeler Mundaneum dans l’absolu.
On est le « Mundaneum Centre d’archives » depuis 1993. Mais le Mundaneum c’est une
institution qui nait après la première guerre mondiale, dont le nom est postérieur à l'IIB.
Dans ses gênes, elle est bibliographique et peut-être que ce sont ces différentes notions qu’il
faut essayer d’expliquer aux gens.
Mais c’est quand même formidable de dire que Paul Otlet a inventé internet, pourquoi pas.
C’est une formule et je pense que dans l’absolu la formule marque les gens. Maintenant, il
n’a pas inventé Google. J’ai bien dit Internet.
POUR LA CARICATURE, C’EST SYMPA. POUR LA RÉALITÉ
MOINS.
FS : Qu’est ce que votre collaboration avec Google vous a-t-elle apportée ? Est-ce qu'ils vous
ont aidé à numériser des documents?
RC : C’est nous qui avons numérisé. C’est moi qui met les images en ligne sur Google.
Google n’a rien numérisé.
ADV : Mais donc vous vous transmettez des images et des métadonnées à Google mais le
public n’a pas accès à ces images … ?
RC : Ils ont accès, mais ils ne peuvent pas télécharger.
FS : Les images que vous avez mises sur Google Cultural Institute sont aujourd’hui dans le
domaine public et donc en tant que public, je ne peux pas voir que les images sont libres de
droit, parce qu’elles sont toutes sous la licence standard de Google.
RC : Ils ont mis « Collection de la Fédération Wallonie Bruxelles » à chaque fois. Puisque
ça fait partie des métadonnées qui sont transmises avec l’image.
ADV : Le problème, actuellement, comme il n’y a pas de catalogue en ligne, c’est qu’il n’y a
pas tant d’autres accès. À part quelques images sur numeriques.be, quand on tape « Otlet »
sur un moteur de recherche, on a l’impression que ce n’est que via le Google Cultural Institute
par lequel on a accès et en réalité c’est un accès limité.
SM : C’est donc une impression.
RC : Vous avez aussi des images sur Wikimedia commons. Il y a la même chose que sur
Google Cultural Institute. C’est moi qui les met des deux cotés, je sais ce que je mets. Et là
je suis encore en train d’en uploader dessus, donc allez y. Pour l’instant, c’est de nouveau des
schémas d’Otlet, en tout cas des planches qui sont mises en ligne.
Sur Wikimédia Commons je sais pas importer les métadonnées automatiquement. Enfin
j’importe un fichier et puis je dois entrer les données moi-même. Je ne peux pas importer un
fichier Excel. Dans Google je fais ça, j’importe les images et ça se fait tout seul.
AV : Et vous pouvez pas trouver une collaboration avec les gens de Wikimédia Commons ?
RC : En fait, ils proposent des systèmes d’importations mais qui ne fonctionnent pas ou alors
qui ne fonctionnent pas avec Windows. Et donc, moi je ne vais pas commencer à installer un
PC qui fonctionne avec Linux ou Ubuntu juste pour pouvoir uploader sur Wikimédia.
AV : Mais eux peuvent le faire ?
RC : On a eu la collaboration sur Le traité de Documentation, puisque c’est eux qui ont
travaillés. Ils ont tout retranscrit.
Aussi, il faut dédommager les bénévoles. Ça je peux vous garantir. Ils sont bénévoles jusqu’à
un certain point. Mais si vous leur confiez du travail comme ça … Ils sont bénévoles parce
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que quand ils retravaillent des fiches sur Wikipédia, parce que c’est leur truc, ils en ont envie,
c’est leur volonté.
Je ne mets pas plus sur Google Cultural Institute que sur Wikipédia. Je ne favorise pas
Google. Ce qu’il y a sur le Cultural Institute, c’est qu’on a la possibilité de réaliser des
expositions virtuelles et quand j’upload là, c’est parce qu’on a une exposition qui va être faite.
On essaye de faire des expositions virtuelles. C’est vrai que ça fonctionne bien pour nous en
matière de communication pour les archives. Ça, il ne faut pas s’en cacher. J’ai beaucoup de
demandes qui arrivent, des demandes d’images, par ce biais là. Ça nous permet de valoriser
des fonds et des thématiques qu’on ne pourrait pas faire dans l’espace.
On a fait une exposition sur Léonie Lafontaine, qui a permis de mettre en ligne une centaine
de documents liés au féminisme, ça n’avait jamais été fait avant. C’était très intéressant et ça
a eu un bon retour pour les autres expositions aussi. Moi, c’est plutôt comme ça que j’utilise
Google Cultural Institute. Je ne suis pas pro Google mais là, j’ai un outil qui me permet de
valoriser les archives.
ADV : Google serait-il la seule solution pour valoriser vos archives ?
SM : Notre solution c’est d’avoir un logiciel à nous. Pourquoi avoir cette envie d’alimenter
d’autres sites ? Parce qu’on ne l’a pas sur le nôtre. Pour rappel, on travaille pour la
Communauté Française qui est propriétaire des collections et avec laquelle on est
conventionné. Elle ne nous demande pas d’avoir un logiciel externe. Elle demande qu’on ait
notre propre produit aussi. Et c’est là dessus que l’on travaille depuis 2014, pour le
remplacement de Pallas, parce que ça fait des années qu’ils nous disent qu’ils ne vont plus
soutenir. C’est plutôt ça qui nous met dans une situation complètement incompréhensible.
Comment voulez vous qu’on puisse faire transparaître ce que nous avons si on n’a pas un
outil qui permette aux chercheurs, quels qu’ils soient, scientifiques ou non, pour qu’ils
puissent être autonomes dans leur recherches ? Et pour nous, le travail que nous avons fait
en terme d’inventaire et de numérisation, qu’il soit exploitable de manière libre ?
Moi, franchement, je me demande, si cette question et cette vision que vous avez, elle ne se
poserait pas si finalement nous étions déjà sur autre chose que Pallas. On est dans un
inconfort de travail de base.
Je pense aussi que l’information à donner de notre part c’est de dire « il y a tout ceci qui
existe, venez le voir ».
On arrive à sensibiliser aussi sur les collections qu’il y a au centre d’archives et c’est bien,
c’est tout à fait intéressant. Maintenant ce serait bien aussi de franchir une autre étape et
d’éduquer sur l'ouverture au patrimoine. C’est ça aussi notre mission.
Donc Google a sa propre politique. Nous avons mis à disposition quelques expositions et
ceci en est l’intérêt. Mais on a quand même tellement de partenaires différents avec lesquels
on a travaillé. On ne privilégie pas un seul partenaire. Aujourd’hui, certaines firmes viennent
vers nous parce qu’elles ont entendu parler justement plus de Google que du Mundaneum et
en même temps du Mundaneum par l’intermédiaire de Google.
Ce sont des éléments qui nous permettent d’ouvrir peut-être le champ du dialogue avec
d’autres partenaires mais qui ne permettent pas d’aller directement en profondeur dans les
archives, enfin, dans le patrimoine réel que l’on a.
Je veux dire, on aura beau dire qu’on fait autre chose, on ne verra que celui là parce que
Google est un mastodonte et parce que ça parle à tout le monde. On est dans une aire de
communication particulière.
RC : Maintenant la collaboration Google et l’image que vous en avez et bien nous on en
pâtit énormément au niveau des archives. Et encore, parce que souvent les gens nous disent
« mais vous avez un gros mécène »
SM : Ils nous réduisent à ça. Pour la caricature c’est sympa. Pour la réalité moins.
FS : Quand on parle aux gens de l’Université de Gand, c’est clair que leur collaboration avec
Google Books a eu une autre fonction. Ce ne sont que des livres, des objets qui sont scannés
de manière assez brutes. Il n’y a pas de métadonnées complexes, c’est plutôt une question de
volume.
SM : La politique de numérisation de l’Université de
Gand, je pense, est plus en lien avec ce que Google
imagine. C’est-à-dire quelle est la plus value que ça leur
apporte de pouvoir travailler à la fois une bibliothèque
universitaire telle que la bibliothèque de l’Université de
Gand, et le fait de l’associer avec le Mundaneum ?
FS : C’est aussi d'autres besoins, un autre type d’accès ?
Dans une bibliothèque les livres sont là pour être lus, j’ai
l’impression que ce n’est pas la même vision pour un
centre d’archives.
SM : C’est bien plus complexe dans d’autres endroits.
From Voor elk boek is een gebruiker:
SVP: Maar ... je kan niet bij Google
gaan aankloppen, Google kiest jou.
Wij hebben wel hun aandacht
gevraagd voor het Mundaneum met
de link tussen Vander Haeghen en
Otlet. Als Google België iets
organiseert, proberen ze ons altijd te
betrekken, omdat wij nu eenmaal een
universiteit zijn. U heeft het
Mundaneum gezien, het is een zeer
mooi archief, maar dat is het ook.
Voor ons zou dat enkel een stuk van
een collectie zijn. Ze worden ook op
een totaal andere manier gesteund
door Google dan wij.
Notre intention en terme de numérisation n’est pas celle
là, et nous ne voyons pas notre action, nous, uniquement
par ce biais là. À Gand, ils ont numérisé des livres. C’est leur choix soutenu par la Région
flamande. De notre côté, nous poursuivons une même volonté d’accès pour le public et les
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chercheurs mais avec un matériel un patrimoine, bien différent de livres publiés uniquement !
Le travail avec Google a permis de collaborer plusieurs fois avec l’Université mais nous
l’avions déjà fait avant de se retrouver avec Google sur certaines activités et l’accueil de
conférenciers. Donc, il y a un partenariat avec l’Université gantoise qui est intéressée par
l’histoire d’Otlet, l’histoire des idées mais aussi de l’internationalisme, de l’architecture de la
schématique. C’est d’ailleurs très enrichissant comme réflexion.
TOUT NUMÉRISER
FS : J’ai entendu quelqu’un se demander « pourquoi ne pas numériser toutes les fiches
bibliographiques qui sont dans les tiroirs » ?
RC : Ça ne sert à rien. Toutes les fiches ça n’aurait pas de sens. Maintenant, ce serait
intéressant d’en étudier quelques-unes.
Il y avait un réseau aussi autour du répertoire. C’est à dire que si on a autant de fiches, ce
n'est pas seulement parce qu’on a des fiches qui ont été rédigées à Bruxelles, on a des fiches
qui viennent du monde entier. Dans chaque pays il y avait des institutions responsables de
réaliser des bibliographies et de les renvoyer à Bruxelles.
Ça serait intéressant d’avoir un échantillon de toutes ces institutions ou de toutes ces fiches
qui existent. Ça permettrait aussi de retrouver la trace de certaines institutions qui n’existent
plus aujourd’hui. On a quand même eu deux guerres, il y a eu des révolutions etcetera. Ils
ont quand même travaillé avec des institutions russes qui n’existent plus aujourd’hui. Par ce
biais là, on pourrait retrouver leur trace. Même chose pour des ouvrages. Il y a des ouvrages
qui n’existent plus et pour lesquels on pourrait retrouver la trace. Il faut savoir qu’après la
deuxième guerre mondiale, en 46-47, le président du Mundaneum est Léon Losseau. Il est
avocat, il habite Mons, sa maison d’ailleurs est au 37 rue de Nimy, pas très loin. Il collabore
avec le Mundaneum depuis ses débuts et donc vu que les deux fondateurs sont décédés
pendant la guerre, à ce moment là il fait venir l’UNESCO à Bruxelles. Parce qu’on est dans
une phase de reconstruction des bibliothèques, beaucoup de livres ont été détruits et on
essaye de retrouver leur traces. Il leur dit « venez à Bruxelles, nous on a le répertoire de tous
ces bouquins, venez l’utiliser, nous on a le répertoire pour reconstituer toutes les
bibliothèques ».
Donc, tout numériser, non. Mais numériser certaines choses pour montrer le mécanisme de
ce répertoire, sa constitution, les différents répertoires qui existaient dans ce répertoire et de
pouvoir retrouver la trace de certains éléments, oui.
Si on numérise tout, cela permettrait d’avoir un état des lieux des sources d’informations qui
existaient à une époque pour un sujet.
SM : Le cheminement de la pensée.
Il y a des pistes très intéressantes qui vont nous permettre d’atteindre des aspects
protéiformes de l’institution, mais c’est vaste.
LA MÉMOIRE VIVE DE L’INSTITUTION
FS : Nous étions très touchées par les fiches annotées de la CDU que vous nous avez
montrées la dernière fois que nous sommes venues.
RC : Le travail sur le système lui-même.
SM : C’est fantastique effectivement, avec l’écriture d’Otlet.
SM : Autant on peut dire qu'Otlet est un maître du marketing, autant il utilisait plusieurs
termes pour décrire une même réalité. C’est pour ça que ne s’attacher qu’à sa vision à lui
c’est difficile. Comme classer ses documents, c’est aussi difficile.
ADV : Otlet n’a-t-il pas laissé suffisamment de documentation ? Une documentation qui
explicite ses systèmes de classement ?
RC : Quand on a ouvert les boîtes d'Otlet en 2002, c’était des caisses à bananes non
classées, rien du tout. En fonction de ce qu’on connaissait de l’histoire du Mundaneum à
l’époque on a pu déterminer plus ou moins des frontières et donc on avait l'Institut
international de bibliographie, la CDU, la Cité Mondiale aussi, le Musée International.
SM : Du pacifisme ...
RC : On a appelé ça « Mundapaix » parce qu’on ne savait pas trop comment le mettre dans
l’histoire du Mundaneum, c’était un peu bizarre. Le reste, on l'avait mis de côté parce qu’on
n'était pas en mesure, à ce moment là, de les classer dans ce qu’on connaissait. Puis, au fur
et à mesure qu’on s’est mis à lire les archives, on s’est mis à comprendre des choses, on a
découvert des institutions qui avaient été créées en plus et ça nous a permis d’aller
rechercher ces choses qu’on avait mises de coté.
Il y avait tellement d’institutions qui ont été créées, qui ont pu changer de noms, on ne sait
pas si elles ont existé ou pas. Il faisait une note, il faisait une publication où il annonçait :
« l’office centrale de machin chose » et puis ce n'est même pas sûr qu’il ait existé quelque
part.
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Parfois, il reprend la même note mais il change certaines
choses et ainsi de suite … rien que sa numérotation c’est
pas toujours facile. Vous avez l’indice CDU, mais
ensuite, vous avez tout le système « M » c’est la référence
aux manuels du RBU. Donc il faut seulement aller
comprendre comment le manuel du RBU est organisé.
C’est à dire trouver des archives qui correspondent pour
pouvoir comprendre cette classification dans le « M ».
RC : On n’a pas trouvé un moment donné, et on aurait
bien voulu trouver, un dossier avec l’explication de son
classement. Sauf qu’il ne nous l’a pas laissé.
SM : Peut-être qu’il est possible que ça ait existé, et je
me demande comment cette information a été expliquée
aux suivants. Je me demande même si George Lorphèvre
savait, parce qu'il n’a pas pu l’expliquer à Boyd
Rayward. En tout cas, les explications n’ont pas été
transmises.
From De Indexalist:
"Bij elke verwijzing stond weer een
andere verwijzing, de één nog
interessanter dan de ander. Elk
vormde de top van een piramide van
weer verdere literatuurstudie, zwanger
met de dreiging om af te dwalen. Elk
was een strakgespannen koord dat
indien niet in acht genomen de auteur
in de val van een fout zou lokken, een
vondst al uitgevonden en
opgeschreven."
From The Indexalist:
“At every reference stood another
reference, each more interesting than
the last. Each the apex of a pyramid
of further reading, pregnant with the
threat of digression, each a thin high
wire which, if not observed might lead
the author into the fall of error, a
finding already found against and
written up.”
L’équipe du Mundaneum a développé une expérience
de plusieurs années et une compréhension sur les archives et leur organisation. Nous avons
par exemple découvert l’existence de fichiers particuliers tels que les fichiers « K ». Ils sont
liés à l’organisation administrative interne. Il a fallu montrer les éléments et archives sur
lesquels nous nous sommes basés pour bien prouver la démarche qui était la nôtre. Certains
documents expliquaient clairement cela. Mais si vous ne les avez jamais vu, c’est difficile de
croire un nouvel élément inconnu !
RC : On n’a pas beaucoup d’informations sur l’origine des collections, c’est-à-dire sur
l’origine des pièces qui sont dans les collections. Par hasard, je vais trouver un tiroir où il est
mis « dons » et à l’intérieur, je ne vais trouver que des fiches écrites à la main comme « dons
de madame une telle de deux drapeaux pour le Musée International » et ainsi de suite.
Il ne nous a pas laissé un manuel à la fin de ses archives et c’est au fur et à mesure qu’on lit
les archives qu’on arrive à faire des liens et à comprendre certains éléments. Aujourd’hui,
faire une base de données idéale, ce n’est pas encore possible, parce qu’il y a encore
beaucoup de choses que nous-mêmes on ne comprend pas. Qu’on doit encore découvrir.
ADV : Serait-il imaginable de produire une documentation issue de votre cheminement dans
la compréhension progressive de cette classification ? Par exemple, des textes enrichis donnant
une perception plus fine, une trace de la recherche. Est-ce que c’est quelque chose qui pourrait
exister ?
RC : Oui, ce serait intéressant.
Par exemple si on prend le répertoire bibliographique. Déjà, il n’y a pas que des références
bibliographiques dedans. Vous avez deux entrées : entrée par matière, entrée par auteur,
donc vous avez le répertoire A et le répertoire B. Si vous regardez les étiquettes, parfois,
vous allez trouver autre chose. Parfois, on a des étiquettes avec « ON ». Vous savez ce que
c’est ? C’est « catalogue collectif des bibliothèque de Belgique ». C’est un travail qu’ils ont
fait à un moment donné. Vous avez les « LDC » les « Bibliothèques collectifs de sociétés
savantes ». Chaque société ayant un numéro, vous avez tout qui est là. Le « K » c’est tout ce
qui est administratif donc à chaque courrier envoyé ou reçu, ils rédigeaient une fiche. On a
des fiches du personnel, on sait au jour le jour qui travaillait et qui a faisait quoi… Et ça, il
ne l’a pas laissé dans les archives.
SM : C’est presque la mémoire vive de l’institution.
On a eu vraiment cette envie de vérifier dans le répertoire cette façon de travailler, le fait
qu’il y ait des informations différentes. Effectivement, c’était un peu avant 2008, qu’on l'a su
et cette information s’est affinée avec des vérifications. Il y a eu des travaux qui ont pu être
faits avec l’identification de séries particulières des dossiers numérotés que Raphaèle a
identifié. Il y avait des correspondances et toute une structuration qu’on a identifié aussi. Ce
sont des sections précises qui ont permis d’améliorer, à la fois la CDU, au départ de faire la
CDU, de faire le répertoire et puis de créer d’autres sections, comme la section féministe,
comme la section chasse et pêche comme la section iconographique. Et donc, par rapport à
ça, je pense qu’il y a vraiment tout un travail qui doit être mis en relation à partir d’une
observation claire, à partir d’une réflexion claire de ce qu’il y a dans le répertoire et dans les
archives. Et ça, c’est un travail qui se fait étape par étape. J’espère qu’on pourra quand
même bien avancer là dessus et donner des indications qui permettront d’aller un peu plus
loin, je ne suis pas sûre qu’on verra le bout.
C’est au moins de transmettre une information, de faire en sorte qu’elle soit utilisable et que
certains documents et ces inventaires soient disponibles, ceux qui existent aujourd’hui. Et que
ça ne se perde pas dans le temps.
FS : Un jour, pensez-vous pouvoir dire « voilà, maintenant c’est fini, on a compris » ?
SM : Je ne suis pas sûre que ce soit si impossible que ça.
Ça dépend de notre volonté et dialogue autour de ces documents. Un dialogue entre les
chercheurs de tout type et l’équipe du Mundaneum enrichit la compréhension. Plus on est
nombreux autour de certains points, plus la compréhension s’élargit. Ça implique bien
entendu une implication de partenaires externes également.
Aujourd’hui on est passé à une politique de numérisation par un matériel, par une
spécialisation du personnel. Et je pense que cette spécialisation nous a permis, depuis des
années, d’aller un peu plus profondément dans les archives et donc de mieux les comprendre.
P.44
P.45
Il y a un historique que l’on comprend véritablement bien aussi, il ne demande qu’à se
déployer. Il y a à comprendre comment on va pouvoir valoriser cela autour de journées,
autour de publications, autour d’outils qui sont à notre disposition. Et donc, autour de
catalogues en ligne, notamment, et de notre propre catalogue en ligne.
C’EST ÇA QU’IL FAUT IMAGINER
FS : Les méthodes et les standards de documentation changent, l’histoire institutionnelle et les
temps changent, les chercheurs passent… vous avez vécu avec tout ça depuis longtemps. Je
me demande comment le faire transparaître, le faire ressentir?
SM : C’est vrai qu’on aimerait bien pouvoir axer aussi la communication de l’institution sur
ces différents aspects. C’est bien ça notre rêve en fait, ou notre aspiration. Pour l’instant, on
est plutôt en train de se demander comment on va mieux communiquer, sur ce que nous
faisons nous ?
RC : Est-ce que ce serait uniquement en mettant en ligne des documents ? Ou imaginer une
application qui permettrait de les mettre en œuvre? Par exemple, si je prends la
correspondance, moi j’ai lu à peu près 3000 courriers. En les lisant, on se rend vraiment
compte du réseau. C’est-à-dire qu’on se rend compte qu’il a de la correspondance à peu près
partout dans le monde. Que ce soit avec des particuliers, avec des bibliothèques, avec des
universités, avec des entreprises et donc déjà rien qu’avec cet échantillon-là, ça donne une
masse d’informations. Maintenant, si on commence à décrire dans une base de données,
lettre par lettre, je ne suis pas sûre que cela apporte quelque chose. Par contre, si on imagine
une application qui permette de faire ressortir sur une carte à chaque fois le nom des
correspondants, là, ça donne déjà une idée et ça peut vraiment mettre en œuvre toute cette
correspondance. Mais prise seule juste comme ça, est-ce que c’est vraiment intéressant ?
Dans une base de données dite « classique », c’est ça aussi le problème avec nos archives, le
Mundaneum n'étant pas un centre d’archives comme les autres de par ses collections, c’est
parfois difficile de nous adapter à des standards existants.
ADV : Il n’y aurait pas qu’un seul catalogue ou pas une seule manière de montrer les
données. C’est bien ça ?
RC : Si vous allez sur Pallas vous avez la hiérarchie du fond Otlet. Est-ce que ça parle à
quelqu’un, à part quelqu’un qui veut faire une recherche très spécifique ? Mais sinon ça ne
lui permet pas de vraiment visualiser le travail qui a été fait, et même l’ampleur du travail.
Nous, on ne peut pas se conformer à une base de donnée comme ça. Il faut que ça existe
mais ça ne transparaît pas le travail d'Otlet et de La Fontaine. Une vision comme ça, ce n'est
pas Mundaneum.
SM : Il n’y a finalement pas de base de données qui arrive à la cheville de ce qu’ils ont
imaginés en terme de papier. C’est ça qu’il faut imaginer.
FS : Pouvez-vous nous parler de cette vision d’un catalogue possible ? Si vous aviez tout
l’argent et tout le temps du monde ?
SM : On ne dort plus alors, c’est ça ?
Il y a déjà une bonne structure qui est là, et l’idée c’est vraiment de pouvoir lier les
documents, les descriptions. On peut aller plus loin dans les inventaires et numériser les
documents qui sont peut-être les plus intéressants et peut-être les plus uniques. Maintenant,
le rêve serait de numériser tout, mais est-ce que ce serait raisonnable de tout numériser ?
FS : Si tous les documents étaient disponibles en ligne ?
RC : Je pense que ça serait difficile de pouvoir transposer la pensée et le travail d'Otlet et
La Fontaine dans une base de données. C’est à dire, dans une base de données, c’est
souvent une conception très carrée : vous décrivez le fond, la série, le dossier, la pièce. Ici
tout est lié. Par exemple, la collection d’affiches, elle dépend de l’Institut International de
Photographie qui était une section du Mundaneum, c’était la section qui conserve l’image.
Ça veut dire que je dois d’abord comprendre tous les développements qui ont eu lieu avec le
concept de documentation pour ensuite lier tout le reste. Et c’est comme ça pour chaque
collection parce que ce ne sont pas des collections qui sont montées par hasard, elles
dépendaient à chaque fois d’une section spécialisée. Et donc, transposer ça dans une base de
données, je ne sais pas comment on pourrait faire.
Je pense aussi qu’aujourd’hui on n’est pas encore assez loin dans les inventaires et dans toute
la compréhension parce qu’en fait à chaque fois qu’on se plonge dans les archives, on
comprend un peu mieux, on voit un peu plus d’éléments, un peu plus de complexité, pour
vraiment pouvoir lier tout ça.
SM : Effectivement nous n’avons pas encore tout compris, il y a encore tous les petits
offices : office chasse, office pêche et renseignements…
RC : À la fin de sa vie, il va aller vers tout ce qui est standardisation, normalisation. Il va être
membre d’associations qui travaillent sur tout ce qui est norme et ainsi de suite. Il y a cet
aspect là qui est intéressant parce que c’est quand même une grande évolution par rapport au
début.
Avec le Musée International, c’est la muséographie et la muséologie qui sont vraiment une
grosse innovation à l’époque. Il y a déjà des personnes qui s’y sont intéressé mais peut-être
pas suffisamment.
P.46
P.47
Je rêve de pouvoir reconstituer virtuellement les salles d’expositions du Musée International,
parce que ça devait être incroyable de voyager là dedans. On a des plans, des photos. Même
si on n’a plus d’objets, on a suffisamment d’informations pour pouvoir le faire. Et il serait
intéressant de pouvoir étudier ce genre de salle même pour aujourd’hui, pour la
muséographie d’aujourd’hui, de reprendre exemple sur ce qu’il a fait.
FS : Si on s’imagine le Mundaneum virtuel, vraiment, si on essaye de le reconstruire à partir
des documents, c’est excitant !
SM : On en parle depuis 2010, de ça.
FS : C’est pas du tout comme le scanner hig-tech de Google Art qui passe devant le Mona
Lisa …
SM : Non. C’est un autre travail
FS : Ce n’est pas ça le musée virtuel.
RC : C’est un autre boulot.
Last
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1. Logiciel fourni par la Communauté française aux centres d’archives privées. « Pallas permet de décrire, de gérer et de consulter
des documents de différents types (archives, manuscrits, photographies, images, documents de bibliothèques) en tenant compte
des conditions de description spécifiques à chaque type de document. » http://www.brudisc.be/fr/content/logiciel-pallas
2. « Images et histoires des patrimoines numérisés » [1]
3. « Notre mission : On transforme le monde par la culture! Nous voulons construire sur le riche héritage culturel européen et
donner aux gens la possibilité de le réutiliser facilement, pour leur travail, pour leur apprentissage personnel ou tout simplement
pour s’amuser. » http://www.europeana.eu
4. « The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) supports shared innovation in metadata design and best practices across a
broad range of purposes and business models. » http://dublincore.org/about-us/
5. La norme générale et internationale de description archivistique, ISAD(G) http://www.ica.org/sites/default/files/
6. « L'UNESCO a mis en place le Programme Mémoire du monde en 1992. Cette mise en oeuvre est d'abord née de la prise
de conscience de l'état de préservation alarmant du patrimoine documentaire et de la précarité de son accès dans différentes
régions du monde. » http://www.unesco.org/new/fr/communication-and-information/memory-of-the-
world/about-the-programme
7. Marcel Dieu dit Hem Day
Amateur
Librarian
-A
Course
in
Critical
Pedagogy
Tomislav Medak & Marcell Mars (Public Library project)
A proposal for a curriculum in amateur librarianship, developed through the
activities and exigencies of the Public Library project. Drawing from a historic
genealogy of public library as the institution of access to knowledge, the
proletarian tradition of really useful knowledge and the amateur agency driven
by technological development, the curriculum covers a range of segments from
immediately applicable workflows for scanning, sharing and using e-books,
over politics and tactics around custodianship of online libraries, to applied
media theory implicit in the practices of amateur librarianship. The proposal is
made with further development, complexification and testing in mind during the
future activities of the Public Library and affiliated organizations.
PUBLIC LIBRARY, A POLITICAL GENEALOGY
Public libraries have historically achieved as an institutional space of exemption from the
commodification and privatization of knowledge. A space where works of literature and
science are housed and made accessible for the education of every member of society
regardless of their social or economic status. If, as a liberal narrative has it, education is a
prerequisite for full participation in a body politic, it is in this narrow institutional space that
citizenship finds an important material base for its universal realization.
P.48
P.49
The library as an institution of public access and popular literacy, however, did not develop
before a series of transformations and social upheavals unfolded in the course of 18th and
19th century. These developments brought about a flood of books and political demands
pushing the library to become embedded in an egalitarian and democratizing political
horizon. The historic backdrop for these developments was the rapid ascendancy of the book
as a mass commodity and the growing importance of the reading culture in the aftermath of
the invention of the movable type print. Having emerged almost in parallel with capitalism, by
the early 18th century the trade in books was rapidly expanding. While in the 15th century
the libraries around the monasteries, courts and universities of Western Europe contained no
more than 5 million manuscripts, the output of printing presses in the 18th century alone
exploded to formidable 700 million volumes.[1] And while this provided a vector for the
emergence of a bourgeois reading public and an unprecedented expansion of modern
science, the culture of reading and Enlightenment remained largely a privilege of the few.
Two social upheavals would start to change that. On 2 November 1789 the French
revolutionary National Assembly passed a decision to seize all library holdings from the
Church and aristocracy. Millions of volumes were transferred to the Bibliothèque Nationale
and local libraries across France. At the same time capitalism was on the rise, particularly in
England. It massively displaced the impoverished rural population into growing urban
centres, propelled the development of industrial production and, by the mid-19th century,
introduced the steam-powered rotary press into the commercial production of books. As
books became more easily mass-produced, the
commercial subscription libraries catering to the better-off
parts of society blossomed. This brought the class aspect
of the nascent demand for public access to books to the
fore.
After the failed attempt to introduce universal suffrage
and end the system of political representation based on
property entitlements through the Reform Act of 1832,
the English Chartist movement started to open reading
rooms and cooperative lending libraries that would
quickly become a popular hotbed of social exchange
between the lower classes. In the aftermath of the
revolutionary upheavals of 1848, the fearful ruling
classes finally consented to the demand for tax-financed
public libraries, hoping that the access to literature and
edification would after all help educate skilled workers
that were increasingly in demand and ultimately
hegemonize the working class for the benefits of
capitalism's culture of self-interest and competition.[2]
management hierarchies, and national
security issues. Various sets of these
conditions that are at work in a
particular library, also redefine the
notion of publishing and of the
publication, and in turn the notion of
public.
From Bibliothécaire amateur un cours de pédagogie
critique:
Puisqu'il était de plus en plus facile de
produire des livres en masse, les
bibliothèques privées payantes, au
service des catégories privilégiées de
la société, ont commencé à se
répandre. Ce phénomène a mis en
relief la question de la classe dans la
demande naissante pour un accès
public aux livres.
REALLY USEFUL KNOWLEDGE
[3]
It's no surprise that the Chartists, reeling from a political defeat, had started to open reading
rooms and cooperative lending libraries. The education provided to the proletariat and the
poor by the ruling classes of that time consisted, indeed, either of a pious moral edification
serving political pacification or of an inculcation of skills and knowledge useful to the factory
owner. Even the seemingly noble efforts of the Society for the Diffusion of the Useful
Knowledge, a Whig organization aimed at bringing high-brow learning to the middle and
working classes in the form of simplified and inexpensive publications, were aimed at dulling
the edge of radicalism of popular movements.[4]
These efforts to pacify the downtrodden masses pushed them to seek ways of self-organized
education that would provide them with literacy and really useful knowledge – not applied,
but critical knowledge that would allow them to see through their own political and economic
subjection, develop radical politics and innovate shadow social institutions of their own. The
radical education, reliant on meagre resources and time of the working class, developed in the
informal setting of household, neighbourhood and workplace, but also through radical press
and communal reading and discussion groups.[5]
The demand for really useful knowledge encompassed a critique of “all forms of ‘provided’
education” and of the liberal conception “that ‘national education’ was a necessary condition
for the granting of universal suffrage.” Development of radical “curricula and pedagogies”
formed a part of the arsenal of “political strategy as a means of changing the world.”[6]
CRITICAL PEDAGOGY
This is the context of the emergence of the public library. A historical compromise between a
push for radical pedagogy and a response to dull its edge. And yet with the age of
digitization, where one would think that the opportunities for access to knowledge have
expanded immensely, public libraries find themselves increasingly limited in their ability to
acquire and lend both digital and paper editions. It is a sign of our radically unequal times
that the political emancipation finds itself on a defensive fighting again for this material base of
pedagogy against the rising forces of privatization. Not only has mass education become
accessible only under the condition of high fees, student debt and adjunct peonage, but the
useful knowledge that the labour market and reproduction of the neoliberal capitalism
demands has become the one and only rationale for education.
P.50
P.51
No wonder that over the last 6-7 years we have seen self-education, shadow libraries and
amateur librarians emerge again to counteract the contraction of spaces of exemption that
have been shrunk by austerity and commodity.
The project Public Library was initiated with the counteraction in mind. To help everyone
learn to use simple tools to be able to act as an Amateur Librarian – to digitize, to collect, to
share, to preserve books and articles that were unaffordable, unavailable, undesirable in the
troubled corners of the Earth we hail from.
Amateur Librarian played an important role in the narrative of Public Library. And it seems
it was successful. People easily join the project by 'becoming' a librarian using Calibre[7] and
[let’s share books].[8] Other aspects of the Public Library narrative add a political articulation
to that simple yet disobedient act. Public Library detects an institutional crisis in education,
an economic deadlock of austerity and a domination of commodity logic in the form of
copyright. It conjures up the amateur librarians’ practice of sharing books/catalogues as a
relevant challenge against the convergence of that crisis, deadlock and copyright regime.
To understand the political and technological assumptions and further develop the strategies
that lie behind the counteractions of amateur librarians, we propose a curriculum that is
indebted to a tradition of critical pedagogy. Critical pedagogy is a productive and theoretical
practice rejecting an understanding of educational process that reduces it to a technique of
imparting knowledge and a neutral mode of knowledge acquisition. Rather, it sees the
pedagogy as a broader “struggle over knowledge, desire, values, social relations, and, most
important, modes of political agency”, “drawing attention to questions regarding who has
control over the conditions for the production of knowledge.”[9]
No industry in the present demonstrates more the
asymmetries of control over the conditions of production
of knowledge than the academic publishing. The denial
of access to outrageously expensive academic
publications for many universities, particularly in the
Global South, stands in stark contrast to the super-profits
that a small number of commercial publishers draws from
the free labour of scientists who write, review and edit
contributions and the extortive prices their institutional
libraries have to pay for subscriptions. It is thus here that
the amateur librarianship attains its poignancy for a
critical pedagogy, inviting us to closer formulate and
unfold its practices in a shared process of discovery.
A CURRICULUM
Public library is:
• free access to books for every member of society,
• library catalogue,
• librarian.
The curriculum in amateur librarianship develops aspects
and implications of this definition. Parts of this curriculum
have evolved over a number of workshops and talks
previously held within the Public Library project, parts of
it are yet to evolve from a process of future research,
exchange and knowledge production in the education
process. While schematic, scaling from the immediately
practical, over strategic and tactical, to reflexive registers
of knowledge, there are actual – here unnamed – people
and practices we imagine we could be learning from.
The first iteration of this curriculum could be either a
summer academy rostered with our all-star team of
librarians, designers, researchers and teachers, or a small
workshop with a small group of students delving deeper
into one particular aspect of the curriculum. In short it is
an open curriculum: both open to educational process
and contributions by others. We welcome comments,
derivations and additions.
From Bibliothécaire
amateur un cours de pédagogie
critique:
Actuellement, aucune industrie ne
montre plus d'asymétries au niveau du
contrôle des conditions de production
de la connaissance que celle de la
publication académique. Refuser
l'accès à des publications
académiques excessivement chères
pour beaucoup d'universités, en
particulier dans l'hémisphère sud,
contraste ostensiblement avec les
profits énormes qu'un petit nombre
d'éditeurs commerciaux tirent du
travail bénévole de scientifiques qui
écrivent, révisent et éditent des
contributions et avec les prix
exorbitants des souscriptions que les
bibliothèques institutionnelles doivent
payer.
From Voor elk boek is een
gebruiker:
FS: Hoe gaan jullie om met boeken
en publicaties die al vanaf het begin
digitaal zijn? DM: We kopen e-books
en e-tijdschriften en maken die
beschikbaar voor onderzoekers. Maar
dat zijn hele andere omgevingen,
omdat die content niet fysiek binnen
onze muren komt. We kopen toegang
tot servers van uitgevers of de
aggregator. Die content komt nooit bij
ons, die blijft op hun machines staan.
We kunnen daar dus eigenlijk niet
zoveel mee doen, behalve verwijzen
en zorgen dat het evengoed vindbaar
is als de print.
P.52
P.53
MODULE 1: WORKFLOWS
• from book to e-book
◦ digitizing a book on a
book scanner
◦ removing DRM and
converting e-book
formats
• from clutter to catalogue
◦ managing an e-book
library with Calibre
◦ finding e-books and
articles on online
libraries
• from reference to bibliography
◦ annotating in an ebook reader device or
application
◦ creating a scholarly
bibliography in Zotero
• from block device to network device
◦ sharing your e-book
library on a local
network to a reading
device
◦ sharing your e-book
library on the
internet with [let’s
share books]
• from private to public IP space
◦ using [let’s share
books] &
library.memoryoftheworld.org
◦ using logan & jessica
◦ using Science Hub
◦ using Tor
MODULE 2: POLITICS/TACTICS
• from developmental subordination to subaltern disobedience
◦ uneven development &
political strategies
◦ strategies of the
developed v strategies
of the
underdeveloped : open
access v piracy
• from property to commons
◦ from property to
commons
◦ copyright, scientific
publishing, open
access
◦ shadow libraries,
piracy,
custodians.online
• from collection to collective action
◦ critical pedagogy &
education
◦ archive, activation &
collective action
MODULE 3: ABSTRACTIONS IN ACTION
• from linear to computational
◦ library &
epistemology:
catalogue, search,
discovery, reference
◦ print book v e-book:
page, margin, spine
• from central to distributed
◦ deep librarianship &
amateur librarians
P.54
P.55
◦ network infrastructure
(s)/topologies (ruling
class studies)
• from factual to fantastic
◦ universe as library as
universe
READING LIST
• Mars, Marcell; Vladimir, Klemo. Download & How to:
Calibre & [let’s share books]. Memory of the World (2014)
https://www.memoryoftheworld.org/blog/2014/10/28/
calibre-lets-share-books/
• Buringh, Eltjo; Van Zanden, Jan Luiten. Charting the “Rise of
the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A
Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth
Centuries. The Journal of Economic History (2009) http://
journals.cambridge.org/article_S0022050709000837
• Mattern, Shannon. Library as Infrastructure. Places Journal
(2014) https://placesjournal.org/article/library-asinfrastructure/
• Antonić, Voja. Our beloved bookscanner. Memory of the
World (2012) https://www.memoryoftheworld.org/
blog/2012/10/28/our-beloved-bookscanner-2/
• Medak, Tomislav; Sekulić, Dubravka; Mertens, An. How to:
Bookscanning. Memory of the World (2014) https://
www.memoryoftheworld.org/blog/2014/12/08/how-tobookscanning/
• Barok, Dusan. Talks/Public Library. Monoskop (2015)
http://monoskop.org/Talks/Public_Library
• Custodians.online. In Solidarity with Library Genesis and
Science Hub (2015) http://custodians.online
• Battles, Matthew. Library: An Unquiet History Random
House (2014)
• Harris, Michael H. History of Libraries of the Western World.
Scarecrow Press (1999)
• MayDay Rooms. Activation (2015) http://
maydayrooms.org/activation/
• Krajewski, Markus. Paper Machines: About Cards &
Catalogs, 1548-1929. MIT Press (2011) https://
library.memoryoftheworld.org/b/
PaRC3gldHrZ3MuNPXyrh1hM1meyyaqvhaWlHTvr53NRjJ2k
For updates: https://www.zotero.org/groups/amateur_librarian__a_course_in_critical_pedagogy_reading_list
Last
Revision:
1·08·2016
1. For an economic history of the book in the Western Europe see Eltjo Buringh and Jan Luiten Van Zanden, “Charting the ‘Rise
of the West’: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth
Centuries,” The Journal of Economic History 69, No. 02 (June 2009): 409–45, doi:10.1017/S0022050709000837,
particularly Tables 1-5.
2. For the social history of public library see Matthew Battles, Library: An Unquiet History (Random House, 2014) chapter 5:
“Books for all”.
3. For this concept we remain indebted to the curatorial collective What, How and for Whom/WHW, who have presented the
work of Public Library within the exhibition Really Useful Knowledge they organized at Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid,
October 29, 2014 – February 9, 2015.
4. “Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge,” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, June 25, 2015, https://
5. Richard Johnson, “Really Useful Knowledge,” in CCCS Selected Working Papers: Volume 1, 1 edition, vol. 1 (London u.a.:
Routledge, 2014), 755.
6. Ibid., 752.
7. http://calibre-ebook.com/
8. https://www.memoryoftheworld.org/blog/2014/10/28/calibre-lets-share-books/
9. Henry A. Giroux, On Critical Pedagogy (Bloomsbury Academic, 2011), 5.
P.56
P.57
Bibliothécaire
amateur
- un
cours de
pédagogie
critique
Tomislav Medak & Marcell Mars (Public Library project)
Proposition de programme d'études de bibliothécaire amateur développé à
travers les activités et les exigences du projet Public Library. Prenant pour
base la généalogie historique de la bibliothèque publique en tant qu'institution
permettant l'accès à la connaissance, la tradition prolétaire de la connaissance
réellement utile et la puissance de l'amateur motivée par le développement
technologique, le programme couvre différents secteurs : depuis les flux de
travail directement applicables comme la numérisation, le partage et l'utilisation
de livres électroniques, à la politique et la tactique de conservation des
bibliothèques en ligne, en passant par la théorie médiatique appliquée qui est
implicite dans les pratiques du bibliothécaire amateur. La proposition est plus
amplement développée, complexifiée et sera testée durant les futures activités
de Public Library et des organisations affiliées.
BIBLIOTHÈQUE PUBLIQUE : UNE GÉNÉALOGIE POLITIQUE
Historiquement, les bibliothèques publiques sont parvenues à être un espace institutionnel
exempté de la marchandisation et de la privatisation de la connaissance. Un espace dans
lequel les œuvres littéraires et scientifiques sont abritées et rendues accessibles pour
l'éducation de chaque membre de la société, quel que soit son statut social ou économique.
Si, du point de vue libéral, l'éducation est un prérequis à la véritable participation au corps
politique, c'est dans cet espace institutionnel étroit que la citoyenneté trouve une base
matérielle importante à sa réalisation universelle.
Si aujourd'hui elle est une institution d'accès public et de savoir populaire, il a fallu une série
de transformations et de bouleversements sociaux au 18e et 19e siècle pour que la
bibliothèque se développe. Ces développements ont provoqué l'arrivée d'un flot de livres et
d'exigences politiques qui ont encouragé la bibliothèque à s'intégrer dans un horizon politique
démocratisant et égalitaire. En toile de fond historique de ces développements, il y eut
l'ascendance rapide du livre en tant que commodité de masse et l'importance croissante de la
culture de la lecture suite à l'invention des caractères d'imprimerie mobiles. Ayant émergé à
la même époque que le capitalisme, au début du 18e siècle le commerce des livres, était en
pleine expansion. Alors qu'au 15e siècle, en Europe occidentale, les bibliothèques qui se
trouvaient autour des monastères, des tribunaux et des universités ne contenaient pas plus de
cinq millions de manuscrits, la production de l'imprimerie a atteint 700 millions de volumes,
et ce, au 18e siècle seulement.[1] Et alors que cela a offert un vecteur à l'émergence d'un
public de lecteurs bourgeois et contribué à une expansion sans précédent de la science
moderne, la culture de la lecture et des Lumières restait alors principalement le privilège
d'une minorité.
Deux bouleversements sociaux allaient commencer à changer cela. Le 2 novembre 1789,
l'Assemblée nationale de la Révolution française a approuvé la saisie de tous les biens
bibliothécaires de l'Église et de l'aristocratie. Des millions de volumes ont été transférés à la
Bibliothèque Nationale ainsi qu'aux bibliothèques régionales, à travers la France. Au même
moment, le capitalisme progressait, en particulier en Angleterre. Ce mouvement a
massivement déplacé une population rurale pauvre dans les centres urbains en pleine
croissance et propulsé le développement de la production industrielle. À la moitié du 19e
siècle, il a également a introduit la presse typographique à vapeur dans la production
commerciale de livres. Puisqu'il était de plus en plus facile de produire des livres en masse,
les bibliothèques privées payantes, au service des
catégories privilégiées de la société, ont commencé à se
répandre. Ce phénomène a mis en relief la question de la
classe dans la demande naissante pour un accès public
aux livres.
Après une tentative ratée d'introduction du suffrage
universel en vue d'en finir avec le système de
représentation politique basée sur les droits de propriété à
travers l'Acte de réforme de 1832, le mouvement anglais
du chartisme a commencé à ouvrir des salles de lectures
et des bibliothèques de prêts coopératifs qui allaient
bientôt devenir un foyer pour l'échange social entre les
classes populaires. Suite aux mouvements
révolutionnaires de 1848, les classes dirigeantes
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P.59
apeurées ont fini par accepter de répondre à la demande qui réclamait des librairies financées
par l'argent public. Elles espéraient qu'un accès à la littérature et à l'édification favoriserait
l'éducation des travailleurs qualifiés qui étaient de plus en plus en demande, mais
souhaitaient aussi maintenir l'hégémonie sur la classe ouvrière au profit de la culture du
capitalisme, de l'intérêt personnel et de la compétition.[2]
LA CONNAISSANCE RÉELLEMENT UTILE
[3]
Sans surprise, les chartistes, qui s'étaient retrouvés chancelants après une défaite politique,
avaient commencé à ouvrir des salles de lecture et des bibliothèques de prêts coopératifs. En
effet, à l'époque, l'éducation proposée au prolétariat et aux pauvres par les classes dirigeantes
consistait, soit à une édification morale pieuse au service de la pacification politique, soit à
l'inculcation de qualifications ou de connaissances qui seraient utiles au propriétaire de
l'usine. Même les efforts aux allures nobles de la Society for the Diffusion of the Useful
Knowledge, une organisation du parti whig cherchant à apporter un apprentissage intellectuel
à la classe ouvrière et à la classe moyenne sous la forme de publications bon marché et
simplifiées, avaient pour objectif l'atténuation de la tendance radicale des mouvements
populaires[4]
Ces efforts de pacification des masses opprimées les ont poussées à chercher des manières
d'organiser par elles-mêmes une éducation qui leur apporterait l'alphabétisation et une
connaissance réellement utile : une connaissance non pas appliquée, mais critique qui leur
permettrait de voir à travers leur propre soumission politique et économique, de développer
une politique radicale et d'innover leurs propres institutions sociales d'opposition. L'éducation
radicale, dépendante du peu de ressources et du manque de temps de la classe ouvrière, s'est
développée dans les cadres informels des foyers, des quartiers et des lieux de travail, mais
également à travers une presse radicale, une lecture commune et des groupes de discussion.[5]
La demande pour une connaissance réellement utile comprenait une critique de « toute
forme d'éducation “fournie” » et de la conception libérale selon laquelle « une “éducation
nationale” était une condition nécessaire à la garantie du suffrage universel ». Un
développement de « programmes et de pédagogies » radicaux constituait une part de l'arsenal
de « stratégie politique comme moyen de changer le monde »[6]
PÉDAGOGIE CRITIQUE
L'émergence de la bibliothèque publique a donc eu lieu dans le contexte d'un compromis
historique entre la formation des fondements d'une pédagogie radicale et une réaction visant
à l'atténuer. Pourtant, à l'âge de la numérisation dans lequel nous pourrions penser que les
opportunités pour un accès à la connaissance se sont largement étendues, les bibliothèques
publiques se retrouvent particulièrement limitées dans leurs possibilités d'acquérir et de prêter
des éditions aussi bien sous une forme papier que numérique. Cette difficulté est un signe de
l'inégalité radicale de notre époque : une fois encore, l'émancipation politique se bat de
manière défensive pour une base matérielle pédagogique contre les forces croissantes de la
privatisation. Non seulement l'éducation de masse est devenue accessible à prix d'or
uniquement, entrainant la dette étudiante et la servitude qui y est associée, mais la
connaissance utile exigée par le marché du travail et la reproduction du capitalisme néolibéral
sont devenues la seule logique de l'éducation.
Sans surprise, au cours des six-sept dernières années, nous avons vu l'apprentissage
autodidacte, les bibliothèques de l'ombre et les bibliothécaires amateurs émerger pour contrer
la contraction des espaces d'exemption réduits par l'austérité et la commodification. Le projet
Public Library a été initié dans l'idée de contrer ce phénomène. Pour aider tout le monde à
apprendre l'utilisation d'outils simples permettant d'agir en tant qu'Amateur Librarian :
numériser, rassembler, partager, préserver des livres, des articles onéreux, introuvables ou
indésirables dans les coins mouvementés de notre planète.
Amateur Librarian a joué un rôle important dans le système narratif de Public Library. Un
rôle qui semble avoir porté ses fruits. Les gens rejoignent facilement le projet en « devenant »
bibliothécaire grâce à l'outil Calibre[7] et [let’s share books].[8] D'autres aspects du narratif de
Public Library ajoutent une articulation politique à cet acte simple, mais désobéissant. Public
Library perçoit une crise institutionnelle dans l'éducation, une impasse économique
d'austérité et une domination de la logique de commodité sous la forme du droit d'auteur.
Elle fait apparaitre la pratique du partage de livres et de catalogues des bibliothécaires
amateurs comme un défi pertinent à l'encontre de la convergence de cette crise, de cette
impasse et du régime du droit d'auteur.
Pour comprendre les hypothèses politiques et technologiques et développer plus en
profondeur les stratégies sur lesquelles les réactions des bibliothécaires amateurs se basent,
nous proposons un programme issu de la tradition pédagogique critique. La pédagogie
critique est une pratique productive et théorique qui rejette la définition du procédé
éducationnel comme réduit à une simple technique de communication de la connaissance et
présentée comme un mode d'acquisition neutre. Au contraire, la pédagogie est perçue plus
largement comme « une lutte pour la connaissance, le désir, les valeurs, les relations sociales,
et plus important encore, les modes d'institution politique », « une attention portée aux
questions relatives au contrôle des conditions de production de la connaissance. »[9]
P.60
P.61
Actuellement, aucune industrie ne montre plus
d'asymétries au niveau du contrôle des conditions de
production de la connaissance que celle de la publication
académique. Refuser l'accès à des publications
académiques excessivement chères pour beaucoup
d'universités, en particulier dans l'hémisphère sud,
contraste ostensiblement avec les profits énormes qu'un
petit nombre d'éditeurs commerciaux tirent du travail
bénévole de scientifiques qui écrivent, révisent et éditent
des contributions et avec les prix exorbitants des
souscriptions que les bibliothèques institutionnelles
doivent payer. C'est donc ici que la bibliothèque amateur
atteint le sommet de son intensité en matière de
pédagogie critique : elle nous invite à formuler et à narrer
plus précisément sa pratique à travers un processus
partagé de découverte.
UN PROGRAMME
Une bibliothèque publique, c'est :
• un libre accès aux livres pour tous les membres de la
société,
• un catalogue de bibliothèque,
• un bibliothécaire.
From Amateur
Librarian - A
Course in Critical Pedagogy:
No industry in the present
demonstrates more the asymmetries of
control over the conditions of
production of knowledge than the
academic publishing. The denial of
access to outrageously expensive
academic publications for many
universities, particularly in the Global
South, stands in stark contrast to the
super-profits that a small number of
commercial publishers draws from the
free labour of scientists who write,
review and edit contributions and the
extortive prices their institutional
libraries have to pay for subscriptions.
From Voor elk boek is een
gebruiker:
FS: Hoe gaan jullie om met boeken
en publicaties die al vanaf het begin
digitaal zijn? DM: We kopen e-books
en e-tijdschriften en maken die
beschikbaar voor onderzoekers. Maar
dat zijn hele andere omgevingen,
omdat die content niet fysiek binnen
onze muren komt. We kopen toegang
tot servers van uitgevers of de
aggregator. Die content komt nooit bij
ons, die blijft op hun machines staan.
We kunnen daar dus eigenlijk niet
zoveel mee doen, behalve verwijzen
en zorgen dat het evengoed vindbaar
is als de print.
Le programme de bibliothécaire amateur développe
plusieurs aspects et implications d'une telle définition.
Certaines parties du programme ont été construites à
partir de différents ateliers et exposés qui se déroulaient précédemment dans le cadre du
projet Public Library. Certaines parties de ce programme doivent encore évoluer s'appuyant
sur un processus de recherche futur, d'échange et de production de connaissance dans le
processus éducatif. Tout en restant schématique en allant de la pratique immédiate, à la
stratégie, la tactique et au registre réflectif de la
connaissance, il existe des personnes et pratiques - non
citées ici - desquelles nous imaginons pouvoir apprendre.
La première itération de ce programme pourrait aussi
bien être une académie d'été avec notre équipe
sélectionnée de bibliothécaires, concepteurs, chercheurs,
professeurs, qu'un petit atelier avec un groupe restreint
d'étudiants se plongeant dans un aspect précis du
programme. En résumé, ce programme est ouvert, aussi
bien au processus éducationnel qu'aux contributions des autres. Nous sommes ouverts aux
commentaires, aux dérivations et aux ajouts.
MODULE 1 : FLUX DE TRAVAIL
• du livre au livre électronique
◦ numériser un livre
avec un scanner de
livres
◦ supprimer la gestion
des droits numériques
et convertir au format
livre numérique
• du désordre au catalogue
◦ gérer une bibliothèque
de livres numériques
avec Calibre
◦ trouver des livres
numériques et des
articles dans des
bibliothèques en ligne
• de la référence à la bibliographie
◦ annoter à partir d'une
application ou d'un
appareil de lecture de
livres électroniques
◦ créer une
bibliographie
académique sur Zotero
• du dispositif de bloc au périphérique réseau
◦ partager votre
bibliothèque de livres
numériques d'un
périphérique local à
un appareil de lecture
◦ partager votre
bibliothèque de livres
numériques sur
internet avec [let’s
share books]
P.62
P.63
• de l'espace IP privé à l'espace IP public
◦ utiliser [let’s share
books] et
library.memoryoftheworld.org
◦ utiliser logan &
jessica
◦ utiliser Science Hub
◦ utiliser Tor
MODULE 2 : POLITIQUE/TACTIQUE
• du développement de la subordination à la désobéissance
subalterne
◦ développement inégal
et stratégies
politiques
◦ stratégies de
développement contre
les stratégies de sous
développement : accès
ouvert contre piratage
• de la propriété au commun
◦ de la propriété au
commun
◦ droit d'auteur,
publication
scientifique, accès
ouvert
◦ bibliothèque de
l'ombre, piratage,
custodians.online
• de la collection à l'action collective
◦ pédagogie critique et
éducation
◦ archive, activation et
action collective
MODULE 3 : ABSTRACTIONS DANS L'ACTION
• du linéaire à l'informatique
◦ bibliothèque
◦ livre imprimé et livre
numérique : page,
marge, dos
• du central au distribué
◦ bibliothécaires
professionnels et
bibliothécaires
amateurs
◦ infrastructure(s) de
réseau/topologies
(études des classes
dirigeantes)
• du factuel au fantastique
◦ l'univers pour
bibliothèque, la
bibliothèque pour
univers
LISTE DE LECTURE
• Mars, Marcell; Vladimir, Klemo. Download & How to:
Calibre & [let’s share books]. Memory of the World (2014)
https://www.memoryoftheworld.org/blog/2014/10/28/
calibre-lets-share-books/
• Buringh, Eltjo; Van Zanden, Jan Luiten. Charting the “Rise of
the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A
Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth
Centuries. The Journal of Economic History (2009) http://
journals.cambridge.org/article_S0022050709000837
• Mattern, Shannon. Library as Infrastructure. Places Journal
(2014) https://placesjournal.org/article/library-asinfrastructure/
• Antonić, Voja. Our beloved bookscanner. Memory of the
World (2012) https://www.memoryoftheworld.org/
blog/2012/10/28/our-beloved-bookscanner-2/
• Medak, Tomislav; Sekulić, Dubravka; Mertens, An. How to:
Bookscanning. Memory of the World (2014) https://
www.memoryoftheworld.org/blog/2014/12/08/how-tobookscanning/
• Barok, Dusan. Talks/Public Library. Monoskop (2015)
http://monoskop.org/Talks/Public_Library
• Custodians.online. In Solidarity with Library Genesis and
Science Hub (2015) http://custodians.online
P.64
P.65
• Battles, Matthew. Library: An Unquiet History Random
House (2014)
• Harris, Michael H. History of Libraries of the Western World.
Scarecrow Press (1999)
• MayDay Rooms. Activation (2015) http://
maydayrooms.org/activation/
• Krajewski, Markus. Paper Machines: About Cards &
Catalogs, 1548-1929. MIT Press (2011) https://
library.memoryoftheworld.org/b/
PaRC3gldHrZ3MuNPXyrh1hM1meyyaqvhaWlHTvr53NRjJ2k
Dernière version: https://www.zotero.org/groups/amateur_librarian__a_course_in_critical_pedagogy_reading_list
Last
Revision:
1·08·2016
1. 1. Pour une histoire économique du livre en Europe occidentale, voir Eltjo Buringh et Jan Luiten Van Zanden, « Charting the
‘Rise of the West’ : Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth
Centuries, » The Journal of Economic History 69, n°. 02 (juin 2009) : 409–45, doi :10.1017/S0022050709000837, en
particulier les tableaux 1-5.
2. 2. Pour une histoire sociale de la bibliothèque publique, voir Matthew Battles, Library: An Unquiet History (Random House,
2014) chapitre 5 : “Books for all”.
3. 3. Pour ce concept, nous sommes redevables au collectif de curateurs What, How and for Whom/WHW, qui a présenté le
travail de Public Library dans le cadre de l'exposition Really Useful Knowledge qu'ils ont organisée au Museo Reina Sofía à
Madrid, entre 29 octobre 2014 et le 9 février 2015.
4. 4. « Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, » Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, Juin 25, 2015, https://
5. 5. Richard Johnson, « Really Useful Knowledge, » dans CCCS Selected Working Papers: Volume 1, 1 édition, vol. 1
(Londres u.a. : Routledge, 2014), 755.
6. Ibid., 752.
7. http://calibre-ebook.com/
8. https://www.memoryoftheworld.org/blog/2014/10/28/calibre-lets-share-books/
9. Henry A. Giroux, On Critical Pedagogy (Bloomsbury Academic, 2011), 5.
A bag
but is
language
nothing
of words
(language is nothing but a bag of words)
MICHAEL MURTAUGH
In text indexing and other machine reading applications the term "bag of
words" is frequently used to underscore how processing algorithms often
represent text using a data structure (word histograms or weighted vectors)
where the original order of the words in sentence form is stripped away. While
"bag of words" might well serve as a cautionary reminder to programmers of
the essential violence perpetrated to a text and a call to critically question the
efficacy of methods based on subsequent transformations, the expression's use
seems in practice more like a badge of pride or a schoolyard taunt that would
go: Hey language: you're nothin' but a big BAG-OF-WORDS.
BAG OF WORDS
In information retrieval and other so-called machine-reading applications (such as text
indexing for web search engines) the term "bag of words" is used to underscore how in the
course of processing a text the original order of the words in sentence form is stripped away.
The resulting representation is then a collection of each unique word used in the text,
typically weighted by the number of times the word occurs.
Bag of words, also known as word histograms or weighted term vectors, are a standard part
of the data engineer's toolkit. But why such a drastic transformation? The utility of "bag of
words" is in how it makes text amenable to code, first in that it's very straightforward to
implement the translation from a text document to a bag of words representation. More
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significantly, this transformation then opens up a wide collection of tools and techniques for
further transformation and analysis purposes. For instance, a number of libraries available in
the booming field of "data sciences" work with "high dimension" vectors; bag of words is a
way to transform a written document into a mathematical vector where each "dimension"
corresponds to the (relative) quantity of each unique word. While physically unimaginable
and abstract (imagine each of Shakespeare's works as points in a 14 million dimensional
space), from a formal mathematical perspective, it's quite a comfortable idea, and many
complementary techniques (such as principle component analysis) exist to reduce the
resulting complexity.
What's striking about a bag of words representation, given is centrality in so many text
retrieval application is its irreversibility. Given a bag of words representation of a text and
faced with the task of producing the original text would require in essence the "brain" of a
writer to recompose sentences, working with the patience of a devoted cryptogram puzzler to
draw from the precise stock of available words. While "bag of words" might well serve as a
cautionary reminder to programmers of the essential violence perpetrated to a text and a call
to critically question the efficacy of methods based on subsequent transformations, the
expressions use seems in practice more like a badge of pride or a schoolyard taunt that would
go: Hey language: you're nothing but a big BAG-OF-WORDS. Following this spirit of the
term, "bag of words" celebrates a perfunctory step of "breaking" a text into a purer form
amenable to computation, to stripping language of its silly redundant repetitions and foolishly
contrived stylistic phrasings to reveal a purer inner essence.
BOOK OF WORDS
Lieber's Standard Telegraphic Code, first published in 1896 and republished in various
updated editions through the early 1900s, is an example of one of several competing systems
of telegraph code books. The idea was for both senders and receivers of telegraph messages
to use the books to translate their messages into a sequence of code words which can then be
sent for less money as telegraph messages were paid by the word. In the front of the book, a
list of examples gives a sampling of how messages like: "Have bought for your account 400
bales of cotton, March delivery, at 8.34" can be conveyed by a telegram with the message
"Ciotola, Delaboravi". In each case the reduction of number of transmitted words is
highlighted to underscore the efficacy of the method. Like a dictionary or thesaurus, the book
is primarily organized around key words, such as act, advice, affairs, bags, bail, and bales,
under which exhaustive lists of useful phrases involving the corresponding word are provided
in the main pages of the volume. [1]
P.68
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P.70
P.71
[...] my focus in this chapter is on the inscription technology that grew parasitically
alongside the monopolistic pricing strategies of telegraph companies: telegraph code
books. Constructed under the bywords “economy,” “secrecy,” and “simplicity,”
telegraph code books matched phrases and words with code letters or numbers. The
idea was to use a single code word instead of an entire phrase, thus saving money by
serving as an information compression technology. Generally economy won out over
[2]
secrecy, but in specialized cases, secrecy was also important.
In Katherine Hayles' chapter devoted to telegraph code books she observes how:
The interaction between code and language shows a steady movement away from a
human-centric view of code toward a machine-centric view, thus anticipating the
[3]
development of full-fledged machine codes with the digital computer.
Aspects of this transitional moment are apparent in a notice included prominently inserted in
the Lieber's code book:
After July, 1904, all combinations of letters that do not exceed ten will pass as one
cipher word, provided that it is pronounceable, or that it is taken from the following
languages: English, French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese or Latin -[4]
International Telegraphic Conference, July 1903
Conforming to international conventions regulating telegraph communication at that time, the
stipulation that code words be actual words drawn from a variety of European languages
(many of Lieber's code words are indeed arbitrary Dutch, German, and Spanish words)
P.72
P.73
underscores this particular moment of transition as reference to the human body in the form
of "pronounceable" speech from representative languages begins to yield to the inherent
potential for arbitrariness in digital representation.
What telegraph code books do is remind us of is the relation of language in general to
economy. Whether they may be economies of memory, attention, costs paid to a
telecommunicatons company, or in terms of computer processing time or storage space,
encoding language or knowledge in any form of writing is a form of shorthand and always
involves an interplay with what one expects to perform or "get out" of the resulting encoding.
Along with the invention of telegraphic codes comes a paradox that John Guillory has
noted: code can be used both to clarify and occlude. Among the sedimented structures
in the technological unconscious is the dream of a universal language. Uniting the
world in networks of communication that flashed faster than ever before, telegraphy
was particularly suited to the idea that intercultural communication could become
almost effortless. In this utopian vision, the effects of continuous reciprocal causality
expand to global proportions capable of radically transforming the conditions of human
[5]
life. That these dreams were never realized seems, in retrospect, inevitable.
P.74
P.75
Far from providing a universal system of encoding messages in the English language,
Lieber's code is quite clearly designed for the particular needs and conditions of its use. In
addition to the phrases ordered by keywords, the book includes a number of tables of terms
for specialized use. One table lists a set of words used to describe all possible permutations of
numeric grades of coffee (Choliam = 3,4, Choliambos = 3,4,5, Choliba = 4,5, etc.); another
table lists pairs of code words to express the respective daily rise or fall of the price of coffee
at the port of Le Havre in increments of a quarter of a Franc per 50 kilos ("Chirriado =
prices have advanced 1 1/4 francs"). From an archaeological perspective, the Lieber's code
book reveals a cross section of the needs and desires of early 20th century business
communication between the United States and its trading partners.
The advertisements lining the Liebers Code book further situate its use and that of
commercial telegraphy. Among the many advertisements for banking and law services, office
equipment, and alcohol are several ads for gun powder and explosives, drilling equipment
and metallurgic services all with specific applications to mining. Extending telegraphy's
formative role for ship-to-shore and ship-to-ship communication for reasons of safety,
commercial telegraphy extended this network of communication to include those parties
coordinating the "raw materials" being mined, grown, or otherwise extracted from overseas
sources and shipped back for sale.
"RAW DATA NOW!"
Tim Berners-Lee: [...] Make a beautiful website, but
first give us the unadulterated data, we want the data.
We want unadulterated data. OK, we have to ask for
raw data now. And I'm going to ask you to practice
that, OK? Can you say "raw"?
Audience: Raw.
Tim Berners-Lee: Can you say "data"?
Audience: Data.
TBL: Can you say "now"?
Audience: Now!
TBL: Alright, "raw data now"!
[...]
From La ville intelligente - Ville de la
connaissance:
Étant donné que les nouvelles formes
modernistes et l'utilisation de
matériaux propageaient l'abondance
d'éléments décoratifs, Paul Otlet
croyait en la possibilité du langage
comme modèle de « données brutes »,
le réduisant aux informations
essentielles et aux faits sans ambiguïté,
tout en se débarrassant de tous les
éléments inefficaces et subjectifs.
From The Smart City - City of
Knowledge:
As new modernist forms and use of
materials propagated the abundance
of decorative elements, Otlet believed
in the possibility of language as a
model of 'raw data', reducing it to
essential information and
unambiguous facts, while removing all
inefficient assets of ambiguity or
subjectivity.
So, we're at the stage now where we have to do this -the people who think it's a great idea. And all the
people -- and I think there's a lot of people at TED
who do things because -- even though there's not an
immediate return on the investment because it will only really pay off when everybody
else has done it -- they'll do it because they're the sort of person who just does things
which would be good if everybody else did them. OK, so it's called linked data. I want
[6]
you to make it. I want you to demand it.
UN/STRUCTURED
As graduate students at Stanford, Sergey Brin and Lawrence (Larry) Page had an early
interest in producing "structured data" from the "unstructured" web. [7]
The World Wide Web provides a vast source of information of almost all types,
ranging from DNA databases to resumes to lists of favorite restaurants. However, this
information is often scattered among many web servers and hosts, using many different
formats. If these chunks of information could be extracted from the World Wide Web
and integrated into a structured form, they would form an unprecedented source of
information. It would include the largest international directory of people, the largest
and most diverse databases of products, the greatest bibliography of academic works,
and many other useful resources. [...]
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2.1 The Problem
Here we define our problem more formally:
Let D be a large database of unstructured information such as the World Wide Web
[8]
[...]
In a paper titled Dynamic Data Mining Brin and Page situate their research looking for rules
(statistical correlations) between words used in web pages. The "baskets" they mention stem
from the origins of "market basket" techniques developed to find correlations between the
items recorded in the purchase receipts of supermarket customers. In their case, they deal
with web pages rather than shopping baskets, and words instead of purchases. In transitioning
to the much larger scale of the web, they describe the usefulness of their research in terms of
its computational economy, that is the ability to tackle the scale of the web and still perform
using contemporary computing power completing its task in a reasonably short amount of
time.
A traditional algorithm could not compute the large itemsets in the lifetime of the
universe. [...] Yet many data sets are difficult to mine because they have many
frequently occurring items, complex relationships between the items, and a large
number of items per basket. In this paper we experiment with word usage in documents
on the World Wide Web (see Section 4.2 for details about this data set). This data set
is fundamentally different from a supermarket data set. Each document has roughly
150 distinct words on average, as compared to roughly 10 items for cash register
transactions. We restrict ourselves to a subset of about 24 million documents from the
web. This set of documents contains over 14 million distinct words, with tens of
thousands of them occurring above a reasonable support threshold. Very many sets of
[9]
these words are highly correlated and occur often.
UN/ORDERED
In programming, I've encountered a recurring "problem" that's quite symptomatic. It goes
something like this: you (the programmer) have managed to cobble out a lovely "content
management system" (either from scratch, or using any number of helpful frameworks)
where your user can enter some "items" into a database, for instance to store bookmarks.
After this ordered items are automatically presented in list form (say on a web page). The
author: It's great, except... could this bookmark come before that one? The problem stems
from the fact that the database ordering (a core functionality provided by any database)
somehow applies a sorting logic that's almost but not quite right. A typical example is the
sorting of names where details (where to place a name that starts with a Norwegian "Ø" for
instance), are language-specific, and when a mixture of languages occurs, no single ordering
is necessarily "correct". The (often) exascerbated programmer might hastily add an
additional database field so that each item can also have an "order" (perhaps in the form of a
date or some other kind of (alpha)numerical "sorting" value) to be used to correctly order
the resulting list. Now the author has a means, awkward and indirect but workable, to control
the order of the presented data on the start page. But one might well ask, why not just edit
the resulting listing as a document? Not possible! Contemporary content management
systems are based on a data flow from a "pure" source of a database, through controlling
code and templates to produce a document as a result. The document isn't the data, it's the
end result of an irreversible process. This problem, in this and many variants, is widespread
and reveals an essential backwardness that a particular "computer scientist" mindset relating
to what constitutes "data" and in particular it's relationship to order that makes what might be
a straightforward question of editing a document into an over-engineered database.
Recently working with Nikolaos Vogiatzis whose research explores playful and radically
subjective alternatives to the list, Vogiatzis was struck by how from the earliest specifications
of HTML (still valid today) have separate elements (OL and UL) for "ordered" and
"unordered" lists.
The representation of the list is not defined here, but a bulleted list for unordered lists,
and a sequence of numbered paragraphs for an ordered list would be quite appropriate.
[10]
Other possibilities for interactive display include embedded scrollable browse panels.
Vogiatzis' surprise lay in the idea of a list ever being considered "unordered" (or in
opposition to the language used in the specification, for order to ever be considered
"insignificant"). Indeed in its suggested representation, still followed by modern web
browsers, the only difference between the two visually is that UL items are preceded by a
bullet symbol, while OL items are numbered.
The idea of ordering runs deep in programming practice where essentially different data
structures are employed depending on whether order is to be maintained. The indexes of a
"hash" table, for instance (also known as an associative array), are ordered in an
unpredictable way governed by a representation's particular implementation. This data
structure, extremely prevalent in contemporary programming practice sacrifices order to offer
other kinds of efficiency (fast text-based retrieval for instance).
DATA MINING
In announcing Google's impending data center in Mons, Belgian prime minister Di Rupo
invoked the link between the history of the mining industry in the region and the present and
future interest in "data mining" as practiced by IT companies such as Google.
Whether speaking of bales of cotton, barrels of oil, or bags of words, what links these subjects
is the way in which the notion of "raw material" obscures the labor and power structures
employed to secure them. "Raw" is always relative: "purity" depends on processes of
"refinement" that typically carry social/ecological impact.
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Stripping language of order is an act of "disembodiment", detaching it from the acts of writing
and reading. The shift from (human) reading to machine reading involves a shift of
responsibility from the individual human body to the obscured responsibilities and seemingly
inevitable forces of the "machine", be it the machine of a market or the machine of an
algorithm.
The computer scientists' view of textual content as
"unstructured", be it in a webpage or the OCR scanned
pages of a book, reflect a negligence to the processes and
labor of writing, editing, design, layout, typesetting, and
eventually publishing, collecting and cataloging [11].
From X = Y:
Still, it is reassuring to know that the
products hold traces of the work, that
even with the progressive removal of
human signs in automated processes,
the workers' presence never
disappears completely. This presence
is proof of the materiality of
information production, and becomes
a sign of the economies and
paradigms of efficiency and
profitability that are involved.
"Unstructured" to the computer scientist, means nonconformant to particular forms of machine reading.
"Structuring" then is a social process by which particular
(additional) conventions are agreed upon and employed.
Computer scientists often view text through the eyes of
their particular reading algorithm, and in the process
(voluntarily) blind themselves to the work practices which have produced and maintain these
"resources".
Berners-Lee, in chastising his audience of web publishers to not only publish online, but to
release "unadulterated" data belies a lack of imagination in considering how language is itself
structured and a blindness to the need for more than additional technical standards to connect
to existing publishing practices.
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1. Benjamin Franklin Lieber, Lieber's Standard Telegraphic Code, 1896, New York; https://archive.org/details/
standardtelegrap00liebuoft
2. Katherine Hayles, "Technogenesis in Action: Telegraph Code Books and the Place of the Human", How We Think: Digital
Media and Contemporary Technogenesis, 2006
3. Hayles
4. Lieber's
5. Hayles
6. Tim Berners-Lee: The next web, TED Talk, February 2009 http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_berners_lee_on_the_next_web/
transcript?language=en
7. "Research on the Web seems to be fashionable these days and I guess I'm no exception." from Brin's Stanford webpage
8. Extracting Patterns and Relations from the World Wide Web, Sergey Brin, Proceedings of the WebDB Workshop at EDBT
1998, http://www-db.stanford.edu/~sergey/extract.ps
9. Dynamic Data Mining: Exploring Large Rule Spaces by Sampling; Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, 1998; p. 2 http://
ilpubs.stanford.edu:8090/424/
10. Hypertext Markup Language (HTML): "Internet Draft", Tim Berners-Lee and Daniel Connolly, June 1993, http://
www.w3.org/MarkUp/draft-ietf-iiir-html-01.txt
11. http://informationobservatory.info/2015/10/27/google-books-fair-use-or-anti-democratic-preemption/#more-279
A Book
of the
Web
DUSAN BAROK
Is there a vital difference between publishing in print versus online other than
reaching different groups of readers and a different lifespan? Both types of texts
are worth considering preserving in libraries. The online environment has
created its own hybrid form between text and library, which is key to
understanding how digital text produces difference.
Historically, we have been treating texts as discrete units, that are distinguished by their
material properties such as cover, binding, script. These characteristics establish them as
either a book, a magazine, a diary, sheet music and so on. One book differs from another,
books differ from magazines, printed matter differs from handwritten manuscripts. Each
volume is a self-contained whole, further distinguished by descriptors such as title, author,
date, publisher, and classification codes that allow it to be located and referred to. The
demarcation of a publication as a container of text works as a frame or boundary which
organises the way it can be located and read. Researching a particular subject matter, the
reader is carried along by classification schemes under which volumes are organised, by
references inside texts, pointing to yet other volumes, and by tables of contents and indexes of
subjects that are appended to texts, pointing to places within that volume.
So while their material properties separate texts into distinct objects, bibliographic information
provides each object with a unique identifier, a unique address in the world of print culture.
Such identifiable objects are further replicated and distributed across containers that we call
libraries, where they can be accessed.
The online environment however, intervenes in this condition. It establishes shortcuts.
Through search engine, digital texts can be searched for any text sequence, regardless of
their distinct materiality and bibliographic specificity. This changes the way they function as a
library, and the way its main object, the book, should be rethought.
(1) Rather than operate as distinct entities, multiple texts are simultaneously accessible
through full-text search as if they are one long text, with its portions spread across the
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web, and including texts that had not been considered as candidates for library
collections.
(2) The unique identifier at hand for these text portions is not the bibliographic
information, but the URL.
(3) The text is as long as web-crawlers of a given search engine are set to reach,
refashioning the library into a storage of indexed data.
These are some of the lines along which online texts appear to produce difference. The first
contrasts the distinct printed publication to the machine-readable text, the second the
bibliographic information to the URL, and the third the library to the search engine.
The introduction of full-text search has created an
environment in which all machine-readable online
documents in reach are effectively treated as one single
document. For any text-sequence to be locatable, it
doesn't matter in which file format it appears, nor whether
its interface is a database-powered website or mere
directory listing. As long as text can be extracted from a
document, it is a container of text sequences which itself
is a sequence in a 'book' of the web.
Even though this is hardly news after almost two decades
of Google Search ruling, little seems to have changed
with respect to the forms and genres of writing. Loyal to
standard forms of publishing, most writing still adheres to
the principle of coherence, based on units such as book
chapters, journal papers, newspaper articles, etc., that are
designed to be read from beginning to end.
From Voor elk boek is een gebruiker:
FS: Maar het gaat toch ook over de
manier waarop jullie toegang bieden,
de bibliotheek als interface? Online
laten jullie dat nu over aan Google.
SVP: De toegang gaat niet meer
over: “deze instelling heeft dit, deze
instelling heeft iets anders”, al die
instellingen zijn via dezelfde interface
te bereiken. Je kan doorheen al die
collecties zoeken en dat is ook weer
een stukje van die originele droom van
Otlet en Vander Haeghen, het idee
van een wereldbibliotheek. Voor elk
boek is er een gebruiker, de
bibliotheek moet die maar gaan
zoeken.
Wat ik intrigerend vind is dat alle
boeken één boek geworden zijn
doordat ze op hetzelfde niveau
doorzoekbaar zijn, dat is ongelooflijk
opwindend. Dat is een andere manier
van lezen die zelfs Otlet zich niet had
kunnen voorstellen. Ze zouden zot
worden moesten ze dit weten.
Still, the scope of textual forms appearing in search
results, and thus a corpus of texts in which they are being
brought into, is radically diversified: it may include
discussion board comments, product reviews, private emails, weather information, spam etc., the type of content
that used to be omitted from library collections. Rather than being published in a traditional
sense, all these texts are produced onto digital networks by mere typing, copying, OCR-ing,
generated by machines, by sensors tracking movement, temperature, etc.
Even though portions of these texts may come with human or non-human authors attached,
authors have relatively little control over discourses their writing gets embedded in. This is
also where the ambiguity of copyright manifests itself. Crawling bots pre-read the internet
with all its attached devices according to the agenda of their maintainers, and the decisions
about which, how and to whom the indexed texts are served in search results is in the code of
a library.
Libraries in this sense are not restricted to digitised versions of physical public or private
libraries as we know them from history. Commercial search engines, intelligence agencies,
and virtually all forms of online text collections can be thought of as libraries.
Acquisition policies figure here on the same level with crawling bots, dragnet/surveillance
algorithms, and arbitrary motivations of users, all of which actuate the selection and
embedding of texts into structures that regulate their retrievability and through access control
produce certain kinds of communities or groups of readers. The author's intentions of
partaking in this or that discourse are confronted by discourse-conditioning operations of
retrieval algorithms. Hence, Google structures discourse through its Google Search
differently from how the Internet Archive does with its Wayback Machine, and from how the
GCHQ does it with its dragnet programme.
They are all libraries, each containing a single 'book' whose pages are URLs with
timestamps and geostamps in the form of IP address. Google, GCHQ, JStor, Elsevier –
each maintains its own searchable corpus of texts. The decisions about who, to which
sections and under which conditions is to be admitted are
From Amateur Librarian - A Course
informed by a mix of copyright laws, corporate agendas,
in Critical Pedagogy:
management hierarchies, and national security issues.
As books became more easily massVarious sets of these conditions that are at work in a
produced, the commercial
subscription libraries catering to the
particular library, also redefine the notion of publishing
better-off parts of society blossomed.
and of the publication, and in turn the notion of public.
This brought the class aspect of the
Corporate journal repositories exploit publicly funded
research by renting it only to libraries which can afford it;
intelligence agencies are set to extract texts from any
moving target, basically any networked device, apparently
in public interest and away from the public eye; publiclyfunded libraries are being prevented by outdated
copyright laws and bureaucracy from providing digitised
content online; search engines create a sense of giving
access to all public record online while only a few know
what is excluded and how search results are ordered.
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nascent demand for public access to
books to the fore.
From Bibliothécaire amateur - un
cours de pédagogie critique:
Puisqu'il était de plus en plus facile de
produire des livres en masse, les
bibliothèques privées payantes, au
service des catégories privilégiées de
la société, ont commencé à se
répandre. Ce phénomène a mis en
relief la question de la classe dans la
demande naissante pour un accès
public aux livres.
P.83
It is within and against this milieu that libraries such as
the Internet Archive, Wikileaks, Aaaaarg, UbuWeb,
Monoskop, Memory of the World, Nettime, TheNextLayer
and others gain their political agency. Their countertechniques for negotiating the publicness of publishing
include self-archiving, open access, book liberation,
leaking, whistleblowing, open source search algorithms
and so on.
Digitization and posting texts online are interventions in
the procedures that make search possible. Operating
online collections of texts is as much about organising
texts within libraries, as is placing them within books of
the web.
Originally written 15-16 June 2015 in Prague, Brno
and Vienna for a talk given at the Technopolitics seminar in Vienna on 16 June 2015.
Revised 29 December 2015 in Bergen.
Last
Revision:
1·08·2016
The
Indexalist
MATTHEW FULLER
I first spoke to the patient in the last week of that August. That evening the sun was tender in
drawing its shadows across the lines of his face. The eyes gazed softly into a close middle
distance, as if composing a line upon a translucent page hung in the middle of the air, the
hands tapping out a stanza or two of music on legs covered by the brown folds of a towelling
dressing gown. He had the air of someone who had seen something of great amazement but
yet lacked the means to put it into language. As I got to know the patient over the next few
weeks I learned that this was not for the want of effort.
In his youth he had dabbled with the world-speak
language Volapük, one designed to do away with the
incompatibility of tongues, to establish a standard in
which scientific intercourse might be conducted with
maximum efficiency and with minimal friction in
movement between minds, laboratories and publications.
Latin biological names, the magnificent table of elements,
metric units of measurement, the nomenclature of celestial
objects from clouds to planets, anatomical parts and
medical conditions all had their own systems of naming
beyond any specific tongue. This was an attempt to bring
reason into speech and record, but there were other
means to do so when reality resisted these early
measures.
The dabbling, he reflected, had become a little more than
that. He had subscribed to journals in the language, he
wrote letters to colleagues and received them in return. A
few words of world-speak remained readily on his tongue, words that he spat out regularly
into the yellow-wallpapered lounge of the sanatorium with a disgust that was lugubriously
palpable.
According to my records, and in piecing together the notes of previous doctors, there was
something else however, something more profound that the language only hinted at. Just as
the postal system did not require the adoption of any language in particular but had its
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formats that integrated them into addressee, address line, postal town and country, something
that organised the span of the earth, so there was a sense of the patient as having sustained
an encounter with a fundamental form of organisation that mapped out his soul. More thrilling
than the question of language indeed was that of the system of organisation upon which
linguistic symbols are inscribed. I present for the reader’s contemplation some statements
typical of those he seemed to mull over.
“The index card system spoke to my soul. Suffice it to say that in its use I enjoyed the
highest form of spiritual pleasure, and organisational efficiency, a profound flowering of
intellect in which every thought moved between its enunciation, evidence, reference and
articulation in a mellifluous flow of ideation and the gratification of curiosity.” This sense of
the soul as a roving enquiry moving across eras, across forms of knowledge and through the
serried landscapes of the vast planet and cosmos was returned to over and over, a sense that
an inexplicable force was within him yet always escaping his touch.
“At every reference stood another reference, each more
interesting than the last. Each the apex of a pyramid of
further reading, pregnant with the threat of digression,
each a thin high wire which, if not observed might lead
the author into the fall of error, a finding already found
against and written up.” He mentions too, a number of
times, the way the furniture seemed to assist his thoughts
- the ease of reference implied by the way in which the
desk aligned with the text resting upon the pages of the
off-print, journal, newspaper, blueprint or book above
which further drawers of cards stood ready in their
cabinet. All were integrated into the system. And yet,
amidst these frenetic recollections there was a note of
mourning in his contemplative moods, “The superposition
of all planes of enquiry and of thought in one system
repels those for whom such harmonious speed is
suspicious.” This thought was delivered with a stare that
was not exactly one of accusation, but that lingered with
the impression that there was a further statement to follow
it, and another, queued up ready to follow.
As I gained the trust of the patient, there was a sense in
which he estimated me as something of a junior
collaborator, a clerk to his natural role as manager. A
lucky, if slightly doubtful, young man whom he might
mentor into efficiency and a state of full access to
information. For his world, there was not the corruption and tiredness of the old methods.
Ideas moved faster in his mind than they might now across the world. To possess a register of
thoughts covering a period of some years is to have an asset, the value of which is almost
incalculable. That it can answer any question respecting any thought about which one has
had an enquiry is but the smallest of its merits. More important is the fact that it continually
calls attention to matters requiring such attention.
Much of his discourse was about the optimum means of arrangement of the system, there
was an art to laying out the cards. As the patient further explained, to meet the objection that
loose cards may easily be mislaid, cards may be tabbed with numbers from one to ten. When
arranged in the drawer, these tabs proceed from left to right across the drawer and the
absence of a single card can thus easily be detected. The cards are further arranged between
coloured guide cards. As an alternative to tabbed cards, signal flags may be used. Here,
metal clips may be attached to the top end of the card and that stand out like guides. For use
of the system in relation to dates of the month, the card is printed with the numbers 1 to 31
at the top. The metal clip is placed as a signal to indicate the card is to receive attention on
the specified day. Within a large organisation a further card can be drawn up to assign
responsibility for processing that date’s cards. There were numerous means of working the
cards, special techniques for integrating them into any type of research or organisation, means
by which indexes operating on indexes could open mines of information and expand the
knowledge and capabilities of mankind.
As he pressed me further, I began to experiment with such methods myself by withdrawing
data from the sanatorium’s records and transferring it to cards in the night. The advantages of
the system are overwhelming. Cards, cut to the right mathematical degree of accuracy,
arrayed readily in drawers, set in cabinets of standard sizes that may be added to at ease,
may be apportioned out amongst any number of enquirers, all of whom may work on them
independently and simultaneously. The bound book, by contrast, may only be used by one
person at a time and that must stay upon a shelf itself referred to by an index card system. I
began to set up a structure of rows of mirrors on chains and pulleys and a set of levered and
hinged mechanical arms to allow me to open the drawers and to privately consult my files
from any location within the sanatorium. The clarity of the image is however so far too much
effaced by the diffusion of light across the system.
It must further be borne in mind that a system thus capable of indefinite expansion obviates
the necessity for hampering a researcher with furniture or appliances of a larger size than are
immediately required. The continuous and orderly sequence of the cards may be extended
further into the domain of furniture and to the conduct of business and daily life. Reasoning,
reference and the order of ideas emerging as they embrace and articulate a chaotic world and
then communicate amongst themselves turning the world in turn into something resembling
the process of thought in an endless process of consulting, rephrasing, adding and sorting.
For the patient, ideas flowed like a force of life, oblivious to any unnatural limitation. Thought
became, with the proper use of the system, part of the stream of life itself. Thought moved
through the cards not simply at the superficial level of the movement of fingers and the
mechanical sliding and bunching of cards, but at the most profound depths of the movement
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between reality and our ideas of it. The organisational grace to be found in arrangement,
classification and indexing still stirred the remnants of his nervous system until the last day.
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An
experimental
transcript
SÎNZIANA PĂLTINEANU
Note: The editor has had the good fortune of finding a whole box of
handwritten index cards and various folded papers (from printed screenshots to
boarding passes) in the storage space of an institute. Upon closer investigation,
it has become evident that the mixed contents of the box make up one single
document. Difficult to decipher due to messy handwriting, the manuscript
poses further challenges to the reader because its fragments lack a preestablished order. Simply uploading high-quality facsimile images of the box
contents here would not solve the problems of legibility and coherence. As an
intermediary solution, the editor has opted to introduce below a selection of
scanned images and transcribed text from the found box. The transcript is
intended to be read as a document sample, as well as an attempt at manuscript
reconstruction, following the original in the author's hand as closely as possible:
pencilled in words in the otherwise black ink text are transcribed in brackets,
whereas curly braces signal erasures, peculiar marks or illegible parts on the
index cards. Despite shifts in handwriting styles, whereby letters sometimes
appear extremely rushed and distorted in multiple idiosyncratic ways, the
experts consulted unanimously declared that the manuscript was most likely
authored by one and the same person. To date, the author remains unknown.
Q
I've been running with a word in my mouth, running with this burning untitled shape, and I
just can't spit it out. Spit it with phlegm from a balcony, kiss it in a mirror, brush it away one
morning. I've been running with a word in my mouth, running...
… it must have been only last month that I began half-chanting-half-mumbling this looped
sequence of sentences on the staircase I regularly take down to work and back up to dream,
yet it feels as if it were half a century ago. Tunneling through my memory, my tongue begins
burning again and so I recollect that the subject matter was an agonizing, unutterable
obsession I needed to sort out most urgently. Back then I knew no better way than to keep
bringing it up obliquely until it would chemically dissolve itself into my blood or evaporate
through the pores of my skin. To whisper the obsession away, I thought not entirely so
naïvely, following a peculiar kind of vengeful logic, by emptying words of their pocket
contents on a spiraling staircase. An anti-incantation, a verbal overdose, a semantic dilution or
reduction – for the first time, I was ready to inflict harm on words! [And I am sure, the
thought has crossed other lucid minds, too.]
N
During the first several days, as I was rushing up and down the stairs like a Tasmanian devil,
swirling those same sentences in my expunction ritual, I hardly noticed that the brown
marbled staircase had a ravenous appetite for all my sound making and fuss: it cushioned the
clump of my footsteps, it absorbed the vibrations of my vocal chords and of my fingers
drumming on the handrail. All this unusual business must have carried on untroubled for
some time until that Wed. [?] morning when I tried approaching the employee at the
reception desk in the hideously large building where I live with a question about elevator
safety. I may take the elevator once in a blue moon, but I could not ignore the new
disquieting note I had been reading on all elevator doors that week:
m a k e / s u r e / t h e / e l e v a t o r / c a r / i s / s t a t i o n e d / o n / y o u r / f l
o o r / b e f o r e / s t e p p i n g / i n
T
P.140
P.141
Walking with a swagger, I entered the incandescent light field around the fancy semicircular,
brown reception desk, pressed down my palms on it, bent forward and from what I found to
be a comfortable inquiry angle, launched question mark after question mark: “Is everything
alright with the elevators? Do you know how worrisome I find the new warning on the
elevator doors? Has there been an accident? Or is this simply an insurance disclaimer-trick?”
Too many floors, too many times reading the same message against my will, must have
inflated my concern, so I breathed out the justification of my anxiety and waited for a
reassuring head shake to erase the imprint of the elevator shaft from my mind. Oddly, not the
faintest or most bored acknowledgment of my inquiry or presence came from across the desk.
From where I was standing, I performed a quick check to see if any cables came out of the
receptionist's ears. Nothing. Channels unobstructed, no ear mufflers, no micro-devices.
Suspicion eliminated, I waved at him, emitted a few other sounds – all to no avail. My
tunnel-visioned receptionist rolled his chair even closer to one of the many monitors under his
hooked gaze, his visual field now narrowed to a very acute angle, sheltered by his high desk.
How well I can still remember that at that exact moment I wished my face would turn into
the widest, most expensive screen, with an imperative, hairy ticker at the bottom –
h e y t o u c h m y s c r e e n m y m u s t a c h e s c r e e n e l e v a t o r t o u c h d o w n s
c r e a m
J
That's one of the first red flags I remember in this situation (here, really starting to come
across more or less as a story): a feeling of being silenced by the building I inhabited. [Or to
think about it the other way around: it's also plausible and less paranoid that upon hearing
my flash sentences the building manifested a sense of phonophobia and consequently
activated a strange defense mechanism. In any case, t]hat day, I had been forewarned, but I
failed to understand. As soon as I pushed the revolving door and left the building with a wry
smile [on my face], the traffic outside wolfed down the warning.
E
The day I resigned myself to those forces – and I assume, I had unleashed them upon myself
through my vengeful desire to hxxx {here, a 3-cm erasure} words until I could see carcass
after carcass roll down the stairs [truth be said, a practice that differed from other people's
doings only in my heightened degree of awareness, which entailed a partially malevolent but
perhaps understandable defensive strategy on my part] – that gloomy day, the burning
untitled shape I had been carrying in my mouth morphed into a permanent official of my
cavity – a word implant in my jaw! No longer do I feel pain on my tongue, only a tinge of
volcanic ash as an aftermath of this defeat.
U
I've been running with a word in my mouth, running with this burning untitled shape, and I
just can't spit it out. Spit it with phlegm from a balcony, kiss it in a mirror, brush it away one
morning. It has become my tooth, rooted in my nervous system. My word of mouth.
P
Since then, my present has turned into an obscure hole, and I can't climb out of it. Most of
the time, I'm sitting at the bottom of this narrow oubliette, teeth in knees, scribbling notes with
my body in a terribly twisted position. And when I'm not sitting, I'm forced to jump.
Agonizing thoughts numb my limbs so much so that I feel my legs turning to stone. On some
days I look up, terrified. I can't even make out whether the diffuse opening is egg- or squareshaped, but there's definitely a peculiar tic-tac sequence interspersed with neighs that my
pricked ears are picking up on. A sound umbrella, hovering somewhere up there, high above
my imploded horizon.
{illegible vertical lines resembling a bar code}
Hypotheses scanned and merged, I temporarily conclude that a horse-like creature with
metal intestines must be galloping round and round the hole I'm in. When I first noticed the
sound, its circular cadence was soft and unobtrusive, almost protective, but now the more laps
the clock-horse is running, the deeper the ticking and the neighing sounds are drilling into the
hole. I picture this as an ever rotating metal worm inside a mincing machine. If I point my
chin up, it bores through my throat!
B
P.142
P.143
What if, in returning to that red flag in my reconstructive undertaking [instead of “red flag”,
whose imperialist connotations strike me today, we cross it out and use “pyramid” to refer to
such potentially revealing frames, when intuitions {two words crossed out, but still legible:
seem to} give the alarm and converge before thoughts do], we posit that an elevator accident
occurred not long after my unanswered query at the High Reception Desk, and that I –
exceptionally – found myself in the elevator car that plummeted. Following this not entirely
bleak hypothesis, the oubliette I'm trapped in translates to an explainable state of blackout
and all the ticking and the drilling could easily find their counterparts in the host of medical
devices (and their noise-making) that support a comatose person. What if what I am
experiencing now is another kind of awareness, inside a coma, which will be gone once I
wake up in a few hours or days on a hospital bed, flowers by my side, someone crying / loud
as a horse / in the other corner of the room, next to a child's bed?
[Plausible as this scenario might be, it's still strange how the situation calls for reality-like
insertions to occur through “what if”s...]
H
Have I fallen into a lucid coma or am I a hallucination, made in 1941 out of gouache and
black pencil, paper, cardboard and purchased in 1966?
[To visualize the equation of my despair, the following elements are given: the abovewhispered question escalates into a desperate shout and multiplies itself over a considerable
stretch of time at the expense of my vocal chords. After all, I am not made of black pencil or
cardboard or paper. Despite this conclusion, the effort has left me sulking for hours without
being able to scribble anything, overwhelmed by a sensation of being pinched and pulled
sideways by dark particles inside the mineral dampness of this open tomb. What's the use of
a vertical territory if you can't sniff it all the way up?]
{several overlapping thumbmarks in black ink, lower right corner}
W
/ one gorgeous whale \
my memory's biomorphic shadow
can anyone write in woodworm language?
how to teach the Cyrillic alphabet to woodworms?
how many hypotheses to /re-stabilize\ one's situation?
how many pyramids one on top of the other to the \coma/ surface?
the denser the pyramid net, the more confusing the situation. true/false\fiction
O
Hasty recordings of several escape attempts. A slew of tentacle-thoughts are rising towards
the ethereal opening and here I am / hopeful and unwashed \ just beneath a submundane
landscape of groping, shimmering arms, hungry to sense and to collect every memory detail in
an effort of sense making, to draw skin over hypotheses and hypotheses over bones. It might
be morning, it might be yesterday's morning out there or any other time in the past, when as I
cracked the door to my workplace, I entered my co-workers' question game and paraverbal
exchange:
Puckered lips open: “Listen, whose childhood dream was it to have one of their eye-bulbs
replaced with a micro fish-eye lens implant?” Knitted eyebrows: “Someone whose neural
pathways zigzagged phrenologist categories?” Microexpressionist: “How many semioticiandentists and woodworm-writers have visited the Chaos Institute to date?” A ragged mane:
“The same number as the number of neurological tools for brain mapping that the Institute
owns?” {one lengthy word crossed out, probably a name}: “Would your brain topography get
upset and wrinkle if you imagined all the bureaucrats' desks from the largest country on earth
[by pop.] piled up in a pyramid?” Microexpressionist again: “Who wants to draft the call for
asemic writers?” Puckered lips closes {sic} the door.
I
It's a humongous workplace, with a blue entrance door, cluttered with papers on both sides.
See? Left hand on the entrance door handle, the woman presses it and the three of them
[guiding co-worker, faceless cameraman, scarlet-haired interviewer] squeeze themselves
P.144
P.145
inside all that paper. [Door shuts by itself.] Doesn't it feel like entering a paper sculpture? [,
she herself appearing for a split second to have undergone a material transformation, to have
turned into paper, the left side of her face glowing in a retro light. It's still her.] This is where
we work, a hybrid site officially called The Institute for Chaos and Neuroplasticity – packed
with folders, jammed with newspapers, stacks of private correspondence left and right,
recording devices, boxes with photographs, xeroxed documents on shelves, {several pea-sized
inkblots} printed screenshots and boarding passes – we keep it all, everything that museums
or archives have no interest in, all orphaned papers, photographic plates and imperiled books
or hard disks relatives might want to discard or even burn after someone's death. Exploring
leftovers around here can go up and down to horrifying and overwhelming sensorial levels...
Z
{a two-centimeter line of rust from a pin in the upper left corner of the index card}
Sociological-intelligence rumors have it that ours is the bureau for studying psychological
attachment to “garbage” (we very much welcome researchers), while others refer to the
Institute as the chaos-brewing place in the neighborhood because we employ absolutely no
classification method for storing papers or other media. The chances of finding us? [Raised
eyebrows and puckered lips as first responses to the scarlet-haired question.] Well, the
incidence is just as low as finding a document or device you're looking for in our storage.
Things are not lost; there are just different ways of finding them. A random stroll, a lucky find
– be that on-line or off-line –, or a seductive word of mouth may be the entrance points into
this experiential space, a manifesto for haphazardness, emotional intuitions, subversion of
neural pathways, and non-productive attitudes. A dadaist archive? queried Scarlet Hair.
Ours is definitely not an archive, there's no trace of pyramidal bureaucracy or taxonomy
here, no nation state at its birth. Hence you won't find a reservoir for national or racial
histories in here. Just imagine we changed perception scales, imagine a collective cut-up
project that we, chaos workers, are bringing together without scissors or screwdrivers because
all that gets through that blue door [and that is the only condition and standard] has already
been shaped and fits in here. [Guiding co-worker speaks in a monotonous and plain GPS
voice. Interview continues, but she forgets to mention that behind the blue door, in this very
big box 1. everyone is an authorized user and 2. time rests unemployed.]
K
Lately, several trucks loaded with gray matter have been adding extra hours of induced
chaos to everyone's content. Although it is the Institute's policy to accept paper donations
only from private individuals, it occasionally makes exceptions and takes on leftovers from
nonprofit organizations.
Each time this happens, an extended rite of passage follows so as to slightly delay and
thereby ease the arrival of chaos bits: the most reliable chaos worker, Microexpressionist by
metonymically selected feature, supervises the transfer of boxes at the very beginning of a
long hallway [eyeballs moving left to right, head planted in an incredibly stiff neck]. Then,
some fifty meters away, standing in front of the opened blue door, Puckered Lips welcomes
newcomers into the chaos, his gestures those of a marshaller guiding a plane into a parking
position. But once the gray [?] matter has passed over the threshold, once the last full
suitcase or shoe box with USB sticks has landed, directions are no longer provided.
Everyone's free to grow limbs and choose temporal neighbors.
L
… seated cross-legged at the longest desk ever, Ragged Mane is randomly extracting
photodocuments from the freshest chaos segment with a metallic extension of two of her
fingers [instead of a pince-nez, she's the one to carry a pair of tweezers in a small pocket at
all times]. “Look what I've just grabbed,” and she pushes a sepia photograph in front of
Knitted Eyebrows, whose otherwise deadpan face instantaneously gets stamped this time
with a question mark: “What is it?” “Another capture, of course! Two mustaches, one hat,
three pairs of glasses, some blurred figures in the background, and one most fascinating
detail!” – [… takes out a magnifying glass and points with one of her flashy pink fingers to
the handheld object under the gaze of four eyes on the left side of the photo. Then, Ragged
Mane continues:] “That raised right index finger above a rectangular-shaped object... you see
it?” “You mean [00:00 = insertion of a lengthy time frame = 00:47] could this mustachioed
fellow be holding a touchscreen mobile phone in his left hand?” For several unrecorded
skeptical moments, they interlock their eyes and knit their eyebrows closer together.
Afterward, eyes split again and roll on the surface of the photograph like black-eyed peas on
a kitchen table. “It's all specks and epoch details,” a resigned voice breaks from the chaos
silence, when, the same thought crosses their minds, and Ragged Mane and Knitted
Eyebrows turn the photo over, almost certain to find an answer. [A simultaneous hunch.] In
block letters it most clearly reads: “DOCUMENTING THE FILMING OF
PEACEMAKERS / ANALOGUE PHOTOGRAPHY ON FILM SET / BERN,
SWITZERLAND / 17.05.2008”
X
P.146
P.147
/ meanwhile, the clock-horse has grown really nervous out there – it's drawing smaller and
smaller circles / a spasmodic and repetitive activity causing dislocation / a fine powder
begins to float inside the oubliette in the slowest motion possible / my breathing has already
been hampered, but now my lungs and brain get filled with an asphyxiating smell of old
paper / hanging on my last tentacle-thought, on my tiptoes, refusing to choke and disintegrate
/ NOT READY TO BE RECYCLED / {messiest handwriting}
A Cyrillic cityscape is imagining how one day all the bureaucrats' desks from the largest
country on earth get piled up in a pyramid. “This new shape is deflating the coherence of my
horizon. [the cityscape worries] No matter!” Once the last desk is placed at the very top, the
ground cracks a half-open mouth, a fissure the length of Rxssxx. On the outside it's spotted
with straddled city topographies, inside, it's filled with a vernacular accumulation of anational
dust without a trace of usable pasts.
{violent horizontal strokes over the last two lines, left and right from the hole at the bottom of
the index card; indecipherable}
M
“What's on TV this afternoon?” This plain but beautifully metamorphosed question has just
landed with a bleep on the chaos couch, next to Ragged Mane, who usually loses no chance
to retort [that is, here, to admonish too hard a fall]: “Doucement!” Under the weight of a
short-lived feeling of guilt, {name crossed out} echoes back in a whisper – d – o – u – c – e
– m – e – n – t –, and then, as if after a palatable word tasting, she clicks her tongue and
with it, she searches for a point of clarification: “Doucement is an anagram for documenté –
which one do you actually mean?” [All conversations with {name crossed out} would suffer
unsettling Meaning U-turns because she specialized in letter permutation.]
Y
Gurgling sounds from a not-so-distant corner of the chaos dump make heads simultaneously
rotate in the direction of the TV screen, where a documentary has just started with a drone'seye view over a city of lined-up skyscrapers. Early on, the commentator breaks into unwitty
superlatives and platitudes, while the soundtrack unnecessarily dramatizes a 3D layering of
the city structure. Despite all this, the mood on the couch is patient, and viewers seem to
absorb the vignetted film. “A city like no other, as atypical as Cappadocia,” explains the low
trepid voice from the box, “a city whose peculiarity owes first to the alignment of all its
elements, where street follows street in a parallel fashion like in linear writing. Hence, reading
the city acquires a literal dimension, skyscrapers echo clustered block letters on a line, and
the pedestrian reader gets reduced to the size of a far-sighted microbe.”
[Woodworm laughs]
V
Minutes into the documentary, the micro-drone camera zooms into the silver district/chapter
of the city to show another set of its features: instead of steel and glass, what from afar
appeared to be ordinary skyscrapers turn out to be “300-meter-tall lofty towers of mailboxlike constructs of dried skin, sprayed on top with silver paint for rims, and decorated with
huge love padlocks. A foreboding district for newlyweds?” [nauseating atmosphere] Unable
to answer or to smell, the mosquito-sized drone blinks in the direction of the right page, and it
speedily approaches another windowless urban variation: the vastest area of city towers – the
Wood Drawers District. “Despite its vintage (here and there rundown) aura, the area is an
exquisite, segregated space for library aficionados, designed out of genetically-engineered
trees that grow naturally drawer-shaped with a remarkable capacity for self-(re)generation. In
terms of real proportions, the size of a mailbox- or a drawer-apartment is comparable to that
P.148
P.149
of a shipping container, from the alternative but old housing projects…” bla bla the furniture
bla... [that chaos corner, so remote and so coal black / that whole atmosphere with blurred
echoes beclouds my reasoning / and right now, I'm feeling nauseous and cursed with all the
words in an unabridged dictionary / new deluxe edition, with black covers and golden
characters]
D
In front of the place where, above a modest skyline, every single morning [scholars'] desks
conjoin in the shape of a multi-storied pyramid, there's a sign that reads: right here you can
bend forward, place your hands on your back, press down your spine with your thumbs and
throw up an index card, throw out a reality version, take out a tooth. In fact, take out all that
you need and once you feel relieved, exchange personas as if in an emergency situation.
Then, behind vermillion curtains, replace pronouns at will.
[Might this have been a pipe dream? An intubated wish for character replacement? {Name
crossed out} would whisper C E E H I N N O R T as place name]
R
[“gray – …
Other Color Terms –
argentine, cerise, cerulean, cyan, ocher, perse, puce, taupe, vermillion”]
To be able to name everything and everyone, especially all the shades in a gray zone, and
then to re-name, re-narrate/re-count, and re-photograph all of it. To treat the ensuing
multilayered landscape with/as an infinitive verb and to scoop a place for yourself in the
accordion of surfaces. For instance, take the first shot – you're being stared at, you're under
the distant gaze of three {words crossed out; illegible}. Pale, you might think, how pallid and
lifeless they appear to be, but try to hold their gaze and notice how the interaction grows
uncomfortable through persistence. Blink, if you must. Move your weight from one leg to the
other, and become aware of how unflinching their concentration remains, as if their eyes are
lured into a screen. And as you're trying to draw attention to yourself by making ampler,
pantomimic gestures, your hands touch the dark inner edges of the monitor you're [boxed] in.
Look out and around again and again...
G
Some {Same?} damned creature made only of arms and legs has been leaving a slew of
black dots all over my corridors and staircases, ashes on my handrails, and larger spots of
black liquid in front of my elevator doors on the southern track – my oldest and dearest
vertically mobile installation, the one that has grown only ten floors high. If I were in shape,
attuned and wired to my perception angles and sensors, I could identify beyond precision that
it is a 403 cabal plotting I begin fearing. Lately, it's all been going really awry. Having failed
at the character recognition of this trickster creature, the following facts can be enumerated in
view of overall [damage] re-evaluation, quantification, and intruder excision: emaciating
architectural structure, increasingly deformed spiraling of brown marbled staircases, smudged
finger- and footprints on all floors, soddened and blackened ceilings, alongside thousands of
harrowing fingers and a detection of an insidious and undesirable multiplication of {word
crossed out: white} hands [tbc].
C
Out of the blue, the clock-horse dislocated particles expand in size, circle in all directions like
giant flies around a street lamp, and then in the most predictable fashion, they collide with my
escapist reminiscences multiple times until I lose connection and the landscape above comes
to a [menacing] stillness. [How does it look now? a scarlet-haired question.] I'm blinking, I'm
moving my weight from one leg to the other, before I can attempt a description of the earth
balls that stagnate in the air among translucent tentacles [they're almost gone] and floating
dioramas of miniatures. Proportions have inverted, scraped surfaces have commingled and
my U-shaped. reality. and. vision. are. stammering... I can't find my hands!
...
P.150
P.151
-- Ospal ( talk ) 09:27, 19 November 2015 (CET) Here is where the transcript ENDS,
where the black text lines dribble back into the box. For information on document location or
transcription method, kindly contact the editor.
Last
Revision:
28·06·2016
LES
UTOPISTES
and
their
common
logos/et
leurs
logos
communs
DENNIS POHL
EN
In itself this list is just a bag of words that orders the common terms used in the works of
Le Corbusier and Paul Otlet with the help of text comparison. The quantity of similar words
relates to the word-count of the texts, which means that each appearance has a different
weight. Taken this into account, the appearance of the word esprit for instance, is more
significant in Vers une Architecture (127 times) than in Traité de documentation (240
times), although the total amount of appearances is almost two times higher.
Beyond the mere quantified use of a common language, this list follows the intuition that
there is something more to elaborate in the discourse between these two utopians. One
possible reading can be found in The Smart City, an essay that traces their encounter.
FR
Cette liste n'est en elle même qu'un sac de mots qui organisent les termes les plus
communs utilisés dans les travaux de Le Corbusier et Paul Otlet en utilisant un comparateur
de texte. Le nombre de mots similaires rapotés par le comptage automatique des mots du
texte, ceci signifie que chaque occurence a une valeur différente. Prenons l'exemple des
aparitions du mot esprit par exemple sont plus significatives dans Vers une Architecture (127
P.152
P.153
fois) plutot que dans le Traité de documentation (240 fois), et ceci bien que le nombre
d'occurences est pratiquement 2 fois plus élevé.
Au delà de simplement comptabiliser la pratique d'un langage commun, mais cette liste suit
une intuition qu'il y a quelque chose qui mériterait une recherche plus approfondie sur le
discours de ces deux utopistes. Une proposition pour une telle recherche peut être trouvée
dans La Ville Intelligente, un essai qui retrace leur rencontre.
Books taken into consideration/Livres prise en compte:
• Le Corbusier, Vers une Architecture, Paris: les éditions G. Crès, 1923. Wordcount: 32733.
• Paul Otlet, Traité de documentation: le livre sur le livre, théorie et pratique, Bruxelles:
Mundaneum, Palais Mondial, 1934. Word-count: 356854.
• Le Corbusier, Urbanisme, Paris: les éditions G. Crès, 1925. Word-count: 37699.
• Paul Otlet, Monde: essai d'universalisme - Connaissance du Monde, Sentiment du
Monde, Action organisee et Plan du Monde, Bruxelles: Editiones Mundeum 1935.
Word-count: 140209.
acquis
appears 5 times in Vers une 21 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
6 times in
Urbanisme and
11 times in
Monde.
activité
appears 10 times in Vers
une Architecture,
43 times in Traité de
documentation,
10 times in
Urbanisme and
78 times in
Monde.
actuel
appears 9 times in Vers une 27 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
6 times in
Urbanisme and
22 times in
Monde.
actuelle
appears 7 times in Vers une 19 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
8 times in
Urbanisme and
26 times in
Monde.
actuelles
appears 5 times in Vers une 6 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
6 times in
Urbanisme and
6 times in
Monde.
affaires
appears 6 times in Vers une 42 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
30 times in
Urbanisme and
19 times in
Monde.
air
appears 12 times in Vers
une Architecture,
12 times in Traité de
documentation,
14 times in
Urbanisme and
16 times in
Monde.
aise
appears 7 times in Vers une 71 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
6 times in
Urbanisme and
12 times in
Monde.
alors
appears 32 times in Vers
une Architecture,
165 times in Traité de 38 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
52 times in
Monde.
angle
appears 5 times in Vers une 18 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
16 times in
Urbanisme and
7 times in
Monde.
années
appears 7 times in Vers une 89 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
10 times in
Urbanisme and
42 times in
Monde.
ans
appears 17 times in Vers
une Architecture,
91 times in Traité de
documentation,
16 times in
Urbanisme and
109 times in
Monde.
architecture
appears 199 times in Vers
une Architecture,
51 times in Traité de
documentation,
26 times in
Urbanisme and
11 times in
Monde.
art
appears 44 times in Vers
une Architecture,
370 times in Traité de 6 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
60 times in
Monde.
aspect
appears 5 times in Vers une 45 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
8 times in
Urbanisme and
29 times in
Monde.
auto
appears 10 times in Vers
une Architecture,
13 times in Traité de
documentation,
12 times in
Urbanisme and
5 times in
Monde.
autrement
appears 6 times in Vers une 15 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
6 times in
Urbanisme and
10 times in
Monde.
avant
appears 8 times in Vers une 131 times in Traité de 6 times in
Architecture,
documentation,
Urbanisme and
45 times in
Monde.
avoir
appears 13 times in Vers
une Architecture,
208 times in Traité de 6 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
72 times in
Monde.
base
appears 8 times in Vers une 119 times in Traité de 6 times in
Architecture,
documentation,
Urbanisme and
66 times in
Monde.
beauté
appears 14 times in Vers
une Architecture,
14 times in
Urbanisme and
21 times in
Monde.
beaucoup
appears 9 times in Vers une 114 times in Traité de 8 times in
Architecture,
documentation,
Urbanisme and
23 times in
Monde.
besoin
appears 16 times in Vers
une Architecture,
82 times in Traité de
documentation,
8 times in
Urbanisme and
40 times in
Monde.
calcul
appears 19 times in Vers
une Architecture,
15 times in Traité de
documentation,
24 times in
Urbanisme and
21 times in
Monde.
cause
appears 6 times in Vers une 47 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
6 times in
Urbanisme and
26 times in
Monde.
cela
appears 16 times in Vers
une Architecture,
16 times in
Urbanisme and
31 times in
Monde.
cellule
appears 7 times in Vers une 9 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
10 times in
Urbanisme and
7 times in
Monde.
centre
appears 7 times in Vers une 55 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
50 times in
Urbanisme and
44 times in
Monde.
P.154
34 times in Traité de
documentation,
99 times in Traité de
documentation,
P.155
chapitre
appears 7 times in Vers une 35 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
chacun
appears 6 times in Vers une 151 times in Traité de 6 times in
Architecture,
documentation,
Urbanisme and
60 times in
Monde.
chemins
appears 9 times in Vers une 18 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
12 times in
Urbanisme and
5 times in
Monde.
chemin
appears 7 times in Vers une 19 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
18 times in
Urbanisme and
9 times in
Monde.
choses
appears 43 times in Vers
une Architecture,
215 times in Traité de 20 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
157 times in
Monde.
chose
appears 34 times in Vers
une Architecture,
110 times in Traité de 12 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
52 times in
Monde.
ciel
appears 8 times in Vers une 13 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
48 times in
Urbanisme and
18 times in
Monde.
cinquante
appears 5 times in Vers une 6 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
8 times in
Urbanisme and
5 times in
Monde.
circulation
appears 6 times in Vers une 27 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
44 times in
Urbanisme and
8 times in
Monde.
cité
appears 10 times in Vers
une Architecture,
29 times in Traité de
documentation,
34 times in
Urbanisme and
35 times in
Monde.
claire
appears 6 times in Vers une 18 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
6 times in
Urbanisme and
6 times in
Monde.
compte
appears 11 times in Vers
une Architecture,
96 times in Traité de
documentation,
8 times in
Urbanisme and
37 times in
Monde.
construction
appears 50 times in Vers
une Architecture,
24 times in Traité de
documentation,
14 times in
Urbanisme and
8 times in
Monde.
conception
appears 23 times in Vers
une Architecture,
62 times in Traité de
documentation,
8 times in
Urbanisme and
64 times in
Monde.
construire
appears 17 times in Vers
une Architecture,
10 times in Traité de
documentation,
6 times in
Urbanisme and
9 times in
Monde.
contre
appears 13 times in Vers
une Architecture,
91 times in Traité de
documentation,
6 times in
Urbanisme and
79 times in
Monde.
conà
appears 9 times in Vers une 49 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
10 times in
Urbanisme and
20 times in
Monde.
12 times in
Urbanisme and
5 times in
Monde.
constructions appears 7 times in Vers une 8 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
10 times in
Urbanisme and
9 times in
Monde.
connaissance
appears 5 times in Vers une 76 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
8 times in
Urbanisme and
56 times in
Monde.
conditions
appears 5 times in Vers une 111 times in Traité de 8 times in
Architecture,
documentation,
Urbanisme and
57 times in
Monde.
cours
appears 8 times in Vers une 150 times in Traité de 8 times in
Architecture,
documentation,
Urbanisme and
65 times in
Monde.
coup
appears 7 times in Vers une 34 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
6 times in
Urbanisme and
14 times in
Monde.
crise
appears 11 times in Vers
une Architecture,
8 times in Traité de
documentation,
6 times in
Urbanisme and
45 times in
Monde.
création
appears 22 times in Vers
une Architecture,
82 times in Traité de
documentation,
10 times in
Urbanisme and
48 times in
Monde.
créer
appears 10 times in Vers
une Architecture,
57 times in Traité de
documentation,
10 times in
Urbanisme and
25 times in
Monde.
crée
appears 10 times in Vers
une Architecture,
26 times in Traité de
documentation,
6 times in
Urbanisme and
18 times in
Monde.
culture
appears 7 times in Vers une 33 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
6 times in
Urbanisme and
68 times in
Monde.
demain
appears 7 times in Vers une 17 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
6 times in
Urbanisme and
11 times in
Monde.
dessus
appears 6 times in Vers une 28 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
16 times in
Urbanisme and
21 times in
Monde.
devant
appears 18 times in Vers
une Architecture,
75 times in Traité de
documentation,
12 times in
Urbanisme and
43 times in
Monde.
dire
appears 17 times in Vers
une Architecture,
185 times in Traité de 16 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
72 times in
Monde.
disposition
appears 5 times in Vers une 83 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
doit
appears 13 times in Vers
une Architecture,
domaines
appears 5 times in Vers une 42 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
6 times in
Urbanisme and
38 times in
Monde.
donne
appears 8 times in Vers une 148 times in Traité de 12 times in
Architecture,
documentation,
Urbanisme and
44 times in
Monde.
droite
appears 11 times in Vers
une Architecture,
8 times in
Monde.
P.156
6 times in
Urbanisme and
408 times in Traité de 14 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
40 times in Traité de
documentation,
36 times in
Urbanisme and
8 times in
Monde.
134 times in
Monde.
P.157
droits
appears 8 times in Vers une 22 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
droit
appears 6 times in Vers une 106 times in Traité de 36 times in
Architecture,
documentation,
Urbanisme and
125 times in
Monde.
désordre
appears 7 times in Vers une 9 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
12 times in
Urbanisme and
12 times in
Monde.
effet
appears 7 times in Vers une 78 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
6 times in
Urbanisme and
32 times in
Monde.
encore
appears 25 times in Vers
une Architecture,
enfin
appears 5 times in Vers une 46 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
ensemble
appears 16 times in Vers
une Architecture,
329 times in Traité de 14 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
123 times in
Monde.
entre
appears 29 times in Vers
une Architecture,
342 times in Traité de 18 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
246 times in
Monde.
esprit
appears 127 times in Vers
une Architecture,
240 times in Traité de 36 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
150 times in
Monde.
espace
appears 20 times in Vers
une Architecture,
69 times in Traité de
documentation,
16 times in
Urbanisme and
122 times in
Monde.
esprits
appears 6 times in Vers une 44 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
6 times in
Urbanisme and
35 times in
Monde.
exemple
appears 5 times in Vers une 143 times in Traité de 12 times in
Architecture,
documentation,
Urbanisme and
30 times in
Monde.
existence
appears 5 times in Vers une 73 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
10 times in
Urbanisme and
75 times in
Monde.
face
appears 15 times in Vers
une Architecture,
11 times in Traité de
documentation,
12 times in
Urbanisme and
18 times in
Monde.
faire
appears 51 times in Vers
une Architecture,
410 times in Traité de 24 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
faites
appears 7 times in Vers une 45 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
faut
appears 46 times in Vers
une Architecture,
285 times in Traité de 54 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
126 times in
Monde.
fer
appears 12 times in Vers
une Architecture,
30 times in Traité de
documentation,
14 times in
Monde.
16 times in
Urbanisme and
197 times in Traité de 22 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
8 times in
Urbanisme and
6 times in
Urbanisme and
14 times in
Urbanisme and
37 times in
Monde.
106 times in
Monde.
29 times in
Monde.
137 times in
Monde.
12 times in
Monde.
fin
appears 5 times in Vers une 122 times in Traité de 6 times in
Architecture,
documentation,
Urbanisme and
66 times in
Monde.
fois
appears 11 times in Vers
une Architecture,
208 times in Traité de 8 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
77 times in
Monde.
font
appears 24 times in Vers
une Architecture,
93 times in Traité de
documentation,
10 times in
Urbanisme and
25 times in
Monde.
fond
appears 5 times in Vers une 67 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
6 times in
Urbanisme and
29 times in
Monde.
forme
appears 14 times in Vers
une Architecture,
france
appears 6 times in Vers une 190 times in Traité de 6 times in
Architecture,
documentation,
Urbanisme and
57 times in
Monde.
grande
appears 40 times in Vers
une Architecture,
202 times in Traité de 82 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
69 times in
Monde.
grand
appears 34 times in Vers
une Architecture,
276 times in Traité de 34 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
89 times in
Monde.
grands
appears 24 times in Vers
une Architecture,
187 times in Traité de 24 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
88 times in
Monde.
grandes
appears 21 times in Vers
une Architecture,
182 times in Traité de 36 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
93 times in
Monde.
grandeur
appears 11 times in Vers
une Architecture,
34 times in Traité de
documentation,
6 times in
Urbanisme and
19 times in
Monde.
gros
appears 5 times in Vers une 25 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
6 times in
Urbanisme and
8 times in
Monde.
guerre
appears 5 times in Vers une 115 times in Traité de 8 times in
Architecture,
documentation,
Urbanisme and
137 times in
Monde.
géométrie
appears 17 times in Vers
une Architecture,
14 times in Traité de
documentation,
24 times in
Urbanisme and
12 times in
Monde.
hauteur
appears 14 times in Vers
une Architecture,
21 times in Traité de
documentation,
10 times in
Urbanisme and
8 times in
Monde.
haute
appears 9 times in Vers une 34 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
8 times in
Urbanisme and
13 times in
Monde.
haut
appears 9 times in Vers une 71 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
18 times in
Urbanisme and
24 times in
Monde.
heures
appears 15 times in Vers
une Architecture,
20 times in
Urbanisme and
16 times in
Monde.
P.158
442 times in Traité de 18 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
45 times in Traité de
documentation,
106 times in
Monde.
P.159
heure
appears 15 times in Vers
une Architecture,
histoire
appears 6 times in Vers une 338 times in Traité de 10 times in
Architecture,
documentation,
Urbanisme and
183 times in
Monde.
homme
appears 74 times in Vers
une Architecture,
189 times in Traité de 66 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
315 times in
Monde.
hommes
appears 11 times in Vers
une Architecture,
122 times in Traité de 30 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
144 times in
Monde.
hors
appears 9 times in Vers une 36 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
10 times in
Urbanisme and
12 times in
Monde.
humaine
appears 19 times in Vers
une Architecture,
72 times in Traité de
documentation,
14 times in
Urbanisme and
96 times in
Monde.
humain
appears 10 times in Vers
une Architecture,
45 times in Traité de
documentation,
16 times in
Urbanisme and
61 times in
Monde.
idées
appears 14 times in Vers
une Architecture,
283 times in Traité de 6 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
80 times in
Monde.
idée
appears 13 times in Vers
une Architecture,
168 times in Traité de 6 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
75 times in
Monde.
immenses
appears 11 times in Vers
une Architecture,
22 times in Traité de
documentation,
8 times in
Urbanisme and
12 times in
Monde.
immense
appears 8 times in Vers une 62 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
6 times in
Urbanisme and
25 times in
Monde.
industrielle
appears 12 times in Vers
une Architecture,
6 times in
Urbanisme and
14 times in
Monde.
industriels
appears 5 times in Vers une 18 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
6 times in
Urbanisme and
9 times in
Monde.
jeu
appears 14 times in Vers
une Architecture,
39 times in Traité de
documentation,
6 times in
Urbanisme and
29 times in
Monde.
jour
appears 13 times in Vers
une Architecture,
216 times in Traité de 22 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
69 times in
Monde.
lequel
appears 5 times in Vers une 67 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
10 times in
Urbanisme and
19 times in
Monde.
libre
appears 7 times in Vers une 48 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
6 times in
Urbanisme and
45 times in
Monde.
lieu
appears 10 times in Vers
une Architecture,
384 times in Traité de 6 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
89 times in
Monde.
58 times in Traité de
documentation,
7 times in Traité de
documentation,
32 times in
Urbanisme and
28 times in
Monde.
logique
appears 14 times in Vers
une Architecture,
117 times in Traité de 8 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
39 times in
Monde.
loin
appears 11 times in Vers
une Architecture,
46 times in Traité de
documentation,
34 times in
Urbanisme and
17 times in
Monde.
louis
appears 11 times in Vers
une Architecture,
33 times in Traité de
documentation,
6 times in
Urbanisme and
10 times in
Monde.
lumière
appears 45 times in Vers
une Architecture,
77 times in Traité de
documentation,
10 times in
Urbanisme and
38 times in
Monde.
machine
appears 17 times in Vers
une Architecture,
119 times in Traité de 20 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
29 times in
Monde.
machines
appears 12 times in Vers
une Architecture,
83 times in Traité de
documentation,
10 times in
Urbanisme and
29 times in
Monde.
main
appears 8 times in Vers une 96 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
10 times in
Urbanisme and
15 times in
Monde.
mal
appears 15 times in Vers
une Architecture,
33 times in Traité de
documentation,
8 times in
Urbanisme and
26 times in
Monde.
masse
appears 6 times in Vers une 35 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
8 times in
Urbanisme and
52 times in
Monde.
masses
appears 5 times in Vers une 21 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
12 times in
Urbanisme and
19 times in
Monde.
mesure
appears 20 times in Vers
une Architecture,
110 times in Traité de 16 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
46 times in
Monde.
milieu
appears 7 times in Vers une 58 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
20 times in
Urbanisme and
56 times in
Monde.
moderne
appears 31 times in Vers
une Architecture,
79 times in Traité de
documentation,
20 times in
Urbanisme and
35 times in
Monde.
moins
appears 16 times in Vers
une Architecture,
243 times in Traité de 10 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
93 times in
Monde.
moment
appears 11 times in Vers
une Architecture,
105 times in Traité de 18 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
36 times in
Monde.
monde
appears 18 times in Vers
une Architecture,
177 times in Traité de 26 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
331 times in
Monde.
montre
appears 10 times in Vers
une Architecture,
27 times in Traité de
documentation,
6 times in
Urbanisme and
11 times in
Monde.
morale
appears 6 times in Vers une 32 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
6 times in
Urbanisme and
35 times in
Monde.
P.160
P.161
moyens
appears 16 times in Vers
une Architecture,
125 times in Traité de 20 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
59 times in
Monde.
moyen
appears 5 times in Vers une 268 times in Traité de 8 times in
Architecture,
documentation,
Urbanisme and
97 times in
Monde.
mécanique
appears 12 times in Vers
une Architecture,
50 times in Traité de
documentation,
31 times in
Monde.
nature
appears 18 times in Vers
une Architecture,
120 times in Traité de 20 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
166 times in
Monde.
nouveau
appears 39 times in Vers
une Architecture,
98 times in Traité de
documentation,
16 times in
Urbanisme and
43 times in
Monde.
nouvelle
appears 13 times in Vers
une Architecture,
129 times in Traité de 6 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
60 times in
Monde.
nouvelles
appears 6 times in Vers une 180 times in Traité de 6 times in
Architecture,
documentation,
Urbanisme and
65 times in
Monde.
nécessaire
appears 11 times in Vers
une Architecture,
80 times in Traité de
documentation,
12 times in
Urbanisme and
43 times in
Monde.
or
appears 10 times in Vers
une Architecture,
63 times in Traité de
documentation,
14 times in
Urbanisme and
45 times in
Monde.
ordre
appears 59 times in Vers
une Architecture,
421 times in Traité de 30 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
organes
appears 5 times in Vers une 74 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
6 times in
Urbanisme and
21 times in
Monde.
outil
appears 19 times in Vers
une Architecture,
12 times in Traité de
documentation,
6 times in
Urbanisme and
5 times in
Monde.
outillage
appears 11 times in Vers
une Architecture,
28 times in Traité de
documentation,
14 times in
Urbanisme and
6 times in
Monde.
paris
appears 20 times in Vers
une Architecture,
192 times in Traité de 60 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
16 times in
Monde.
part
appears 13 times in Vers
une Architecture,
214 times in Traité de 14 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
77 times in
Monde.
partie
appears 11 times in Vers
une Architecture,
222 times in Traité de 10 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
58 times in
Monde.
partout
appears 8 times in Vers une 48 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
12 times in
Urbanisme and
28 times in
Monde.
passé
appears 17 times in Vers
une Architecture,
12 times in
Urbanisme and
49 times in
Monde.
55 times in Traité de
documentation,
16 times in
Urbanisme and
128 times in
Monde.
passion
appears 8 times in Vers une 6 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
pensée
appears 10 times in Vers
une Architecture,
291 times in Traité de 12 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
127 times in
Monde.
perfection
appears 12 times in Vers
une Architecture,
14 times in Traité de
documentation,
10 times in
Urbanisme and
7 times in
Monde.
petit
appears 11 times in Vers
une Architecture,
88 times in Traité de
documentation,
14 times in
Urbanisme and
23 times in
Monde.
petite
appears 7 times in Vers une 28 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
10 times in
Urbanisme and
18 times in
Monde.
petites
appears 5 times in Vers une 25 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
6 times in
Urbanisme and
12 times in
Monde.
peuvent
appears 13 times in Vers
une Architecture,
198 times in Traité de 12 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
45 times in
Monde.
pied
appears 13 times in Vers
une Architecture,
12 times in Traité de
documentation,
8 times in
Monde.
plan
appears 86 times in Vers
une Architecture,
151 times in Traité de 32 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
174 times in
Monde.
place
appears 32 times in Vers
une Architecture,
208 times in Traité de 14 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
62 times in
Monde.
plans
appears 15 times in Vers
une Architecture,
60 times in Traité de
documentation,
12 times in
Urbanisme and
27 times in
Monde.
pleine
appears 6 times in Vers une 12 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
10 times in
Urbanisme and
6 times in
Monde.
point
appears 18 times in Vers
une Architecture,
278 times in Traité de 16 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
133 times in
Monde.
pourrait
appears 10 times in Vers
une Architecture,
93 times in Traité de
documentation,
12 times in
Urbanisme and
32 times in
Monde.
poésie
appears 5 times in Vers une 83 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
6 times in
Urbanisme and
7 times in
Monde.
pratique
appears 15 times in Vers
une Architecture,
98 times in Traité de
documentation,
6 times in
Urbanisme and
28 times in
Monde.
pratiques
appears 5 times in Vers une 44 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
6 times in
Urbanisme and
11 times in
Monde.
première
appears 11 times in Vers
une Architecture,
133 times in Traité de 8 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
38 times in
Monde.
P.162
58 times in
Urbanisme and
22 times in
Urbanisme and
14 times in
Monde.
P.163
prix
appears 7 times in Vers une 133 times in Traité de 8 times in
Architecture,
documentation,
Urbanisme and
35 times in
Monde.
principes
appears 5 times in Vers une 132 times in Traité de 12 times in
Architecture,
documentation,
Urbanisme and
53 times in
Monde.
problème
appears 53 times in Vers
une Architecture,
92 times in Traité de
documentation,
28 times in
Urbanisme and
88 times in
Monde.
programme
appears 14 times in Vers
une Architecture,
24 times in Traité de
documentation,
6 times in
Urbanisme and
12 times in
Monde.
produit
appears 13 times in Vers
une Architecture,
81 times in Traité de
documentation,
24 times in
Urbanisme and
38 times in
Monde.
progrès
appears 9 times in Vers une 133 times in Traité de 14 times in
Architecture,
documentation,
Urbanisme and
73 times in
Monde.
puis
appears 10 times in Vers
une Architecture,
115 times in Traité de 6 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
48 times in
Monde.
quatre
appears 11 times in Vers
une Architecture,
114 times in Traité de 12 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
40 times in
Monde.
qualité
appears 6 times in Vers une 39 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
quelque
appears 14 times in Vers
une Architecture,
132 times in Traité de 6 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
64 times in
Monde.
quelques
appears 12 times in Vers
une Architecture,
167 times in Traité de 10 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
33 times in
Monde.
raison
appears 6 times in Vers une 112 times in Traité de 38 times in
Architecture,
documentation,
Urbanisme and
77 times in
Monde.
rapport
appears 6 times in Vers une 106 times in Traité de 6 times in
Architecture,
documentation,
Urbanisme and
33 times in
Monde.
rapide
appears 5 times in Vers une 53 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
8 times in
Urbanisme and
16 times in
Monde.
règle
appears 5 times in Vers une 22 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
10 times in
Urbanisme and
5 times in
Monde.
résoudre
appears 5 times in Vers une 18 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
6 times in
Urbanisme and
8 times in
Monde.
sens
appears 31 times in Vers
une Architecture,
176 times in Traité de 14 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
64 times in
Monde.
sentiment
appears 10 times in Vers
une Architecture,
33 times in Traité de
documentation,
69 times in
Monde.
6 times in
Urbanisme and
14 times in
Urbanisme and
8 times in
Monde.
services
appears 5 times in Vers une 107 times in Traité de 20 times in
Architecture,
documentation,
Urbanisme and
24 times in
Monde.
seule
appears 7 times in Vers une 93 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
8 times in
Urbanisme and
43 times in
Monde.
siècle
appears 6 times in Vers une 283 times in Traité de 20 times in
Architecture,
documentation,
Urbanisme and
93 times in
Monde.
sol
appears 28 times in Vers
une Architecture,
10 times in Traité de
documentation,
20 times in
Urbanisme and
24 times in
Monde.
solution
appears 8 times in Vers une 26 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
8 times in
Urbanisme and
25 times in
Monde.
solutions
appears 6 times in Vers une 10 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
16 times in
Urbanisme and
10 times in
Monde.
souvent
appears 7 times in Vers une 207 times in Traité de 10 times in
Architecture,
documentation,
Urbanisme and
30 times in
Monde.
suivant
appears 12 times in Vers
une Architecture,
102 times in Traité de 16 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
30 times in
Monde.
surface
appears 25 times in Vers
une Architecture,
51 times in Traité de
documentation,
19 times in
Monde.
système
appears 10 times in Vers
une Architecture,
256 times in Traité de 32 times in
documentation,
Urbanisme and
129 times in
Monde.
série
appears 56 times in Vers
une Architecture,
98 times in Traité de
documentation,
8 times in
Urbanisme and
24 times in
Monde.
sécurité
appears 5 times in Vers une 5 times in Traité de
Architecture,
documentation,
6 times in
Urbanisme and
9 times in
Monde.
table
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Last
Revision:
3·08·2016
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X=Y
DICK RECKARD
0. INNOVATION OF THE SAME
Last
Revision:
2·08·2016
The PR imagery produced by and around the
Mundaneum (disambiguation: the institution in
Mons) often suggests, through a series of
'samenesses', an essential continuity between
Otlet's endeavour and Internet-related products
and services, in particular Google's. A good
example is a scene from the video "From
industrial heartland to the Internet age",
published by The Mundaneum, 2014 , where the drawers of Mundaneum
(disambiguation: Otlet's Utopia) morph into the servers of one of Google's
data centres.
This approach is not limited to images: a recurring discourse that shapes some of the
exhibitions taking place in the Mundaneum maintains that the dream of the Belgian utopian
has been kept alive in the development of internetworked communications, and currently
finds its spitiual successor in the products and services of Google. Even though there are
many connections and similarities between the two endeavours, one has to acknowledge that
Otlet was an internationalist, a socialist, an utopian, that his projects were not profit oriented,
and most importantly, that he was living in the temporal and cultural context of modernism at
the beginning of the 20th century. The constructed identities and continuities that detach
Otlet and the Mundaneum from a specific historical frame, ignore the different scientific,
social and political milieus involved. It means that these narratives exclude the discording or
disturbing elements that are inevitable when considering such a complex figure in its entirety.
This is not surprising, seeing the parties that are involved in the discourse: these types of
instrumental identities and differences suit the rhetorical tone of Silicon Valley. Newly
launched IT products for example, are often described as groundbreaking, innovative and
different from anything seen before. In other situations, those products could be advertised
exactly the same, as something else that already exists[1]. While novelty and difference
surprise and amaze, sameness reassures and comforts. For example, Google Glass was
marketed as revolutionary and innovative, but when it was attacked for its blatant privacy
issues, some defended it as just a camera and a phone joined together. The samenessdifference duo fulfils a clear function: on the one hand, it suggests that technological
advancements might alter the way we live dramatically, and we should be ready to give up
our old-fashioned ideas about life and culture for the sake of innovation. On the other hand, it
proposes we should not be worried about change, and that society has always evolved
through disruptions, undoubtedly for the better. For each questionable groundbreaking new
invention, there is a previous one with the same ideal, potentially with just as many critics...
Great minds think alike, after all. This sort of a-historical attitude pervades techno-capitalist
milieus, creating a cartoonesque view of the past, punctuated by great men and great
inventions, a sort of technological variant of Carlyle's Great Man Theory. In this view, the
Internet becomes the invention of a few father/genius figures, rather than the result of a long
and complex interaction of diverging efforts and interests of academics, entrepreneurs and
national governments. This instrumental reading of the past is largely consistent with the
theoretical ground on which the Californian Ideology[2] is based, in which the conception of
history is pervaded by various strains of technological determinism (from Marshall McLuhan
to Alvin Toffler[3]) and capitalist individualism (in generic neoliberal terms, up to the fervent
objectivism of Ayn Rand).
The appropriation of Paul Otlet's figure as Google's grandfather is a historical simplification,
and the samenesses in this tale are not without fundament. Many concepts and ideals of
documentation theories have reappeared in cybernetics and information theory, and are
therefore present in the narrative of many IT corporations, as in Mountain View's case. With
the intention of restoring a historical complexity, it might be more interesting to play the
exactly the same game ourselves, rather than try to dispel the advertised continuum of the
Google on paper. Choosing to focus on other types of analogies in the story, we can maybe
contribute a narrative that is more respectful to the complexity of the past, and more telling
about the problems of the present.
What followings are three such comparisons, which focus on three aspects of continuity
between the documentation theories and archival experiments Otlet was involved in, and the
cybernetic theories and practices that Google's capitalist enterprise is an exponent of. The
First one takes a look at the conditions of workers in information infrastructures, who are
fundamental for these systems to work but often forgotten or displaced. Next, an account of
the elements of distribution and control that appear both in the idea of a Reseau Mundaneum
, and in the contemporary functioning of data centres, and the resulting interaction with other
types of infrastructures. Finally, there is a brief analysis of the two approaches to the
'organization of world's knowledge', which examines their regimes of truth and the issues that
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come with them. Hopefully these three short pieces can provide some additional ingredients
for adulterating the sterile recipe of the Google-Otlet sameness.
A. DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF MECHANICAL TURKS?
In a drawing titled Laboratorium Mundaneum, Paul
Otlet depicted his project as a massive factory, processing
books and other documents into end products, rolled out
by a UDC locomotive. In fact, just like a factory,
Mundaneum was dependent on the bureaucratic and
logistic modes of organization of labour developed for
industrial production. Looking at it and at other written
and drawn sketches, one might ask: who made up the
workforce of these factories?
In his Traité de Documentation, Otlet describes
extensively the thinking machines and tasks of intellectual
work into which the Fordist chain of documentation is
broken down. In the subsection dedicated to the people
who would undertake the work though, the only role
described at length is the Bibliotécaire. In a long chapter
that explains what education the librarian should follow, which characteristics are required,
and so on, he briefly mentions the existence of “Bibliotecaire-adjoints, rédacteurs, copistes,
gens de service”[4]. There seems to be no further description nor depiction of the staff that
would write, distribute and search the millions of index cards in order to keep the archive
running, an impossible task for the Bibliotécaire alone.
A photograph from around 1930, taken in the Palais
Mondial, where we see Paul Otlet together with the rest
of the équipe, gives us a better answer. In this beautiful
group picture, we notice that the workforce that kept the
archival machine running was made up of women, but we
do not know much about them. As in telephone switching
systems or early software development[5], gender
stereotypes and discrimination led to the appointment of
female workers for repetitive tasks that required specific
knowledge and precision. According to the ideal image described in "Traité", all the tasks of
collecting, translating, distributing, should be completely
automatic, seemingly without the necessity of human
intervention. However, the Mundaneum hired dozens of
women to perform these tasks. This human-run version of RC : Il faut déjà au minimum avoir
the system was not considered worth mentioning, as if it
was a temporary in-between phase that should be
overcome as soon as possible, something that was staining the project with its vulgarity.
Notwithstanding the incredible advancement of information technologies and the automation
of innumerable tasks in collectiong, processing and distributing information, we can observe
the same pattern today. All automatic repetitive tasks that technology should be able to do for
us are still, one way or another, relying on human labour. And unlike the industrial worker
who obtained recognition through political movements and struggles, the role of many
cognitive workers is still hidden or under-represented. Computational linguistics, neural
networks, optical character recognition, all amazing machinic operations are still based on
humans performing huge amounts of repetitive intellectual tasks from which software can
learn, or which software can't do with the same efficiency. Automation didn't really free us
from labour, it just shifted the where, when and who of labour.[6]. Mechanical turks, content
verifiers, annotators of all kinds... The software we use requires a multitude of tasks which
are invisible to us, but are still accomplished by humans. Who are they? When possible,
work is outsourced to foreign English-speaking countries with lower wages, like India. In the
western world it follows the usual pattern: female, lower income, ethnic minorities.
An interesting case of heteromated labour are the socalled Scanops[7], a set of Google workers who have a
different type of badge and are isolated in a section of the
Mountain View complex secluded from the rest of the
workers through strict access permissions and fixed time
schedules. Their work consists of scanning the pages of
printed books for the Google Books database, a task that
is still more convenient to do by hand (especially in the
case of rare or fragile books). The workers are mostly
women and ethnic minorities, and there is no mention of
them on the Google Books website or elsewhere; in fact
the whole scanning process is kept secret. Even though
the secrecy that surrounds this type of labour can be
justified by the need to protect trade secrets, it again
conceals the human element in machine work. This is
even more obvious when compared to other types of
human workers in the project, such as designers and
programmers, who are celebrated for their creativity and
ingenuity.
However, here and there, evidence of the workforce shows up in the result of their labour.
Photos of Google Books employee's hands sometimes mistakenly end up in the digital
version of the book online[8].
Whether the tendency to hide the human presence is due to the unfulfilled wish for total
automation, to avoid the bad publicity of low wages and precarious work, or to keep an aura
of mystery around machines, remains unclear, both in the case of Google Books and the
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Palais Mondial. Still, it is reassuring to know that the products hold traces of the work, that
even with the progressive removal of human signs in
automated processes, the workers' presence never
disappears completely. This presence is proof of the
materiality of information production, and becomes a sign
in a webpage or the OCR scanned
pages of a book, reflect a negligence
to the processes and labor of writing,
editing, design, layout, typesetting, and
eventually publishing, collecting and
[9]
cataloging .
In 2013, while Prime Minister Di Rupo was celebrating the beginning of the second phase
of constructing the Saint Ghislain data centre, a few hundred kilometres away a very similar
situation started to unroll. In the municipality of Eemsmond, in the Dutch province of
Groningen, the local Groningen Sea Ports and NOM development were rumoured to have
plans with another code named company, Saturn, to build a data centre in the small port of
Eemshaven.
A few months later, when it was revealed that Google
was behind Saturn, Harm Post, director of Groningen
Sea Ports, commented: "Ten years ago Eemshaven
became the laughing stock of ports and industrial
development in the Netherlands, a planning failure of the
previous century. And now Google is building a very
large data centre here, which is 'pure advertisement' for
Eemshaven and the data port."[10] Further details on tax
cuts were not disclosed and once finished, the data centre will provide at most 150 jobs in
the region.
Yet another territory fortunately chosen by Google, just like Mons, but what are the selection
criteria? For one thing, data centres need to interact with existing infrastructures and flows of
various type. Technically speaking, there are three prerequisites: being near a substantial
source of electrical power (the finished installation will consume twice as much as the whole
city of Groningen); being near a source of clean water, for the massive cooling demands;
being near Internet infrastructure that can assure adequate connectivity. There is also a
whole set of non-technical elements, that we can sum up as the social, economical and
political climate, which proved favourable both in Mons and Eemshaven.
The push behind constructing new sites in new locations, rather expanding existing ones, is
partly due to the rapid growth of the importance of Software as a service, so-called cloud
computing, which is the rental of computational power from a central provider. With the rise
of the SaaS paradigm the geographical and topological placement of data centres becomes of
strategic importance to achieve lower latencies and more stable service. For this reason,
Google has in the last 10 years been pursuing a policy of end-to-end connection between its
facilities and user interfaces. This includes buying leftover fibre networks[11], entering the
business of underwater sea cables[12] and building new data centres, including the ones in
Mons and Eemshaven.
The spread of data centres around the world, along the main network cables across
continents, represents a new phase in the diagram of the Internet. This should not be
confused with the idea of decentralization that was a cornerstone value in the early stages of
interconnected networks.[13] During the rapid development of the Internet and the Web, the
new tenets of immediacy, unlimited storage and exponential growth led to the centralization
of content in increasingly large server farms. Paradoxically, it is now the growing
centralization of all kind of operations in specific buildings, that is fostering their distribution.
The tension between centralization and distribution and the dependence on neighbouring
infrastructures as the electrical grid is not an exclusive feature of contemporary data storage
and networking models. Again, similarities emerge from the history of the Mundaneum,
illustrating how these issues relate closely to the logistic organization of production first
implemented during the industrial revolution, and theorized within modernism.
Centralization was seen by Otlet as the most efficient way to organize content, especially in
view of international exchange[14] which already caused problems related to space back then:
the Mundaneum archive counted 16 million entries at its peak, occupying around 150
rooms. The cumbersome footprint, and the growing difficulty to find stable locations for it,
concurred to the conviction that the project should be included in the plans of new modernist
cities. In the beginning of the 1930s, when the Mundaneum started to lose the support of the
Belgian government, Otlet thought of a new site for it as part of a proposed Cité Mondiale,
which he tried in different locations with different approaches.
Between various attempts, he participated in the competition for the development of the Left
Bank in Antwerp. The most famous modernist urbanists of the time were invited to plan the
development from scratch. At the time, the left bank was completely vacant. Otlet lobbied for
the insertion of a Mundaneum in the plans, stressing how it would create hundreds of jobs for
the region. He also flattered the Flemish pride by insisting on how people from Antwerp
were more hard working than the ones from Brussels, and how they would finally obtain their
deserved recognition, when their city would be elevated to World City status.[15] He partly
succeeded in his propaganda; aside from his own proposal, developed in collaboration with
Le Corbusier, many other participants included Otlet's Mundaneum as a key facility in their
plans. In these proposals, Otlet's archival infrastructure was shown in interaction with the
existing city flows such as industrial docks, factories, the
railway and the newly constructed stock market.[16]The
modernist utopia of a planned living environment implied
that methods similar to those employed for managing the
flows of coal and electricity could be used for the
organization of culture and knowledge.
P.172
From From Paper Mill to Google
Data Center:
In a sense, data centers are similar to
the capitalist factory system; but
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The Traité de Documentation, published in 1934, includes an extended reflection on a
Universal Network of Documentation, that would coordinate the transfer of knowledge
between different documentation centres such as libraries or the Mundaneum[17]. In fact the
existing Mundaneum would simply be the first node of a wide network bound to expand to
the rest of the world, the Reseau Mundaneum. The nodes of this network are explicitly
described in relation to "post, railways and the press, those three essential organs of modern
life which function unremittingly in order to unite men, cities and nations."[18] In the same
period, in letter exchanges with Patrick Geddes and Otto Neurath, commenting on the
potential of heliographies as a way to distribute knowledge, the three imagine the White Link
, a network to distribute copies throughout a series of Mundaneum nodes[19]. As a result, the
same piece of information would be serially produced and logistically distributed, described
as a sort of moving Mundaneum idea, facilitated by the railway system[20]. No wonder that
future Mundaneums were foreseen to be built next to a train station.
In Otlet's plans for a Reseau Mundaneum we can already detect some of the key
transformations that reappear in today's data centre scenario. First of all, a drive for
centralization, with the accumulation of materials that led to the monumental plans of World
Cities. In parallel, the push for international exchange, resulting in a vision of a distribution
network. Thirdly, the placement of the hypothetic network nodes along strategic intersections
of industrial and logistic infrastructure.
While the plan for Antwerp was in the end rejected in favour of more traditional housing
development, 80 years later the legacy of the relation between existing infrastructural flows
and logistics of documentation storage is highlighted by the data ports plan in Eemshaven.
Since private companies are the privileged actors in these types of projects, the circulation of
information increasingly respond to the same tenets that regulate the trade of coal or
electricity. The very different welcome that traditional politics reserve for Google data centres
is a symptom of a new dimension of power in which information infrastructure plays a vital
role. The celebrations and tax cuts that politicians lavish on these projects cannot be
explained with 150 jobs or economic incentives for a depressed region alone. They also
indicate how party politics is increasingly confined to the periphery of other forms of power
and therefore struggle to assure themselves a strategic positioning.
C. 025.45UDC; 161.225.22; 004.659GOO:004.021PAG.
The Universal Decimal Classification[21] system, developed by Paul Otlet and Henri
Lafontaine on the basis of the Dewey Decimal Classification system is still considered one of
their most important realizations as well as a corner-stone in Otlet's overall vision. Its
adoption, revision and use until today demonstrate a thoughtful and successful approach to
the classification of knowledge.
The UDC differs from Dewey and other bibliographic systems as it has the potential to
exceed the function of ordering alone. The complex notation system could classify phrases
and thoughts in the same way as it would classify a book, going well beyond the sole function
of classification, becoming a real language. One could in fact express whole sentences and
statements in UDC format[22]. The fundamental idea behind it [23]was that books and
documentation could be broken down into their constitutive sentences and boiled down to a
set of universal concepts, regulated by the decimal system. This would allow to express
objective truths in a numerical language, fostering international exchange beyond translation,
making science's work easier by regulating knowledge with numbers. We have to understand
the idea in the time it was originally conceived, a time shaped by positivism and the belief in
the unhindered potential of science to obtain objective universal knowledge. Today,
especially when we take into account the arbitrariness of the decimal structure, it sounds
doubtful, if not preposterous.
However, the linguistic-numeric element of UDC which enables to express fundamental
meanings through numbers, plays a key role in the oeuvre of Paul Otlet. In his work we learn
that numerical knowledge would be the first step towards a science of combining basic
sentences to produce new meaning in a systematic way. When we look at Monde, Otlet's
second publication from 1935, the continuous reference to multiple algebraic formulas that
describe how the world is composed suggests that we could at one point “solve” these
equations and modify the world accordingly.[24] Complementary to the Traité de
Documentation, which described the systematic classification of knowledge, Monde set the
basis for the transformation of this knowledge into new meaning.
Otlet wasn't the first to envision an algebra of thought. It has been a recurring topos in
modern philosophy, under the influence of scientific positivism and in concurrence with the
development of mathematics and physics. Even though one could trace it back to Ramon
Llull and even earlier forms of combinatorics, the first to consistently undertake this scientific
and philosophical challenge was Gottfried Leibniz. The German philosopher and
mathematician, a precursor of the field of symbolic logic, which developed later in the 20th
century, researched a method that reduced statements to minimum terms of meaning. He
investigated a language which “... will be the greatest instrument of reason,” for “when there
are disputes among persons, we can simply say: Let us calculate, without further ado, and
see who is right”.[25] His inquiry was divided in two phases. The first one, analytic, the
characteristica universalis, was a universal conceptual language to express meanings, of which
we only know that it worked with prime numbers. The second one, synthetic, the calculus
ratiocinator, was the algebra that would allow operations between meanings, of which there is
even less evidence. The idea of calculus was clearly related to the infinitesimal calculus, a
fundamental development that Leibniz conceived in the field of mathematics, and which
Newton concurrently developed and popularized. Even though not much remains of
Leibniz's work on his algebra of thought, it was continued by mathematicians and logicians in
the 20th century. Most famously, and curiously enough around the same time Otlet
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published Traité and Monde, logician Kurt Godel used the same idea of a translation into
prime numbers to demonstrate his incompleteness theorem.[26] The fact that the characteristica
universalis only made sense in the fields of logics and mathematics is due to the fundamental
problem presented by a mathematical approach to truth beyond logical truth. While this
problem was not yet evident at the time, it would emerge in the duality of language and
categorization, as it did later with Otlet's UDC.
The relation between organizational and linguistic aspects of knowledge is also one of the
open issues at the core of web search, which is, at first sight, less interested in objective
truths. At the beginning of the Web, around the mid '90s, two main approaches to online
search for information emerged: the web directory and web crawling. Some of the first search
engines like Lycos or Yahoo!, started with a combination of the two. The web directory
consisted of the human classification of websites into categories, done by an “editor”; crawling
in the automatic accumulation of material by following links with different rudimentary
techniques to assess the content of a website. With the exponential growth of web content on
the Internet, web directories were soon dropped in favour of the more efficient automatic
crawling, which in turn generated so many results that quality has become of key importance.
Quality in the sense of the assessment of the webpage content in relation to keywords as well
as the sorting of results according to their relevance.
Google's hegemony in the field has mainly been obtained by translating the relevance of a
webpage into a numeric quantity according to a formula, the infamous PageRank algorithm.
This value is calculated depending on the relational importance of the webpage where the
word is placed, based on how many other websites link to that page. The classification part is
long gone, and linguistic meaning is also structured along automated functions. What is left is
reading the network formation in numerical form, capturing human opinions represented by
hyperlinks, i.e. which word links to which webpage, and which webpage is generally more
important. In the same way that UDC systematized documents via a notation format, the
systematization of relational importance in numerical format brings functionality and
efficiency. In this case rather than linguistic the translation is value-based, quantifying network
attention independently from meaning. The interaction with the other infamous Google
algorithm, Adsense, adds an economic value to the PageRank position. The influence and
profit deriving from how high a search result is placed, means that the relevance of a wordwebsite relation in Google search results translates to an actual relevance in reality.
Even though both Otlet and Google say they are tackling the task of organizing knowledge,
we could posit that from an epistemological point of view the approaches that underlie their
respective projects, are opposite. UDC is an example of an analytic approach, which
acquires new knowledge by breaking down existing knowledge into its components, based on
objective truths. Its propositions could be exemplified with the sentences “Logic is a
subdivision of Philosophy” or “PageRank is an algorithm, part of the Google search engine”.
PageRank, on the contrary, is a purely synthetic one, which starts from the form of the
network, in principle devoid of intrinsic meaning or truth, and creates a model of the
network's relational truths. Its propositions could be exemplified with “Wikipedia is of the
utmost relevance” or “The University of District Columbia is the most relevant meaning of
the word 'UDC'”.
We (and Google) can read the model of reality created by the PageRank algorithm (and all
the other algorithms that were added during the years[27]) in two different ways. It can be
considered a device that 'just works' and does not pretend to be true but can give results
which are useful in reality, a view we can call pragmatic, or instead, we can see this model as
a growing and improving construction that aims to coincide with reality, a view we can call
utopian. It's no coincidence that these two views fit the two stereotypical faces of Google, the
idealistic Silicon Valley visionary one, and the cynical corporate capitalist one.
From our perspective, it is of relative importance which of the two sides we believe in. The
key issue remains that such a structure has become so influential that it produces its own
effects on reality, that its algorithmic truths are more and more considered as objective truths.
While the utility and importance of a search engine like Google are out of the question, it is
necessary to be alert about such concentrations of power. Especially if they are only
controlled by a corporation, which, beyond mottoes and utopias, has by definition the single
duty of to make profits and obey its stakeholders.
1. A good account of such phenomenon is described by David Golumbia. http://www.uncomputing.org/?p=221
2. As described in the classic text looking at the ideological ground of Silicon Valley culture. http://www.hrc.wmin.ac.uk/theorycalifornianideology-main.html
3. For an account of Toffler's determinism, see http://www.ukm.my/ijit/IJIT%20Vol%201%202012/7wan%20fariza.pdf .
4. Otlet, Paul. Traité de documentation: le livre sur le livre, théorie et pratique. Editiones Mundaneum, 1934: 393-394.
5. http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2011/researcher-reveals-how-%E2%80%9Ccomputer-geeks%E2%80%9D-replaced-%
E2%80%9Ccomputergirls%E2%80%9D
6. This process has been named “heteromation”, for a more thorough analysis see: Ekbia, Hamid, and Bonnie Nardi.
“Heteromation and Its (dis)contents: The Invisible Division of Labor between Humans and Machines.” First Monday 19, no.
6 (May 23, 2014). http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/5331
7. The name scanops was first introduce by artist Andrew Norman Wilson when he found out about this category of workers
during his artistic residency at Google in Mountain View. See http://www.andrewnormanwilson.com/WorkersGoogleplex.html
.
8. As collected by Krissy Wilson on her http://theartofgooglebooks.tumblr.com .
9. http://informationobservatory.info/2015/10/27/google-books-fair-use-or-anti-democratic-preemption/#more-279
10. http://www.rtvnoord.nl/nieuws/139016/Keerpunt-in-de-geschiedenis-van-de-Eemshaven .
11. http://www.cnet.com/news/google-wants-dark-fiber/ .
12. http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/internet/google-new-brazil-us-internet-cable .
13. See Baran, Paul. “On Distributed Communications.” Product Page, 1964. http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_memoranda/
RM3420.html .
14. Pierce, Thomas. Mettre des pierres autour des idées. Paul Otlet, de Cité Mondiale en de modernistische stedenbouw in de jaren
1930. PhD dissertation, KULeuven, 2007: 34.
15. Ibid: 94-95.
16. Ibid: 113-117.
17. Otlet, Paul. Traité de documentation: le livre sur le livre, théorie et pratique. Editiones Mundaneum, 1934.
18. Otlet, Paul. Les Communications MUNDANEUM, Documentatio Universalis, doc nr. 8438
19. Van Acker, Wouter. “Internationalist Utopias of Visual Education: The Graphic and Scenographic Transformation of the
Universal Encyclopaedia in the Work of Paul Otlet, Patrick Geddes, and Otto Neurath.” Perspectives on Science 19, no. 1
(January 19, 2011): 68-69.
20. Ibid: 66.
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P.177
21. The Decimal part in the name means that any records can be further subdivided by tenths, virtually infinitely, according to an
evolving scheme of depth and specialization. For example, 1 is “Philosophy”, 16 is “Logic”, 161 is “Fundamentals of Logic”,
161.2 is “Statements”, 161.22 is “Type of Statements”, 161.225 is “Real and ideal judgements”, 161.225.2 is “Ideal
Judgements” and 161.225.22 is “Statements on equality, similarity and dissimilarity”.
22. “The UDC and FID: A Historical Perspective.” The Library Quarterly 37, no. 3 (July 1, 1967): 268-270.
23. TEMP: described in french by the word depouillement,
24. Otlet, Paul. Monde, essai d’universalisme: connaissance du monde, sentiment du monde, action organisée et plan du monde.
Editiones Mundaneum, 1935: XXI-XXII.
25. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, The Art of Discovery 1685, Wiener: 51.
26. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del_numbering
27. A fascinating list of all the algorithmic components of Google search is at https://moz.com/google-algorithm-change .
Madame
C/
Mevrouw
C
FEMKE SNELTING
MADAME C.01
EN
When I arrived in Brussels that autumn, I was still very young. I thought that as an au-pair
I would be helping out in the house, but instead I ended up working with the professor on
finishing his book. At the time I arrived, the writing was done but his handwriting was so
hard to decipher that the printer had a difficult time working with the manuscript. It became
my job to correct the typeset proofs but often there were words that neither the printer nor I
could decipher, so we had to ask. And the professor often had no time for us. So I did my
best to make the text as comprehensible as possible.
On the title page of the final proofs from the printer, the professor wrote me:
After five months of work behind the same table, here it is. Now it is your turn to sow the
good seed of documentation, of institution, and of Mundaneum, through the pre-book and the
spoken word[1]
NL
Toen ik die herfst in Brussel arriveerde was ik nog heel jong. Ik dacht dat ik als au-pair in
de huishouding zou helpen, maar in plaats daarvan moest ik de professor helpen met het
afmaken van zijn boek. Toen ik aankwam was het schrijven al afgerond, maar de drukker
worstelde nog met het manuscript omdat het handschrift moeilijk te ontcijferen was. Het
werd mijn taak om de drukproeven te corrigeren. Er waren veel woorden die de drukker en
ik niet konden ontcijferen, dus dan moesten we het navragen. Maar vaak had de professor
geen tijd voor ons. Ik deed dan mijn best om de tekst zo leesbaar mogelijk te maken.
Op de titelpagina van de definitieve drukproef schreef de professor me:
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Na vijf maanden gewerkt te hebben aan dezelfde tafel is hier het resultaat. Nu is het jouw
beurt om via het boek, het voor-boek, het woord, het goede zaad te zaaien van documentatie,
instituut en Mundaneum.[2]
MADAME C.02
EN
She serves us coffee from a ceramic coffee pot and also a cake bought at the bakery next
door. It's all written in the files she reminds us repeatedly, and tells us about one day in the
sixties, when her husband returned home, telling her excitedly that he discovered the
Mundaneum at Chaussée de Louvain in Brussels. Ever since, he would return to the same
building, making friends with the friends of the Palais Mondial, those dedicated caretakers of
the immense paper heritage.
I haven't been there so often myself, she says. But I do remember there were cats, to keep the
mice away from the paper. And my husband loved cats. So in the eighties, when he was
finally in a position to save the archives, the cats had to be taken care of too." Hij wanted to
write the cats were written into the inventory.
We finish our coffee and she takes us behind a curtain that separates the salon from a small
office. She shows us four green binders that contain the meticulously filed papers of her late
husband pertaining to the Mundaneum. In the third is the Donation act that describes the
transfer of the archives from the Friends of the Palais Mondial to the Centre de Lecture
Public of the French community.
In the inventory, the cats are nowhere to be found.[3]
NL
Ze schenkt ons koffie uit een keramieken koffiepot en serveert gebak dat ze bij de
naburige bakkerij kocht. Herhaaldelijk herinnert ze ons eraan dat 'het allemaal geschreven
staat in de documenten'. Ze vertelt ons dat in de jaren zestig, haar man op een dag
thuiskwam en opgewonden vertelde dat hij het Mundaneum ontdekt had op de Leuvense
Steenweg in Brussel. Sindsdien keerde hij daar regelmatig terug om de vrienden van het
Palais Mondial te ontmoeten: de toegewijde verzorgers van die immense papieren erfenis.
Ik ben er zelf niet zo vaak geweest, zegt ze. Maar ik herinner me dat er katten waren om de
muizen weg te houden van al het papier. En mijn man hield van katten. In de jaren tachtig,
toen hij eindelijk een positie had die hem in staat stelde om de archieven te redden, moest er
ook voor de katten worden gezorgd. Hij wilde de katten opnemen in de inventaris.
We drinken onze koffie op en ze neemt ons mee achter een gordijn dat de salon van een
klein kantoor scheidt. Ze toont ons vier groene mappen met de keurig geordende papieren
van haar voormalige echtgenoot over het Mundaneum. In de derde map bevindt zich de akte
die de overdracht van de archieven beschrijft van de Vrienden van het Palais Mondial aan
het Centre de Lecture Public van de Franse Gemeenschap (CLPCF).
In de inventaris is geen spoor van de katten te vinden.[4]
MADAME C.03
EN
In a margarine box, between thousands of notes, tickets, postcards, letters, all folded to the
size of an index card, we find this:
Paul, leave me the key to mythe house, I forgot mine. Put it on your desk, in the small index
card box.[5]
NL
In een grote margarinedoos, tussen duizenden bonnetjes, aantekeningen, briefkaarten, en
brieven, allemaal gevouwen op maat van een indexkaart, vinden we een bericht:
Paul, laat je de sleutel van mijnhet huis voor mij achter, ik ben de mijne vergeten. Stop hem in
het kleine indexkaartdoosje op je bureau.[6]
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Last
Revision:
2·08·2016
1. EN
Wilhelmina Coops came from The Netherlands to Brussels in 1932 to learn French. She was instrumental in transforming
Le Traité de Documentation into a printed book.
2. NL
Wilhelmina Coops kwam in 1932 uit Nederland naar Brussel om Frans te leren. Ze hielp het manuscript voor Le Traité de
Documentation omzetten naar een gedrukt boek.
3. EN
The act is dated April 4 1985. Madame Canonne is a librarian, widow of André Canonne († 1990). She is custodian of
the documents relating to the wanderings of The Mundaneum in Brussels.
4. NL
De akte is gedateerd op 4 april 1985. Madame Canonne is bibliothecaresse en weduwe van André Canonne († 1990).
Ze is de bewaarster van documenten die gerelateerd zijn aan de omzwervingen van het Mundaneum in Brussel.
5. EN
Cato van Nederhasselt, second wife of Paul Otlet, collaborated with her husband on many projects. Her family fortune kept
the Mundaneum running after other sources had dried up.
6. NL
Cato van Nederhasselt, de tweede vrouw van Paul Otlet, werkte met haar man aan vele projecten. Nadat alle andere
bronnen waren uitgeput hield haar familiefortuin het Mundaneum draaiende.
A Preemptive
History
of the
Google
Cultural
Institute
GERALDINE JUÁREZ
I. ORGANIZING INFORMATION IS NEVER INNOCENT
Six years ago, Google, an Alphabet company, launched a new project: The Google Art
Project. The official history, the one written by Google and distributed mainly through
tailored press releases and corporate news bits, tells us that it all started as “a 20% project
within Google in 2010 and had its first public showing in 2011. It was 17 museums,
coming together in a very interesting online platform, to allow users to essentially explore art
in a very new and different way."[1] While Google Books faced legal challenges and the
European Commission launched its antitrust case against Google in 2010, the Google Art
Project, not coincidentally, scaled up gradually, resulting in the Google Cultural Institute with
headquarters in Paris, “whose mission is to make the world's culture accessible online.”[2]
The Google Cultural Institute is strictly divided in Art Project, Historical Moments and
World Wonders, roughly corresponding to fine art, world history and material culture.
Technically, the Google Cultural Institute can be described as a database that powers a
repository of high-resolution images of fine art, objects, documents and ephemera, as well as
information about and from their ‘partners’ - the public museums, galleries and cultural
institutions that provide this cultural material - such as 3D tour views and street-view maps.
So far and counting, the Google Cultural Institute hosts 177 digital reproductions of selected
paintings in gigapixel resolution and 320 3D versions of different objects, together with
multiple thematic slide shows curated in collaboration with their partners or by their users.
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According to their website, in their ‘Lab’ they develop the “new technology to help partners
publish their collections online and reach new audiences, as seen in the Google Art Project,
Historic Moments and World Wonders initiatives.” These services are offered – not by
chance – as a philanthropic service to public institutions that increasingly need to justify their
existence in face of cuts and other managerial demands of the austerity policies in Europe
and elsewhere.
The Google Cultural Institute “would be unlikely, even unthinkable, absent the chronic and
politically induced starvation of publicly funded cultural institutions even throughout the
wealthy countries”[3]. It is important to understand that what Google is really doing is
bankrolling the technical infrastructure and labour needed to turn culture into data. In this
way it can be easily managed and feed all kind of products needed in the neoliberal city to
promote and exploit these cultural ‘assets’, in order to compete with other urban centres in
the global stage, but also, to feed Google’s unstoppable accumulation of information.
The head of the Google Cultural Institute knows there are a lot of questions about their
activities but Alphabet chose to label legitimate critiques as misunderstandings: “This is our
biggest battle, this constant misunderstanding of why the Cultural Institute actually exists.”[4]
The Google Cultural Institute, much like many other cultural endeavours of Google like
Google Books and their Digital Revolution art exhibition, has been subject to a few but
much needed critiques, such as Powered by Google: Widening Access and Tightening
Corporate Control (Schiller & Yeo 2014), an in-depth account of the origins of this cultural
intervention and its role in the resurgence of welfare capitalism, “where people are referred to
corporations rather than states for such services as they receive; where corporate capital
routinely arrogates to itself the right to broker public discourse; and where history and art
remain saturated with the preferences and priorities of elite social classes.”[5]
Known as one, if not the first essay that dissects Google's use of information and the rhetoric
of democratization behind it to reorganize cultural public institutions as a “site of profitmaking”, Schiller & Yeo’s text is fundamental to understand the evolution of the Google
Cultural Institute within the historical context of digital capitalism, where the global
dependency in communication and information technologies is directly linked to the current
crisis of accumulation and where Google's archive fever “evinces a breath-taking cultural and
ideological range.”[6]
II. WHO COLONIZES THE COLONIZERS?
The Google Cultural Institute is a complex subject of interest since it reflects the colonial
impulses embedded in the scientific and economic desires that formed the very collections
which the Google Cultural Institute now mediates and accumulates in its database.
Who colonizes the colonizers? It is a very difficult issue which I have raised before in an
essay dedicated to the Google Cultural Institute, Alfred Russel Wallace and the colonial
impulse behind archive fevers from the 19th but also the 21st century. I have no answer yet.
But a critique of the Google Cultural Institute where their motivations are interpreted as
merely colonialist, would be misleading and counterproductive. It is not their goal to slave and
exploit whole populations and its resources in order to impose a new ideology and civilise
barbarians in the same sense and way that European countries did during the Colonization.
Additionally, it would be unfair and disrespectful to all those who still have to deal with the
endless effects of Colonization, that have exacerbated with the expansion of economic
globalisation.
The conflation of technology and science that has produced the knowledge to create such an
entity as Google and its derivatives, such as the Cultural Institute, together with the scale of
its impact on a society where information technology is the dominant form of technology,
makes technocolonialism a more accurate term to describe Google's cultural interventions
from my perspective.
Although technocolonization shares many traits and elements with the colonial project,
starting with the exploitation of materials needed to produce information and media
technologies – and the related conflicts that this produces –, information technologies still
differ from ships and canons. However, the commercial function of maritime technologies is
the same as the free – as in free trade – services deployed by Google or Facebook’s drones
beaming internet in Africa, although the networked aspect of information technologies is
significantly different at the infrastructure level.
There is no official definition of technocolonialism, but it is important to understand it as a
continuation of the idea of Enlightenment that gave birth to the impulse to collect, organise
and manage information in the 19th century. My use of this term aims to emphasize and
situate contemporary accumulation and management of information and data within a
technoscientific landscape driven by “profit above else” as a “logical extension of the surplus
value accumulated through colonialism and slavery.”[7]
Unlike in colonial times, in contemporary technocolonialism the important narrative is not the
supremacy of a specific human culture. Technological culture is the saviour. It doesn’t matter
if the culture is Muslim, French or Mayan, the goal is to have the best technologies to turn it
into data, rank it, produce content from it and create experiences that can be monetized.
It only makes sense that Google, a company with a mission of to organise the world’s
information for profit, found ideal partners in the very institutions that were previously in
charge of organising the world’s knowledge. But as I pointed out before, it is paradoxical that
the Google Cultural Institute is dedicated to collect information from museums created under
Colonialism in order to elevate a certain culture and way of seeing the world above others.
Today we know and are able to challenge the dominant narratives around cultural heritage,
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because these institutions have an actual record in history and not only a story produced for
the ‘about’ section of a website, like in the case of the Google Cultural Institute.
“What museums should perhaps do is make visitors aware that this is not the only way of
seeing things. That the museum – the installation, the arrangement, the collection – has a
history, and that it also has an ideological baggage”[8]. But the Google Cultural Institute is
not a museum, it is a database with an interface that enables to browse cultural content.
Unlike the prestigious museums it collaborates with, it lacks a history situated in a specific
cultural discourse. It is about fine art, world wonders and historical moments in a general
sense. The Google Cultural Institute has a clear corporate and philanthropic mission but it
lacks a point of view and a defined position towards the cultural material that it handles. This
is not surprising since Google has always avoided to take a stand, it is all techno-determinism
and the noble mission of organising the world’s information to make the world better. But
“brokering and hoarding information are a dangerous form of techno-colonialism.”[8]
Looking for a cultural narrative beyond the Californian ideology, Alphabet's search engine
found in Paul Otlet and the Mundaneum the perfect cover to insert their philanthropic
services in the history of information science beyond Silicon Valley. After all, they
understand that “ownership over the historical narratives and their material correlates
becomes a tool for demonstrating and realizing economic claims”.[9]
After establishing a data centre in the Belgian city of Mons, home of the Mundaneum
archive center, Google lent its support to "the Mons 2015 adventure, in particular by
working with our longtime partners, the Mundaneum archive. More than a century ago, two
visionary Belgians envisioned the World Wide Web’s architecture of hyperlinks and
indexation of information, not on computers, but on paper cards. Their creation was called
the Mundaneum.”[10]
On the occasion of the 147th birthday of Paul Otlet, a Doodle in the homepage of the
Alphabet spelled the name of its company using the ‘drawers of the Mundaneum’ to form the
words G O O G L E: “Today’s Doodle pays tribute to Paul’s pioneering work on the
Mundaneum. The collection of knowledge stored in the Mundaneum’s drawers are the
foundational work for everything that happens at Google. In early drafts, you can watch the
concept come to life.”[11]
III. GOOGLE CULTURAL HISTORY
The dematerialisation of public collections using infrastructure and services bankrolled by
private actors like the GCI needs to be questioned and analyzed further in the context of
heterotopic institutions, to understand the new forms taken by the endless tension between
knowledge/power at the core of contemporary archivalism, where the architecture of the
interface replaces and acts on behalf of the museum, and the body of the visitor is reduced to
the fingers of a user capable of browsing endless cultural assets.
At a time when cultural institutions should be decolonised instead of googlified, it is vital to
discuss a project such as the Google Cultural Institute and its continuous expansion – which
is inversely proportional to the failure of the governments and the passivity of institutions
seduced by gadgets[12].
However, the dialogue is fragmented between limited academic accounts, corporate press
releases, isolated artistic interventions, specialised conferences and news reports. Femke
Snelting suggests that we must “find the patience to build a relation to these histories in ways
that make sense.” To do so, we need to excavate and assemble a better account of the
history of the Google Cultural Institute. Building upon Schiller & Yeo’s seminal text, the
following timeline is my contribution to this task and an attempt to put together the pieces, by
situating them in a broader economic and political context beyond the official history told by
the Google Cultural Institute. A closer inspection of the events reveals that the escalation of
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Alphabet's cultural interventions often emerge after a legal challenge against their economic
hegemony in Europe was initiated.
2009
ERIC SCHMIDT VISITS IRAQ
A news report from the Wall Street Journal[13] as well as an AP report on Youtube[14] confirm
the new Google venture in the field of historical collections. The executive chairman of
Alphabet declared: “I can think of no better use of our time and our resources to make the
images and ideas from your civilization, from the very beginning of time, available to a billion
people worldwide.”
A detailed account and reflection of this visit, its background and agenda can be found in
Powered by Google: Widening Access and Tightening Corporate Control. (Schiller & Yeo
2014)
FRANCE REACTS AGAINST GOOGLE BOOKS
In relation to the Google Books dispute in Europe, Reuters reported in 2009 that France's
ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy “pledged hundreds of millions of euros toward a separate
digitization program, saying he would not permit France to be “stripped of our heritage to the
benefit of a big company, no matter how friendly, big or American it is.”[15]
Although the reactionary and nationalistic agenda of Sarkozy should not be celebrated, it is
important to note that the first open attack on Google’s cultural agenda came from the French
government. Four years later, the Google Cultural Institute establishes its headquarters in
Paris.
2010
EUROPEAN COMMISSION LAUNCHES AN ANTITRUST INVESTIGATION AGAINST
GOOGLE.
The European Commission has decided to open an antitrust investigation into
allegations that Google Inc. has abused a dominant position in online search, in
violation of European Union rules (Article 102 TFEU). The opening of formal
proceedings follows complaints by search service providers about unfavourable
treatment of their services in Google's unpaid and sponsored search results coupled
with an alleged preferential placement of Google's own services. This initiation of
proceedings does not imply that the Commission has proof of any infringements. It
only signifies that the Commission will conduct an in-depth investigation of the case as
[16]
a matter of priority.
THE GOOGLE ART PROJECT STARTS AS A 20% PROJECT UNDER THE DIRECTION
OF AMIT SOOD.
According to the Guardian[17], and other news reports, Google's cultural project is started by
passionate art “googlers”.
GOOGLE ANNOUNCES ITS PLANS TO BUILD A EUROPEAN CULTURAL INSTITUTE IN
FRANCE
Referring to France as one of the most important centres for culture and technology, Google
CEO Eric Schmidt formally announces the creation of a centre "dedicated to technology,
especially noting the promotion of past, present and future European cultures."[18]
2011
GOOGLE ART PROJECT LAUNCHES IN TATE LONDON.
In February the new ‘product’ is officially presented. The introduction[19] emphasises that it
started as a 20% project, meaning a project that lacked corporate mandate.
According to the “Our Story”[20] section of the Google Cultural Institute, the history of the
Google Art Project starts with the integration of 140,000 assets from the Yad Vashem
World Holocaust Centre, followed by the inclusion of the Nelson Mandela Archives in the
Historical Moments section of the Google Cultural Institute.
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Later in August, Eric Schmidt declares that education should bring art and science together
just like in “the glory days of the Victorian Era”.[21]
2012
EU DATA AUTHORITIES INITIATE A NEW INVESTIGATION INTO GOOGLE AND
THEIR NEW TERMS OF USE.
At the request of the French authorities, the European Union initiates an investigation against
Google, related to the breach of data privacy due to the new terms of use published by
Google on 1 March 2012.[22]
THE GOOGLE CULTURAL INSTITUTE CONTINUES TO DIGITALIZE CULTURAL
‘ASSETS’.
According to the Google Cultural Institute website, 151 partners join the Google Art
Project including France's Musée D’Orsay. The World Wonders section is launched
including partnerships with the likes of UNESCO. By October, the platform is rebranded
and re-launched including over 400+ partners.
2013
GOOGLE CULTURAL INSTITUTE HEADQUARTERS OPENS IN PARIS.
On 10 December, the new French headquarters open in 8 rue de Londres. The French
Minister Aurélie Filippetti cancels her attendance as she doesn’t “wish to appear as a
guarantee for an operation that still raises a certain number of questions."[23]
BRITISH TAX AUTHORITIES INITIATE INVESTIGATION INTO GOOGLE'S TAX
SCHEME
HM Customs and Revenue Committee inquiry brands Google's tax operations in the UK
via Ireland as "devious, calculated and, in my view, unethical".[24]
2014
EUROPEAN COURT OF JUSTICE RULES ON THE “RIGHT TO BE FORGOTTEN”
AGAINST GOOGLE.
The controversial ruling holds search engines responsible for the personal data that it handles
and under European Law the court ruled “that the operator is, in certain circumstances,
obliged to remove links to web pages that are published by third parties and contain
information relating to a person from the list of results displayed following a search made on
the basis of that person’s name. The Court makes it clear that such an obligation may also
exist in a case where that name or information is not erased beforehand or simultaneously
from those web pages, and even, as the case may be, when its publication in itself on those
pages is lawful.”[25]
DIGITAL REVOLUTION AT BARBICAN UK
Google sponsors the exhibition Digital Revolution[26] and commission artworks under the
brand “Dev-art: art made with code.[27]”. The exhibition later tours to the Tekniska Museet in
Stockholm.[28]
GOOGLE CULTURAL INSTITUTE'S “THE LAB” OPENS
“Here creative experts and technology come together share ideas and build new ways to
experience art and culture.”[29]
GOOGLE EXPRESSED ITS PLANS TO SUPPORT THE CITY OF MONS, EUROPEAN
CAPITAL OF CULTURE IN 2015.
A press release from Google[30] describes the new partnership with the Belgian city of Mons
as a result of their position as local employer and investor in the city, since one of their two
major data centres in Europe is located there.
2015
EU COMMISSION SENDS STATEMENT OF OBJECTIONS TO GOOGLE.
The European Commission has sent a Statement of Objections to Google alleging the
company has abused its dominant position in the markets for general internet search
services in the European Economic Area (EEA) by systematically favouring its own
[31]
comparison shopping product in its general search results pages.”
Google rejects the accusations as “wrong as a matter of fact, law and economics”.[32]
EUROPEAN COMMISSION STARTS INVESTIGATION INTO ANDROID.
The Commission will assess if, by entering into anticompetitive agreements and/or by
abusing a possible dominant position, Google has illegally hindered the development
and market access of rival mobile operating systems, mobile communication
applications and services in the European Economic Area (EEA). This investigation
is distinct and separate from the Commission investigation into Google's search
[33]
business.
GOOGLE CULTURAL INSTITUTE CONTINUES TO EXPAND.
According to the ‘Our Story’ section of the Google Cultural Institute, the Street Art project
now has 10,000 assets. A new extension displays art from the Google Art Project in the
Chrome browser and “art lovers can wear art on their wrists via Android art”. By August,
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the project has more than 850 partners using their tools, 4.7 million assets in its collection
and more than 1500 curated exhibitions.
TRANSPARENCY INTERNATIONAL REVEALS GOOGLE AS SECOND BIGGEST
[34]
CORPORATE LOBBYISTS OPERATING IN BRUSSELS.
ALPHABET INC. IS ESTABLISHED ON OCTOBER 2ND.
“Alphabet Inc. (commonly known as Alphabet) is an American multinational conglomerate
created in 2015 as the parent company of Google and several other companies previously
owned by or tied to Google.”[35]
PAUL OTLET DOODLE AND MUNDANEUM-GOOGLE EXHIBITIONS.
Google creates a doodle for their homepage on the occasion of the 147th birthday of Paul
Otlet[36] and produces the slide shows Towards the Information Age, Mapping Knowledge
and The 100th Anniversary of a Nobel Peace Prize, all hosted by the Google Cultural
Institute.
“The Mundaneum and Google have worked closely together to curate 9 exclusive online
exhibitions for the Google Cultural Institute. The team behind the reopening of the
Mundaneum this year also worked with the Cultural Institute engineers to launch a dedicated
mobile app.”[37]
GOOGLE CULTURAL INSTITUTE PARTNERS WITH THE BRITISH MUSEUM.
The British Museum announce a “unique partnership” where over 4,500 assets can be
“seen online in just a few clicks”. In the official press release, the director of the museum,
Neil McGregor, said “The world today has changed, the way we access information has
been revolutionised by digital technology. This enables us to gives the Enlightenment ideal
on which the Museum was founded a new reality. It is now possible to make our collection
accessible, explorable and enjoyable not just for those who physically visit, but to everybody
with a computer or a mobile device. ”[38]
GOOGLE CULTURAL INSTITUTE ADDS A PERFORMING ARTS SECTION.
Over 60 performing arts (dance, drama, music, opera) organizations and performers join the
assets collection of the Google Cultural Institute [39]
2016
CODA
The Google Culture Institute has quietly changed the name of its platform to “Google Art &
Culture”. The website has been also restructured, and categories have been simplified into
“Arts”, “History” and “Wonders”. Its partners and projects are placed at the top of their
“Menu”. It is now possible to browse artists and mediums trough time and by color. The site
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offers a daily digest of art and history, but also cityscapes, galleries and street art views are
only one click away.
An important aspect of this make-over is the way in which it reveals its own instability as a
cultural archive. Before the upgrade, the link http://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/assetviewer/text-as-set-cell-0?exhibitId=QQ-RRh0A would take you to "The origins of the
Internet in Europe”, the page dedicated to the Mundaneum and Paul Otlet. Now it takes
you to a 404 error page. No timestamp, no redirect. No archived copy recorded in the
Wayback Machine. The structure of the new link for this "exhibition" still hints at some sort
of beta state: https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/beta/exhibit/QQ-RRh0A . How
long can we rely on this cultural institute/beta link?
Should the “curator of the world”[40], as Amit Sood is described in media, take some
responsibility over the reliability of the structure in which Google Arts & Culture displays the
cultural material extracted from public institutions and, that unlike Google, need to do so by
mandate? Or should we all just take his word and look away: “I fell into this by mistake.”[41]?
Last
Revision:
2·08·2016
1. Caines, Matthew. “Arts head: Amit Sood, director, Google Cultural Institute” The Guardian. Dec 3, 2013. http://
www.theguardian.com/culture-professionals-network/culture-professionals-blog/2013/dec/03/amit sood-google-culturalinstitute-art-project
2. Google Paris. Accessed Dec 22, 2016 http://www.google.se/about/careers/locations/paris/
3. Schiller, Dan & Yeo, Shinjoung. “Powered By Google: Widening Access And Tightening Corporate Control.” (In Aceti, D.
L. (Ed.). Red Art: New Utopias in Data Capitalism: Leonardo Electronic Almanac, Vol. 20, No. 1. London: Goldsmiths
University Press. 2014):48
4. Down, Maureen. “The Google Art Heist”. The New York Times. Sept 12, 2015 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/
opinion/sunday/the-google-art-heist.html
5. Schiller, Dan & Shinjoung Yeo. “Powered By Google: Widening Access And Tightening Corporate Control.”, 48
6. Schiller, Dan & Yeo, Shinjoung. “Powered By Google: Widening Access And Tightening Corporate Control.”, 48
7. Davis, Heather & Turpin, Etienne, eds. Art in the Antropocene (London: Open Humanities Press. 2015), 7
8. Bush, Randy. Psg.com On techno-colonialism. (blog) June 13, 2015. Accessed Dec 22, 2015 https://psg.com/ontechnocolonialism.html
9. Starzmann, Maria Theresia. “Cultural Imperialism and Heritage Politics in the Event of Armed Conflict: Prospects for an
‘Activist Archaeology’”. Archeologies. Vol. 4 No. 3 (2008):376
10. Echikson, William. Partnering in Belgium to create a capital of culture (blog) March 20, 2014. Accessed Dec 22, 2015
http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.se/2014/03/partnering-in-belgium-to-create-capital.html
11. Google. Mundaneum co-founder Paul Otlet's 147th Birthday (blog) August 23, 2015. Accessed Dec 22, 2015 http://
www.google.com/doodles/mundaneum-co-founder-paul-otlets-147th-birthday
12. eg. https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/thelab/#experiments
13. Lavallee, Andrew. “Google CEO: A New Iraq Means Business Opportunities.” Wall Street Journal. Nov 24, 2009 http://
blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/11/24/google-ceo-a-new-iraq-means-business-opportunities/
14. Associated Press. Google Documents Iraqi Museum Treasures (on-line video November 24, 2009) https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqtgtdBvA9k
15. Jarry, Emmanuel. “France's Sarkozy takes on Google in books dispute.” Reuters. December 8, 2009. http://
www.reuters.com/article/us-france-google-sarkozy-idUSTRE5B73E320091208
16. European Commission. Antitrust: Commission probes allegations of antitrust violations by Google (Brussels 2010) http://
europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-10-1624_en.htm
17. Caines, Matthew. “Arts head: Amit Sood, director, Google Cultural Institute” The Guardian. December 3, 2013. http://
www.theguardian.com/culture-professionals-network/culture-professionals-blog/2013/dec/03/amit sood google-culturalinstitute-art-project
18. Cyrus, Farivar. "Google to build R&D facility and 'European cultural center' in France.” Deutsche Welle. September 9,
2010. http://www.dw.com/en/google-to-build-rd-facility-and-european-cultural-center-in-france/a-5993560
19. Google Art Project. Art Project V1 - Launch Event at Tate Britain. (on-line video February 1, 2011) https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsynsSWVvnM
20. Google Cultural Institute. Accessed Dec 18, 2015. https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/about/partners/
21. Robinson, James. “Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google, condemns British education system” The Guardian. August 26, 2011
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/aug/26/eric-schmidt-chairman-google-education
22. European Commission. Letter addressed to Google by the Article 29 Group (Brussels 2012) http://ec.europa.eu/justice/
data-protection/article-29/documentation/other-document/files/2012/20121016_letter_to_google_en.pdf
23. Willsher, Kim. “Google Cultural Institute's Paris opening snubbed by French minister.” The Guardian. December 10, 2013
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/10/google-cultural-institute-france-minister-snub
24. Bowers, Simon & Syal, Rajeev. “MP on Google tax avoidance scheme: 'I think that you do evil'”. The Guardian. May 16,
2013. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/may/16/google-told-by-mp you-do-do-evil
25. Court of Justice of the European Union. Press-release No 70/14 (Luxembourg, 2014) http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/
docs/application/pdf/2014-05/cp140070en.pdf
26. Barbican. “Digital Revolution.” Accessed December 15, 2015 https://www.barbican.org.uk/bie/upcoming-digital-revolution
27. Google. “Dev Art”. Accessed December 15, 2015 https://devart.withgoogle.com/
28. Tekniska Museet. “Digital Revolution.” Accessed December 15, 2015 http://www.tekniskamuseet.se/1/5554.html
29. Google Cultural Institute. Accessed December 15, 2015. https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/thelab/
30. Echikson,William. Partnering in Belgium to create a capital of culture (blog) March 20, 2014. Accessed Dec 22, 2015
http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.se/2014/03/partnering-in-belgium-to-create-capital.html
31. European Commission. Antitrust: Commission sends Statement of Objections to Google on comparison shopping service;
opens separate formal investigation on Android. (Brussels 2015) http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-15-4780_en.htm
32. Yun Chee, Foo. “Google rejects 'unfounded' EU antitrust charges of market abuse” Reuters. (August 27, 2015) http://
www.reuters.com/article/us-google-eu-antitrust-idUSKCN0QW20F20150827
33. European Commission. Antitrust: Commission sends Statement
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34. Transparency International. Lobby meetings with EU policy-makers dominated by corporate interests (blog) June 24, 2015.
Accessed December 22, 2015. http://www.transparency.org/news/pressrelease/
lobby_meetings_with_eu_policy_makers_dominated_by_corporate_interests
35. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. s.v. “Alphabet Inc,” (accessed Jan 25, 2016, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabet_Inc
.
36. Google. Mundaneum co-founder Paul Otlet's 147th Birthday (blog) August 23, 2015. Accessed Dec 22, 2015 http://
www.google.com/doodles/mundaneum-co-founder-paul-otlets-147th-birthday
37. Google. Mundaneum co-founder Paul Otlet's 147th Birthday
38. The British Museum. The British Museum’s unparalleled world collection at your fingertips. (blog) November 12, 2015.
Accessed December 22, 2015. https://www.britishmuseum.org/about_us/news_and_press/press_releases/2015/
with_google.aspx
39. Sood, Amit. Step on stage with the Google Cultural Institute (blog) December 1, 2015. Accessed December 22, 2015.
https://googleblog.blogspot.se/2015/12/step-on-stage-with-google-cultural.html
40. Sam Sundberg “Världsarvet enligt Google”. Svenska Dagbladet. March 27, 2016 http://www.svd.se/varldsarvet-enligtgoogle
41. TED. Amit Sood: Every piece of art you've ever wanted to see up close and searchable. (on-line video February 2016)
https://www.ted.com/talks/amit_sood_every_piece_of_art_you_ve_ever_wanted_to_see_up_close_and_searchable/
Une
histoire
préventive
du
Google
Cultural
Institute
GERALDINE JUÁREZ
I. L'ORGANISATION DE L'INFORMATION N'EST JAMAIS
INNOCENTE
Il y a six ans, Google, une entreprise d'Alphabet a lancé un nouveau projet : le Google Art
Project. L'histoire officielle, celle écrite par Google et distribuée principalement à travers des
communiqués de presse sur mesure et de brèves informations commerciales, nous dit que
tout a commencé « en 2010, avec un projet ou Google intervenait à 20%, qui fut présenté
au public pour la première fois en 2011. Il s'agissait de 17 musées réunis dans une
plateforme en ligne très intéressante afin de permettre aux utilisateurs de découvrir l'art d'une
manière tout à fait nouvelle et différente. »[1] Tandis que Google Books faisait face à des
problèmes d'ordre légal et que la Commission européenne lançait son enquête antitrust
contre Google en 2010, le Google Art Project prenait, non pas par hasard, de l'ampleur.
Cela conduisit à la création du Google Art Institute dont le siège se trouve à Paris et « dont
la mission est de rendre la culture mondiale accessible en ligne ».[2]
Le Google Cultural Institute est clairement divisé en sections : Art Project, Historical
Moments et World Wonders. Cela correspond dans les grandes lignes à beaux-arts, histoire
du monde et matériel culturel. Techniquement, le Google Cultural Institute peut être décrit
comme une base de données qui alimente un dépositaire d'images haute résolution
représentant des objets d'art, des objets, des documents, des éphémères ainsi que
d'informations à propos, et provenant, de leurs « partenaires » - les musées publics, les
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galeries et les institutions culturelles qui offrent ce matériel culturel -des visites en 3D et des
cartes faites à partir de "street view". Pour le moment, le Google Cultural Institute compte
177 reproductions numériques d'une sélection de peintures dans une résolution de l'ordre
des giga pixels et 320 différents objets en 3D ainsi que de multiples diapositives thématiques
choisies en collaboration avec leurs partenaires ou par leurs utilisateurs.
Selon leur site, dans leur « Lab », ils développent une « nouvelle technologie afin d'aider
leurs partenaires à publier leurs collections en ligne et à toucher de nouveaux publics, comme
l'ont fait les initiatives du Google Art Project, Historic Moments et Words Wonders. » Ce
n'est pas un hasard que ces services soient proposés comme une oeuvre philanthropique aux
institutions publiques qui sont de plus en plus amenées à justifier leur existence face aux
réductions budgétaires et aux autres exigences en matière de gestion des politiques
d'austérité en Europe et ailleurs. « Il est peu probable et même impensable que [le Google
Cultural Institute] fasse disparaitre la famine chronique des institutions culturelles de service
public causée par la politique et présente même dans les pays riches »[3]. Il est important de
comprendre que Google est réellement en train de financer l'infrastructure technique et le
travail nécessaire à la transformation de la culture en données. De cette manière, Google
s'assure que la culture peut être facilement gérée et nourrir toute sortes de produits
nécessaires à la ville néolibérale, afin de promouvoir et d'exploiter ces « biens » culturels, et
de soutenir la compétition avec d'autres centres urbains au niveau mondial, mais également
l'instatiable apétit d'informations de Google.
Le dirigeant du Google Cultural Institute est conscient qu'il existe un grand nombre
d'interrogations autour de leurs activités, cependant, Alphabet a choisi d'appeler les critiques
légitimes: des malentendus ; « Notre plus grand combat est ce malentendu permanent sur les
raisons de l'existence du Cultural Institute »[4] Le Google Cultural Institute, comme beaucoup
d'autres efforts culturels de Google, tels que Google Books et leur exposition artistique
Digital Revolution, a été le sujet de quelques critiques bien nécessaires, comme Powered by
Google: Widening Access and Tightening Corporate Control (Schiller & Yeo 2014); un
compte rendu détaillé des origines de cette intervention culturelle et de son rôle dans la
résurgence du capitalisme social: « là où les gens sont renvoyés aux corporations plutôt
qu'aux États pour des services qu'ils reçoivent ; là où le capital des entreprises a l'habitude
de se donner le droit de négocier le discours public ; et où l'histoire et l'art restent saturés par
les préférences et les priorités des classes de l'élite sociale. »[5]
Connu comme l'un, peut-être le seul essai d'analyse de l'utilisation des informations par
Google et de la rhétorique de démocratisation se trouvant en amont pour réorganiser les
institutions publiques culturelles en un « espace de profit », le texte de Schiller & Yeo est
fondamental pour la compréhension de l'évolution du Google Cultural Institute dans le
contexte historique du capitalisme numérique, où la dépendance mondiale aux technologies
de l'information est directement liée à la crise actuelle d'accumulation et, où la fièvre
d'archivage de Google « évince sa portée culturelle et idéologique à couper le souffle ».[6]
II. QUI COLONISE LES COLONS ?
Le Google Cultural Institute est un sujet de débat intéressant puisqu'il reflète les pulsions
colonialistes ancrées dans les désirs scientifiques et économiques qui ont formé ces mêmes
collections que le Google Cultural Institute négocie et accumule dans sa base de données.
Qui colonise les colons ? C'est une problématique très difficile que j'ai soulevée
précédemment dans un essai dédié au Google Cultural Institute, Alfred Russel Wallace et
les pulsions colonialistes derrière les fièvres d'archivage du 19e et du 20e siècles. Je n'ai pas
encore de réponse. Pourtant, une critique du Google Cultural Institute dans laquelle ses
motivations sont interprétées comme simplement colonialistes serait trompeuse et contreproductive. Leur but n'est pas d'asservir et d'exploiter la population tout entière et ses
ressources afin d'imposer une nouvelle idéologie et de civiliser les barbares dans la même
optique que celle des pays européens durant la colonisation. De plus, cela serait injuste et
irrespectueux vis-à-vis de tous ceux qui subissent encore les effets permanents de la
colonisation, exacerbés par l'expansion de la mondialisation économique.
Selon moi, l'assemblage de la technologie et de la science qui a produit le savoir à l'origine
de la création d'entités telles que Google et de ses dérivés, comme le Cultural Institute; ainsi
que la portée de son impact sur une société où la technologie de l'information est la forme de
technologie dominante, font de "technocolonialisme" un terme plus précis pour décrire les
interventions culturelles de Google. Même si la technocolonilisation partage de nombreux
traits et éléments avec le projet colonial, comme l'exploitation des matériaux nécessaires à la
production d'informations et de technologies médiatiques - ainsi que les conflits qui en
découlent - les technologies de l'information sont tout de même différentes des navires et des
canons. Cependant, la fonction commerciale des technologies maritimes est identique aux
services libres - comme dans libre échange - déployés par les drones de Google ou Facebook
qui fournissent internet à l'Afrique, même si la mise en réseau des technologies de
l'information est largement différent en matière d'infrastructure.
Il n'existe pas de définition officielle du technocolonialisme, mais il est important de le
comprendre comme une continuité des idées des Lumières qui a été à l'origine du désir de
rassembler, d'organiser et de gérer les informations au 19e siècle. Mon utilisation de ce
terme a pour objectif de souligner et de situer l'accumulation contemporaine, ainsi que la
gestion de l'information et des données au sein d'un paysage scientifique dirigé par l'idée « du
profit avant tout » comme une « extension logique de la valeur du surplus accumulée à
travers le colonialisme et l'esclavage ».[7]
Contrairement à l'époque coloniale, dans le technocolonialisme contemporain, la narration
n'est pas la suprématie d'une culture humaine spécifique. La culture technologique est le
sauveur. Peu importe que vous soyez musulman, français ou maya, l'objectif est d'obtenir les
meilleures technologies pour transformer la vie en données, les classifier, produire un contenu
à partir de celles-ci et créer des expériences pouvant être monétisées.
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En toute logique, pour Google, une entreprise dont la mission est d'organiser les informations
du monde en vue de générer un profit, les institutions qui étaient auparavant chargées de
l'organisation de la connaissance du monde constituent des partenaires idéaux. Cependant,
comme indiqué plus tôt, l'engagement du Google Cultural Institute à rassembler les
informations des musées créés durant la période coloniale afin d'élever une certaine culture et
une manière supérieure de voir le monde est paradoxal. Aujourd'hui, nous sommes au
courant et nous sommes capables de défier les narrations dominantes autour du patrimoine
culturel, car ces institutions ont un véritable récit de l'histoire qui ne se limite pas à la
production de la section « à propos » d'un site internet, comme celui du Google Cultural
Institute. « Ce que les musées devraient peut-être faire, c'est amener les visiteurs à prendre
conscience que ce n'est pas la seule manière de voir les choses. Que le musée, à savoir
l'installation, la disposition et la collection, possède une histoire et qu'il dispose également
d'un bagage idéologique »[8]. Cependant, le Google Cultural Institute n'est pas un musée,
c'est une base de données disposant d'une interface qui permet de parcourir le contenu
culturel. Contrairement aux prestigieux musées avec lesquels il collabore, il manque d'une
histoire située dans un discours culturel spécifique. Il s'agit d'objets d'art, de merveilles du
monde et de moments historiques au sens large. La mission du Google Cultural Institute est
clairement commerciale et philanthropique, mais celui-ci manque d'un point de vue et d'une
position définie vis-à-vis du matériel culturel qu'il traite. Ce n'est pas surprenant puisque
Google a toujours évité de prendre position, tout est question de technodéterminisme et de la
noble mission d'organiser les informations du monde afin de le rendre meilleur. Cependant,
« la négociation et le rassemblement d'informations sont une forme dangereuse de
technocolonialisme ».[8]
En cherchant une narration culturelle dépassant l'idéologie californienne, le moteur de
recherche d'Alphabet a trouvé dans Paul Otlet et le Mundaneum la couverture parfaite pour
intégrer ses services philanthropiques dans l'histoire de la science de l'information, au-delà de
la Silicon Valley. Après tout, ils comprennent que « la possession des narrations historiques
et de leurs corrélats matériels devient un outil de manifestation et de réalisation des
revendications économiques ».[9]
Après avoir établi un centre de données dans la ville belge de Mons, ville du Mundaneum,
Google a offert son soutien à « l'aventure Mons 2015, en particulier en travaillant avec nos
partenaires de longue date, les archives du Mundaneum. Plus d'un siècle auparavant, deux
visionnaires belges ont imaginé l'architecture du World Wide Web d'hyperliens et
d'indexation de l'information, non pas sur des ordinateurs, mais sur des cartes de papier.
Leur création était appelée Mundaneum. »[10]
À l'occasion du 147e anniversaire de Paul Otlet, un Doodle sur la page d'Alphabet épelait
le nom de son entreprise en utilisant « les tiroirs du Mundaneum » pour former le mot G O
O G L E : « Aujourd'hui, Doodle rend hommage au travail pionnier de Paul sur le
Mundaneum. La collection de connaissances emmagasinées dans les tiroirs du Mundaneum
constituent un travail fondamental pour tout ce qui se fait chez Google. Dès les premiers
essais, vous pouvez voir ce concept prendre vie. »[11]
III. GOOGLE CULTURAL INSTITUTE
La dématérialisation des collections publiques à l'aide d'une infrastructure et de services
financés par des acteurs privés, tels que le GCI, doit être questionnée et analysée plus en
profondeur par des institutions hétérotopes pour comprendre les nouvelles formes prises par
une tension infinie entre connaissance/pouvoir au cœur d'un archivage contemporain, où
l'architecture de l'interface remplace et agit au nom du musée et où le visiteur est réduit aux
doigts d'un utilisateur capable de parcourir un nombre infini de biens culturels. À l'époque
où les institutions culturelles devraient être décolonisées plutôt que googlifiées, il est capital
d'aborder la question d'un projet tel que le Google Cultural Institute et son expansion
continue et inversement proportionnelle à l'échec des gouvernements et à la passivité des
institutions séduites par les gadgets[12].
Cependant, le dialogue est fragmenté entre les comptes rendus académiques, les
communiqués de presse, les interventions artistiques isolées, les conférences spécialisées et
les bulletins d'informations. Selon Femke Snelting, nous devons « trouver la patience de
construire une relation à ces théories de manière cohérente ». Pour ce faire, nous devons
approfondir et assembler un meilleur compte rendu de l'histoire du Google Cultural Institute.
Construite à partir du texte phare de Schiller & Yeo, la ligne du temps suivante est ma
contribution à cette tâche et à une tentative d'assembler des morceaux en les situant dans un
contexte politique et économique plus large allant au-delà de l'histoire officielle racontée par
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le Google Cultural Institute. Une inspection plus minutieuse des événements révèle que
l'escalade des interventions culturelles d'Alphabet se produit généralement après l'apparition
d'un défi juridique pour l'hégémonie économique en Europe.
2009
ERIC SCHMIDT VISITE L'IRAK
Un bulletin d'informations du Wall Street Journal[13] ainsi qu'un rapport de l'AP Youtube[14]
confirment le nouveau projet de Google dans le domaine de collections historiques. Le
président exécutif d'Alphabet déclare : « je ne peux pas imaginer une meilleure manière
d'utiliser notre temps et nos ressources qu'en rendant disponibles les images et les idées de
notre civilisation, depuis son origine, pour un milliard de personnes à travers le monde. »
Un compte rendu détaillé de la réflexion de cette visite, son contexte et son programme se
trouvent dans Powered by Google: Widening Access and Tightening Corporate Control.
(Schiller & Yeo 2014)
LA FRANCE RÉAGIT À L'ENCONTRE DE GOOGLE BOOKS
Concernant le conflit impliquant Google Books en Europe, Reuters a déclaré qu'en 2009,
l'ancien président français, Nicolas Sarkozy « avait promis des centaines de millions d'euros à
un programme de numérisation distinct, disant qu'il ne permettrait pas à la France “d'être
dépouillée de son patrimoine au profit d'une grande entreprise, peu importe si celle-ci était
sympathique, grande ou américaine.” »[15]
Cependant, même si le programme réactionnaire et nationaliste de Nicolas Sarkozy ne doit
pas être félicité, il est important de noter que la première attaque ouverte à l'encontre du
programme culturel de Google est venue du gouvernement français. Quatre ans plus tard, le
Google Cultural Institute établissait son siège à Paris.
2010
LA COMMISSION EUROPÉENNE LANCE UNE ENQUÊTE ANTITRUST À L'ENCONTRE DE
GOOGLE.
La Commission européenne a décidé d'ouvrir une enquête antitrust à partir des
allégations selon lesquelles Google Inc. aurait abusé de sa position dominante de
moteur de recherche, en violation avec le règlement de l'Union européenne (Article
102 TFUE). L'ouverture de procédures formelles fait suite aux plaintes déposées par
des fournisseurs de service de recherche relatives à un traitement défavorable de leurs
services dans les résultats de recherche gratuits et payants de Google, ainsi qu'au
placement préférentiel des propres services de Google. Le lancement des procédures ne
signifie pas que la Commission dispose d'une quelconque preuve d'infraction. Cela
signifie seulement que la Commission va mener une enquête poussée et prioritaire sur
[16]
l'affaire.
LE GOOGLE ART PROJECT A COMMENCÉ COMME PROJET 20 % SOUS LA DIRECTION
D'AMIT SOOD.
D'après The Guardian[17], ainsi que d'autres bulletins d'informations, le projet culturel de
Google a été lancé par des « googleurs » passionnés d'art.
GOOGLE ANNONCE SON PROJET DE CONSTRUCTION D'UN EUROPEAN CULTURAL
CENTER EN FRANCE.
Faisant référence à la France comme à l'un des plus importants centres pour la culture et la
technologie, le PDG de Google, Eric Schmidt, a annoncé officiellement la création d'un
centre « dédié à la technologie, particulièrement en faveur de la promotion des cultures
européennes passées, présentes et futures ».[18]
2011
LE GOOGLE ART PROJECT EST LANCÉ À LA TATE LONDON.
En février, le nouveau « produit » a été officiellement présenté. La présentation[19] souligne
que l'idée a commencé avec un projet 20 %, un projet qui n'émanait donc pas d'un mandat
d'entreprise.
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D'après la section « Our Story »[20] du Google Cultural Institute, l'histoire du Google Art
Project commence avec l'intégration de 140 000 pièces du Yad Vashem World Holocaust
Centre, suivie de l'intégration des archives de Nelson Mandela dans la section "Historical
Moments" du Google Cultural Institute.
Plus tard au mois d'août, Eric Schmidt déclara que l'éducation devrait rassembler l'art et la
science comme lors des « jours glorieux de l'époque victorienne ».[21]
2012
LES AUTORITÉS DES DONNÉES DE L'UE LANCENT UNE NOUVELLE ENQUÊTE SUR
GOOGLE ET SES NOUVEAUX TERMES D'UTILISATION.
À la demande des autorités françaises, l'Union européenne lance une enquête à l'encontre
de Google concernant une violation des données privées causée par les nouveaux termes
d'utilisation publiés par Google le 1er mars 2012.[22]
LE GOOGLE CULTURAL INSTITUTE CONTINUE À NUMÉRISER LES « BIENS »
CULTURELS.
D'après le site du Google Cultural Institute, 151 partenaires ont rejoint le Google Art
Project, y compris le Musée d'Orsay en France. La section World of Wonders est lancée
avec des partenariats comme celui de l'UNESCO. Au mois d'octobre, la plateforme avait
changé d'image et était relancée avec plus de 400 partenaires.
2013
LE SIÈGE DU GOOGLE CULTURAL INSTITUTE OUVRE À PARIS.
Le 10 décembre, le nouveau siège français ouvre au numéro 8 rue de Londres. La ministre
française, Aurélie Filippetti, annule sa participation à l'événement, car elle « ne souhaite pas
apparaitre comme une garantie à une opération qui soulève encore un certain nombre de
questions ».[23]
LES AUTORITÉS FISCALES BRITANNIQUES LANCENT UNE ENQUÊTE SUR LE PLAN
FISCAL DE GOOGLE.
L'enquêteur du HM Customs and Revenue Committee estime que les opérations fiscales de
Google au Royaume-Uni réalisées via l'Irlande sont « fourbes, calculées et, selon moi,
contraires à l'éthique ».[24]
2014
CONCERNANT LE « DROIT À L'OUBLI », LA COUR DE JUSTICE DE L'UE STATUE
CONTRE GOOGLE.
La décision controversée tient les moteurs de recherche responsables des données
personnelles qu'ils gèrent. Conformément à la loi européenne, la Cour a statué « que
l'opérateur est, dans certaines circonstances, obligé de retirer des liens vers des sites internet
publiés par un parti tiers et contenant des informations liées à une personne et apparaissant
dans la liste des résultats suite à une recherche basée sur le nom de cette personne. La Cour
établit clairement qu'une telle obligation peut également exister dans un cas où le nom, ou
l'information, n'est pas effacé préalablement de ces pages internet, et même, comme cela peut
être le cas, lorsque leur publication elle-même est légale. »[25]
RÉVOLUTION NUMÉRIQUE AU BARBICAN, ROYAUME-UNI
Google sponsorise l'exposition Digital Revolution[26] et les œuvres commissionnées sous le
nom « Dev-art: art made with code.[27] ». Le Tekniska Museet à Stockholm a ensuite
accueilli l'exposition.[28] « The Lab » du Google Cultural Institute ouvre « Ici, les experts
créatifs et la technologie se rassemblent pour partager des idées et construire de nouvelles
manières de profiter de l'art et de la culture. »[29]
GOOGLE FAIT CONNAITRE SON INTENTION DE SOUTENIR LA VILLE DE MONS,
CAPITALE EUROPÉENNE DE LA CULTURE EN 2015.
Un communiqué de presse de Google[30] décrit le nouveau partenariat avec la ville belge de
Mons comme le résultat de leur position d'employeur local et d'investisseur dans la ville où
se situe l'un de leurs deux principaux centres de données en Europe.
2015
LA COMMISSION DE L'UE ENVOIE UNE COMMUNICATION DES GRIEFS À GOOGLE.
La Commission européenne a envoyé une communication des griefs à Google, déclarant
que :
« l'entreprise avait abusé de sa position dominante sur les marchés des services
généraux de recherches internet dans l'espace économique européen en favorisant
systématiquement son propre produit de comparateur d'achats dans les pages de
[31]
résultats généraux de recherche. »
Google rejette les accusations, les jugeant « erronées d'un point de vue factuel, légal et
économique ».[32]
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P.205
LA COMMISSION EUROPÉENNE COMMENCE À ENQUÊTER SUR ANDROID.
La Commission déterminera si, en concluant des accords anti-compétitifs et/ou en abusant
d'une possible position dominante, Google a :
illégalement entravé le développement et l'accès au marché de systèmes mobiles
d'exploitation, d'applications mobiles de communication et des services de ses rivaux
dans l'espace économique européen. Cette enquête est distincte et séparée du travail
[33]
d'investigation sur le commerce de la recherche de Google.
LE GOOGLE CULTURAL INSTITUTE POURSUIT SON EXPANSION.
D'après la section « Our Story » du Google Cultural Institute, le projet Street Art contient à
présent 10 000 pièces. Une nouvelle extension affiche les oeuvres d'art du Google Art
Project dans le navigateur Chrome et « les amateurs d'art peuvent porter une œuvre au
poignet grâce à l'art Android ». Au mois d'août, le projet disposait de 850 partenaires
utilisant ses outils, de 4,7 millions de pièces dans sa collection et de plus de 1 500
expositions organisées.
TRANSPARENCY INTERNATIONAL RÉVÈLE QUE GOOGLE EST LE DEUXIÈME PLUS
[34]
GRAND LOBBYISTE À BRUXELLES.
ALPHABET INC. EST CRÉÉ LE 2 OCTOBRE.
« Alphabet Inc. (connu sous le nom d'Alphabet) est un conglomérat multinational américain
créé en 2015 pour être la société mère de Google et de plusieurs entreprises appartenant
auparavant à Google ou y étant liées. »[35]
LE DOODLE PAUL OTLET ET LES EXPOSITIONS MUNDANEUM-GOOGLE.
Google crée un doodle pour sa page d'accueil à l'occasion du 147e anniversaire de Paul
Otlet[36] et des projections de diapositives Towards the Information Age, Mapping
Knowledge et The 100th Anniversary of a Nobel Peace Prize, toutes organisées par le
Google Cultural Institute.
« Le Mundaneum et Google ont étroitement collaboré pour organiser neuf expositions
en ligne exclusives pour le Google Cultural Institute. Cette année, l'équipe dans les
coulisses de la réouverture du Mundaneum a travaillé avec les ingénieurs du Cultural
[37]
Institute pour lancer une application mobile qui y est consacrée. »
LE GOOGLE CULTURAL INSTITUTE S'ASSOCIE AU BRITISH MUSEUM.
Le British Museum annonce un « partenariat unique » à travers lequel plus de 4 500 pièces
pourront être « visionnées en ligne en seulement quelques clics ». Dans le communiqué de
presse officiel, le directeur du musée, Neil McGregor, a déclaré « le monde a changé
aujourd'hui, notre manière d'accéder à l'information a été révolutionnée par la technologie
numérique. Cela permet de donner une nouvelle réalité à l'idéal des Lumières sur lequel le
Museum a été fondé. Il est à présent possible d'accéder à notre collection, d'explorer et de
profiter non seulement pour ceux qui la visitent en personne, mais pour tous ceux qui
disposent d'un ordinateur ou d'un appareil mobile. »[38]
LE GOOGLE CULTURAL INSTITUTE AJOUTE LA SECTION PERFORMING ARTS.
Plus de 60 organisations et interprètes d'art du spectacle (danse, théâtre, musique, opéra)
rejoignent la collection Google Cultural Institute[39]
2016
...
Last
Revision:
28·06·2016
1. Caines, Matthew. « Arts head: Amit Sood, director, Google Cultural Institute »The Guardian. 3 décembre 2013. http://
www.theguardian.com/culture-professionals-network/culture-professionals-blog/2013/dec/03/amit sood-google-culturalinstitute-art-project
2. Google Paris. Consulté le 22 décembre 2016 http://www.google.se/about/careers/locations/paris/
P.206
P.207
3. Schiller, Dan & Yeo, Shinjoung. « Powered By Google: Widening Access And Tightening Corporate Control. » (In Aceti, D.
L. (Éd.). Red Art: New Utopias in Data Capitalism: Leonardo Electronic Almanac, Vol. 20, No. 1. Londres : Goldsmiths
University Press. 2014): 48
4. Down, Maureen. « The Google Art Heist ». The New York Times. 12 septembre 2015 http://
www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/opinion/sunday/the-google-art-heist.html
5. Schiller, Dan & Shinjoung Yeo. « Powered By Google: Widening Access And Tightening Corporate Control. », 48
6. 6. Schiller, Dan & Yeo, Shinjoung. « Powered By Google: Widening Access And Tightening Corporate Control. », 48
7. Davis, Heather & Turpin, Etienne, eds. Art in the Antropocene (Londres : Open Humanities Press. 2015), 7
8. Bush, Randy. Psg.com On techno-colonialism. (blog) 13 juin 2015. Consulté le 22 décembre 2015 https://psg.com/ontechnocolonialism.html
9. Starzmann, Maria Theresia. « Cultural Imperialism and Heritage Politics in the Event of Armed Conflict: Prospects for an
‘Activist Archaeology’ ». Archeologies. Vol. 4 n° 3 (2008):376
10. Echikson,William. Partnering in Belgium to create a capital of culture (blog) 10 mars 2014. Consulté le 22 décembre 2015
http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.se/2014/03/partnering-in-belgium-to-create-capital.html
11. Google. Mundaneum co-founder Paul Otlet's 147th Birthday (blog) 23 août, 2015. Consulté le 22 décembre 2015 http://
www.google.com/doodles/mundaneum-co-founder-paul-otlets-147th-birthday
12. ex. https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/thelab/#experiments
13. 13. Lavallee, Andrew. « Google CEO: A New Iraq Means Business Opportunities. » Wall Street Journal. 24 novembre
2009 http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/11/24/google-ceo-a-new-iraq-means-business-opportunities/
14. 14. Associated Press. Google Documents Iraqi Museum Treasures (vidéo en ligne 24 novembre 2009) https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqtgtdBvA9k
15. Jarry, Emmanuel. « France's Sarkozy takes on Google in books dispute. » Reuters. 8 décembre 2009. http://
www.reuters.com/article/us-france-google-sarkozy-idUSTRE5B73E320091208
16. European Commission. Antitrust: Commission probes allegations of antitrust violations by Google (Bruxelles 2010) http://
europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-10-1624_en.htm
17. Caines, Matthew. “Arts head: Amit Sood, director, Google Cultural Institute »The Guardian. 3 décembre 2013. http://
www.theguardian.com/culture-professionals-network/culture-professionals-blog/2013/dec/03/amit sood google-culturalinstitute-art-project
18. Cyrus, Farivar. « Google to build R&D facility and 'European cultural center' in France. » Deutsche Welle. 9 septembre
2010. http://www.dw.com/en/google-to-build-rd-facility-and-european-cultural-center-in-france/a-5993560
19. 19. Google Art Project. Art Project V1 - Launch Event at Tate Britain. (vidéo en ligne le 1er février 2011) https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsynsSWVvnM
20. Google Cultural Institute. Consulté le 18 décembre 2015. https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/about/partners/
21. Robinson, James. « Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google, condemns British education system » The Guardian. 26 août 2011
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/aug/26/eric-schmidt-chairman-google-education
22. European Commission. Letter addressed to Google by the Article 29 Group (Bruxelles 2012) http://ec.europa.eu/justice/
data-protection/article-29/documentation/other-document/files/2012/20121016_letter_to_google_en.pdf
23. Willsher, Kim. « Google Cultural Institute's Paris opening snubbed by French minister. » The Guardian. 10 décembre, 2013
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/10/google-cultural-institute-france-minister-snub
24. 24. Bowers, Simon & Syal, Rajeev. « MP on Google tax avoidance scheme: 'I think that you do evil' ». The Guardian. 16
mai 2013. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/may/16/google-told-by-mp you-do-do-evil
25. Court of Justice of the European Union. Press-release No 70/14 (Luxembourg, 2014) http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/
docs/application/pdf/2014-05/cp140070en.pdf
26. Barbican. « Digital Revolution. » Consulté le 15 décembre 2015 https://www.barbican.org.uk/bie/upcoming-digital-revolution
27. Google. « Dev Art ». Consulté le 15 décembre 2015 https://devart.withgoogle.com/
28. Tekniska Museet. « Digital Revolution. » Consulté le 15 décembre 2015 http://www.tekniskamuseet.se/1/5554.html
29. Google Cultural Institute. Consulté le 15 décembre 2015. https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/thelab/
30. Echikson,William. Partnering in Belgium to create a capital of culture (blog) 10 mars 2014. Consulté le 22 décembre 2015
http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.se/2014/03/partnering-in-belgium-to-create-capital.html
31. European Commission. Antitrust: Commission sends Statement of Objections to Google on comparison shopping service;
opens separate formal investigation on Android. (Bruxelles 2015) http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-15-4780_en.htm
32. Yun Chee, Foo. « Google rejects 'unfounded' EU antitrust charges of market abuse » Reuters. (27 août 2015) http://
www.reuters.com/article/us-google-eu-antitrust-idUSKCN0QW20F20150827
33. European Commission. Antitrust: Commission sends Statement
34. Transparency International. Lobby meetings with EU policy-makers dominated by corporate interests (blog) 24 juin 2015.
Consulté le mardi 22 décembre 2015. http://www.transparency.org/news/pressrelease/
lobby_meetings_with_eu_policy_makers_dominated_by_corporate_interests
35. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. s.v. “Alphabet Inc,” (consulté le 25 janvier 2016, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Alphabet_Inc.
36. Google. Mundaneum co-founder Paul Otlet's 147th Birthday (blog) 23 août, 2015. Consulté le 22 décembre 2015 http://
www.google.com/doodles/mundaneum-co-founder-paul-otlets-147th-birthday
37. Google. Mundaneum co-founder Paul Otlet's 147th Birthday
38. The British Museum. The British Museum’s unparalleled world collection at your fingertips. (blog) Novembre 12, 2015.
Consulté le mardi 22 décembre 2015. https://www.britishmuseum.org/about_us/news_and_press/press_releases/2015/
with_google.aspx
39. Sood, Amit. Step on stage with the Google Cultural Institute (blog) 1er décembre 2015. Consulté le mardi 22 décembre
2015. https://googleblog.blogspot.se/2015/12/step-on-stage-with-google-cultural.html
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Special:Disambiguation
The following is a list of all disambiguation pages on Mondotheque.
A page is treated as a disambiguation page if it contains the tag __DISAMBIG__ (or an
equivalent alias).
Showing below up to 15 results in range #1 to #15.
View (previous 50 | next 50) (20 | 50 | 100 | 250 | 500)
1. Biblion may refer to:
◦ Biblion (category), a subcategory of the category: Index Traité de
documentation
◦ Biblion (Traité de documentation), term used by Paul
Otlet to define all categories of books and documents in a section of Traité de
documentation
◦ Biblion (unity), the smallest document or intellectual unit
2. Cultural Institute may refer to:
◦ A Cultural Institute (organisation) , such as The
Mundaneum Archive Center in Mons
◦ Cultural Institute (project), a critical interrogation of
cultural institutions in neo-liberal times, developed by amongst others
Geraldine Juárez
◦ The Google Cultural Institute, a project offering
"Technologies that make the world’s culture accessible to anyone, anywhere."
3. L'EVANGELISTE may refer to:
◦ Vint Cerf, so-called 'internet evangelist', or 'father of the internet',
working at LA MÉGA-ENTREPRISE
◦ Jiddu Krishnamurti, priest at the 'Order of the Star', a theosophist
splinter group that Paul Otlet related to
◦ Sir Tim Berners Lee, 'open data evangelist', heading the World Wide
Web consortium (W3C)
4. L'UTOPISTE may refer to:
◦ Paul Otlet, documentalist, universalist, internationalist, indexalist. At
times considered as the 'father of information science', or 'visionary inventor of
the internet on paper'
◦ Le Corbusier, architect, universalist, internationalist. Worked with Paul
Otlet on plans for a City of knowledge
◦ Otto Neurath , philosopher of science, sociologist, political economist.
Hosted a branch of Mundaneum in The Hague
◦ Ted Nelson , technologist, philosopher, sociologist. Coined the terms
hypertext, hypermedia, transclusion, virtuality and intertwingularity
5. LA CAPITALE may refer to:
◦ Brussels, capital of Flanders and Europe
◦ Genève , world civic center
6. LA MANAGER may refer to:
◦ Delphine Jenart, assistant director at the Mundaneum Archive Center
in Mons.
◦ Bill Echikson, former public relations officer at Google, coordinating
communications for the European Union, and for all of Southern, Eastern
Europe, Middle East and Africa. Handled the company’s high profile
antitrust and other policy-related issues in Europe.
7. LA MÉGA-ENTREPRISE may refer to:
◦ Google inc, or Alphabet, sometimes referred to as "Crystal
Computing", "Project02", "Saturn" or "Green Box Computing"
◦ Carnegie Steel Company, supporter of the Mundaneum in Brussels
and the Peace Palace in The Hague
8. LA RÉGION may refer to:
◦ Wallonia (Belgium), or La Wallonie. Former mining area, homebase of former prime minister Elio di Rupo, location of two Google
datacenters and the Mundaneum Archive Center
◦ Groningen (The Netherlands), future location of a Google data
center in Eemshaven
◦ Hamina (Finland), location of a Google data center
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9. LE BIOGRAPHE is used for persons that are instrumental in constructing the
narrative of Paul Otlet. It may refer to:
◦ André Canonne, librarian and director of the Centre de Lecture
publique de la Communauté française (CLPCF). Discovers the
Mundaneum in the 1960s. Publishes a facsimile edition of the Traité de
documentation (1989) and prepares the opening of Espace Mundaneum in
Brussels at Place Rogier (1990)
◦ Warden Boyd Rayward, librarian scientist, discovers the Mundaneum
in the 1970s. Writes the first biography of Paul Otlet in English: The
Universe of Information: the Work of Paul Otlet for Documentation and
international Organization (1975)
◦ Benoît Peeters and François Schuiten , comics-writers and
scenographers, discover the Mundaneum in the 1980s. The archivist in the
graphic novel Les Cités Obscures (1983) is modelled on Paul Otlet
◦ Françoise Levie, filmmaker, discovers the Mundaneum in the 1990s.
Author of the fictionalised biography The man who wanted to classify the
world (2002)
◦ Alex Wright, writer and journalist, discovers the Mundaneum in 2003.
Author of Cataloging the World: Paul Otlet and the Birth of the Information
Age (2014)
10. LE DIRECTEUR may refer to:
◦ Harm Post, director of Groningen Sea Ports, future location of a Google
data center
◦ Andrew Carnegie, director of Carnegy Steel Company, sponsor of the
Mundaneum
◦ André Canonne, director of the Centre de Lecture publique de la
Communauté française (CLPCF) and guardian of the Mundaneum. See
also: LE BIOGRAPHE
◦ Jean-Paul Deplus, president of the current Mundaneum association,
but often referred to as LE DIRECTEUR
◦ Amid Sood, director (later 'founder') of the Google Cultural Institute and
Google Art Project
◦ Steve Crossan, director (sometimes 'founder' or 'head') of the Google
Cultural Institute
11. LE POLITICIEN may refer to:
◦ Elio di Rupo, former prime minister of Belgium and mayor of Mons
◦ Henri Lafontaine, Belgium lawyer and statesman, working with Paul
Otlet to realise the Mundaneum
◦ Nicolas Sarkozy, former president of France, negotiating deals with
LA MÉGA-ENTREPRISE
12. LE ROI may refer to:
◦ Leopold II, reigned as King of the Belgians from 1865 until 1909.
Exploited Congo as a private colonial venture. Patron of the Mundaneum
project
◦ Albert II, reigned as King of the Belgians from 1993 until his
abdication in 2013. Visited LA MÉGA-ENTREPRISE in 2008
13. Monde may refer to:
◦ Monde (Univers) means world in French and is used in many
drawings and schemes by Paul Otlet. See for example: World + Brain and
Mundaneum
◦ Monde (Publication), Essai d'universalisme. Last book published
by Paul Otlet (1935)
◦ Mondialisation , Term coined by Paul Otlet (1916)
14. Mundaneum may refer to:
◦ Mundaneum (Utopia) , a project designed by Paul Otlet and Henri
Lafontaine
◦ Mundaneum (Archive Centre) , a cultural institution in Mons,
housing the archives of Paul Otlet and Henri Lafontaine since 1993
15. Urbanisme may refer to:
◦ Urban planning, a technical and political process concerned with the
use of land, protection and use of the environment, public welfare, and the
design of the urban environment, including air, water, and the infrastructure
passing into and out of urban areas such as transportation, communications,
and distribution networks.
◦ Urbanisme (Publication), a book by Le Corbusier (1925).
View (previous 50 | next 50) (20 | 50 | 100 | 250 | 500)
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Location,
location,
location
From
Paper
Mill to
Google
Data
Center
SHINJOUNG YEO
Every second of every day, billions of people around the world are googling, mapping, liking,
tweeting, reading, writing, watching, communicating, and working over the Internet.
According to Cisco, global Internet traffic will surpass one zettabyte – nearly a trillion
gigabytes! – in 2016, which equates to 667 trillion feature-length films.[1] Internet traffic is
expected to double by 2019[2] as the internet ever increasingly weaves itself into the very
fabric of many people’s daily lives.
Internet search giant Google – since August, 2015 a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc.[3] – is one
of the major conduits of our social activities on the Web. It processes over 3.3 billion
searches each and every day, 105 billon searches per month or 1.3 trillion per year,[4] and is
responsible for over 88% Internet search activity around the globe.[5] Predicating its business
on people’s everyday information activity – search – in 2015, Google generated $74.54
billion dollars,[6] equivalent to or more than the GDP of some countries. The vast majority of
Google’s revenue – $ 67.39 billion dollars[7] – from advertising on its various platforms
including Google search, YouTube, AdSense products, Chrome OS, Android etc.; the
company is rapidly expanding its business to other sectors like cloud services, health,
education, self-driving cars, internet of things, life sciences, and the like. Google’s lucrative
internet business does not only generate profits. As Google’s chief economist Hal Varian
states:
…it also generates torrents of data about users’ tastes and habits, data that Google
then sifts and processes in order to predict future consumer behavior, find ways to
improve its products, and sell more ads. This is the heart and soul of Googlenomics.
It’s a system of constant self-analysis: a data-fueled feedback loop that defines not only
[8]
Google’s future but the future of anyone who does business online.
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P.215
Google’s business model is emblematic of the “new economy” which is primarily built around
data and information. The “new economy” – the term popularized in the 1990s during the
first dot-com boom – is often distinguished by the mainstream discourse from the traditional
industrial economy that demands large-scale investment of physical capital and produces
material goods and instead emphasizes the unique nature of information and purports to be
less resource-intensive. Originating in the 1960s, post-industrial theorists asserted the
emergence of the “new” economy, claiming that the increase of highly-skilled information
workers, widespread application of information technologies, along with the decrease of
manual labor, would bring a new mode of production and fundamental changes in
exploitative capitalist social relations.[9]
Has the “new” economy challenged capitalist social relations and transcended the material
world? Google and other Internet companies have been investing heavily in industrial-scale
real estate around the world and continue to build large-scale physical infrastructure in the
way of data centers where the world’s bits and bytes are stored, processed and delivered.
The term “tube” or “cloud” or “weightless” often gives us a façade that our newly marketed
social and cultural activities over the Internet transcend the physical realm and occur in the
vapors of the Internet; far from this perception, however, every bit of information in the “new
economy” is transmitted through and located in physical space, on very real and very large
infrastructure encomapssing existing power structures from phone lines and fiber optics to
data centers to transnatonal underseas telecommunication cables.
There is much boosterism and celebration that the “new economy” holds the keys to
individual freedom, liberty and democratic participation and will free labor from exploitation;
however, the material/physical base that supports the economy and our everyday lives tells a
very different story. My analysis presents an integral piece of the physical infrastructure
behind the “new economy” and the space embedded in that infrastructure in order to
elucidate that the “new economy” does not occur in an abstract place but rather is manifested
in the concrete material world, one deeply embedded in capitalist development which
reproduces structural inequality on a global scale. Specifically, the analysis will focus on
Google’s growing large-scale data center infrastructure that is restructuring and reconfiguring
previously declining industrial cities and towns as new production places within the US and
around the world.
Today, data centers are found in nearly every sector of the economy: financial services,
media, high-tech, education, retail, medical, government etc. The study of the development of
data centers in each of these sectors could be separate projects in and of themselves;
however, for this project, I will only look at Google as a window into the “new” economy, the
company which has led the way in the internet sector in building out and linking up data
centers as it expands its territory of profit.[10]
DATA CENTRES IN CONTEXT
The concepts of “spatial fix” by critical geographer David Harvey[11] and “digital capitalism”
by historian of communication and information Dan Schiller[12] are useful to contextualize and
place the emergence of large-scale data centers within capitalist development. Harvey
illustrates the notion of spatial fix to explicate and situate the geographical dynamics and crisis
tendency of capitalism with over-accumulation and under-consumption. Harvey’s spatial fix
has dual meanings. One meaning is that it is necessary for capital to have a fixed space –
physical infrastructure (transportation, communications, highways, power etc.) as well as a
built environment – in order to facilitate capital’s geographical expansion. The other meaning
is a fix or solution for capitalists’ crisis through geographical expansion and reorganization of
space as capital searches for new markets and temporarily relocates to more profitable space
– new accumulation sites and territories. This temporal spatial fix will lead capital to leave
behind existing physical infrastructure and built environments as it shifts to new temporal
fixed spaces in order to cultivate new markets.
Building on Harvey’s work, Schiller introduced the concept of digital capitalism in response
to the 1970’s crisis of capitalism in which information became that “spatial-temporal fix” or
“pole of growth.”[13] To renew capitalist crisis from the worst economic downturn of the
1970s, a massive amount of information and communication technologies were introduced
across the length and breadth of economic sectors as capitalism shifted to a more informationintensive economy – digital capitalism. Today digital capitalism grips every sector, as it has
expanded and extended beyond information industries and reorganized the entire economy
from manufacturing production to finance to science to education to arts and health and
impacts every iota of people’s social lives.[14] Current growth of large-scale data centers by
Internet companies and their reoccupation of industrial towns needs to be situated within the
context of the development of digital capitalism.
FROM MANUFACTURING FACTORY TO DATA FACTORY
Large-scale data centers – sometimes called “server farms” in an oddly quaint allusion to the
pre-industrial agrarian society – are centralized facilities that primarily contain large numbers
of servers and computer equipment used for data processing, data storage, and high-speed
telecommunications. In a sense, data centers are similar to the capitalist factory system; but
instead of a linear process of input of raw materials to
output of material goods for mass consumption, they input
mass data in order to facilitate and expand the endless
cycle of commodification – an Ouroboros-like machine.
As the factory system enables the production of more
P.216
From X = Y:
In these proposals, Otlet's archival
P.217
goods at a lower cost through automation and control of labor to maximize profit, data centers
have been developed to process large quantities of bits and bytes as fast as possible and at as
low a cost as possible through automation and centralization. The data center is a hyperautomated digital factory system that enables the operation of hundreds of thousands of
servers through centralization in order to conduct business around the clock and around the
globe. Compared to traditional industrial factories that produce material goods and generally
employ entire towns if not cities, large-scale data centers each generally employ fewer than
100 full-time employees – most of these employees are either engineers or security guards.
In a way, data centers are the ultimate automated factory. Moreover, the owner of a
traditional factory needs to acquire/purchase/extract raw materials to produce commodities;
however, much of the raw data for a data center are freely drawn from the labor and
everyday activities of Internet users without a direct cost to the data center. The factory
system is to industrial capitalism what data centers are becoming to digital capitalism.
THE GROWTH OF GOOGLE’S DATA FACTORIES
Today, there is a growing arms race among leading Internet companies – Google, Microsoft,
Amazon, Facebook, IBM – in building out large-scale data centers around the globe.[16]
Among these companies, Google has so far been leading in terms of scale and capital
investment. In 2014, the company spent $11 billion for real estate purchases, production
equipment, and data center construction,[17] compared to Amazon which spent $4.9 billion
and Facebook with $1.8 billion in the same year.[18]
Until 2002, Google rented only one collocation facility in Santa Clara, California to house
about 300 servers.[19] However, by 2003 the company had started to purchase entire
collocation buildings that were cheaply available due to overexpansion during the dot.com
era. Google soon began to design and build its own data centers containing thousands of
custom-built servers as Google expanded its services and global market and responded to
competitive pressures. Initially, Google was highly secretive about its data center locations
and related technologies; a former Google employee called this Google’s “Manhattan
project.” However, in 2012, Google began to open up its data centers. While this seems
like Google’s had a change of heart and wants to be more transparent about their data
centers to the public, it is in reality more about Google’s self-serving public relations
onslaught to show how its cloud infrastructure is superior to Google’s competitors and to
secure future cloud clients.[20]
As of 2016, Google has data centers in 14 locations around the globe – eight in Americas,
two in Asia and four in Europe – with an unknown number of collocated centers – ones in
which space, servers, and infrastructure are shared with other companies – in undisclosed
locations. The sheer size of Google’s data centers is reflected in its server chip consumption.
In all, Google supposedly accounts for 5% of all server chips sold in the world,[21] and it is
even affecting the price of chips as the company is one of biggest chip buyers. Google’s
recent allying with Qualcomm for its new chip has become a threat to Intel – Google has
been the largest customer of the world’s largest chip maker for quite some time.[22] According
to Steven Levy, Google admitted that, “it is the largest computing manufacturer in the world
– making its own servers requires it to build more units every year than the industry giants
HP, Dell, and Lenovo.”[23] Moreover, Google has been amassing cheap “dark fibre” – fibre
optic cables that were laid down during the 1990s dot.com boom by now-defunct telecom
firms betting on increased internet traffic[24] - constructing Google’s fibre optic cables in US
cities,[25] and investing in building massive undersea cables to maintain its dominance and
expand its markets by controlling Internet infrastructure.[26]
With its own customized servers and software, Google is building a massive data center
network infrastructure, delivering its service at unprecedented speeds around the clock and
around the world. According to one report, Google’s global network of data centers, with a
capacity to deliver 1-petabit-per-second bandwidth, is powerful enough to read all of the
scanned books in the Library of Congress in a fraction of a second.[27] New York Times
columnist Pascal Zachary once reported:
…I believe that the physical network is Google’s “secret sauce,” its premier competitive
advantage. While a brilliant lone wolf can conceive of a dazzling algorithm, only a
super wealthy and well-managed organization can run what is arguably the most
valuable computer network on the planet. Without the computer network, Google is
[28]
nothing.
Where then is Google’s secret sauce physically located? Despite its massiveness, Google’s
data center infrastructure and locations have been invisible to millions of everyday Google
users around the globe – users assume that Google is ubiquitous, the largest cloud in the
‘net.’ However, this infrastructure is no longer unnoticed since the infrastructure needed to
support the “new economy” is beginning to occupy and transform our landscapes and
building a new fixed network of global digital production space.
NEW NETWORK OF DIGITAL PRODUCTION SPACE:
RESTRUCTURING INDUSTRIAL CITIES
While Google’s data traffic and exchange extends well beyond geographic boundaries, its
physical plants are fixed in places where digital goods and services are processed and
produced. For the production of material goods, access to cheap labor has long been one of
the primary criteria for companies to select their places of production; but for data centers, a
large quantity of cheap labor is not as important since they require only a small number of
employees. The common characteristics necessary for data center sites have so far been:
good fiber-optic infrastructure; cheap and reliable power sources for cooling and running
servers, geographical diversity for redundancy and speed, cheap land, and locations close to
target markets.[29] Today, if one finds geographical areas in the world with some combination
of these factors, there will likely be data centers there or in the planning stages for the near
future.
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Given these criteria, there has been an emerging trend of reconfiguration and conversion to
data centers of former industrial sites such as paper mills, printing plants, steel plants, textile
mills, auto plants, aluminum plants and coal plants. In the United States, and in particular rust
belt regions of the upper Northeast, Great Lakes and Midwest regions – previously hubs of
manufacturing industries and heart lands of both industrial capitalism and labor movements –
are turning (or attempting to turn) into hotspots for large-scale data centers for Internet
companies.[30] These cities are the remains of past crises of industrial capitalism as well as of
long labor struggles.
The reasons that former industrial sites in the US and other parts of the world are attractive
for data center conversion is that, starting in the 1970s, many factories had closed or moved
their operations overseas in search of ever-cheaper labor and concomitantly weak or
nonexistent labor laws, leaving behind solid physical plants and industrial infrastructures of
power, water and cooling systems once used to drive industrial machines and production lines
and now perfectly fit for data center development.[31] Especially, finding cheap energy is
crucial for companies like Google since data center energy costs are a major expenditure.
Moreover, many communities surrounding former industrial sites have struggled and become
distressed with increasing poverty, high unemployment and little labor power. Thus, under
the guise of “economic development,” many state and local governments have been eager to
lure data centers by offering lavish subsidies for IT companies. For at least the last five years,
state after state has legislated tax breaks for data centers and about a dozen states have
created customized incentives programs for data center operations.[32] State incentives range
from full or partial exemptions of sales/use taxes on equipment, construction materials, and in
some cases purchases of electricity and backup fuel.[33] This kind of corporate-centric
economic development is far from the construction of democratic cities that prioritize social
needs and collective interests, and reflects the environmental and long-term sustainability of
communities; but rather the goal is to, “create a good business climate and therefore to
optimize conditions for capital accumulation no matter what the consequences for
employment or social and environmental well-being.”[34]
Google’s first large-scale data center site is located in one of these struggling former industrial
towns. In 2006, Google opened its first data center in The Dalles – now nicknamed
Googleville – a town of a little over 15,000 located alongside the Columbia River and
about 80 miles east of Portland, Oregon. It is an ideal site in the sense that it is close to a
major metropolitan corridor (Seattle-Tacoma-Portland) to serve business interests and large
urban population centers; yet, cheap land, little organized labor, and the promise of cheap
electrical power from the Bonneville Power Administration, a federal governmental agency,
as well as a 15-year property tax exemption. In addition, The Dalles had already built a
fiber-optic loop as part of its economic development hoping to attract the IT industry.[35]
Not long ago, the residents of The Dalles and communities up and down the Columbia
River gorge relied on the aluminum industry, an industry which required massive amounts of
– in this case hydroelectric – power. Energy makes up 40 percent of the cost of aluminum
production[36] and was boosted by the war economies of World War II and the Korean war
as aluminum was used for various war products, especially aircraft. However, starting in
1980, aluminum smelter plants began to close and move out of the area, laid off their
workers and left their installed infrastructure behind.
Since then, The Dalles, like other industrial towns, has suffered from high unemployment,
poverty, aging population and budget-strapped schools, etc. Thus, the decision for Google to
build a data center the size of two football fields (68,680-square-foot storage buildings) in
order to take advantage of the preinstalled fiber optic infrastructure, relatively cheap
hydropower from the Dalles Dam, and tax benefits was presented as the new hope
for the
[37]
distressed town and a large employment opportunity for the town’s population.
There was much community excitement that Google’s arrival would mean an economic
revival for the struggling city and a better life for the poor , but no one could discuss about it
at the time of negotiations with Google because local officials involved in negotiations had all
signed nondisclosure agreements (NDAs);[38] they were required not to mention Google in
any way but were instead instructed to refer to the project as “Project 02.”[39] Google insisted
that the information it shared with representatives of The Dalles not be subject to public
records disclosures.[40] While public subsidies were a necessary precondition of building the
data center,[41] there were no transparency or open public debates on alternative visions of
development that reflects collective community interests.
Google’s highly anticipated data center in The Dalles opened in 2006, but it “opened” only
in the sense that it became operational. To this day, Google’s data center site is off-limits to
the community and is well-guarded, including multiple CCTV cameras which survey the
grounds around the clock. Google might boast of its corporate culture as “open” and “nonhierarchical” but this does not extend to the data centers within the community where Google
benefits as it extracts resources. Not only was the building process secretive, but access to the
data center itself is highly restricted. Data centers are well secured with several guards, gates
and checkpoints. Google’s data center has reshaped the landscape into a pseudo-militarized
zone as it is not far off from a top-secret military compound – access denied.
This kind of landscape is reproduced in other parts of the US as well. New data center hubs
have begun to emerge in other rural communities; one of them is in southwestern North
Carolina where the leading tech giants – Google, Facebook, Apple, Disney and American
Express – have built data centers in close proximity to each other. The cluster of data
centers is referred to as the “NC Data Center Corridor,”[42] a neologism used to market the
area.
At one time, the southwestern part of North Carolina had heavy concentration of highly
labor-intensive textiles and furniture industries that exploited the region’s cheap labor supply
and where workers fought long and hard for better working conditions and wages. However,
over the last 25 years, factories have closed and slowly moved out of the area and been
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relocated to Asia and Latin America.[43] As a result – and mirroring the situation in The
Dalles – the area has suffered a series of layoffs, chronically high unemployment rates and
poverty, but now is being rebranded as a center of the “new economy” geared toward
attracting high-tech industries. For many towns, abandoned manufacturing plants are no
longer an eyesore but rather are becoming major selling points to the IT industry. Rich
Miller, editor of Data Center Knowledge, stated, “one of the things that’s driving the
competitiveness of our area is the power capacity built for manufacturers in the past 50
years.”[44]
In 2008, Google opened a $600 million data center in Lenoir, NC, a town in Caldwell
County (population 18,228[45]). Lenoir was once known as the furniture capital of the South
but lost 1,120 jobs in 2006.[46] More than 300,000 furniture jobs moved away from the
United States during 2000 as factories relocate to China for cheaper labor and operational
costs.[47] In order to lure Google, Caldwell County and the City of Lenoir gave Google a
100 percent waiver on business property taxes, an 80 percent waiver on real estate property
taxes over the next 30 years,[48] and various other incentives. Former NC Governor Mike
Easley announced that, “this company will provide hundreds of good-paying, knowledgebased jobs that North Carolina’s citizens want;”[49] yet, he addressed neither the cost of
attracting Google for taxpayers – including those laid-off factory workers – nor the
environmental impact of the data center. In 2013, Google expanded its operation in Lenoir
with an additional $600 million investment, and as of 2015, it has 250 employees in its
220-plus acre data center site.[50]
The company continues its crusade of giving “hope” to distressed communities and now
“saving” the environment from the old coal-fueled industrial economy. Google’s latest project
in the US is in Widows Creek, Alabama where the company is converting a coal burning
power plant commissioned in 1952 – which has been polluting the area for years – to its 14
th data center powered by renewable power. Shifting from coal to renewable energy seems to
demonstrate how Google has gone “green” and is being a different kind of corporation that
cares for the environment. However, this is a highly calculated business decision given that
relying on renewable energy is more economical over the long term than coal – which is
more volatile as commodity prices greatly fluctuate.[51] Google is gobbling up renewable
energy deals around the world to procure cheap energy and power its data centers.[52]
However, Google’s “green” public relations also camouflage environmental damages that are
brought by the data center’s enormous power consumption, e-waste from hardware, rare
earth mining and the environmental damage over the entire supply chain.[53]
The trend of reoccupation of industrial sites by data centers is not confined to the US.
Google’s Internet business operates across territories and more than 50% of its revenues
come from outside the US. As Google’s domestic search market share has stabilized at
around 60% share, the company has aggressively moved to build data centers around the
world for its global expansion. One of Google’s most ambitious data center projects outside
the US was in Hamina, Finland where Google converted a paper mill to a data center.
In 2008, Stora Enso, the Finnish paper maker, in which the Finnish Government held 16%
of the company’s shares and controlled 34% of the company, shut down its Summa paper
mill on the site close to the city of Hamina in Southeastern Finland despite workers’
resistance against the closure.[54] The company shed 985 jobs including 485 from the
Summa plant.[55] Shortly after closing the plant, Stora Enso sold the 53 year-old paper mill
site to Google for roughly $52 million which included 410 acres of land and the paper mill
and its infrastructure itself.
Whitewashing the workers’ struggles, the Helsinki Times reported that, “everyone was
excited about Google coming to Finland. The news that the Internet giant had bought the old
Stora Enso mill in Hamina for a data centre was great news for a community stunned by job
losses and a slowing economy.”[56] However, the local elites recognized that jobs created by
Google would not drastically affect the city’s unemployment rate or alleviate the economic
plight for many people in the community, so they justified their decision by arguing that
connecting Google’s logo to the city’s image would result in increased investments in the
area.[57] The facility had roughly 125 full-time employees when Google announced its
Hamina operation’s expansion in 2013.[58] The data center is monitored by Google’s
customary CCTV cameras and motion detectors; even Google staff only have access to the
server halls after passing biometric authentication using iris recognition scanners.[59]
Like Google’s other data centers, Google’s decision to build a data center in Hamina is not
merely because of favorable existing infrastructure or natural resources. The location of
Hamina as its first Nordic data center is vital and strategic in terms of extending Google’s
reach into geographically dispersed markets, speed and management of data traffic. Hamina
is located close to the border with Russia and the area has long been known for good
Internet connectivity via Scandinavian telecommunications giant TeliaSonera, whose services
and international connections run right through the area of Hamina and reach into Russia as
well as to Sweden and Western Europe.[60] Eastern Europe has a growing Internet market
and Russia is one of the few countries where Google does not dominate the search market.
Yandex, Russia’s native language search engine, controls the Russian search market with
over 60% share.[61] By locating its infrastructure in Hamina, Google is establishing its
strategic global digital production beach-head for both the Nordic and Russian markets.
As Google is trying to maintain its global dominance and expand its business, the company
has continued to build out its data center operations on European soil. Besides Finland,
Google has built data centers in Dublin, Ireland, and St. Ghislain and Mons in Belgium,
which respectively had expanded their operations after their initial construction. However,
the stories of each of these data centers is similar: aluminum smelting plant town The Dalles,
Oregon and Lenoir North Carolina in the US, paper mill town Hamina, Finland, coalmining town Ghislain–Mons, Belgium and a warehouse converted data center in Dublin,
Ireland. Each of these were once industrial production sites and/or sites for the extraction of
environmental resources turned into data centers creating temporal production spaces to
accelerate digital capitalism. Google’s latest venture in Europe is in a seaport town of
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Eemshaven, Netherlands which hosts several power stations as well as the transatlantic fiberoptic cable which links the US and Europe.
To many struggling communities around the world, the building of Google’s large-scale data
centers has been presented by the company and by political elites as an opportunity to
participate in the “new economy” – as well as a veiled threat of being left behind from the
“new economy” – as if this would magically lead to the creation of prosperity and equality. In
reality, these cities and towns are being reorganized and reoccupied for corporate interests,
re-integrated into sites of capital accumulation and re-emerged as new networks of production
for capitalist development.
CONCLUSION
Is the current physical landscape that supports the “new economy” outside of capitalist social
relations? Does the process of the redevelopment of struggling former industrial cites by
building Google data centers under the slogan of participation in the “new economy” really
meet social needs, and express democratic values? The “new economy” is boasted about as if
it is radically different from past industrial capitalist development, the solution to myriad social
problems that hold the potential for growth outside of the capitalist realm; however, the “new
economy” operates deeply within the logic of capitalist development – constant technological
innovation, relocation and reconstruction of new physical production places to link
geographically dispersed markets, reduction of labor costs, removal of obstacles that hinder its
growth and continuous expansion. Google’s purely market-driven data centers illustrate that
the “new economy” built on data and information does not bypass physical infrastructures and
physical places for the production and distribution of digital commodities. Rather, it is firmly
anchored in the physical world and simply establishes new infrastructures on top of existing
industrial ones and a new network of production places to meet the needs of the processes of
digital commodities at the expense of environmental, labor and social well-being.
We celebrate the democratic possibilities of the “networked information economy” providing
for alternative space free from capitalist practices; however, it is vital to recognize that this
“new economy” in which we put our hopes is supported by, built on, and firmly planted in
our material world. The question that we need to ask ourselves is: given that our communities
and physical infrastructures continue to be configured to assist the reproduction of the social
relations of capitalism, how far can our “new economy” deliver on the democracy and social
justice for which we all strive?
Last
Revision:
3·07·2016
1. James Titcomb, “World’s internet traffic to surpass one zettabyte in 2016,” Telegraph, February 4, 2016, http://
www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/02/04/worlds-internet-traffic-to-surpass-one-zettabyte-in-2016/
2. Ibid.
3. Cade Metz, “A new company called Alphabet now owns Google,” Wired, August 10, 2015. http://wired.com/2015/08/
new-company-called-alphabet-owns-google/.
4. Google hasn’t released new data since 2012, but the data extrapolate from based on Google annual growth date. See Danny
Sullivan, “Google Still Doing At Least 1 Trillion Searches Per Year,” Search Engine Land, January 16, 2015, http://
searchengineland.com/google-1-trillion-searches-per-year-212940
5. This is Google’s desktop search engine market as of January 2016. See “Worldwide desktop market share of leading search
engines from January 2010 to January 2016,” Statista, http://www.statista.com/statistics/216573/worldwide-market-shareof-search-engines/.
6. “Annual revenue of Alphabet from 2011 to 2015 (in billions of US dollars),” Statista, http://www.statista.com/
statistics/507742/alphabet-annual-global-revenue/.
7. “Advertising revenue of Google from 2001 to 2015 (in billion U.S. dollars),” Statista, http://www.statista.com/
statistics/266249/advertising-revenue-of-google/.
8. Seven Levy, “Secret of Googlenomics: Data-Fueled Recipe Brews Profitability,” Wired, May 22, 2009, http://
www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/17-06/nep_googlenomics?currentPage=all.
9. Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture In Social Forecasting (New York: Basic Books, 1974); Alvin
Toffler, The Third Wave (New York: Morrow, 1980).
10. The term “territory of profit” is borrowed from Gary Fields’ book titled Territories of Profit: Communications, Capitalist
Development, and the Innovative Enterprises of G. F. Swift and Dell Computer (Stanford University Press, 2003)
11. David Harvey, Spaces of capital: towards a critical geography (New York: Routledge, 2001)
12. Top of FormDan Schiller, Digital capitalism networking the global market system (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1999).
13. Dan Schiller, “Power Under Pressure: Digital Capitalism In Crisis,” International Journal of Communication 5 (2011): 924–
941
14. Dan Schiller, “Digital capitalism: stagnation and contention?” Open Democracy, October 13, 2015, https://
www.opendemocracy.net/digitaliberties/dan-schiller/digital-capitalism-stagnation-and-contention.
15. Ibid: 113-117.
16. Jason Hiner, “Why Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are racing to run your data center.” ZDNet, June 4, 2009, http://
www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/why-microsoft-google-and-amazon-are-racing-to-run-your-data-center/19733.
17. Derrick Harris, “Google had its biggest quarter ever for data center spending. Again,” Gigaom, February 4, 2015, https://
gigaom.com/2015/02/04/google-had-its-biggest-quarter-ever-for-data-center-spending-again/.
18. Ibid.
19. Steven Levy, In the plex: how Google thinks, works, and shapes our lives )New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 182.
20. Steven Levy, “Google Throws Open Doors to Its Top-Secret Data Center,” Wired, October 17 2012, http://
www.wired.com/2012/10/ff-inside-google-data-center/.
21. Cade Metz, “Google’s Hardware Endgame? Making Its Very Own Chips,” Wired, February 12, 2016, http://
www.wired.com/2016/02/googles-hardware-endgame-making-its-very-own-chips/.
22. Ian King and Jack Clark, “Qualcomm's Fledgling Server-Chip Efforts,” Bloomberg Business, February 3, 2016, http://
www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-03/google-said-to-endorse-qualcomm-s-fledgling-server-chip-efforts-ik6ud7qg.
23. Levy, In the Plex, 181.
24. In 2013, Wall Street Journal reported that Google controls more than 100,000 miles of routes around the world which was
considered bigger than US-based telecom company Sprint. See Drew FitzGerald and Spencer E. Ante, “Tech Firms Push to
Control Web's Pipes,” Wall Street Journal, December 13, 2016, http://www.wsj.com/articles/
SB10001424052702304173704579262361885883936
25. Google is offering its gigabit-speed fiber optic Internet service in 10 US cities. Since Internet service is a precondition of
Google’s myriad Internet businesses, Google’s strategy is to control the pipes rather than relying on telecom firms. See Mike
Wehner, “Google Fiber is succeeding and cable companies are starting to feel the pressure,” Business Insider, April 15, 2015,
http://www.businessinsider.com/google-fiber-is-succeeding-and-cable-companies-are-starting-to-feel-the-pressure-2015-4;
Ethan Baron, “Google Fiber coming to San Francisco first,” San Jose Mercury News, February 26, 2016, http://
www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_29556617/sorry-san-jose-google-fiber-coming-san-francisco.
26. Tim Hornyak, “9 things you didn't know about Google's undersea cable,” Computerworld, July 14, 2015, http://
www.computerworld.com/article/2947841/network-hardware-solutions/9-things-you-didnt-know-about-googles-underseacable.html
27. Jaikumar Vijayan, “Google Gives Glimpse Inside Its Massive Data Center Network,” eWeek, June 18, 2015, http://
www.eweek.com/servers/google-gives-glimpse-inside-its-massive-data-center-network.html
28. Pascal Zachary, “Unsung Heroes Who Move Products Forward,” New York Times, September 30, 2007, http://
www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/technology/30ping.html
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P.225
29. Tomas Freeman, Jones Lang, and Jason Warner, “What’s Important in the Data Center Location Decision,” Spring 2011,
http://www.areadevelopment.com/siteSelection/may2011/data-center-location-decision-factors2011-62626727.shtml
30. “From rust belt to data center green?” Green Data Center News, February 10, 2011, http://www.greendatacenternews.org/
articles/204867/from-rust-belt-to-data-center-green-by-doug-mohney/
31. Rich Miller, “North Carolina Emerges as Data Center Hub,” Data Center Knowledge, November 7, 2010, http://
www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2010/11/17/north-carolina-emerges-as-data-center-hub/.
32. David Chernicoff, “US tax breaks, state by state,” Datacenter Dynamics, January 6, 2016, http://
www.datacenterdynamics.com/design-build/us-tax-breaks-state-by-state/95428.fullarticle; Case Study: Server Farms,” Good
Job First, http://www.goodjobsfirst.org/corporate-subsidy-watch/server-farms.
33. John Leino, “The role of incentives in Data Center Location Decisions,” Critical Environment Practice, February 28, 2011,
http://www.cbrephoenix.com/wp_eig/?p=68.
34. David, Harvey, Spaces of global capitalism (London: Verso. 2006), 25.
35. Marsha Spellman, “Broadband, and Google, Come to Rural Oregon,” Broadband Properties, December 2005, http://
www.broadbandproperties.com/2005issues/dec05issues/spellman.pdf.
36. Ross Courtney “The Goldendale aluminum plant -- The death of a way of life,” Yakima Herald-Republic,” April 9, 2011,
http://www.yakima-herald.com/stories/2011/4/9/the-goldendale-aluminum-plant-the-death-of-a-way-of-life.
37. Ginger Strand, “Google’s addition to cheap electricity,” Harper Magazine, March 2008, https://web.archive.org/web/20080410194348/http://harpers.org/media/
slideshow/annot/2008-03/index.html.
38. Linda Rosencrance, “Top-secret Google data center almost completed,” Computerworld, June 16, 2006, http://
www.computerworld.com/article/2546445/data-center/top-secret-google-data-center-almost-completed.html.
39. Bryon Beck, “Welcome to Googleville America’s newest information superhighway begins On Oregon’s Silicon Prairie,”
Willamette Week, June 4, 2008, http://wweek.com/portland/article-9089-welcome_to_googleville.html.
40. Rich Miller, “Google & Facebook: A Tale of Two Data Centers,” Data Center Knowledge, August 2, 2010, http://
www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2010/08/10/google-facebook-a-tale-of-two-data-centers/
41. Ibid.
42. Alex Barkinka, “From textiles to tech, the state’s newest crop,” Reese News Lab, April 13, 2011, http://
reesenews.org/2011/04/13/from-textiles-to-tech-the-states-newest-crop/14263/.
43. “Textile & Apparel Overview,” North Carolina in the Global Economy, http://www.ncglobaleconomy.com/textiles/
overview.shtml.
44. Rich Miller, “The Apple-Google Data Center Corridor,” Data Center knowledge, August 4, 2009, http://
www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/08/04/the-apple-google-data-center-corridor/.
45. “2010 Decennial Census from the US Census Bureau,” http://factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/cf/1.0/en/place/Lenoir city,
North Carolina/POPULATION/DECENNIAL_CNT.
46. North Carolina in the Global Economy. Retrieved from http://www.soc.duke.edu/NC_GlobalEconomy/furniture/
workers.shtml
47. Frank Langfitt, Furniture Work Shifts From N.C. To South China. National Public Radio, December 1, 2009, http://
www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121576791&ft=1&f=121637143; Dan Morse, In North Carolina,
Furniture Makers Try to Stay Alive,” Wall Street Journal, February 20, 2004, http://www.wsj.com/articles/
SB107724173388134838; Robert Lacy, “Whither North Carolina Furniture Manufacturing,” Federal Reserve Bank of
Richmond, Working Paper Series, September 2004, https://www.richmondfed.org/~/media/richmondfedorg/publications/
research/working_papers/2004/pdf/wp04-7.pdf
48. Stephen Shankland, “Google gives itself leeway for N.C., data center,” Cnet, December 5, 2008, http://
news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10114349-93.html; Bill Bradley, “Cities Keep Giving Out Money for Server Farms, See
Very Few Jobs in Return,” Next City, August 15, 2013, https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/cities-keep-giving-out-money-forserver-farms-see-few-jobs-in-return.
49. Katherine Noyes, “Google Taps North Carolina for New Datacenter,” E-Commerce Times, January 19, 2007, http://
www.ecommercetimes.com/story/55266.html?wlc=1255976822
50. Getahn Ward, “Google to invest in new Clarksville data center,” Tennessean, December 22, 2015, http://
www.tennessean.com/story/money/real-estate/2015/12/21/google-invest-500m-new-clarksville-data-center/77474046/.
51. Ingrid Burrington, “The Environmental Toll of a Netflix Binge,” Atlantic, December 16, 2015, http://www.theatlantic.com/
technology/archive/2015/12/there-are-no-clean-clouds/420744/.
52. Mark Bergen, “After Gates, Google Splurges on Green With Largest Renewable Energy Buy for Server Farms,” Re/code,
December 3, 2015, http://recode.net/2015/12/03/after-gates-google-splurges-on-green-with-largest-renewable-energy-buyfor-server-farms/.
53. Burrington, “The Environmental Toll of a Netflix Binge.”; Richard Maxwell and Toby Miller, Greening the media (New
York: Oxford Univeristy Press, 2012)
54. “Finnish Paper Industry Uses Court Order to Block Government Protest,” IndustriAll Global Union, http://www.industriallunion.org/archive/icem/finnish-paper-industry-uses-court-order-to-block-government-protest.
55. Terhi Kinnunen and Tarmo Virki, “Stora to cut 985 jobs, close mills despite protests,” Reuter, January 17, 2008, http://
www.reuters.com/article/storaenso-idUSL1732158220080117; “Workers react to threat of closure of paper pulp mills,”
European Foundation, March 3, 2008, http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/observatories/eurwork/articles/workers-react-tothreat-of-closure-of-paper-pulp-mills.
56. David Cord, “Welcome to Finland,” The Helsinki Times, April 9, 2009, http://www.helsinkitimes.fi/helsinkitimes/2009apr/
issue15-95/helsinki_times15-95.pdf.
57. Elina Kervinen, Google is busy turning the old Summa paper mill into a data centre. Helsingin Sanomat International Edition,
October 9, 2010, https://web.archive.org/web/20120610020753/http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Google+is+busy
+turning+the+old+Summa+paper+mill+into+a+data+centre/1135260141400.
58. “Google invests 450M in expansion of Hamina data centre,” Helsinki Times, November 4, 2013, http://
www.helsinkitimes.fi/business/8255-google-invests-450m-in-expansion-of-hamina-data-centre.html.
59. “Revealed: Google’s new mega data center in Finland,” Pingdon, September 15, 2010, http://
royal.pingdom.com/2010/09/15/googles-mega-data-center-in-finland/
60. Ibid.
61. Shiv Mehta, “What's Google Strategy for the Russian Market?” Investopedia, July 28, 2015, http://www.investopedia.com/
articles/investing/072815/whats-google-strategy-russian-market.asp.
P.226
P.227
House,
City,
World,
Nation,
Globe
NATACHA ROUSSEL
This timeline starts in Brussels and is an attempt to situate some of the events
in the life, death and revival of the Mundaneum in relation to both local and
international events. By connecting several geographic locations at different
scales, this small research provokes cqrrelations in time and space that could help
formulate questions about the ways local events repeatedly mirror and
recompose global situations. Hopefully, it can also help to see which
contextual elements in the first iteration of the Mundaneum were different from
the current situation of our information economy.
The ambitious project of the Mundaneum was imagined by Paul Otlet with support of Henri
La Fontaine at the end of the 19th century. At that time colonialism was at its height,
bringing a steady stream of income to occidental countries which created a sense of security
that made everything seem possible. According to some of the most forward thinking persons
of the time it felt as if the intellectual and material benefits of rational thinking could
universally become the source of all goods. Far from any actual move towards independence,
the first tensions between colonial/commercial powers were starting to manifest themselves.
Already some conflicts erupted, mainly to defend commercial interests such as during the
Fashoda crisis and the Boers war. The sense of strength brought to colonial powers by the
large influx of money was however quickly tempered by World War I that was about to
shake up modern European society.
In this context Henri La Fontaine, energised by Paul Otlet's encompassing view of
classification systems and standards, strongly associates the Mundaneum project with an ideal
of world peace. This was a conscious process of thought; they believed that this universal
archive of all knowledge represented a resource for the promotion of education towards the
development of better social relations. While Otlet and La Fontaine were not directly
concerned with economical and colonial issues, their ideals were nevertheless fed by the
wealth of the epoch. The Mundaneum archives were furthermore established with a clear
intention, and a major effort was done to include documents that referred to often neglected
topics or that could be considered as alternative thinking, such as the well known archives of
the feminist movement in Belgium and information on anarchism and pacifism. In line with
the general dynamism caused by a growing wealth in Europe at the turn of the century, the
Mundaneum project seemed to be always growing in size and ambition. It also clearly
appears that the project was embedded in the international and 'politico-economical' context
of its time and in many aspects linked to a larger movement that engaged civil society towards
a proto-structure of networked society. Via the development of infrastructures for
communication and international regulations, Henri La Fontaine was part of several
international initiatives. For example he launched the 'Bureau International de la paix' as
early as 1907 and a few years after, in 1910, the 'International Union of Associations'.
Overall his interventions helped to root the process of archive collection in a larger network
of associations and regulatory structures. Otlet's view of archives and organisation extended
to all domains and La Fontaine asserted that general peace could be achieved through social
development by the means of education and access to knowledge. Their common view was
nurtured by an acute perception of their epoch, they observed and often contributed to most
of the major experiments that were triggered by the ongoing reflection about the new
organisation modalities of society.
The ever ambitious process of building the Mundaneum
From The Itinerant Archive (print):
archives took place in the context of a growing
Museology merged with the
internationalisation of society, while at the same time the
International Institute of Bibliography
social gap was increasing due to the expansion of
(IIB) which had its offices in the
same building. The ever-expanding
industrial society. Furthermore, the internationalisation of
index card catalog had already been
finances and relations did not only concern industrial
accessible to the public since 1914.
society, it also acted as a motivation to structure social
The project would be later known as
the World Palace or Mundaneum.
and political networks, among others via political
Here, Paul Otlet and Henri La
negotiations and the institution of civil society
Fontaine started to work on their
Encyclopaedia Universalis
organisations. Several broad structures dedicated to the
Mundaneum, an illustrated
regulation of international relations were created
encyclopaedia in the form of a mobile
simultaneous with the worldwide spreading of an
exhibition.
industrial economy. They aimed to formulate a world
view that would be based on international agreements
and communication systems regulated by governments and structured via civil society
organisations, rather than leaving everything to individual and commercial initiatives. Otlet
and La Fontaine spent a large part of their lives attempting to formulate a mondial society.
While La Fontaine clearly supported international networks of civil society organisations,
Otlet, according to Vincent Capdepuy[1], was the first person to use the French term
Mondialisation far ahead of his time, advocating what would become after World War II an
important movement that claimed to work for the development of an international regulatory
P.228
P.229
system. Otlet also mentioned that this 'Mondial' process was directly related to the necessity
of a new repartition and the regulation of natural goods (think: diamonds and gold ...), he
writes:
« Un droit nouveau doit remplacer alors le droit ancien pour préparer et organiser une
nouvelle répartition. La “question sociale” a posé le problème à l’intérieur ; “la question
internationale” pose le même problème à l’extérieur entre peuples. Notre époque a
poursuivi une certaine socialisation de biens. […] Il s’agit, si l’on peut employer cette
expression, de socialiser le droit international, comme on a socialisé le droit privé, et de
[2]
prendre à l’égard des richesses naturelles des mesures de “mondialisation”. » .
The approaches of La Fontaine and Otlet already bear certain differences, as one
(Lafontaine) emphasises an organisation based on local civil society structures which implies
direct participation, while the other (Otlet) focuses more on management and global
organisation managed by a regulatory framework. It is interesting to look at these early
concepts that were participating to a larger movement called 'the first mondialisation', and
understand how they differ from current forms of globalisation which equally involve private
and public instances and various infrastructures.
The project of Otlet and Lafontaine took place in an era of international agreements over
communication networks. It is known and often a subject of fascination that the global project
of the Mundaneum also involved the conception of a technical infrastructure and
communication systems that were conceived in between the two World Wars. Some of them
such as the Mondotheque were imagined as prospective possibilities, but others were already
implemented at the time and formed the basis of an international communication network,
consisting of postal services and telegraph networks. It is less acknowledged that the epoch
was also a time of international agreements between countries, structuring and normalising
international life; some of these structures still form the basis of our actual global economy,
but they are all challenged by private capitalist structures. The existing postal and telegraph
networks covered the entire planet, and agreements that regulated the price of the stamp
allowing for postal services to be used internationally, were recent. They certainly were the
first ones during where international agreements regulated commercial interests to the benefit
of individual communication. Henri Lafontaine directly participated in these processes by
asking for the postal franchise to be waived for the transport of documents between
international libraries, to the benefit of among others the Mundaneum. Lafontaine was also
an important promoter of larger international movements that involved civil society
organisations; he was the main responsible for the 'Union internationale des associations', that
acted as a network of information-sharing, setting up modalities for exchange to the general
benefit of civil society. Furthermore, concerns were raised to rethink social organisation that
was harmed by industrial economy and this issue was addressed in Brussels by the brand
new discipline of sociology. The 'Ecole de Bruxelles'[3] in which Otlet and La Fontaine both
took part was already very early on trying to formulate a legal discourse that could help
address social inequalities, and eventually come up with regulations that could help 'reengineer' social organisation.
The Mundaneum project differentiates itself from contemporary enterprises such as Google,
not only by its intentions, but also by its organisational context as it clearly inscribed itself in
an international regulatory framework that was dedicated to the promotion of local civil
society. How can we understand the similarities and differences between the development of
the Mundaneum project and the current knowledge economy? The timeline below attempts
to re-situate the different events related to the rise and fall of the Mundaneum in order to help
situate the differences between past and contemporary processes.
DATE
EVENT
TYPE
1865
The International Union of telegraph STANDARD
, is set up it is an important element of the
organisation of a mondial communication
network and will further become the
SCALE
WORLD
International Telecommunication
[4]
Union (UTI) that is still active in regulating
and standardizing radio-communication.
1870
Franco-Prussian war.
EVENT
WORLD
1874
The ONU creates the General Postal
[5]
Union and aims to federate international
postal distribution.
STANDARD
WORLD
1875
General Conference on Weights and
Measures in Sèvres, France.
STANDARD
WORLD
1882
Triple Alliance,
EVENT
WORLD
1889
Henri Lafontaine creates La Société Belge EVENT
de l'arbitrage et de la paix.
NATION
1890's
First colonial wars (Fachoda crisis, Boers war EVENT
...).
WORLD
1890
Henri Lafontaine meets Paul Otlet.
PERSON
CITY
1891
Franco-Russian entente', preliminary to
the Triple entente that will be signed in
1907.
EVENT
WORLD
1891
Henri Lafontaine publishes an essay Pour une PUBLICATION NATION
bibliographie de la paix.
P.230
renewed in 1902.
P.231
1893
Otlet and Lafontaine start together the Office ASSOCIATION CITY
International de Bibliologie
Sociologique (OIBS).
1894
Henri Lafontaine is elected senator of the
province of Hainaut and later senator of the
province of Liège-Brabant.
EVENT
NATION
1895 2-4 First Conférence de Bibliographie at
ASSOCIATION CITY
September which it is decided to create the Institut
International de Bibliographie (IIB)
founded by Henri La Fontaine.
WORLD
1900
Congrès bibliographique
international in Paris.
EVENT
1903
Creation of the international Women's
suffrage alliance (IWSA) that will later
become the International Alliance of
Women.
ASSOCIATION WORLD
1904
Entente cordiale
between France and
England which defines their mutual zone of
colonial influence in Africa.
EVENT
WORLD
1905
First Moroccan crisis.
EVENT
WORLD
1907 June Otlet and Lafontaine organise a Central
ASSOCIATION CITY
Office for International Associations
that will become the International Union
of Associations (IUA) at the first
Congrès mondial des associations
internationales in Brussels in May 1910.
1907
Henri Lafontaine is elected president of the
Bureau international de la paix that
he previously initiated.
1908 July Congrès bibliographique
international in Brussels.
PERSON
NATION
EVENT
CITY
ASSOCIATION WORLD
1910 May Official Creation of the International
union of associations (IUA). In 1914,
it federates 230 organizations, a little more
than half of them still exist. The IUA promotes
internationalist aspirations and desire for peace.
ASSOCIATION WORLD
1910
25-27
August
Le Congrès International de
Bibliographie et de Documentation
1911
ASSOCIATION WORLD
More than 600 people and institutions are
listed as IIB members or refer to their methods,
specifically the UDC.
1913
Henri Lafontaine is awarded the Nobel Price EVENT
for Peace.
WORLD
1914
Germany declares war to France and invades
Belgium.
WORLD
1916
PUBLICATION WORLD
Lafontaine publishes The great solution:
magnissima charta while in exile in the United
States.
1919
deals with issues of international cooperation
between non-governmental organizations and
with the structure of universal documentation.
Opening of the Mundaneum or Palais
at the Cinquantenaire park.
EVENT
EVENT
CITY
Mondial
1919 June The Traité de Versailles marks the end EVENT
of World War I and creation of the Societé
28
Des Nations (SDN) that will later become
the United Nations (UN).
WORLD
ASSOCIATION NATION
1924
Creation (within the IIB), of the Central
Classification Commission focusing on
development of the Universal Decimal
Classification (UDC).
1931
The IIB becomes the International
Institute of documentation (IID) and
in 1938 and is named International
Federation of documentation (IDF).
ASSOCIATION WORLD
1934
Publication of Otlet's book Traité de
documentation.
PUBLICATION WORLD
1934
The Mundaneum is closed after a governmental MOVE
decision. A part of the archives are moved to
Rue Fétis 44, Brussels, home of Paul Otlet.
the
1939
Invasion of Poland by Germany, start of World EVENT
September War II.
P.232
HOUSE
WORLD
P.233
1941
MOVE
Some files from the Mundaneum collections
concerning international associations, are
transferred to Germany. They are assumed to
have propaganda value.
WORLD
1944
Death of Paul Otlet. He is buried in Etterbeek EVENT
cemetery.
CITY
1947
The International Telecomunication
Union (UTI) is attached to the UN.
STANDARD
GLOBE
Two separate ITU committees, the
STANDARD
GLOBE
STANDARD
GLOBE
1956
Consultive Committee for
International Telephony (CCIF) and the
Consultive Committee for
International Telegraphy (CCIT) are
joined to form the CCITT, an institute to create
standards, recommendations and models for
telecommunications.
1963
American Standard Code for
Information Interchange (ASCII)
developed.
is
1966
The ARPANET project is initiated.
1974
Telenet,
1986
First meeting of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF) , the US-located informal
STANDARD
GLOBE
1992
Creation of The Internet Society, an
American association with international
vocation.
STANDARD
WORLD
1993
Elio Di Rupo organises the transport of the
Mundaneum archives from Brussels to 76 rue
de Nimy in Mons.
MOVE
NATION
2012
Failure of the World Conference on
STANDARD
GLOBE
founded.
ASSOCIATION NATION
the first public version of the Internet STANDARD
WORLD
organization that promotes open standards
along the lines of "rough consensus and running
code".
International Telecommunications
(WCIT) to reach an international agreement
on Internet regulation.
1. https://cybergeo.revues.org/24903%7CVincent Capdepuy, In the prism of the words. Globalization and the philological
argument
2. Paul Otlet, 1916, Les Problèmes internationaux et la Guerre, les conditions et les facteurs de la vie internationale, Genève/
Paris, Kundig/Rousseau, p. 76.
3. http://www.philodroit.be/IMG/pdf/bf_-_le_droit_global_selon_ecole_de_bruxelles_-2014-3.pdf?lang=fr
4. http://www.itu.int/en/Pages/default.aspx
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union
P.234
P.235
The
Smart
City City of
Knowledge
DENNIS POHL
In Paul Otlet's words the Mundaneum is “an idea, an institution, a method, a
material corpus of works and collections, a building, a network.” It became a
lifelong project that he tried to establish together with Henri La Fontaine in
the beginning of the 20th century. The collaboration with Le Corbusier was
limited to the architectural draft of a centre of information, science, and
education, leading to the idea of a “World Civic Center” in Geneva.
Nevertheless the dialectical discourse between both Utopians did not restrict
itself to commissioned design, but reveals the relation between a specific
positivist conception of knowledge and architecture; the system of information
and the spatial distribution according to efficiency principles. A notion that lays
the foundation for what is now called the Smart City.
[1]
FORMULATING THE MUNDANEUM
“We’re on the verge of a historic moment for cities”
[2]
“We are at the beginning of a historic transformation in cities. At a time when the
concerns about urban equity, costs, health and the environment are intensifying,
unprecedented technological change is going to enable cities to be more efficient,
[3]
responsive, flexible and resilient.”
P.236
P.237
In 1927 Le Corbusier participated in the
design competition for the headquarters of
the League of Nations, but his designs were
rejected. It was then that he first met his
later cher ami Paul Otlet. Both were already
familiar with each other’s ideas and writings,
as evidenced by their use of schemes, but
also through the epistemic assumptions that
underlie their world views.
OTLET, SCHEME AND REALITY
CORBUSIER, CURRENT AND IDEAL
TRAFFIC CIRCULATION
Before meeting Le Corbusier, Otlet was
fascinated by the idea of urbanism as a
science, which systematically organizes all
elements of life in infrastructures of flows.
He was convinced to work with Van der
Swaelmen, who had already planned a
world city on the site of Tervuren near
Brussels in 1919.[4]
VAN DER SWAELMEN - TERVUREN, 1916
ends.
For Otlet it was the first time that two
notions from different practices came
together, namely an environment ordered
and structured according to principles of
rationalization and taylorization. On the one
hand, rationalization as an epistemic practice
that reduces all relationships to those of
definable means and ends. On the other
hand, taylorization as the possibility to
analyze and synthesize workflows according
to economic efficiency and productivity.
Nowadays, both principles are used
synonymously: if all modes of production are
reduced to labour, then its efficiency can be
rationally determined through means and
“By improving urban technology, it’s possible to significantly improve the lives of
billions of people around the world. […] we want to supercharge existing efforts in
areas such as housing, energy, transportation and government to solve real problems
[5]
that city-dwellers face every day.”
In the meantime, in 1922, Le Corbusier developed his theoretical model of the Plan Voisin,
which served as a blueprint for a vision of Paris with 3 million inhabitants. In the 1925
publication Urbanisme his main objective is to construct “a theoretically water-tight formula
to arrive at the fundamental principles of modern town planning.”[6] For Le Corbusier
“statistics are merciless things,” because they “show the past and foreshadow the future”[7],
therefore such a formula must be based on the objectivity of diagrams, data and maps.
CORBUSIER - SCHEME FOR THE TRAFFIC
CIRCULATION
P.238
P.239
OTLET'S FORMULA
Moreover, they “give us an exact picture of
our present state and also of former states;
[...] (through statistics) we are enabled to
penetrate the future and make those truths
our own which otherwise we could only
have guessed at.”[8] Based on the analysis of
statistical proofs he concluded that the
ancient city of Paris had to be demolished in
order to be replaced by a new one.
Nevertheless, he didn’t arrive at a concrete
formula but rather at a rough scheme.
A formula that includes every atomic entity
was instead developed by his later friend Otlet as an answer to the question he posed in
Monde, on whether the world can be expressed by a determined unifying entity. This is
Otlet’s dream: a “permanent and complete representation of the entire world,”[9] located in
one place.
Early on Otlet understood the active potential of Architecture and Urbanism as a dispositif, a
strategic apparatus, that places an individual in a specific environment and shapes his
understanding of the world.[10] A world that can be determined by ascertainable facts through
knowledge. He thought of his Traité de documentation: le livre sur le livre, théorie et pratique
as an “architecture of ideas”, a manual to collect and organize the world's knowledge, hand in
hand with contemporary architectural developments. As new modernist forms and use of
materials propagated the abundance of decorative
From A bag but is language nothing
elements, Otlet believed in the possibility of language as
of words:
a model of 'raw data', reducing it to essential information
and unambiguous facts, while removing all inefficient
Tim Berners-Lee: [...] Make a
beautiful website, but first give us the
assets of ambiguity or subjectivity.
“Information, from which has been removed all dross and
foreign elements, will be set out in a quite analytical way.
It will be recorded on separate leaves or cards rather than
being confined in volumes,” which will allow the
standardized annotation of hypertext for the Universal
Decimal Classification (UDC).[11] Furthermore, the
“regulation through architecture and its tendency of a
total urbanism would help towards a better understanding
of the book Traité de documentation and it's right
functional and holistic desiderata.”[12] An abstraction
would enable Otlet to constitute the “equation of
urbanism” as a type of sociology (S): U = u(S), because
according to his definition, urbanism “is an art of
unadulterated data, we want the data.
We want unadulterated data. OK, we
have to ask for raw data now. And
I'm going to ask you to practice that,
OK? Can you say "raw"?
Audience: Raw.
Tim Berners-Lee: Can you say
"data"?
Audience: Data.
TBL: Can you say "now"?
Audience: Now!
TBL: Alright, "raw data now"!
[...]
From La ville intelligente - Ville de la
connaissance:
Étant donné que les nouvelles formes
modernistes et l'utilisation de
matériaux propageaient l'abondance
d'éléments décoratifs, Paul Otlet
croyait en la possibilité du langage
comme modèle de « données brutes »,
le réduisant aux informations
essentielles et aux faits sans ambiguïté,
distributing public space in order to raise general human happiness; urbanization is the result
of all activities which a society employs in order to reach its proposed goal; [and] a material
expression of its organization.”[13] The scientific position, which determines all characteristic
values of a certain region by a systematic classification and observation, was developed by the
Scottish biologist and town planner Patrick Geddes, who Paul Otlet invited to present his
Town Planning Exhibition to an international audience at the 1913 world exhibition in
Gent.[14] What Geddes inevitably takes further is the positivist belief in a totality of science,
which he unfolds from the ideas of Auguste Comte, Frederic Le Play and Elisée Reclus in
order to reach a unified understanding of an urban development in a special context. This
position would allow to represent the complexity of an inhabited environment through data.[15]
THINKING THE MUNDANEUM
The only person that Otlet considered capable of the architectural realization of the
Mundaneum was Le Corbusier, whom he approached for the first time in spring 1928. In
one of the first letters he addressed the need to link “the idea and the building, in all its
symbolic representation. […] Mundaneum opus maximum.” Aside from being a centre of
documentation, information, science and education, the complex should link the Union of
International Associations (UIA), which was founded by La Fontaine and Otlet in 1907,
and the League of Nations. “A material and moral representation of The greatest Society of
the nations (humanity);” an international city located on an extraterritorial area in Geneva.[16]
Despite their different backgrounds, they easily understood each other, since they “did
frequently use similar terms such as plan, analysis, classification, abstraction, standardization
and synthesis, not only to bring conceptual order into their disciplines and knowledge
organization, but also in human action.”[17] Moreover, the appearance of common terms in
their most significant publications is striking. Such as spirit, mankind, elements, work, system
and history, just to name a few. These circumstances led both Utopians to think the
Mundaneum as a system, rather than a singular central type of building; it was meant to
include as many resources in the development process as possible. Because the Mundaneum
is “an idea, an institution, a method, a material corpus of works and collections, a building, a
network,”[18] it had to be conceptualized as an “organic plan with the possibility to expand on
different scales with the multiplication of each part.”[19] The possibility of expansion and an
organic redistribution of elements adapted to new necessities and needs, is what guarantees
the system efficiency, namely by constantly integrating more resources. By designing and
standardizing forms of life up to the smallest element, modernism propagated a new form of
living which would ensure the utmost efficiency. Otlet supported and encouraged Le
Corbusier with his words: “The twentieth century is called upon to build a whole new
civilization. From efficiency to efficiency, from rationalization to rationalization, it must so raise
itself that it reaches total efficiency and rationalization. […] Architecture is one of the best
bases not only of reconstruction (the deforming and skimpy name given to the whole of postwar activities) but of intellectual and social construction to which our era should dare to lay
claim.”[20] Like the Wohnmaschine, in Corbusier’s famous housing project Unité d'habitation,
P.240
P.241
the distribution of elements is shaped according to man's needs. The premise which underlies
this notion is that man's needs and desires can be determined, normalized and standardized
following geometrical models of objectivity.
“making transportation more efficient and lowering the cost of living, reducing energy
[21]
usage and helping government operate more efficiently”
BUILDING THE MUNDANEUM
In the first working phase, from March to September 1928, the plans for the Mundaneum
seemed more a commissioned work than a collaboration. In the 3rd person singular, Otlet
submitted descriptions and organizational schemes which would represent the institutional
structures in a diagrammatic manner. In exchange, Le Corbusier drafted the architectural
plans and detailed descriptions, which led to the publication N° 128 Mundaneum, printed
by International Associations in Brussels.[22] Le Corbusier seemed a little less enthusiastic
about the Mundaneum project than Otlet, mainly because of his scepticism towards the
League of Nations, which he called a “misguided” and “pre-machinist creation.”[23] The
rejection of his proposal for the Palace for the League of Nations in 1927, expressed with
anger in a public announcement, might also play a role. However, the second phase, from
September 1928 to August 1929, was marked by a strong friendship evidenced by the rise
of the international debate after their first publications, letters starting with cher ami and their
agreement to advance the project to the next level by including more stakeholders and
developing the Cité mondiale. This led to the second publication by Paul Otlet, La Cité
mondiale in February 1929, which unexpectedly traumatized the diplomatic environment in
Geneva. Although both tried to organize personal meetings with key stakeholders, the project
didn't find support for its realization, especially after Switzerland had withdrawn its offer of
providing extraterritorial land for Cité mondiale. Instead, Le Corbusier focussed on his Ville
Radieuse concept, which was presented at the 3rd CIAM meeting in Brussels in 1930.[24]
He considered Cité mondiale as “a closed case”, and withdrew himself from the political
environment by considering himself without any political color, “since the groups that gather
around our ideas are, militaristic bourgeois, communists, monarchists, socialists, radicals,
League of Nations and fascists. When all colors are mixed, only white is the result. That
stands for prudence, neutrality, decantation and the human search for truth.”[25]
GOVERNING THE MUNDANEUM
Le Corbusier considered himself and his work “apolitical” or “above politics”.[26] Otlet,
however, was more aware of the political force of his project. “Yet it is important to predict.
To know in order to predict and to predict in order to control, was Comte's positive
philosophy. Prediction doesn't cost a thing, was added by a master of contemporary urbanism
(Le Corbusier).”[27] Lobbying for the Cité mondiale project, That prediction doesn't cost
anything and is “preparing the ways for the coming years”, Le Corbusier wrote to Arthur
Fontaine and Albert Thomas from the International Labor Organization that prediction is
free and “preparing the ways for the coming years”.[28] Free because statistical data is always
available, but he didn't seem to consider that prediction is a form of governing. A similar
premise underlies the present domination of the smart city ideologies, where large amounts of
data are used to predict for the sake of efficiency. Although most of the actors behind these
ideas consider themselves apolitical, the governmental aspect is more than obvious. A form of
control and government, which is not only biopolitical but rather epistemic. The data is not
only used to standardize units for architecture, but also to determine categories of knowledge
that restrict life to the normality of what can be classified. What becomes clear in this
juxtaposition of Le Corbusier's and Paul Otlet's work is that the standardization of
architecture goes hand in hand with an epistemic standardization because it limits what can
be thought, experienced and lived to what is already there. This architecture has to be
considered as an “epistemic object”, which exemplifies the cultural logic of its time.[29] By its
presence it brings the abstract cultural logic underlying its conception into the everyday
experience, and becomes with material, form and function an actor that performs an epistemic
practice on its inhabitants and users. In this case: the conception that everything can be
known, represented and (pre)determined through data.
P.242
P.243
1. Paul Otlet, Monde: essai d'universalisme - Connaissance du Monde, Sentiment du Monde, Action organisee et Plan du Monde
, (Bruxelles: Editiones Mundeum 1935): 448.
2. Steve Lohr, Sidewalk Labs, a Start-Up Created by Google, Has Bold Aims to Improve City Living New, in York Times
11.06.15, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/11/technology/sidewalk-labs-a-start-up-created-by-google-has-bold-aims-toimprove-city-living.html?_r=0, quoted here is Dan Doctoroff, founder of Google Sidewalk Labs
3. Dan Doctoroff, 10.06.2015, http://www.sidewalkinc.com/relevant
4. Giuliano Gresleri and Dario Matteoni. La Città Mondiale: Andersen, Hébrard, Otlet, Le Corbusier. (Venezia: Marsilio,
1982): 128; See also: L. Van der Swaelmen, Préliminaires d'art civique (Leynde 1916): 164 – 299.
5. Larry Page, Press release, 10.06.2015, http://www.sidewalkinc.com/
6. Le Corbusier, “A Contemporary City” in The City of Tomorrow and its Planning, (New York: Dover Publications 1987):
164.
7. ibid.: 105 & 126.
8. ibid.: 108.
9. Rayward, W Boyd, “Visions of Xanadu: Paul Otlet (1868–1944) and Hypertext” in Journal of the American Society for
Information Science, (Volume 45, Issue 4, May 1994): 235.
10. The french term dispositif or translated apparatus, refers to Michel Foucault's description of a merely strategic function, “a
thoroughly heterogeneous ensemble consisting of discourses, institutions, architectural forms regulatory decisions, laws,
administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophical, moral and philanthropic propositions – in short, the said as much as
the unsaid.” This distinction allows to go beyond the mere object, and rather deconstruct all elements involved in the production
conditions and relate them to the distribution of power. See: Michel Foucault, “Confessions of the Flesh (1977) interview”, in
Power/Knowledge Selected Interviews and Other Writings, Colin Gordon (Ed.), (New York: Pantheon Books 1980): 194 –
200.
11. Bernd Frohmann, “The role of facts in Paul Otlet’s modernist project of documentation”, in European Modernism and the
Information Society, Rayward, W.B. (Ed.), (London: Ashgate Publishers 2008): 79.
12. “La régularisation de l’architecture et sa tendance à l’urbanisme total aident à mieux comprendre le livre et ses propres
desiderata fonctionnels et intégraux.” See: Paul Otlet, Traité de documentation, (Bruxelles: Mundaneum, Palais Mondial,
1934): 329.
13. “L'urbanisme est l'art d'aménager l'espace collectif en vue d'accroîte le bonheur humain général; l'urbanisation est le résulat de
toute l'activité qu'une Société déploie pour arriver au but qu'elle se propose; l'expression matérielle (corporelle) de son
organisation.” ibid.: 205.
14. Thomas Pearce, Mettre des pierres autour des idées, Paul Otlet, de Cité Mondiale en de modernistische stedenbouw in de jaren
1930, (KU Leuven: PhD Thesis 2007): 39.
15. Volker Welter, Biopolis Patrick Geddes and the City of Life. (Cambridge, Mass: MIT 2003).
16. Letter from Paul Otlet to Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, Brussels 2nd April 1928. See: Giuliano Gresleri and Dario
Matteoni. La Città Mondiale: Andersen, Hébrard, Otlet, Le Corbusier. (Venezia: Marsilio, 1982): 221-223.
17. W. Boyd Rayward (Ed.), European Modernism and the Information Society. (London: Ashgate Publishers 2008): 129.
18. “Le Mundaneum est une Idée, une Institution, une Méthode, un Corps matériel de traveaux et collections, un Edifice, un
Réseau.” See: Paul Otlet, Monde: essai d'universalisme - Connaissance du Monde, Sentiment du Monde, Action organisee et
Plan du Monde, (Bruxelles: Editiones Mundeum 1935): 448.
19. Giuliano Gresleri and Dario Matteoni. La Città Mondiale: Andersen, Hébrard, Otlet, Le Corbusier. (Venezia: Marsilio,
1982): 223.
20. Le Corbusier, Radiant City, (New York: The Orion Press 1964): 27.
21. http://www.sidewalkinc.com/
22. Giuliano Gresleri and Dario Matteoni. La Città Mondiale: Andersen, Hébrard, Otlet, Le Corbusier. (Venezia: Marsilio,
1982): 128
23. ibid.: 232.
24. ibid.: 129.
25. ibid.: 255.
26. Eric Paul Mumford, The CIAM Discourse on Urbanism, 1928-1960, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002): 20.
27. “Savoir, pour prévoir afin de pouvoir, a été la lumineuse formule de Comte. Prévoir ne coûte rien, a ajouté un maître de
l'urbanisme contemporain (Le Corbusier).” See: Paul Otlet, Monde: essai d'universalisme - Connaissance du Monde,
Sentiment du Monde, Action organisee et Plan du Monde, (Bruxelles: Editiones Mundeum 1935): 407.
28. Giuliano Gresleri and Dario Matteoni. La Città Mondiale: Andersen, Hébrard, Otlet, Le Corbusier. (Venezia: Marsilio,
1982): 241.
29. Considering architecture as an object of knowledge formation, the term “epistemic object” by the German philosopher Günter
Abel, helps bring forth the epistemic characteristic of architecture. Epistemic objects according to Abel are these, on which our
knowledge and empiric curiosity are focused. They are objects that perform an active contribution to what can be thought and
how it can be thought. Moreover because one cannot avoid architecture, it determines our boundaries (of thinking). See:
Günter Abel, Epistemische Objekte – was sind sie und was macht sie so wertvoll?, in: Hingst, Kai-Michael; Liatsi, Maria
(ed.), (Tübingen: Pragmata, 2008).
P.244
P.245
La ville
intelligente
- Ville
de la
connaissance
DENNIS POHL
Selon les mots de Paul Otlet, le Mundaneum est « une idée, une institution,
une méthode, un corpus matériel de travaux et de collections, une construction,
un réseau. » Il est devenu le projet d'une vie qu'il a tenté de mettre sur pied
avec Henri La Fontaine au début du 20e siècle. La collaboration avec Le
Corbusier se limitait au projet architectural d'un centre d'informations, de
science et d'éducation qui conduira à l'idée d'un « World Civic Center », à
Genève. Cependant, le discours dialectique entre les deux utopistes ne s'est
pas limité à une réalisation commissionnée, il a révélé la relation entre une
conception positiviste spécifique de la connaissance et l'architecture ; le
système de l'information et la distribution spatiale d'après des principes
d'efficacité. Une notion qui a apporté la base de ce qu'on appelle aujourd'hui
la Ville intelligente.
[1]
FORMULER LE MONDANEUM
[2]
« Nous sommes à l'aube d'un moment historique pour les villes » « Nous sommes à
l'aube d'une transformation historique des villes À une époque où les préoccupations
pour l'égalité urbaine, les coûts, la santé et l'environnement augmentent, un
changement technologique sans précédent va permettre aux villes d'être plus efficaces,
[3]
réactives, flexibles et résistantes. »
P.246
P.247
OTLET, SCHÉMA ET RÉALITÉ
CORBUSIER, CIRCULATION DU TRAFIC
ACTUELLE ET IDÉALE
En 1927, Le Corbusier a participé à une
compétition de design pour le siège de la
Ligue des nations. Cependant, ses
propositions furent rejetées. C'est à ce
moment qu'il a rencontré, pour la première
fois, son cher ami Paul Otlet. Tous deux
connaissaient déjà les idées et les écrits de
l'autre, comme le montre leur utilisation des
plans, mais également les suppositions
épistémiques à la base de leur vues sur le
monde. Avant de rencontrer Le Corbusier,
Paul Otlet était fasciné par l'idée d'un
urbanisme scientifique qui organise
systématiquement tous les éléments de la vie
par des infrastructures de flux. Il avait été
convaincu de travailler avec Van der
Saelmen, qui avait déjà prévu une ville
monde sur le site de Tervuren, près de
Bruxelles, en 1919.[4]
Pour Paul Otlet, c'était la première fois que
deux notions de pratiques différentes se
rassemblaient, à savoir un environnement
ordonné et structuré d'après des principes de
rationalisation et de taylorisme. D'un côté, la
rationalisation: une pratique épistémique qui
réduit toutes les relations à des moyens et
des fins définissables. D'un autre, le
taylorisme: une possibilité d'analyse et de
synthèse des flux de travail fonctionnant
selon les règles de l'efficacité économique et
VAN DER SWAELMEN - TERVUREN, 1916
productive. De nos jours, les deux principes
sont considérés comme des synonymes : si
tous les modes de production sont réduits au
travail, alors l'efficacité peut être rationnellement déterminée à par les moyens et les fins.
« En améliorant la technologie urbaine, il est possible d'améliorer de manière
significative la vie de milliards de gens dans le monde. […] nous voulons encourager
les efforts existants dans des domaines comme l'hébergement, l'énergie, le transport et le
gouvernement afin de résoudre des problèmes réels auxquels les citadins font face au
[5]
quotidien. »
Pendant ce temps, en 1922, Le Corbusier avait développé son modèle théorique du Plan
Voisin qui a servi de projet pour une vision de Paris avec trois millions d'habitants. Dans la
publication de 1925 d'Urbanisme, son objectif principal est la construction « d'un édifice
théoretique rigoureux, à formuler des principes fondamentaux d'urbanisme moderne. »[6] Pour
Le Corbusier, « la statistique est implacable », car « la statistique montre le passé et esquisse
l’avenir »[7], dès lors, une telle formule doit être basée sur l'objectivité des diagrammes, des
données et des cartes.
P.248
P.249
De plus, « la statisique donne la situation
exacte de l’heure présente, mais aussi les
états antérieurs ; [...] (à travers les
statistiques) nous pouvons pénétrer dans
l’avenir et aquérir des certitudes anticipées ».
[8]
À partir de l'analyse des preuves
statistiques, il conclut que la vieille ville de
Paris devait être démolie afin d'être
remplacée par une nouvelle. Cependant, il
n'est pas arrivé à une formule concrète, mais
à un plan approximatif.
CORBUSIER - SCHÉMA POUR UNE
CIRCULATION DU TRAFIC
À la place, une formule comprenant chaque
entité atomique fut développée par son ami
Paul Otlet en réponse à la question qu'il
publia dans Monde pour savoir si le monde
pouvait être exprimé par une entité
unificatrice déterminée. Voici le rêve de
Paul Otlet : une « représentation
permanente et complète du monde entier »[9]
dans un même endroit.
Paul Otlet comprit rapidement le potentiel
actif de l'architecture et de l'urbanisme en
LA FORMULE D'OTLET
tant que dispositif stratégique qui place un
individu dans un environnement spécifique
et façonne sa compréhension du monde.[10]
Un monde qui peut être déterminé par des faits vérifiables à travers la connaissance. Il a
pensé son Traité de documentation: le livre sur le livre, théorie et pratique comme une
« architecture des idées », un manuel pour collecter et organiser la connaissance du monde
en l'association avec les développements architecturaux contemporains.
Étant donné que les nouvelles formes modernistes et
l'utilisation de matériaux propageaient l'abondance
d'éléments décoratifs, Paul Otlet croyait en la possibilité
du langage comme modèle de « données brutes », le
réduisant aux informations essentielles et aux faits sans
ambiguïté, tout en se débarrassant de tous les éléments
inefficaces et subjectifs.
From A bag but is language nothing
of words:
Tim Berners-Lee: [...] Make a
beautiful website, but first give us the
unadulterated data, we want the data.
We want unadulterated data. OK, we
have to ask for raw data now. And
I'm going to ask you to practice that,
OK? Can you say "raw"?
« Des informations, dont tout déchet et élément étrangers
Audience: Raw.
ont été supprimés, seront présentées d'une manière assez
analytique. Elles seront encodées sur différentes feuilles
Tim Berners-Lee: Can you say
"data"?
ou cartes plutôt que confinées dans des volumes, » ce qui
permettra l'annotation standardisée de l'hypertexte pour
Audience: Data.
la classification décimale universelle ( CDU ).[11] De plus,
TBL: Can you say "now"?
la « régulation à travers l'architecture et sa tendance à un
urbanisme total favoriseront une meilleure compréhension Audience: Now!
du livre Traité de documentation ainsi que du désidérata
TBL: Alright, "raw data now"!
fonctionnel et holistique adéquat. »[12] Une abstraction
[...]
permettrait à Paul Otlet de constituer « l'équation de
l'urbanisme » comme un type de sociologie : U = u(S),
car selon sa définition, l'urbanisme « L'urbanisme est l'art
From The Smart City - City of
d'aménager l'espace collectif en vue d'accroître le
Knowledge:
As new modernist forms and use of
bonheur humain général ; l'urbanisation est le résultat de
materials propagated the abundance
toute l'activité qu'une Société déploie pour arriver au but
of decorative elements, Otlet believed
qu'elle se propose ; l'expression matérielle (corporelle)
in the possibility of language as a
model of 'raw data', reducing it to
de son organisation. »[13] La position scientifique qui
essential information and
détermine toutes les valeurs caractéristiques d'une
unambiguous facts, while removing all
certaine région par une classification et une observation
inefficient assets of ambiguity or
subjectivity.
systémiques a été avancée par le biologiste écossais et
planificateur de villes, Patrick Geddes, qui fut invité par
Paul Otlet pour l'exposition universelle de 1913 à Gand
afin de présenter à un public international sa Town Planning Exhibition.[14] Patrick Geddes
allait inévitablement plus loin dans sa croyance positiviste en une totalité de la science, une
croyance qui découle des idées d'Auguste Compte, de Frederic Le Play et d'Elisée Reclus,
pour atteindre une compréhension unifiée du développement urbain dans un contexte
spécifique. Cette position permettrait de représenter à travers des données la complexité d'un
environnement habité.[15]
PENSER LE MUNDANEUM
La seule personne que Paul Otlet estimait capable de réaliser l'architecture du Mundaneum
était Le Corbusier, qu'il approcha pour la première fois au printemps 1928. Dans une de
P.250
P.251
ses premières lettres, il évoqua le besoin de lier « l'idée et la construction, dans toute sa
représentation symbolique. […] Mundaneum opus maximum.” En plus d'être un centre de
documentation, d'informations, de science et d'éducation, le complexe devrait lier l'Union des
associations internationales (UAI), fondée par La Fontaine et Otlet en 1907, et la Ligue
des nations. « Une représentation morale et matérielle de The greatest Society of the nations
(humanité) ; » une ville internationale située dans une zone extraterritoriale à Genève.[16]
Malgré les différents milieux dont ils étaient issus, ils pouvaient facilement se comprendre
puisqu'ils « utilisaient fréquemment des termes similaires comme plan, analyse, classification,
abstraction, standardisation et synthèse, non seulement pour un ordre conceptuel dans leurs
disciplines et l'organisation de leur connaissance, mais également dans l'action humaine. »[17]
De plus, l'apparence des termes dans leurs publications les plus importantes est frappante.
Pour n'en nommer que quelques-uns : esprit, humanité, travail, système et histoire. Ces
circonstances ont conduit les deux utopistes à penser le Mundaneum comme un système
plutôt que comme un type de construction central singulier ; le processus de développement
cherchait à inclure autant de ressources que possible. Puisque « Le Mundaneum est une
Idée, une Institution, une Méthode, un Corps matériel de travaux et collections, un Édifice,
un Réseau. »[18] il devait être conceptualisé comme un « plan organique avec possibilité
d'expansion à différentes échelles grâce à la multiplication de chaque partie. »[19] La
possibilité d'expansion et la redistribution organique des éléments adaptées à de nouvelles
nécessités et besoins garantit l'efficacité du système, à savoir en intégrant plus de ressources
en permanence. En concevant et normalisant des formes de vie, même pour le plus petit
élément, le modernisme a propagé une nouvelle forme de vie qui garantirait l'efficacité
optimale. Paul Otlet a soutenu et encouragé Le Corbusier avec ces mots : « Le vingtième
siècle est appelé à construire une toute nouvelle civilisation. De l'efficacité à l'efficacité, de la
rationalisation à la rationalisation, il doit s'élever et atteindre l'efficacité et la rationalisation
totales. […] L'architecture est l'une des meilleures bases, non seulement de la reconstruction
(le nom étriqué et déformant donné à toutes les activités d'après-guerre), mais à la
construction intellectuelle et sociale à laquelle notre ère devrait oser prétendre. »[20] Comme la
Wohnmaschine, dans le célèbre projet d'habitation du Corbusier, Unité d'habitation, la
distribution des éléments est établie en fonction des besoins de l'homme. Le principe qui sous
tend cette notion est l'idée que les besoins et les désirs de l'homme peuvent être déterminés,
normalisés et standardisés selon des modèles géométriques d'objectivité.
« rendre le transport plus efficace et diminuer le coût de la vie, la consommation
[21]
d'énergie et aider le gouvernement à fonctionner plus efficacement »
CONSTRUIRE LE MUNDANEUM
Dans la première phase de travail, de mars à septembre 1928, les plans du Mundaneum
ressemblaient plus à un travail commissionné qu'à une collaboration. À la troisième personne
du singulier, Paul Otlet a soumis des descriptions et des projets organisationnels qui
représenteraient les structures institutionnelles de manière schématique. En échange, Le
Corbusier a réalisé le brouillon des plans architecturaux et les descriptions détaillées, ce qui
conduisit à la publication du N° 128 Mundaneum, imprimée par Associations
Internationales à Bruxelles.[22] Le Corbusier semblait un peu moins enthousiaste que Paul
Otlet concernant le Mundaneum, principalement à cause de son scepticisme vis-à-vis de la
Ligue des nations dont il disait qu'elle était « fourvoyée » et « une création prémachiniste ».[23]
Le rejet de sa proposition pour le palais de la Ligue des nations en 1927, exprimé avec
colère dans une déclaration publique, jouait peut-être également un rôle. Cependant, la
seconde phase, de septembre 1928 à août 1929, fut marquée par une amitié solide dont
témoigne l'amplification du débat international après leurs premières publications, des lettres
commençant par « cher ami », leur accord concernant l'avancement du projet au prochain
niveau avec l'intégration d'actionnaires et le développement de la Cité mondiale. Cela
conduisit à la seconde publication de Paul Otlet, la Cité mondiale, en février 1929, qui
traumatisa de manière inattendue l'environnement diplomatique de Genève. Même si tous
deux tentèrent d'organiser des entretiens personnels avec des acteurs clés, le projet ne trouva
pas de soutien pour sa réalisation, d'autant moins après le retrait de la proposition de la
Suisse de fournir un territoire extraterritorial pour la Cité mondiale. À la place, Le Corbusier
s'est concentré sur son concept de la Ville Radieuse qui fut présenté lors du 3e CIAM à
Bruxelles, en 1930.[24] Il considérait la Cité mondiale comme « une affaire classée » et s'était
retiré de l'environnement politique en considérant qu'il n'avait aucune couleur politique
« puisque les groupes qui se rassemblent autour de nos idées sont des bourgeois militaristes,
des communistes, des monarchistes, des socialistes, des radicaux, la Ligue des nations et des
fascistes. Lorsque toutes les couleurs sont mélangées, seul le blanc ressort. Il représente la
prudence, la neutralité, la décantation et la recherche humaine de la vérité. »[25]
DIRIGER LE MUNDANEUM
Le Corbusier considérait son travail et lui-même comme étant « apolitiques » ou « au-dessus
de la politique ».[26] Cependant, Paul Otlet était plus conscient de la force politique de ce
projet. « Savoir, pour prévoir afin de pouvoir, a été la lumineuse formule de Comte. Prévoir
ne coûte rien, a ajouté un maitre de l'urbanisme contemporain (Le Corbusier). »[27] En faisant
le lobby du projet de la Cité mondiale, cette prévision ne coûte rien et « prépare les années à
venir », Le Corbusier écrivit à Arthur Fontaine et Albert Thomas depuis l'Organisation
internationale de travail que la prévision était gratuite et « préparait les années à venir ».[28]
Gratuite, car les données statistiques sont toujours disponibles, cependant, il ne semblait pas
considérer la prévision comme une forme de pouvoir. Une prémisse similaire est à l'origine
de la domination actuelle des idéologies de la ville intelligente où de grandes quantités de
données sont utilisées pour prévoir au nom de l'efficacité. Même si la plupart des acteurs
derrière ces idées se considèrent apolitiques, l'aspect gouvernemental est plus qu'évident.
Une forme de contrôle et de gouvernement n'est pas seulement biopolitique, mais plutôt
épistémique. Les données sont non seulement utilisées pour standardiser les unités pour
l'architecture, mais également pour déterminer les catégories de connaissance qui restreignent
la vie à la normalité dans laquelle elle peut être classée. Dans cette juxtaposition du travail de
Le Corbusier et Paul Otlet, il devient clair que la standardisation de l'architecture va de pair
P.252
P.253
avec une standardisation épistémique, car elle limite ce qui peut être pensé, ressenti et vécu à
ce qui existe déjà. Cette architecture doit être considérée comme un « objet épistémique »
qui illustre la logique culturelle de son époque.[29] Par sa présence, elle apporte la logique
culturelle abstraite sous-jacente à sa conception dans l'expérience quotidienne et devient, au
côté de la matière, de la forme et de la fonction, un acteur qui accomplit une pratique
épistémique sur ses habitants et ses usagers. Dans ce cas : la conception selon laquelle tout
peut être connu, représenté et (pré)déterminé à travers les données.
Last
Revision:
2·08·2016
1. Paul Otlet, Monde : essai d'universalisme - Connaissance du Monde, Sentiment du Monde, Action organisée et Plan du
Monde, (Bruxelles : Editiones Mundeum 1935) : 448.
P.254
P.255
2. Steve Lohr, Sidewalk Labs, a Start-Up Created by Google, Has Bold Aims to Improve City Living New, dans le York Times
11/06/15, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/11/technology/sidewalk-labs-a-start-up-created-by-google-has-bold-aims-toimprove-city-living.html?_r=0, citation de Dan Doctoroff, fondateur de Google Sidewalk Labs
3. Dan Doctoroff, 10/06/2015, http://www.sidewalkinc.com/relevant
4. Giuliano Gresleri et Dario Matteoni. La Città Mondiale : Andersen, Hébrard, Otlet, Le Corbusier. (Venise : Marsilio,
1982) : 128 ; Voir aussi : L. Van der Swaelmen, Préliminaires d'art civique (Leynde 1916) : 164 - 299.
5. Larry Page, Communiqué de presse, 10/06/2015, http://www.sidewalkinc.com/
6. Le Corbusier, « Une Ville Contemporaine » dans Urbanisme, (Paris : Les Éditions G. Crès & Cie 1924) : 158.
7. ibid. : 115 et 97.
8. ibid. : 100.
9. Rayward, W Boyd, « Visions of Xanadu: Paul Otlet (1868–1944) and Hypertext » dans le Journal of the American Society
for Information Science, (Volume 45, Numéro 4, mai 1994) : 235.
10. Le terme français « dispositif » fait référence à la description de Michel Foucault d'une fonction simplement stratégique, « un
ensemble réellement hétérogène constitué de discours, d'institutions, de formes architecturales, de décisions régulatrices, de lois,
de mesures administratives, de déclarations scientifiques, philosophiques, morales et de propositions philanthropiques. En
résumé, ce qui est dit comme ce qui ne l'est pas. » La distinction permet d'aller plus loin que le simple objet, et de déconstruire
tous les éléments impliqués dans les conditions de production et de les lier à la distribution des pouvoirs. Voir : Michel Foucault,
« Confessions of the Flesh (1977) interview », dans Power/Knowledge Selected Interviews and Other Writings, Colin
Gordon (Éd.), (New York : Pantheon Books 1980) : 194 - 200.
11. Bernd Frohmann, « The role of facts in Paul Otlet’s modernist project of documentation », dans European Modernism and the
Information Society, Rayward, W.B. (Éd.), (Londres : Ashgate Publishers 2008) : 79.
12. « La régularisation de l’architecture et sa tendance à l’urbanisme total aident à mieux comprendre le livre et ses propres
désiderata fonctionnels et intégraux. » Voir : Paul Otlet, Traité de documentation, (Bruxelles : Mundaneum, Palais Mondial,
1934) : 329.
13. ibid. : 205.
14. Thomas Pearce, Mettre des pierres autour des idées, Paul Otlet, de Cité Mondiale en de modernistische stedenbouw in de
jaren 1930, (KU Leuven : PhD Thesis 2007) : 39.
15. Volker Welter, Biopolis Patrick Geddes and the City of Life. (Cambridge, Mass : MIT 2003).
16. Lettre de Paul Otlet à Le Corbusier et Pierre Jeanneret, Bruxelles, 2 avril 1928. Voir : Giuliano Gresleri et Dario Matteoni.
La Città Mondiale : Andersen, Hébrard, Otlet, Le Corbusier. (Venise : Marsilio, 1982) : 221-223.
17. W. Boyd Rayward (Éd.), European Modernism and the Information Society. (Londres : Ashgate Publishers 2008) : 129.
18. Voir : Paul Otlet, Monde : essai d'universalisme - Connaissance du Monde, Sentiment du Monde, Action organisée et Plan du
Monde, (Bruxelles : Editiones Mundeum 1935) : 448.
19. Giuliano Gresleri et Dario Matteoni. La Città Mondiale : Andersen, Hébrard, Otlet, Le Corbusier. (Venise : Marsilio,
1982) : 223.
20. Le Corbusier, Radiant City, (New York : The Orion Press 1964) : 27.
21. http://www.sidewalkinc.com/
22. Giuliano Gresleri et Dario Matteoni. La Città Mondiale : Andersen, Hébrard, Otlet, Le Corbusier. (Venise : Marsilio,
1982) : 128
23. ibid. : 232.
24. ibid. : 129.
25. ibid. : 255.
26. Eric Paul Mumford, The CIAM Discourse on Urbanism, 1928-1960, (Cambridge : MIT Press, 2002) : 20.
27. Voir : Paul Otlet, Monde : essai d'universalisme - Connaissance du Monde, Sentiment du Monde, Action organisée et Plan du
Monde, (Bruxelles : Editiones Mundeum 1935) : 407.
28. Giuliano Gresleri et Dario Matteoni. La Città Mondiale : Andersen, Hébrard, Otlet, Le Corbusier. (Venise : Marsilio,
1982) : 241.
29. En considérant l'architecture comme un objet de formation du savoir, le terme « objet épistémique » du philosophe Günter Abel
aide à produire la caractéristique épistémique de l'architecture. D'après Günter Abel, les objets épistémiques sont ceux sur
lesquels notre connaissance et notre curiosité empirique sont concentrés. Ce sont des objets ont une contribution active en ce qui
concerne ce qui peut être pensé et la manière dont cela peut être pensé. De plus, puisque personne ne peut éviter l'architecture,
elle détermine nos limites (de pensée). Voir : Günter Abel, Epistemische Objekte – was sind sie und was macht sie so
wertvoll?, dans : Hingst, Kai-Michael; Liatsi, Maria (éd.), (Tübingen : Pragmata, 2008).
The
Itinerant
Archive
The project of the Mundaneum and its many protagonists is undoubtedly
linked to the context of early 19th century Brussels. King Leopold II , in an
attempt to awaken his countries' desire for greatness, let a steady stream of
capital flow into the city from his private colonies in Congo. Located on the
crossroad between France, Germany, The Netherlands and The United
Kingdom, the Belgium capital formed a fertile ground for ambitious institutional
projects with international ambitions, such as the Mundaneum. Its tragic
demise was unfortunately equally at home in Brussels. Already in Otlet's
lifetime, the project fell prey to the dis-interest of its former patrons, not
surprising after World War I had shaken their confidence in the beneficial
outcomes of a global knowledge infrastructure. A complex entanglement of disinterested management and provincial politics sent the numerous boxes and
folders on a long trajectory through Brussels, until they finally slipped out of
the city. It is telling that the Capital of Europe has been unable to hold on to its
pertinent past.
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This tour is a kind of itinerant monument to the Mundaneum in Brussels. It
takes you along the many temporary locations of the archives, guided by the
words of care-takers, reporters and biographers that have crossed it's path.
Following the increasingly dispersed and dwindling collection through the city
and centuries, you won't come across any material trace of its passage. You
might discover many unknown corners of Brussels though.
1919: MUSÉE INTERNATIONAL
Outre le Répertoire bibliographique universel et un Musée de la presse qui
comptera jusqu’à 200.000 spécimens de journaux du monde entier, on y trouvera
quelque 50 salles, sorte de musée de l’humanité technique et scientifique. Cette
décennie représente l’âge d’or pour le Mundaneum, même si le gros de ses
collections fut constitué entre 1895 et 1914, avant l’existence du Palais Mondial.
L’accroissement des collections ne se fera, par la suite, plus jamais dans les mêmes
[1]
proportions.
En 1920, le Musée international et les institutions créées par Paul Otlet et Henri
La Fontaine occupent une centaine de salles. L’ensemble sera désormais appelé
Palais Mondial ou Mundaneum. Dans les années 1920, Paul Otlet et Henri La
Fontaine mettront également sur pied l’Encyclopedia Universalis Mundaneum,
[2]
encyclopédie illustrée composée de tableaux sur planches mobiles.
Start at Parc du Cinquantenaire 11,
Brussels in front of the entrance of
what is now Autoworld.
In 1919, significantly delayed by World War I, the Musée international finally opened. The
project had been conceptualised by Paul Otlet and Henri Lafontaine already ten years
earlier and was meant to be a mix between a documentation center, conference venue and
educational display. It occupied the left wing of the magnificent buildings erected in the Parc
Cinquantenaire for the Grand Concours International des Sciences et de l'industrie.
Museology merged with the International Institute of
From House, City, World, Nation,
Bibliography (IIB) which had its offices in the same
Globe:
building. The ever-expanding index card catalog had
The ever ambitious process of
already been accessible to the public since 1914. The
building the Mundaneum archives
took place in the context of a growing
project would be later known as the World Palace or
internationalisation of society, while at
Mundaneum. Here, Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine
the same time the social gap was
started to work on their Encyclopaedia Universalis
increasing due to the expansion of
Mundaneum, an illustrated encyclopaedia in the form of a industrial society. Furthermore, the
internationalisation of finances and
mobile exhibition.
relations did not only concern
Walk under
the colonnade
to your
right, and
you will
recognise the
former entrance
industrial society, it also acted as a
motivation to structure social and
political networks, among others via
political negotiations and the
institution of civil society organisations.
of Le Palais Mondial.
Only a few years after its delayed opening, the ambitious project started to lose support from
the Belgium government, who preferred to use the vast exhibition spaces for commercial
activities. In 1922 and 1924, Le Palais Mondial was temporarily closed to make space for
an international rubber fair.
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1934: MUNDANEUM MOVED TO HOME OF PAUL OTLET
Si dans de telles conditions le Palais Mondial devait définitivement rester fermé, il
semble bien qu’il n’y aurait plus place dans notre Civilisation pour une institution
d’un caractère universel, inspirée de l’idéal indiqué en ces mots à son entrée : Par
la Liberté, l’Égalité et la Fraternité mondiales − dans la Foi, l’Espérance et la
[3]
Charité humaines − vers le Travail, le Progrès et la Paix de tous !
Cato, my wife, has been absolutely devoted to my work. Her savings and jewels
testify to it; her invaded house testify to it; her collaboration testifies to it; her wish
to see it finished after me testifies to it; her modest little fortune has served for the
[4]
constitution of my work and of my thought.
Walk under the Arc de Triumph and exit
the Jubelfeestpark on your left. On
Avenue des Nerviens turn left into
Sint Geertruidestraat. Turn left onto
Kolonel Van Gelestraat and right onto
Rue Louis Hap. Turn left onto
Oudergemselaan and right onto Rue
Fetis 44.
In 1934, the ministry of public works decided to close the Mundaneum in order to make
place for an extension of the Royal Museum of Art and History. An outraged Otlet posted in
front of the closed entrance with his colleagues, but to no avail. The official address of the
Mundaneum was 'temporarily' transferred to the house at Rue Fétis 44 where he lived with
his second wife, Cato Van Nederhasselt.
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Part of the archives were moved Rue Fétis, but many boxes and most of the card-indexes
remained stored in the Cinquantenaire building. Paul Otlet continued a vigorous program of
lectures and meetings in other places, including at home.
1941: MUNDANEUM IN PARC LÉOPOLD
The upper galleries ... are one big pile of rubbish, one inspector noted in his report.
It is an impossible mess, and high time for this all to be cleared away. The Nazis
evidently struggled to make sense of the curious spectacle before them. The
institute and its goals cannot be clearly defined. It is some sort of ... 'museum for
the whole world,' displayed through the most embarrassing and cheap and
[5]
primitive methods.
Distributed in two large workrooms, in corridors, under stairs, and in attic rooms
and a glass-roofed dissecting theatre at the top of the building, this residue
gradually fell prey to the dust and damp darkness of the building in its lower
regions, and to weather and pigeons admitted through broken panes of glass in the
roof in the upper rooms. On the ground floor of the building was a dimly lit, small,
steeply-raked lecture theatre. On either side of its dais loomed busts of the
[6]
founders.
Derrière les vitres sales, j’aperçus un amoncellement de livres, de liasses de papiers
contenus par des ficelles, des dossiers dressés sur des étagères de fortune. Des
feuilles volantes échappées des cartons s’amoncelaient dans les angles de l’immense
pièce, du papier pelure froissé se mêlait au gravat et à la poussière. Des récipients
de fortune avaient été placés entre les caisses et servaient à récolter l’eau de pluie.
Un pigeon avait réussi à pénétrer à l’intérieur et se cognait inlassablement contre
[7]
l’immense baie vitrée qui fermait le bâtiment.
Annually in this room in the years after Otlet's death until the late 1960's, the
busts garlanded with floral wreaths for the occasion, Otlet and La Fontaine's
colleagues and disciples, Les Amis du Palais Mondial, met in a ceremony of
remembrance. And it was Otlet, theorist and visionary, who held their
imaginations most in beneficial thrall as they continued to work after his death, just
as they had in those last days of his life, among the mouldering, discorded
collections of the Mundaneum, themselves gradually overtaken by age, their
[8]
numbers dwindling.
Exit the Fétisstraat onto Chaussee de
Wavre, turn right and follow into the
Vijverstraat. Turn right on Rue Gray,
cross Jourdan plein into Parc Leopold.
Right at the entrance is the building
of l’Institut d’Anatomie Raoul
Warocqué.
In 1941, the Nazi-Germans occupying Belgium wanted to use the spaces in the Palais du
Cinquantenaire but they were still used to store the collections of the Mundaneum. They
decided to move the archives to Parc Léopold except for a mass of periodicals, which were
simply destroyed. A vast quantity of files related to international associations were assumed to
have propaganda value for the German war effort. This part of the archive was transferred
back to Berlin and apparently re-appeared in the Stanford archives (?) many years later.
They must have been taken there by American soldiers after World War II.
Until the 1970's, the Mundaneum (or what was left of it) remained in the decaying building
in Parc Léopold. Georges Lorphèvre and André Colet continued to carry on the work of the
Mundaneum with the help of a few now elderly Amis du Palais Mondial, members of the
association with the same name that was founded in 1921. It is here that the Belgian
librarian André Canonne, the Australian scholar Warden Boyd Rayward and the Belgian
documentary-maker Françoise Levie came across the Mundaneum archives for the very first
time.
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2009: OFFICES GOOGLE BELGIUM
A natural affinity exists between Google's modern project of making the world’s
information accessble and the Mundaneum project of two early 20th century
Belgians. Otlet and La Fontaine imagined organizing all the world's information on paper cards. While their dream was discarded, the Internet brought it back to
reality and it's little wonder that many now describe the Mundaneum as the paper
Google. Together, we are showing the way to marry our paper past with our
[9]
digital future.
Exit the park onto Steenweg op
Etterbeek and walk left to number
176-180.
In 2009, Google Belgium opened its offices at the Chaussée d'Etterbeek 180. It is only a
short walk away from the last location that Paul Otlet has been able to work on the
Mundaneum project.
Celebrating the discovery of its "European roots", the company has insisted on the
connection between the project of Paul Otlet, and their own mission to organize the world's
information and make it universally accessible and useful. To celebrate the desired
connection to the Forefather of documentation, the building is said to have a Mundaneum
meeting room. In the lobby, you can find a vitrine with one of the drawers filled with UDCindex cards, on loan from the Mundaneum archive center in Mons.
1944: GRAVE OF PAUL OTLET
When I am no more, my documentary instrument (my papers) should be kept
together, and, in order that their links should become more apparent, should be
sorted, fixed in successive order by a consecutive numbering of all the cards (like
[10]
the pages of a book).
Je le répète, mes papiers forment un tout. Chaque partie s’y rattache pour
constituer une oeuvre unique. Mes archives sont un "Mundus Mundaneum", un
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outil conçu pour la connaissance du monde. Conservez-les; faites pour elles ce que
[11]
moi j’aurais fait. Ne les détruisez pas !
O P T I O N A L : Continue on Chaussée
d'Etterbeek toward Belliardstraat.
Turn left until you reach Rue de
Trèves. Turn right onto Luxemburgplein
and take bus 95 direction Wiener.
Paul Otlet dies in 1944 when he is 76 years old. His grave at the cemetary of Ixelles is
decorated with a globe and the inscription "Il ne fut rien sinon Mundanéen" (He was nothing
if not Mundanéen).
Exit the cemetary and walk toward
Avenue de la Couronne. At the
roundabout, turn left onto
Boondaalsesteenweg. Turn left onto
Boulevard Géneral Jacques and take
tram 25 direction Rogier.
Halfway your tram-journey you pass Square Vergote (Stop: Georges Henri), where Henri
Lafontaine and Mathilde Lhoest used to live. Statesman and Nobel-prize winner Henri
Lafontaine worked closely with Otlet and supported his projects throughout his life.
Get off at the stop Coteaux and follow
Rogierstraat until number 67.
1981: STORAGE AT AVENUE ROGIER 67
C'est à ce moment que le conseil d'administration, pour sauver les activités
(expositions, prêts gratuits, visites, congrès, exposés, etc.) vendit quelques pièces. Il
n'y a donc pas eu de vol de documents, contrairement à ce que certains affirment,
[12]
garantit de Louvroy.
In fact, not one of the thousands of objects contained in the hundred galleries of the
Cinquantenaire has survived into the present, not a single maquette, not a single
telegraph machine, not a single flag, though there are many photographs of the
[13]
exhibition rooms.
Mais je me souviens avoir vu à Bruxelles des meubles d'Otlet dans des caves
inondées. On dit aussi que des pans entiers de collections ont fait le bonheur des
amateurs sur les brocantes. Sans compter que le papier se conserve mal et que des
[14]
dépôts mal surveillés ont pollué des documents aujourd'hui irrécupérables.
This part of the walk takes about 45"
and will take you from the Ixelles
neighbourhood through Sint-Joost to
Schaerbeek; from high to low Brussels.
Continue on Steenweg op Etterbeek,
cross Rue Belliard and continue onto
Jean Reyplein. Take a left onto
Chaussée d'Etterbeek. If you prefer,
you can take a train at Bruxelles
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P.267
Schumann Station to North Station, or
continue following Etterbeekse
steenweg onto Square Marie-Louise.
Continue straight onto
Gutenbergsquare, Rue Bonneels which
becomes Braemtstraat at some point.
Cross Chausséee de Louvain and turn
left onto Oogststraat. Continue onto
Place Houwaert and Dwarsstraat.
Continue onto Chaussée de Haecht and
follow onto Kruidtuinstraat. Take a
slight right onto Rue Verte, turn left
onto Kwatrechtstraat and under the
North Station railroad tracks. Turn
right onto Rue du Progrès.
Rogierstraat is the first street on
your left.
In 1972, we find Les Amis du Mundaneum back at Chaussée de Louvain 969.
Apparently, the City of Brussels has moved the Mundaneum out of Parc Léopold into a
parking garage, 'a building rented by the ministry of Finances', 'in the direction of the SaintJosse-ten-Node station'.[15]. 10 years later, the collection is moved to the back-house of a
building at Avenue Rogier 67.
As a young librarian, Andre Canonne visits the collection at this address until he is in a
position to move the collection elsewhere.
1985: ESPACE MUNDANEUM UNDER PLACE ROGIER
On peut donc croire sauvées les collections du "Mundaneum" et a bon droit
espérer la fin de leur interminable errance. Au moment ou nous écrivons ces lignes,
des travaux d’aménagement d'un "Espace Mundaneum" sont en voie
[16]
d’achèvement au cour de Bruxelles.
L'acte fut signé par le ministre Philippe Monfils, président de l'exécutif. Son
prédécesseur, Philippe Moureaux, n'était pas du même avis. Il avait même acheté
pour 8 millions un immeuble de la rue Saint-Josse pour y installer le musée. Il
fallait en effet sauver les collections, enfouies dans l'arrière-cour d'une maison de
repos de l'avenue Rogier! (...) L'étage moins deux, propriété de la commune de
Saint-Josse, fut cédé par un bail emphytéotique de 30 ans à la Communauté, avec
un loyer de 800.000 F par mois. (...) Mais le Mundaneum est aussi en passe de
devenir une mystérieuse affaire en forme de pyramide. A l'étage moins un, la
commune de Saint-Josse et la société française «Les Pyramides» négocient la
construction d'un Centre de congrès (il remplace celui d'un piano-bar luxueux)
d'ampleur. Le montant de l'investissement est évalué à 150 millions (...) Et puis,
ce musée fantôme n'est pas fermé pour tout le monde. Il ouvre ses portes! Pas pour
y accueillir des visiteurs. On organise des soirées dansantes, des banquets dans la
grande salle. Deux partenaires (dont un traiteur) ont signé des contrats avec
l'ASBL Centre de lecture publique de la communauté française. Contrats
[17]
reconfirmés il y a quinze jours et courant pendant 3 ans encore!
Mais curieusement, les collections sont toujours avenue Rogier, malgré l'achat
d'un local rue Saint-Josse par la Communauté française, et malgré le transfert
officiel (jamais réalisé) au «musée» du niveau - 2 de la place Rogier. Les seules
choses qu'il contient sont les caisses de livres rétrocédées par la Bibliothèque
[18]
Royale qui ne savait qu'en faire.
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Follow Avenue Rogier. Turn left onto
Brabantstraat until you cross under
the railroad tracks. Place Rogier is
on your right hand, marked by a large
overhead construction of a tilted
white dish.
In 1985, Andre Canonne convinced Les Amis du Palais Mondial to transfer the
responsability for the collection and mission of the association to la Centre de lecture
publique de la Communauté française based in Liege, the organisation that he now has
become the director of. It was agreed that the Mundaneum should stay in Brussels; the
documents mention a future location at the Rue Saint Josse 49, a building apparently
acquired for that purpose by the Communauté française.
Five years later, plans have changed. In 1990, the archives are being moved from their
temporary storage in Avenue Rogier and the Royal Library of Belgium to a new location in
Place Rogier -2. Under the guidance of André Canonne a "Mundaneum space" will be
opened in the center of Brussels, right above the Metro station Rogier. Unfortunately,
Canonne dies just weeks after the move has begun, and the Brussels' Espace Mundaneum
never opens its doors.
In the following three years, the collection remains in the same location but apparently
without much supervision. Journalists report that doors were left unlocked and that Metro
passengers could help themselves to handfuls of documents. The collection has in the mean
time attracted the attention of Elio di Rupo, at that time minister of education at la
Communauté française. It marks the beginning of the end of The Mundaneum as an itinerant
archive in Brussels.
You can end the tour here, or add two optional destinations:
1934: IMPRIMERIE VAN KEERBERGHEN IN RUE PIERS
O P T I O N A L :
(from Place Rogier, 20") Follow
Kruidtuinlaan onto Boulevard Baudouin
and onto Antwerpselaan, down in the
direction of the canal. At the
Sainctelette bridge, cross the canal
and take a slight left into Rue
Adolphe Lavallée. Turn left onto
Piersstraat. Alternatively, at Rogier
you can take a Metro to Ribaucourt
station, and walk from there.
At number 101 we find Imprimerie Van Keerberghen, the printer that produced and
distributed Le Traité de Documentation . In 1934, Otlet did not have enough money to pay
for the full print-run of the book and therefore the edition remained with Van Keerberghen
who would distribute the copies himself through mailorders. The plaque on the door dates
from the period that the Traité was printed. So far we have not been able to confirm whether
this family-business is still in operation.
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RUE OTLET
O P T I O N A L :
(from Rue Piers, ca. 30") Follow Rue
Piers and turn left into
Merchtemsesteenweg and follow until
Chaussée de Gand, turn left. Turn
right onto Ransfortstraat and cross
Chaussée de Ninove. Turn left to
follow the canal onto Mariemontkaai
and left at Rue de Manchester to cross
the water. Continue onto
Liverpoolstraat, cross Chaussee de
Mons and continue onto Dokter De
Meersmanstraat until you meet Rue
Otlet.
(from Place Rogier, ca. 30") Follow
Boulevard du Jardin Botanique and turn
left onto Adolphe Maxlaan and Place De
Brouckère. Continue onto Anspachlaan,
turn right onto Rue du Marché aux
Poulets. Turn left onto
Visverkopersstraat and continue onto
Rue Van Artevelde. Continue straight
onto Anderlechtschesteenweg, continue
onto Chaussée de Mons. Turn left onto
Otletstraat. Alternatively you can
take tram 51 or 81 to Porte
D'Anderlecht.
Although it seems that this dreary street is named to honor Paul Otlet, it already
mysteriously appears on a map dated 1894 when Otlet was not even 26 years old [19] and
again on a map from 1910, when the Mundaneum had not yet opened it's doors.[20]
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OUTSIDE BRUSSELS
1998: THE MUNDANEUM RESURRECTED
Bernard Anselme, le nouveau ministre-président de la Communauté française,
négocia le transfert à Mons, au grand dam de politiques bruxellois furieux de voir
cette prestigieuse collection quitter la capitale. (...) Cornaqué par Charles Picqué et
Elio Di Rupo, le transfert à Mons n'a pas mis fin aux ennuis du Mundaneum.
On créa en Hainaut une nouvelle ASBL chargée d'assurer le relais. C'était sans
compter avec l'ASBL Célès, héritage indépendant du CLPCF, évoqué plus haut,
que la Communauté avait fini par dissoudre. Cette association s'est toujours
considérée comme propriétaire des collections, au point de s'opposer régulièrement
à leur exploitation publique. Les faits lui ont donné raison: au début du mois de
mai, le Célès a obtenu du ministère de la Culture que cinquante millions lui soient
[21]
versés en contrepartie du droit de propriété.
The reestablishment of the Mundaneum in Mons as a museum and archive is in
my view a major event in the intellectual life of Belgium. Its opening attracted
[22]
considerable international interest at the time.
Le long des murs, 260 meubles-fichiers témoignaient de la démesure du projet.
Certains tiroirs, ouverts, étaient éclairés de l’intérieur, ce qui leur donnait une
impression de relief, de 3D. Un immense globe terrestre, tournant lentement sur
lui-même, occupait le centre de l’espace. Sous une voie lactée peinte à même le
plafond, les voix de Paul Otlet et d’Henri La Fontaine, interprétés par des
comédiens, s’élevaient au fur et à mesure que l’on s’approchait de tel ou tel
[23]
document.
L’Otletaneum, c’est à dire les archives et papiers personnels ayant appartenu à
Paul Otlet, représentait un fonds important, peu connu, mal répertorié, que l’on
pouvait cependant quantifier à la place qu’il occupait sur les étagères des réserves
situées à l’arrière du musée. Il y avait là 100 à 150 mètres de rayonnages, dont
une partie infime avait fait l’objet d’un classement. Le reste, c’est à dire une
soixantaine de boîtes à bananes‚ était inexploré. Sans compter l’entrepôt de
Cuesmes où le travail de recensement pouvait être estimé, me disait-il, à une
[24]
centaine d’années...
Après des multiples déménagements, un travail laborieux de sauvegarde entamé
par les successeurs, ce patrimoine unique ne finit pas de révéler ses richesses et ses
surprises. Au-delà de cette démarche originale entamée dans un esprit
philanthropique, le centre d’archives propose des collections documentaires à valeur
[25]
historique, ainsi que des archives spécialisées.
In 1993, after some armwrestling between different local fractions of the Parti Socialiste, the
collections of the Mundaneum are moved from Place Rogier to former departement store
L'independance in Mons, 40 kilometres from Brussels and home to Elio Di Rupo. Benoît
Peeters and François Schuiten design a theatrical scenography that includes a gigantic globe
and walls decorated with what is if left of the wooden card catalogs. The center opens in
1998 under the direction of librarian Jean-François Füeg .
In 2015, Mons is elected Capital of Europe with the slogan "Mons, where culture meets
technology". The Mundaneum archive center plays a central role in the media-campaigns
and activities leading up to the festive year. In that same period, the center undergoes a largescale renovation to finally brings the archive facilities up to date. A new reading room is
named after André Canonne, the conference room is called Utopia. The mise-en-scène of
Otlet's messy office is removed, but otherwise the scenography remains largely unchanged.
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P.275
2007: CRYSTAL COMPUTING
Jean-Paul Deplus, échevin (adjoint) à la culture de la ville, affiche ses ambitions.
« Ce lieu est une illustration saisissante de ce que des utopistes visionnaires ont
apporté à la civilisation. Ils ont inventé Google avant la lettre. Non seulement ils
l’ont fait avec les seuls outils dont ils disposaient, c’est-à- dire de l’encre et du
papier, mais leur imagination était si féconde que l’on a retrouvé les dessins et
croquis de ce qui préfigure Internet un siècle plus tard. » Et Jean-Pol Baras
d’ajouter «Et qui vient de s’installer à Mons ? Un “data center” de Google ...
[26]
Drôle de hasard, non ? »
Dans une ambiance où tous les partenaires du «projet Saint-Ghislain» de Google
savouraient en silence la confirmation du jour, les anecdotes sur la discrétion
imposée durant 18 mois n’ont pas manqué. Outre l’utilisation d’un nom de code,
Crystal Computing, qui a valu un jour à Elio Di Rupo d’être interrogé sur
l’éventuelle arrivée d’une cristallerie en Wallonie («J’ai fait diversion comme j’ai
pu !», se souvient-il), un accord de confidentialité liait Google, l’Awex et l’Idea,
notamment. «A plusieurs reprises, on a eu chaud, parce qu’il était prévu qu’au
[27]
moindre couac sur ce point, Google arrêtait tout»
Beaucoup de show, peu d’emplois: Pour son data center belge, le géant des
moteurs de recherche a décroché l’un des plus beaux terrains industriels de
Wallonie. Résultat : à peine 40 emplois directs et pas un euro d’impôts. Reste que
la Région ne voit pas les choses sous cet angle. En janvier, a appris Le Vif/
L’Express, le ministre de l’Economie Jean-Claude Marcourt (PS) a notifié à
Google le refus d’une aide à l’expansion économique de 10 millions d’euros.
Motif : cette aide était conditionnée à la création de 110 emplois directs, loin d’être
atteints. Est-ce la raison pour laquelle aucun ministre wallon n’était présent le 10
avril aux côtés d’Elio Di Rupo ? Au cabinet Marcourt, on assure que les relations
avec l’entreprise américaine sont au beau fixe : « C’est le ministre qui a permis ce
nouvel investissement de Google, en négociant avec son fournisseur d’électricité
[28]
(NDLR : Electrabel) une réduction de son énorme facture.
In 2005, Elio di Rupo succeeds in bringing a company "Crystal Computing" to the region,
code name for Google inc. who plans to build a data-center at Saint Ghislain, a prime
industrial site close to Mons. Promising 'a thousand jobs', the presence of Google becomes a
way for Di Rupo to demonstrate that the Marshall Plan for Wallonia, an attempt to "step up
the efforts taken to put Wallonia back on the track to prosperity" is attaining its goals. The
first data-center opens in 2007 and is followed by a second one opening in 2015. The
direct impact on employment in the region is estimated to be somewhere between 110[29] and
120 jobs.[30]
P.276
P.277
Last
Revision:
2·08·2016
1. Paul Otlet (1868-1944) Fondateur du mouvement bibliogique international Par Jacques Hellemans (Bibliothèque de
l’Université libre de Bruxelles, Premier Attaché)
2. Jacques Hellemans. Paul Otlet (1868-1944) Fondateur du mouvement bibliogique international
3. Paul Otlet. Document II in: Traité de documentation (1934)
4. Paul Otlet. Diary (1938), Quoted in: W. Boyd Rayward. The Universe of Information : The Work of Paul Otlet for
Documentation and International Organisation (1975)
5. Alex Wright. Cataloging the World: Paul Otlet and the Birth of the Information Age (2014)
6. Warden Boyd Rayward. Mundaneum: Archives of Knowledge (2010)
7. Françoise Levie. L'homme qui voulait classer le monde: Paul Otlet et le Mundaneum (2010)
8. Warden Boyd Rayward. Mundaneum: Archives of Knowledge (2010)
9. William Echikson. A flower of computer history blooms in Belgium (2013) http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.be/2013/02/
a-flower-of-computer-history-blooms-in.html
10. Testament Paul Otlet, 1942.01.18*, No. 67, Otletaneum. Quoted in: W. Boyd Rayward. The Universe of Information :
The Work of Paul Otlet for Documentation and International Organisation (1975)
11. Paul Otlet cited in Françoise Levie, Filmer Paul Otlet, Cahiers de la documentation – Bladen voor documentatie – 2012/2
12. Le Soir, 27 juillet 1991
13. Warden Boyd Rayward. Mundaneum: Archives of Knowledge (2010)
14. Le Soir, 17 juin 1998
15. http://www.reflexcity.net/bruxelles/photo/72ca206b2bf2e1ea73dae1c7380f57e3
16. André Canonne. Introduction to the 1989 facsimile edition of Le Traité de documentation File:TDD ed1989 preface.pdf
17. Le Soir, 24 juillet 1991
18. Le Soir, 27 juillet 1991
19. http://www.reflexcity.net/bruxelles/plans/4-cram-fin-xixe.html
20. http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b84598749/f1.item.zoom
21. Le Soir, 17 juin 1998
22. Warden Boyd Rayward. Mundaneum: Archives of Knowledge (2010)
23. Françoise Levie, Filmer Paul Otlet, Cahiers de la documentation – Bladen voor documentatie – 2012/2
24. Françoise Levie, L'Homme qui voulait classer le monde: Paul Otlet et le Mundaneum, Impressions Nouvelles, Bruxelles,
2006
25. Stéphanie Manfroid, Les réalités d’une aventure documentaire, Cahiers de la documentation – Bladen voor documentatie –
2012/2
26. Jean-Michel Djian, Le Mundaneum, Google de papier, Le Monde Magazine, 19 december 2009
27. Libre Belgique (27 april 2007)
28. Le Vif, April 2013
29. Le Vif, April 2013
Les
Pyramides
"A pyramid is a structure whose outer surfaces are triangular and converge to
a single point at the top"
[1]
A slew of pyramids can be found in all of Paul Otlet's drawers. Knowledge
schemes and diagrams, drawings and drafts, designs, prototypes and
architectural plans (including works by Le Corbusier and Maurice Heymans)
employ the pyramid to provide structure, hierarchy, precise path and finally
access to the world's synthesized knowledge. At specific temporal crosssections, these plans were criticized for their proximity to occultism or
monumentalism. Today their rich esoteric symbolism is still readily apparent
and gives reason to search for possible spiritual or mystical underpinnings of
the Mundaneum.
Paul Otlet (1926):
“Une immense pyramide est à construire. Au sommet y travaillent Penseurs,
Sociologues et grands Artistes. Le sommet doit rejoindre la base où s’agitent les
masses, mais la base aussi doit être disposée de manière qu’elle puisse rejoindre le
[2]
sommet.”
P.280
P.281
[3]
[4]
Paul Otlet, Species
Inscription: "Il ne fut rien
sinon Mundanéen"
Mundaneum.
Mundaneum, Mons.
Personal papers of Paul
Otlet (MDN). Fonds
Encyclopaedia Universalis
Mundaneum (EUM),
document No. 8506.
La Pyramide des
Qui scit ubi scientia
Tomb at the grave of Paul
Bibliographies. In: Paul habenti est proximus.
Otlet
Otlet, Traité de
Who knows where
documentation: le livre sur science is, is about to have
le livre, théorie et pratique it. The librarian is helped
(Bruxelles: Editiones
by collaborators:
Mundaneum, 1934),
Bibliotecaire-adjoints,
rédacteurs, copistes, gens
290.
de service.
[5]
[6]
[7]
Design for the
Sketch for La
An axonometric view of Plan of the Mundaneum Perspective of the
Mundaneum, Section and Mondotheque. Paul Otlet, the Mundaneum gives the by M.C. Heymans
Mundaneum by M.C.
facades by Le Corbusier 1935?
effect of an aerial
Heymans
photograph of an
archeological site —
Egyptian, Babylonian,
Assyrian, ancient
American (Mayan and
Aztec) or Peruvian. These
historical reminiscences are
striking. Remember the
important building works
of the Mayas, who were
the zenith of ancient
American civilization.
These well-known ruins
(Uxmal, Chichen-Itza,
Palenque on the Yucatan
peninsula, and Copan in
Guatemala) represent a
“metaphysical architecture”
of special cities of religious
cults and burial grounds,
cities of rulers and priests;
pyramids, cathedrals of the
sun, moon and stars; holy
places of individual gods;
graduating pyramids and
terraced palaces with
architectural objects
conceived in basic
[8]
[9]
[10]
Paul Otlet, Cellula
Mundaneum (1936).
Mundaneum, Mons.
Personal papers of Paul
Otlet (MDN). Fonds
Affiches (AFF).
As soon as all forms of life Sketch for Mundaneum
are categorized, classified World City. Le
and determined,
Corbusier, 1929
individuals will become
numeric "dividuals" in sets,
subsets or classes.
[12]
Atlas Bruxelles –
Urbaneum - Belganeum Mundaneum. Page de
garde du chapitre 991 de
l'Atlas de Bruxelles.
[13]
The universe (which
others call the Library) is
composed of an indefinite
and perhaps infinite
number of triangular
galleries, with vast air
shafts between, surrounded
by very low railings. From
any of the triangles one
can see, interminably, the
upper and lower floors.
The distribution of the
galleries is invariable.
P.282
[11]
The ship wherein Theseus
and the youth of Athens
returned had thirty oars,
and was preserved by the
Athenians down even to
the time of Demetrius
Phalereus, for they took
away the old planks as
they decayed, putting in
new and stronger timber in
their place, insomuch that
this ship became a
standing example among
the philosophers, for the
logical question of things
that grow; one side holding
that the ship remained the
same, and the other
contending that it was not
the same.
P.283
[14]
[15]
Universal Decimal
Classification: hierarchy
World City by Le
Corbusier & Jeanneret
Paul Otlet personal
papers. Picture taken
during a Mondotheque
visit of the Mundaneum
archives, 11 September
2015
The face of the earth
Alimentation. — La base
would be much altered if de notre alimentation
repose en principe sur un
brick architecture were
trépied. 1° Protides
ousted everywhere by
glass architecture. It would (viandes, azotes). 2°
be as if the earth were
Glycides (légumineux,
hydrates de carbone). 3°
adorned with sparkling
jewels and enamels. Such Lipides (graisses). Mais il
glory is unimagmable. We faut encore pour présider
should then have a
au cycle de la vie et en
paradise on earth, and no assurer la régularité, des
need to watch in longing vitamines : c’est à elles
qu’est due la croissance
expectation for the
paradise in heaven.
des jeunes, l’équilibre
nutritif des adultes et une
certaine jeunesse chez les
vieillards.
[16]
[17]
[18]
[19]
Traité de documentation - Inverted pyramid and floor Architectural vision of the Section by Stanislas
La pyramide des
plan by Stanislas Jasinski Mundaneum by M.C.
Jasinski
bibliographies
Heymans
Le Corbusier, Musée
Mondial (1929), FLC,
doc nr. 24510
Le reseau Mundaneum.
From Paul Otlet,
Encylcopaedia Universalis
Mundaneum
[20]
Paul Otlet, Mundaneum.
Documentatio Partes.
MDN, EUM, doc nr.
8506, scan nr.
Mundaneum_A400176
P.284
Les
Pyramides
Metro Place Rogier in
2008
Paul Otlet, Atlas Monde
(1936). MDN, AFF,
scan nr.
Mundaneum_032;
Mundaneum_034;
Mundaneum_036;
Mundaneum_038;
Mundaneum_040;
Mundaneum_042;
Mundaneum_044;
Mundaneum_046;
Mundaneum_049 (sic!)
[21]
The “Sacrarium,” is
See Cross-readings,
Place Rogier, Brussels
something like a temple of Rayward, Warden Boyd around 2005
ethics, philosophy, and
(who translated and
religion. A great globe,
adapted), Mundaneum:
modeled and colored, in a Archives of Knowledge,
scale 1 = 1,000,000 with Urbana-Campaign, Ill. :
the planetarium inside, is Graduate School of
Library and Information
situated in front of the
museum building.
Science, University of
Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, 2010.
Original: Charlotte
Dubray et al.,
Mundaneum: Les
Archives de la
Connaissance, Bruxelles:
Les Impressions
Nouvelles, 2008. (p. 37)
Paul Otlet, Le Monde en son ensemble
(1936). Mundaneum, Mons. MDN,
AFF, scan nr.
MUND-00009061_2008_0001_MA
[22]
Place Rogier, Brussels
with sign "Pyramides"
P.285
[23]
Toute la Documentation. Logo
A late sketch from 1937 of the Mundaneum
showing all the complexity
of the pyramid of
documentation. An
evolutionary element
works its way up, and in
the conclusive level one
can read a synthesis:
"Homo Loquens, Homo
Scribens, Societas
Documentalis".
SOURCES
Last
Revision:
1·08·2016
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid
2. Paul Otlet, L’Éducation et les Instituts du Palais Mondial (Mundaneum). Bruxelles: Union des Associations Internationales,
1926, p. 10. ("A great pyramid should be constructed. At the top are to be found Thinkers, Sociologists and great Artists. But
the top must be joined to the base where the masses are found, and the bases must have control of a path to the top.")
3. Wouter Van Acker. "Architectural Metaphors of Knowledge: The Mundaneum Designs of Maurice Heymans, Paul Otlet,
and Le Corbusier." Library Trends 61, no. 2 (2012): 371-396. http://muse.jhu.edu/
4. Photo: Roel de Groof http://www.zita.be/foto/roel-de-groof/allerlei/graf-paul-otlet/
5. Wouter Van Acker, 'Opening the Shrine of the Mundaneum The Positivist Spirit in the Architecture of Le Corbusier and his
Belgian “Idolators,”' in Proceedings of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand: 30, Open, edited
by Alexandra Brown and Andrew Leach (Gold Coast,Qld: SAHANZ, 2013), vol. 2, p. 792.
6. Wouter Van Acker. "Architectural Metaphors of Knowledge: The Mundaneum Designs of Maurice Heymans, Paul Otlet,
and Le Corbusier." Library Trends 61, no. 2 (2012): 371-396.
7. Wouter Van Acker. "Architectural Metaphors of Knowledge: The Mundaneum Designs of Maurice Heymans, Paul Otlet,
and Le Corbusier." Library Trends 61, no. 2 (2012): 371-396.
8. Wouter Van Acker. "Architectural Metaphors of Knowledge: The Mundaneum Designs of Maurice Heymans, Paul Otlet,
and Le Corbusier." Library Trends 61, no. 2 (2012): 371-396. http://muse.jhu.edu/
9. Paul Otlet, Traité de documentation: le livre sur le livre, théorie et pratique (Bruxelles: Editiones Mundaneum, 1934), 420.
10. http://www.fondationlecorbusier.fr
11. http://www.numeriques.be
12. http://www.numeriques.be
13. Rayward, Warden Boyd, The Universe of Information: the Work of Paul Otlet for Documentation and international
Organization, FID Publication 520, Moscow, International Federation for Documentation by the All-Union Institute for
Scientific and Technical Information (Viniti), 1975. (p. 352)
14. The Man Who Wanted to Classify the World
15. Rayward, Warden Boyd (who translated and adapted), Mundaneum: Archives of Knowledge, Urbana-Campaign, Ill. :
Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2010, p. 35. Original:
Charlotte Dubray et al., Mundaneum: Les Archives de la Connaissance, Bruxelles: Les Impressions Nouvelles, 2008.
16. Paul Otlet, Traité de documentation: le livre sur le livre, théorie et pratique (Bruxelles: Editiones Mundaneum, 1934).
17. Wouter Van Acker, 'Opening the Shrine of the Mundaneum The Positivist Spirit in the Architecture of Le Corbusier and his
Belgian “Idolators,”' in Proceedings of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand: 30, Open, edited
by Alexandra Brown and Andrew Leach (Gold Coast,Qld: SAHANZ, 2013), vol. 2, p. 804.
18. Wouter Van Acker, 'Opening the Shrine of the Mundaneum The Positivist Spirit in the Architecture of Le Corbusier and his
Belgian “Idolators,”' in Proceedings of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand: 30, Open, edited
by Alexandra Brown and Andrew Leach (Gold Coast,Qld: SAHANZ, 2013), vol. 2, p. 803.
19. Wouter Van Acker, 'Opening the Shrine of the Mundaneum The Positivist Spirit in the Architecture of Le Corbusier and his
Belgian “Idolators,”' in Proceedings of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand: 30, Open, edited
by Alexandra Brown and Andrew Leach (Gold Coast,Qld: SAHANZ, 2013), vol. 2, p. 804.
20. From Van Acker, Wouter, “Internationalist Utopias of Visual Education. The Graphic and Scenographic Transformation of
the Universal Encyclopaedia in the Work of Paul Otlet, Patrick Geddes, and Otto Neurath,” in Perspectives on Science,
Vol.19, nr.1, 2011, p. 72. http://staging01.muse.jhu.edu/journals/perspectives_on_science/v019/19.1.van-acker.html
21. https://ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/15431/Rayward_215_WEB.pdf?sequence=2
22. http://www.sonuma.com/archive/la-conservation-des-archives-du-mundaneum
23. Mundaneum Archives, Mons
P.286
P.287
Transclusionism
This page documents some of the contraptions at work in the Mondotheque
wiki. The name "transclusionism" refers to the term "transclusion" coined by
utopian systems humanist Ted Nelson and used in Mediawiki to refer to
inclusion of the same piece of text in between different pages.
HOW TO TRANSCLUDE LABELLED SECTIONS BETWEEN
TEXTS:
To create transclusions between different texts, you need to select a section of text that will
form a connection between the pages, based on a common subject:
• Think of a category that is the common ground for the link. For example if two texts
refer to a similar issue or specific concept (eg. 'rawdata'), formulate it without
spaces or using underscores (eg. 'raw_data', not 'raw data' );
• Edit the two or more pages which you want to link, adding {{RT|rawdata}}
before the text section, and
end=rawdata /> at the end (take care of the closing '/>' );
• All text sections in other wiki pages that are marked up through the same common
ground, will be transcluded in the margin of the text.
HOW IT SHOWS UP:
For example, this is how a transclusion from a labelled section of the Xanadu article appears:
From Xanadu:
Every document can contain links of
any type including virtual copies
("transclusions") to any other
document in the system accessible to
its owner.
HOW IT WORKS:
The code is used by the 'Labeled Section Transclusion' extension, which
looks for the tagged sections in a text, to transclude them into another text based on the
assigned labels.
The {{RT|rawdata}} instead, creates the side links by transcluding the
Template:RT page, substituting the word rawdata in its internal code, in place of
{{{1}}}. This is the commented content of Template:RT:
# Puts the trancluded sections in its own div:
# Searches semantically for all the pages in the
# requested category, puts them in an
array:
{{#ask:
[[Category:{{{1}}}]]|format=array | name=results
}}
# Starts a loop, going from 0 to the amount of pages
# in the array:
{{#loop: looper
| 0
| {{#arraysize: results}}
# If the pagename of the current element of the array
# is the same as the page calling the loop, it will skip
# the page:
| {{#ifeq: {{FULLPAGENAME:
{{#arrayindex: results | {{#var:looper}} }}
}}
|
{{FULLPAGENAME}}
|
|
{{#lst:
# Otherwise it searches through the current page in the
# loop, for all the occurrences of labeled sections:
{{#arrayindex: results | {{#var:looper}} }}
| {{{1}}}
}}
# Adds a link to the current page in loop:
([[{{#arrayindex: results | {{#var:looper}} }}]])
# Adds some space after the page:
P.288
P.289
# End of pagename if statement:
}}
# End of loop:
}}
# Closes div:
# Adds the page to the label category:
[[category:{{{1}}}]]
NECESSAIRE
Currently, on top of MediaWiki and SemanticMediaWiki, the following extensions needed
to be installed for the contraption to work:
• Labeled Section Transclusion to be able to select specific sections of the texts and make
connections between them;
• Parser Functions to be able to operate statements like
if
in the wiki pseudo-language;
• Arrays to create lists of objects, for example as a result of semantic queries;
• Loops to loop between the arrays above;
• Variables as it's needed by some of the above.
Last
Revision:
2·08·2016
Reading
list
Cross-readings. Not a bibliography.
PAUL OTLET
• Paul Otlet, L’afrique aux noirs, Bruxelles: Ferdinand Larcier,
1888.
• Paul Otlet, L’Éducation et les Instituts du Palais Mondial
(Mundaneum). Bruxelles: Union des Associations
Internationales, 1926.
• Paul Otlet, Cité mondiale. Geneva: World civic center:
Mundaneum. Bruxelles: Union des Associations
Internationales, 1929.
• Paul Otlet, Traité de documentation, Bruxelles, Mundaneum,
Palais Mondial, 1934.
• Paul Otlet, Monde: essai d'universalisme - Connaissance du
Monde, Sentiment du Monde, Action organisee et Plan du
Monde, Bruxelles: Editiones Mundeum 1935. See also:
http://www.laetusinpraesens.org/uia/docs/otlet_contents.php
• Paul Otlet, Plan belgique; essai d'un plan général, économique,
social, culturel. Plan d'urbanisation national. Liaison avec le
plan mondial. Conditions. Problèmes. Solutions. Réformes,
Bruxelles: Éditiones Mundaneum, 1935.
RE-READING OTLET
Or, reading the readers that explored and contextualized the work of Otlet in recent times.
• Jacques Gillen, Stéphanie Manfroid, and Raphaèle Cornille
(eds.), Paul Otlet, fondateur du Mundaneum (1868-1944).
P.290
P.291
Architecte du savoir, Artisan de paix, Mons: Éditions Les
Impressions Nouvelles, 2010.
• Françoise Levie, L’homme qui voulait classer le monde. Paul
Otlet et le Mundaneum, Bruxelles: Les Impressions Nouvelles,
2006.
• Warden Boyd Rayward, The Universe of Information: the
Work of Paul Otlet for Documentation and international
Organization, FID Publication 520, Moscow: International
Federation for Documentation by the All-Union Institute for
Scientific and Technical Information (Viniti), 1975.
• Warden Boyd Rayward, Universum informastsii Zhizn' i
deiatl' nost' Polia Otle, Trans. R.S. Giliarevesky, Moscow:
VINITI, 1976.
• Warden Boyd Rayward (ed.), International Organization and
Dissemination of Knowledge: Selected Essays of Paul Otlet,
Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1990.
• Warden Boyd Rayward, El Universo de la Documentacion: la
obra de Paul Otlet sobra documentacion y organizacion
internacional, Trans. Pilar Arnau Rived, Madrid: Mundanau,
2005.
• Warden Boyd Raywar, "Visions of Xanadu: Paul Otlet
(1868-1944) and Hypertext." Journal of the American
Society for Information Science (1986-1998) 45, no. 4 (05,
1994): 235-251.
• Warden Boyd Rayward (who translated and adapted),
Mundaneum: Archives of Knowledge, Urbana-Campaign, Ill. :
Graduate School of Library and Information Science,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2010. Original:
Charlotte Dubray et al., Mundaneum: Les Archives de la
Connaissance, Bruxelles: Les Impressions Nouvelles, 2008.
• Wouter Van Acker,[http://staging01.muse.jhu.edu/journals/
perspectives_on_science/v019/19.1.van-acker.html
“Internationalist Utopias of Visual Education. The Graphic
and Scenographic Transformation of the Universal
Encyclopaedia in the Work of Paul Otlet, Patrick Geddes,
and Otto Neurath” in Perspectives on Science, Vol.19, nr.1,
2011, p. 32-80.
• Wouter Van Acker, “Universalism as Utopia. A Historical
Study of the Schemes and Schemas of Paul Otlet
(1868-1944)”, Unpublished PhD Dissertation, University
Press, Zelzate, 2011.
• Theater Adhoc, The humor and tragedy of completeness,
2005.
FATHERS OF THE INTERNET
Constructing a posthumous pre-history of contemporary networking technologies.
• Christophe Lejeune, Ce que l’annuaire fait à Internet Sociologie des épreuves documentaires, in Cahiers dela
documentation – Bladen voor documentatie – 2006/3.
• Paul Dourish and Genevieve Bell, Divining a Digital Future,
Chicago: MIT Press 2011.
• John Johnston, The Allure of Machinic Life: Cybernetics,
Artificial Life, and the New AI, Chicago: MIT Press 2008.
• Charles van den Heuvel Building society, constructing
knowledge, weaving the web, in Boyd Rayward [ed.]
European Modernism and the Information Society, London:
Ashgate Publishers 2008, chapter 7 pp. 127-153.
• Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler, Ora Lassila, The Semantic
Web, in Scientific American - SCI AMER , vol. 284, no. 5,
pp. 34-43, 2001.
• Alex Wright, Cataloging the World: Paul Otlet and the Birth
of the Information Age, Oxford University Press, 2014.
• Popova, Maria, “The Birth of the Information Age: How Paul
Otlet’s Vision for Cataloging and Connecting Humanity
Shaped Our World”, Brain Pickings, 2014.
• Heuvel, Charles van den, “Building Society, Constructing
Knowledge, Weaving the Web”. in European Modernism and
P.292
P.293
the Information Society – Informing the Present,
Understanding the Past, Aldershot, 2008, pp. 127–153.
CLASSIFYING THE WORLD
The recurring tensions between the world and its systematic representation.
• ShinJoung Yeo, James R. Jacobs, Diversity matters?
Rethinking diversity in libraries, Radical Reference
Countepoise 9 (2) Spring, 2006. p. 5-8.
• Thomas Hapke, Wilhelm Ostwald's Combinatorics as a Link
between In-formation and Form, in Library Trends, Volume
61, Number 2, Fall 2012.
• Nancy Cartwright, Jordi Cat, Lola Fleck, Thomas E. Uebel,
Otto Neurath: Philosophy Between Science and Politics.
Cambridge University Press, 2008.
• Nathan Ensmenger, The Computer Boys Take Over:
Computers, Programmers, and the Politics of Technical
Expertise. MIT Press, 2010.
• Ronald E. Day, The Modern Invention of Information:
Discourse, History, and Power, Southern Illinois University
Press, 2001.
• Markus Krajewski, Peter Krapp Paper Machines: About
Cards & Catalogs, 1548-1929 The MIT Press
• Eric de Groller A Study of general categories applicable to
classification and coding in documentation; Documentation and
terminology of science; 1962.
• Marlene Manoff, "Theories of the archive from across the
disciplines," in portal: Libraries and the Academy, Vol. 4, No.
1 (2004), pp. 9–25.
• Charles van den Heuvel, W. Boyd Rayward, Facing
Interfaces: Paul Otlet's Visualizations of Data Integration.
Journal of the American society for information science and
technology (2011).
DON'T BE EVIL
Standing on the hands of Internet giants.
• Rene Koenig, Miriam Rasch (eds), Society of the Query
Reader: Reflections on Web Search, Amsterdam: Institute of
Network Cultures, 2014.
• Matthew Fuller, Andrew Goffey, Evil Media. Cambridge,
Mass., United States: MIT Press, 2012.
• Steve Levy In The Plex. Simon & Schuster, 2011.
• Dan Schiller, ShinJoung Yeo, Powered By Google: Widening
Access and Tightening Corporate Control in: Red Art: New
Utopias in Data Capitalism, Leonardo Electronic Almanac,
Volume 20 Issue 1 (2015).
• Invisible Committee, Fuck Off Google, 2014.
• Dave Eggers, The Circle. Knopf, 2014.
• Matteo Pasquinelli, Google’s PageRank Algorithm: A
Diagram of the Cognitive Capitalism and the Rentier of the
Common Intellect. In: Konrad Becker, Felix Stalder
(eds), Deep Search, London: Transaction Publishers: 2009.
• Joris van Hoboken, Search Engine Freedom: On the
Implications of the Right to Freedom of Expression for the
P.294
P.295
Legal Governance of Web Search Engines. Kluwer Law
International, 2012.
• Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Control and Freedom: Power and
Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics. The MIT Press, 2008.
• Siva Vaidhyanathan, The Googlization of Everything (And
Why We Should Worry). University of California Press.
2011.
• William Miller, Living With Google. In: Journal of Library
Administration Volume 47, Issue 1-2, 2008.
• Lawrence Page, Sergey Brin The Anatomy of a Large-Scale
Hypertextual Web Search Engine. Computer Networks, vol.
30 (1998), pp. 107-117.
• Ken Auletta Googled: The end of the world as we know it.
Penguin Press, 2009.
EMBEDDED HIERARCHIES
How classification systems, and the dream of their universal application actually operate.
• Paul Otlet, Traité de documentation, Bruxelles, Mundaneum,
Palais Mondial, 1934. (for alphabet hierarchy, see page 71)
• Paul Otlet, L’afrique aux noirs, Bruxelles: Ferdinand Larcier,
1888.
• Judy Wajcman, Feminism Confronts Technology, University
Park, Pa: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991.
• Judge, Anthony, “Union of International Associations – Virtual
Organization – Paul Otlet's 100-year Hypertext
Conundrum?”, 2001.
• Ducheyne, Steffen, “Paul Otlet's Theory of Knowledge and
Linguistic Objectivism”, in Knowledge Organization, no 32,
2005, pp. 110–116.
ARCHITECTURAL VISIONS
Writings on how Otlet's knowledge site was successively imagined and visualized on grand
architectural scales.
• Catherine Courtiau, "La cité internationale 1927-1931," in
Transnational Associations, 5/1987: 255-266.
• Giuliano Gresleri and Dario Matteoni. La Città Mondiale:
Andersen, Hébrard, Otlet, Le Corbusier. Venezia: Marsilio,
1982.
• Isabelle Rieusset-Lemarie, "P. Otlet's Mundaneum and the
International Perspective in the History of Documentation and
Information science," in Journal of the American Society for
Information Science (1986-1998)48.4 (Apr 1997):
301-309.
• Le Corbusier, Vers une Architecture, Paris: les éditions G.
Crès, 1923.
• Transnational Associations, "Otlet et Le Corbusier" 1927-31,
INGO Development Projects: Quantity or Quality, Issue No:
5, 1987.
• Wouter Van Acker. "Hubris or utopia? Megalomania and
imagination in the work of Paul Otlet," in Cahiers de la
documentation – Bladen voor documentatie – 2012/2,
58-66.
• Wouter Van Acker. "Architectural Metaphors of Knowledge:
The Mundaneum Designs of Maurice Heymans, Paul Otlet,
and Le Corbusier." Library Trends 61, no. 2 (2012):
371-396.
• Van Acker, Wouter, Somsen, Geert, “A Tale of Two World
Capitals – the Internationalisms of Pieter Eijkman and Paul
Otlet”, in Revue Belge de Philologie et d'Histoire/Belgisch
Tijdschrift voor Filologie en Geschiedenis, Vol. 90, nr.4,
2012.
• Wouter Van Acker, "Opening the Shrine of the Mundaneum
The Positivist Spirit in the Architecture of Le Corbusier and his
Belgian “Idolators”, in Proceedings of the Society of
P.296
P.297
Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand: 30,
Open, edited by Alexandra Brown and Andrew Leach (Gold
Coast,Qld: SAHANZ, 2013), vol. 2, 791-805.
• Anthony Vidler, “The Space of History: Modern Museums
from Patrick Geddes to Le Corbusier,” in The Architecture of
the Museum: Symbolic Structures, Urban Contexts, ed.
Michaela Giebelhausen (Manchester; New York: Manchester
University Press, 2003).
• Volker Welter. "Biopolis Patrick Geddes and the City of
Life." Cambridge, Mass: MIT, 2003.
• Alfred Willis, “The Exoteric and Esoteric Functions of Le
Corbusier’s Mundaneum,” Modulus/University of Virginia
School of Architecture Review 12, no. 21 (1980).
ZEITGEIST
It includes both century-old sources and more recent ones on the parallel or entangled
movements around the Mundaneum time.
• Hendrik Christian Andersen and Ernest M. Hébrard.
Création d'un Centre mondial de communication. Paris, 1913.
• Julie Carlier, "Moving beyond Boundaries: An Entangled
History of Feminism in Belgium, 1890–1914," Ph.D.
dissertation, Universiteit Gent, 2010. (esp. 439-458.)
• Bambi Ceuppens, Congo made in Flanders?: koloniale
Vlaamse visies op "blank" en "zwart" in Belgisch Congo.
[Gent]: Academia Press, 2004.
• Conseil International des Femmes (International Council of
Women), Office Central de Documentation pour les Questions
Concernant la Femme. Rapport. Bruxelles : Office Central de
Documentation Féminine, 1909.
• Sandi E. Cooper, Patriotic pacifism waging war on war in
Europe, 1815-1914. New York: Oxford University Press,
1991.
• Sylvie Fayet-Scribe, "Women Professionals in Documentation
in France during the 1930s," Libraries & the Cultural Record
Vol. 44, No. 2, Women Pioneers in the Information Sciences
Part I, 1900-1950 (2009), pp. 201-219. (translated by
Michael Buckland)
• François Garas, Mes temples. Paris: Michalon, 1907.
• Madeleine Herren, Hintertüren zur Macht: Internationalismus
und modernisierungsorientierte Aussenpolitik in Belgien, der
Schweiz und den USA 1865-1914. München: Oldenbourg,
2000.
• Robert Hoozee and Mary Anne Stevens, Impressionism to
Symbolism: The Belgian Avant-Garde 1880-1900, London:
Royal Academy of Arts, 1994.
• Markus Krajewski, Die Brücke: A German contemporary of
the Institut International de Bibliographie. In: Cahiers de la
documentation / Bladen voor documentatie 66.2 (Juin,
Numéro Spécial 2012), 25–31.
• Daniel Laqua, "Transnational intellectual cooperation, the
League of Nations, and the problem of order," in Journal of
Global History (2011) 6, pp. 223–247.
• Lewis Pyenson and Christophe Verbruggen, "Ego and the
International: The Modernist Circle of George Sarton," Isis,
Vol. 100, No. 1 (March 2009), pp. 60-78.
• Elisée Reclus, Nouvelle géographie universelle; la terre et les
hommes, Paris, Hachette et cie., 1876-94.
• Edouard Schuré, Les grands initiés: esquisse de l'histoire
secrète des religions, 1889.
• Rayward, Warden Boyd (ed.), European Modernism and the
Information Society: Informing the Present, Understanding the
Past. Aldershot, Hants, England: Ashgate, 2008.
• Van Acker, Wouter, “Internationalist Utopias of Visual
Education. The Graphic and Scenographic Transformation of
the Universal Encyclopaedia in the Work of Paul Otlet,
P.298
P.299
Patrick Geddes, and Otto Neurath”, in Perspectives on
Science, Vol.19, nr.1, 2011, p. 32-80.
• Nader Vossoughian, "The Language of the World Museum:
Otto Neurath, Paul Otlet, Le Corbusier", Transnational
Associations 1-2 (January-June 2003), Brussels, pp 82-93.
• Alfred Willis, “The Exoteric and Esoteric Functions of Le
Corbusier’s Mundaneum,” Modulus/University of Virginia
School of Architecture Review 12, no. 21 (1980).
Last
Revision:
2·08·2016
Colophon/
Colofon
• Mondotheque editorial team/redactie team/équipe éditoriale: André Castro,
Sînziana Păltineanu, Dennis Pohl, Dick Reckard, Natacha
Roussel, Femke Snelting, Alexia de Visscher
• Copy-editing/tekstredactie/édition EN: Sophie Burm (Amateur Librarian, The
Smart City - City of Knowledge, X=Y, A Book of the Web), Liz Soltan (An
experimental transcript)
• Translations EN-FR/vertalingen EN-FR/traductions EN-FR: Eva Lena
Vermeersch (Amateur Librarian, A Pre-emptive History of the Google Cultural
Institute, The Smart City - City of Knowledge), Natacha Roussel (LES
UTOPISTES and their common logos, Introduction), Donatella
Portoghese
• Translations EN-NL/vertalingen EN-FR/traductions EN-NL: Femke
Snelting, Peter Westenberg
• Transcriptions/transcripties/transcriptions: Lola Durt, Femke Snelting,
Tom van den Wijngaert
• Design and development/ontwerp en ontwikkeling/graphisme et développement:
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• Published by/een publicatie van/publié par: Constant (2016)
• Printed at/druk/imprimé par: Online-Druck.biz
• License/licentie/licence: Texts and images developed by Mondotheque are available
under a Free Art License 1.3 (C) Copyleft Attitude, 2007. You may copy,
distribute and modify them according to the terms of the Free Art License: http://
artlibre.org Texts and images by Paul Otlet and Henri Lafontaine are in the Public
Domain. Other materials copyright by the authors/Teksten en afbeeldingen
ontwikkeld door Mondotheque zijn beschikbaar onder een Free Art License 1.3 (C)
Copyleft Attitude, 2007. U kunt ze dus kopiëren, verspreiden en wijzigen volgens de
voorwaarden van de Free Art License: http://artlibre.org Teksten en beelden van
Paul Otlet en Henri Lafontaine zijn in het publieke domein. Andere materialen:
auteursrecht bij de auteurs/Les textes et images développées par Mondotheque sont
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disponibles sous licence Art Libre 1.3 (C) Copyleft Attitude 2007. Vous pouvez
les copier, distribuer et modifier selon les termes de la Licence Art Libre: http://
artlibre.org Les textes et les images de Paul Otlet et Henri Lafontaine sont dans le
domaine public. Les autres matériaux sont assujettis aux droits d'auteur choisis par
les auteurs.
• ISBN: 9789081145954
Thank you/bedankt/merci: the contributors/de auteurs/les contributeurs, Yves Bernard,
Michel Cleempoel, Raphaèle Cornille, Jan Gerber, Marc d'Hoore, Églantine Lebacq,
Nicolas Malevé, Stéphanie Manfroid, Robert M. Ochshorn, An Mertens, Dries Moreels,
Sylvia Van Peteghem, Jara Rocha, Roel Roscam Abbing.
Mondotheque is supported by/wordt ondersteund door/est soutenu par: De Vlaamse
GemeenschapsCommissie, Akademie Schloss Solitude.
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::: {.section}
The show had already been going on for more than three hours, but nobody
was bothered by this. Quite the contrary. The tension in the venue was
approaching its peak, and the ratings were through the roof. Throughout
all of Europe, 195 million people were watching the spectacle on
television, and the social mass media were gaining steam. On Twitter,
more than 47,000 messages were being sent every minute with the hashtag
\#Eurovision.[^1^](#f6-note-0001){#f6-note-0001a} The outcome was
decided shortly after midnight: Conchita Wurst, the bearded diva, was
announced the winner of the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest. Cheers erupted
as the public celebrated the victor -- but also itself. At long last,
there was more to the event than just another round of tacky television
programming ("This is Ljubljana calling!"). Rather, a statement was made
-- a statement in favor of tolerance and against homophobia, for
diversity and for the right to define oneself however one pleases. And
Europe sent this message in the midst of a crisis and despite ongoing
hostilities, not to mention all of the toxic rumblings that could be
heard about decadence, cultural decay, and Gayropa. Visibly moved, the
Austrian singer let out an exclamation -- "We are unity, and we are
unstoppable!" -- as she returned to the stage with wobbly knees to
accept the trophy.
With her aesthetically convincing performance, Conchita succeeded in
unleashing a strong desire for personal []{#Page_1 type="pagebreak"
title="1"}self-discovery, for community, and for overcoming stale
conventions. And she did this through a character that mainstream
society would have considered paradoxical and deviant not long ago but
has since come to understand: attractive beyond the dichotomy of man and
woman, explicitly artificial and yet entirely authentic. This peculiar
conflation of artificiality and naturalness is equally present in
Berndnaut Smilde\'s photographic work of a real indoor cloud (*Nimbus*,
2010) on the cover of this book. Conchita\'s performance was also on a
formal level seemingly paradoxical: extremely focused and completely
open. Unlike most of the other acts, she took the stage alone, and
though she hardly moved at all, she nevertheless incited the audience to
participate in numerous ways and genuinely to act out the motto of the
contest ("Join us!"). Throughout the early rounds of the competition,
the beard, which was at first so provocative, transformed into a
free-floating symbol that the public began to appropriate in various
ways. Men and women painted Conchita-like beards on their faces,
newspapers printed beards to be cut out, and fans crocheted beards. Not
only did someone Photoshop a beard on to a painting of Empress Sissi of
Austria, but King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands even tweeted a
deceptively realistic portrait of his wife, Queen Máxima, wearing a
beard. From one of the biggest stages of all, the evening of Wurst\'s
victory conveyed an impression of how much the culture of Europe had
changed in recent years, both in terms of its content and its forms.
That which had long been restricted to subcultural niches -- the
fluidity of gender identities, appropriation as a cultural technique,
or the conflation of reception and production, for instance -- was now
part of the mainstream. Even while sitting in front of the television,
this mainstream was no longer just a private audience but rather a
multitude of singular producers whose networked activity -- on location
or on social mass media -- lent particular significance to the occasion
as a moment of collective self-perception.
It is more than half a century since Marshall McLuhan announced the end
of the Modern era, a cultural epoch that he called the Gutenberg Galaxy
in honor of the print medium by which it was so influenced. What was
once just an abstract speculation of media theory, however, now
describes []{#Page_2 type="pagebreak" title="2"}the concrete reality of
our everyday life. What\'s more, we have moved well past McLuhan\'s
diagnosis: the erosion of old cultural forms, institutions, and
certainties is not just something we affirm, but new ones have already
formed whose contours are easy to identify not only in niche sectors but
in the mainstream. Shortly before Conchita\'s triumph, Facebook thus
expanded the gender-identity options for its billion-plus users from 2
to 60. In addition to "male" and "female," users of the English version
of the site can now choose from among the following categories:
::: {.extract}
Agender, Androgyne, Androgynes, Androgynous, Asexual, Bigender, Cis, Cis
Female, Cis Male, Cis Man, Cis Woman, Cisgender, Cisgender Female,
Cisgender Male, Cisgender Man, Cisgender Woman, Female to Male (FTM),
Female to Male Trans Man, Female to Male Transgender Man, Female to Male
Transsexual Man, Gender Fluid, Gender Neutral, Gender Nonconforming,
Gender Questioning, Gender Variant, Genderqueer, Hermaphrodite,
Intersex, Intersex Man, Intersex Person, Intersex Woman, Male to Female
(MTF), Male to Female Trans Woman, Male to Female Transgender Woman,
Male to Female Transsexual Woman, Neither, Neutrois, Non-Binary, Other,
Pangender, Polygender, T\*Man, Trans, Trans Female, Trans Male, Trans
Man, Trans Person, Trans\*Female, Trans\*Male, Trans\*Man,
Trans\*Person, Trans\*Woman, Transexual, Transexual Female, Transexual
Male, Transexual Man, Transexual Person, Transexual Woman, Transgender
Female, Transgender Person, Transmasculine, T\*Woman, Two\*Person,
Two-Spirit, Two-Spirit Person.
:::
This enormous proliferation of cultural possibilities is an expression
of what I will refer to below as the digital condition. Far from being
universally welcomed, its growing presence has also instigated waves of
nostalgia, diffuse resentments, and intellectual panic. Conservative and
reactionary movements, which oppose such developments and desire to
preserve or even re-create previous conditions, have been on the rise.
Likewise in 2014, for instance, a cultural dispute broke out in normally
subdued Baden-Würtemberg over which forms of sexual partnership should
be mentioned positively in the sexual education curriculum. Its impetus
was a working paper released at the end of 2013 by the state\'s
[]{#Page_3 type="pagebreak" title="3"}Ministry of Culture. Among other
things, it proposed that adolescents "should confront their own sexual
identity and orientation \[...\] from a position of acceptance with
respect to sexual diversity."[^2^](#f6-note-0002){#f6-note-0002a} In a
short period of time, a campaign organized mainly through social mass
media collected more than 200,000 signatures in opposition to the
proposal and submitted them to the petitions committee at the state
parliament. At that point, the government responded by putting the
initiative on ice. However, according to the analysis presented in this
book, leaving it on ice creates a precarious situation.
The rise and spread of the digital condition is the result of a
wide-ranging and irreversible cultural transformation, the beginnings of
which can in part be traced back to the nineteenth century. Since the
1960s, however, this shift has accelerated enormously and has
encompassed increasingly broader spheres of social life. More and more
people have been participating in cultural processes; larger and larger
dimensions of existence have become battlegrounds for cultural disputes;
and social activity has been intertwined with increasingly complex
technologies, without which it would hardly be possible to conceive of
these processes, let alone achieve them. The number of competing
cultural projects, works, reference points, and reference systems has
been growing rapidly. This, in turn, has caused an escalating crisis for
the established forms and institutions of culture, which are poorly
equipped to deal with such an inundation of new claims to meaning. Since
roughly the year 2000, many previously independent developments have
been consolidating, gaining strength and modifying themselves to form a
new cultural constellation that encompasses broad segments of society --
a new galaxy, as McLuhan might have
said.[^3^](#f6-note-0003){#f6-note-0003a} These days it is relatively
easy to recognize the specific forms that characterize it as a whole and
how these forms have contributed to new, contradictory and
conflict-laden political dynamics.
My argument, which is restricted to cultural developments in the
(transatlantic) West, is divided into three chapters. In the first, I
will outline the *historical* developments that have given rise to this
quantitative and qualitative change and have led to the crisis faced by
the institutions of the late phase of the Gutenberg Galaxy, which
defined the last third []{#Page_4 type="pagebreak" title="4"}of the
twentieth century.[^4^](#f6-note-0004){#f6-note-0004a} The expansion of
the social basis of cultural processes will be traced back to changes in
the labor market, to the self-empowerment of marginalized groups, and to
the dissolution of centralized cultural geography. The broadening of
cultural fields will be discussed in terms of the rise of design as a
general creative discipline, and the growing significance of complex
technologies -- as fundamental components of everyday life -- will be
tracked from the beginnings of independent media up to the development
of the internet as a mass medium. These processes, which at first
unfolded on their own and may have been reversible on an individual
basis, are integrated today and represent a socially dominant component
of the coherent digital condition. From the perspective of cultural
studies and media theory, the second chapter will delineate the already
recognizable features of this new culture. Concerned above all with the
analysis of forms, its focus is thus on the question of "how" cultural
practices operate. It is only because specific forms of culture,
exchange, and expression are prevalent across diverse varieties of
content, social spheres, and locations that it is even possible to speak
of the digital condition in the singular. Three examples of such forms
stand out in particular. *Referentiality* -- that is, the use of
existing cultural materials for one\'s own production -- is an essential
feature of many methods for inscribing oneself into cultural processes.
In the context of unmanageable masses of shifting and semantically open
reference points, the act of selecting things and combining them has
become fundamental to the production of meaning and the constitution of
the self. The second feature that characterizes these processes is
*communality*. It is only through a collectively shared frame of
reference that meanings can be stabilized, possible courses of action
can be determined, and resources can be made available. This has given
rise to communal formations that generate self-referential worlds, which
in turn modulate various dimensions of existence -- from aesthetic
preferences to the methods of biological reproduction and the rhythms of
space and time. In these worlds, the dynamics of network power have
reconfigured notions of voluntary and involuntary behavior, autonomy,
and coercion. The third feature of the new cultural landscape is its
*algorithmicity*. It is characterized, in other []{#Page_5
type="pagebreak" title="5"}words, by automated decision-making processes
that reduce and give shape to the glut of information, by extracting
information from the volume of data produced by machines. This extracted
information is then accessible to human perception and can serve as the
basis of singular and communal activity. Faced with the enormous amount
of data generated by people and machines, we would be blind were it not
for algorithms.
The third chapter will focus on *political dimensions*. These are the
factors that enable the formal dimensions described in the preceding
chapter to manifest themselves in the form of social, political, and
economic projects. Whereas the first chapter is concerned with long-term
and irreversible historical processes, and the second outlines the
general cultural forms that emerged from these changes with a certain
degree of inevitability, my concentration here will be on open-ended
dynamics that can still be influenced. A contrast will be made between
two political tendencies of the digital condition that are already quite
advanced: *post-democracy* and *commons*. Both take full advantage of
the possibilities that have arisen on account of structural changes and
have advanced them even further, though in entirely different
directions. "Post-democracy" refers to strategies that counteract the
enormously expanded capacity for social communication by disconnecting
the possibility to participate in things from the ability to make
decisions about them. Everyone is allowed to voice his or her opinion,
but decisions are ultimately made by a select few. Even though growing
numbers of people can and must take responsibility for their own
activity, they are unable to influence the social conditions -- the
social texture -- under which this activity has to take place. Social
mass media such as Facebook and Google will receive particular attention
as the most conspicuous manifestations of this tendency. Here, under new
structural provisions, a new combination of behavior and thought has
been implemented that promotes the normalization of post-democracy and
contributes to its otherwise inexplicable acceptance in many areas of
society. "Commons," on the contrary, denotes approaches for developing
new and comprehensive institutions that not only directly combine
participation and decision-making but also integrate economic, social,
and ethical spheres -- spheres that Modernity has tended to keep
apart.[]{#Page_6 type="pagebreak" title="6"}
Post-democracy and commons can be understood as two lines of development
that point beyond the current crisis of liberal democracy and represent
new political projects. One can be characterized as an essentially
authoritarian system, the other as a radical expansion and renewal of
democracy, from the notion of representation to that of participation.
Even though I have brought together a number of broad perspectives, I
have refrained from discussing certain topics that a book entitled *The
Digital Condition* might be expected to address, notably the matter of
copyright, for one example. This is easy to explain. As regards the new
forms at the heart of this book, none of these developments requires or
justifies copyright law in its present form. In any case, my thoughts on
the matter were published not long ago in another book, so there is no
need to repeat them here.[^5^](#f6-note-0005){#f6-note-0005a} The theme
of privacy will also receive little attention. This is not because I
share the view, held by proponents of "post-privacy," that it would be
better for all personal information to be made available to everyone. On
the contrary, this position strikes me as superficial and naïve. That
said, the political function of privacy -- to safeguard a degree of
personal autonomy from powerful institutions -- is based on fundamental
concepts that, in light of the developments to be described below,
urgently need to be updated. This is a task, however, that would take me
far beyond the scope of the present
book.[^6^](#f6-note-0006){#f6-note-0006a}
Before moving on to the first chapter, I should first briefly explain my
somewhat unorthodox understanding of the central concepts in the title
of the book -- "condition" and "digital." In what follows, the term
"condition" will be used to designate a cultural condition whereby the
processes of social meaning -- that is, the normative dimension of
existence -- are explicitly or implicitly negotiated and realized by
means of singular and collective activity. Meaning, however, does not
manifest itself in signs and symbols alone; rather, the practices that
engender it and are inspired by it are consolidated into artifacts,
institutions, and lifeworlds. In other words, far from being a symbolic
accessory or mere overlay, culture in fact directs our actions and gives
shape to society. By means of materialization and repetition, meaning --
both as claim and as reality -- is made visible, productive, and
negotiable. People are free to accept it, reject it, or ignore
[]{#Page_7 type="pagebreak" title="7"}it altogether. Social meaning --
that is, meaning shared by multiple people -- can only come about
through processes of exchange within larger or smaller formations.
Production and reception (to the extent that it makes any sense to
distinguish between the two) do not proceed linearly here, but rather
loop back and reciprocally influence one another. In such processes, the
participants themselves determine, in a more or less binding manner, how
they stand in relation to themselves, to each other, and to the world,
and they determine the frame of reference in which their activity is
oriented. Accordingly, culture is not something static or something that
is possessed by a person or a group, but rather a field of dispute that
is subject to the activities of multiple ongoing changes, each happening
at its own pace. It is characterized by processes of dissolution and
constitution that may be collaborative, oppositional, or simply
operating side by side. The field of culture is pervaded by competing
claims to power and mechanisms for exerting it. This leads to conflicts
about which frames of reference should be adopted for different fields
and within different social groups. In such conflicts,
self-determination and external determination interact until a point is
reached at which both sides are mutually constituted. This, in turn,
changes the conditions that give rise to shared meaning and personal
identity.
In what follows, this broadly post-structuralist perspective will inform
my discussion of the causes and formational conditions of cultural
orders and their practices. Culture will be conceived throughout as
something heterogeneous and hybrid. It draws from many sources; it is
motivated by the widest possible variety of desires, intentions, and
compulsions; and it mobilizes whatever resources might be necessary for
the constitution of meaning. This emphasis on the materiality of culture
is also reflected in the concept of the digital. Media are relational
technologies, which means that they facilitate certain types of
connection between humans and
objects.[^7^](#f6-note-0007){#f6-note-0007a} "Digital" thus denotes the
set of relations that, on the infrastructural basis of digital networks,
is realized today in the production, use, and transformation of
material and immaterial goods, and in the constitution and coordination
of personal and collective activity. In this regard, the focus is less
on the dominance of a certain class []{#Page_8 type="pagebreak"
title="8"}of technological artifacts -- the computer, for instance --
and even less on distinguishing between "digital" and "analog,"
"material" and "immaterial." Even in the digital condition, the analog
has not gone away. Rather, it has been re-evaluated and even partially
upgraded. The immaterial, moreover, is never entirely without
materiality. On the contrary, the fleeting impulses of digital
communication depend on global and unmistakably material infrastructures
that extend from mines beneath the surface of the earth, from which rare
earth metals are extracted, all the way into outer space, where
satellites are circling around above us. Such things may be ignored
because they are outside the experience of everyday life, but that does
not mean that they have disappeared or that they are of any less
significance. "Digital" thus refers to historically new possibilities
for constituting and connecting various human and non-human actors,
which is not limited to digital media but rather appears everywhere as a
relational paradigm that alters the realm of possibility for numerous
materials and actors. My understanding of the digital thus approximates
the concept of the "post-digital," which has been gaining currency over
the past few years within critical media cultures. Here, too, the
distinction between "new" and "old" media and all of the ideological
baggage associated with it -- for instance, that the new represents the
future while the old represents the past -- have been rejected. The
aesthetic projects that continue to define the image of the "digital" --
immateriality, perfection, and virtuality -- have likewise been
discarded.[^8^](#f6-note-0008){#f6-note-0008a} Above all, the
"post-digital" is a critical response to this techno-utopian aesthetic
and its attendant economic and political perspectives. According to the
cultural theorist Florian Cramer, the concept accommodates the fact that
"new ethical and cultural conventions which became mainstream with
internet communities and open-source culture are being retroactively
applied to the making of non-digital and post-digital media
products."[^9^](#f6-note-0009){#f6-note-0009a} He thus cites the trend
that process-based practices oriented toward open interaction, which
first developed within digital media, have since begun to appear in more
and more contexts and in an increasing number of
materials.[^10[]{#Page_9 type="pagebreak"
title="9"}^](#f6-note-0010){#f6-note-0010a}
For the historical, cultural-theoretical, and political perspectives
developed in this book, however, the concept of the post-digital is
somewhat problematic, for it requires the narrow context of media art
and its fixation on technology in order to become a viable
counter-position. Without this context, certain misunderstandings are
impossible to avoid. The prefix "post-," for instance, is often
interpreted in the sense that something is over or that we have at least
grasped the matters at hand and can thus turn to something new. The
opposite is true. The most enduringly relevant developments are only now
beginning to adopt a specific form, long after digital infrastructures
and the practices made popular by them have become part of our everyday
lives. Or, as the communication theorist and consultant Clay Shirky puts
it, "Communication tools don\'t get socially interesting until they get
technologically boring."[^11^](#f6-note-0011){#f6-note-0011a} For it is
only today, now that our fascination for this technology has waned and
its promises sound hollow, that culture and society are being defined by
the digital condition in a comprehensive sense. Before, this was the
case in just a few limited spheres. It is this hybridization and
solidification of the digital -- the presence of the digital beyond
digital media -- that lends the digital condition its dominance. As to
the concrete realities in which these things will materialize, this is
currently being decided in an open and ongoing process. The aim of this
book is to contribute to our understanding of this process.[]{#Page_10
type="pagebreak" title="10"}
:::
::: {.section .notesList}
[1](#f6-note-0001a){#f6-note-0001} Dan Biddle, "Five Million Tweets for
\#Eurovision 2014," *Twitter UK* (May 11, 2014), online.
[2](#f6-note-0002a){#f6-note-0002} Ministerium für Kultus, Jugend und
Sport -- Baden-Württemberg, "Bildungsplanreform 2015/2016 -- Verankerung
von Leitprinzipien," online \[--trans.\].
[3](#f6-note-0003a){#f6-note-0003} As early as 1995, Wolfgang Coy
suggested that McLuhan\'s metaphor should be supplanted by the concept
of the "Turing Galaxy," but this never caught on. See his introduction
to the German edition of *The Gutenberg Galaxy*: "Von der Gutenbergschen
zur Turingschen Galaxis: Jenseits von Buchdruck und Fernsehen," in
Marshall McLuhan, *Die Gutenberg Galaxis: Das Ende des Buchzeitalters*,
(Cologne: Addison-Wesley, 1995), pp. vii--xviii.[]{#Page_176
type="pagebreak" title="176"}
[4](#f6-note-0004a){#f6-note-0004} According to the analysis of the
Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells, this crisis began almost
simultaneously in highly developed capitalist and socialist societies,
and it did so for the same reason: the paradigm of "industrialism" had
reached the limits of its productivity. Unlike the capitalist societies,
which were flexible enough to tame the crisis and reorient their
economies, the socialism of the 1970s and 1980s experienced stagnation
until it ultimately, in a belated effort to reform, collapsed. See
Manuel Castells, *End of Millennium*, 2nd edn (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell,
2010), pp. 5--68.
[5](#f6-note-0005a){#f6-note-0005} Felix Stalder, *Der Autor am Ende
der Gutenberg Galaxis* (Zurich: Buch & Netz, 2014).
[6](#f6-note-0006a){#f6-note-0006} For my preliminary thoughts on this
topic, see Felix Stalder, "Autonomy and Control in the Era of
Post-Privacy," *Open: Cahier on Art and the Public Domain* 19 (2010):
78--86; and idem, "Privacy Is Not the Antidote to Surveillance,"
*Surveillance & Society* 1 (2002): 120--4. For a discussion of these
approaches, see the working paper by Maja van der Velden, "Personal
Autonomy in a Post-Privacy World: A Feminist Technoscience Perspective"
(2011), online.
[7](#f6-note-0007a){#f6-note-0007} Accordingly, the "new social" media
are mass media in the sense that they influence broadly disseminated
patterns of social relations and thus shape society as much as the
traditional mass media had done before them.
[8](#f6-note-0008a){#f6-note-0008} Kim Cascone, "The Aesthetics of
Failure: 'Post-Digital' Tendencies in Contemporary Computer Music,"
*Computer Music Journal* 24/2 (2000): 12--18.
[10](#f6-note-0010a){#f6-note-0010} In the field of visual arts,
similar considerations have been made regarding "post-internet art." See
Artie Vierkant, "The Image Object Post-Internet,"
[jstchillin.org](http://jstchillin.org) (December 2010), online; and Ian
Wallace, "What Is Post-Internet Art? Understanding the Revolutionary New
Art Movement," *Artspace* (March 18, 2014), online.
[11](#f6-note-0011a){#f6-note-0011} Clay Shirky, *Here Comes Everybody:
The Power of Organizing without Organizations* (New York: Penguin,
2008), p. 105.
:::
:::
::: {.section}
Many authors have interpreted the new cultural realities that
characterize our daily lives as a direct consequence of technological
developments: the internet is to blame! This assumption is not only
empirically untenable; it also leads to a problematic assessment of the
current situation. Apparatuses are represented as "central actors," and
this suggests that new technologies have suddenly revolutionized a
situation that had previously been stable. Depending on one\'s point of
view, this is then regarded as "a blessing or a
curse."[^1^](#c1-note-0001){#c1-note-0001a} A closer examination,
however, reveals an entirely different picture. Established cultural
practices and social institutions had already been witnessing the
erosion of their self-evident justification and legitimacy, long before
they were faced with new technologies and the corresponding demands
these make on individuals. Moreover, the allegedly new types of
coordination and cooperation are also not so new after all. Many of them
have existed for a long time. At first most of them were totally
separate from the technologies for which, later on, they would become
relevant. It is only in retrospect that these developments can be
identified as beginnings, and it can be seen that much of what we regard
today as novel or revolutionary was in fact introduced at the margins of
society, in cultural niches that were unnoticed by the dominant actors
and institutions. The new technologies thus evolved against a
[]{#Page_11 type="pagebreak" title="11"}background of processes of
societal transformation that were already under way. They could only
have been developed once a vision of their potential had been
formulated, and they could only have been disseminated where demand for
them already existed. This demand was created by social, political, and
economic crises, which were themselves initiated by changes that were
already under way. The new technologies seemed to provide many differing
and promising answers to the urgent questions that these crises had
prompted. It was thus a combination of positive vision and pressure that
motivated a great variety of actors to change, at times with
considerable effort, the established processes, mature institutions, and
their own behavior. They intended to appropriate, for their own
projects, the various and partly contradictory possibilities that they
saw in these new technologies. Only then did a new technological
infrastructure arise.
This, in turn, created the preconditions for previously independent
developments to come together, strengthening one another and enabling
them to spread beyond the contexts in which they had originated. Thus,
they moved from the margins to the center of culture. And by
intensifying the crisis of previously established cultural forms and
institutions, they became dominant and established new forms and
institutions of their own.
:::
::: {.section}
The Expansion of the Social Basis of Culture {#c1-sec-0002}
--------------------------------------------
Watching television discussions from the 1950s and 1960s today, one is
struck not only by the billows of cigarette smoke in the studio but also
by the homogeneous spectrum of participants. Usually, it was a group of
white and heteronormatively behaving men speaking with one
another,[^2^](#c1-note-0002){#c1-note-0002a} as these were the people
who held the important institutional positions in the centers of the
West. As a rule, those involved were highly specialized representatives
from the cultural, economic, scientific, and political spheres. Above
all, they were legitimized to appear in public to articulate their
opinions, which were to be regarded by others as relevant and worthy of
discussion. They presided over the important debates of their time. With
few exceptions, other actors and their deviant opinions -- there
[]{#Page_12 type="pagebreak" title="12"}has never been a time without
them -- were either not taken seriously at all or were categorized as
indecent, incompetent, perverse, irrelevant, backward, exotic, or
idiosyncratic.[^3^](#c1-note-0003){#c1-note-0003a} Even at that time,
the social basis of culture was beginning to expand, though the actors
at the center of the discourse had failed to notice this. Communicative
and cultural processes were gaining significance in more and more
places, and excluded social groups were self-consciously developing
their own language in order to intervene in the discourse. The rise of
the knowledge economy, the increasingly loud critique of
heteronormativity, and a fundamental cultural critique posed by
post-colonialism enabled a greater number of people to participate in
public discussions. In what follows, I will subject each of these three
phenomena to closer examination. In order to do justice to their
complexity, I will treat them on different levels: I will depict the
rise of the knowledge economy as a structural change in labor; I will
reconstruct the critique of heteronormativity by outlining the origins
and transformations of the gay movement in West Germany; and I will
discuss post-colonialism as a theory that introduced new concepts of
cultural multiplicity and hybridization -- concepts that are now
influencing the digital condition far beyond the limits of the
post-colonial discourse, and often without any reference to this
discourse at all.
::: {.section}
### The growth of the knowledge economy {#c1-sec-0003}
At the beginning of the 1950s, the Austrian-American economist Fritz
Machlup was immersed in his study of the political economy of
monopoly.[^4^](#c1-note-0004){#c1-note-0004a} Among other things, he was
concerned with patents and copyright law. In line with the neo-classical
Austrian School, he considered both to be problematic (because
state-created) monopolies.[^5^](#c1-note-0005){#c1-note-0005a} The
longer he studied the monopoly of the patent system in particular, the
more far-reaching its consequences seemed to him. He maintained that the
patent system was intertwined with something that might be called the
"economy of invention" -- ultimately, patentable insights had to be
produced in the first place -- and that this was in turn part of a much
larger economy of knowledge. The latter encompassed government agencies
as well as institutions of education, research, and development
[]{#Page_13 type="pagebreak" title="13"}(that is, schools, universities,
and certain corporate laboratories), which had been increasing steadily
in number since Roosevelt\'s New Deal. Yet it also included the
expanding media sector and those industries that were responsible for
providing technical infrastructure. Machlup subsumed all of these
institutions and sectors under the concept of the "knowledge economy," a
term of his own invention. Their common feature was that essential
aspects of their activities consisted in communicating things to other
people ("telling anyone anything," as he put it). Thus, the employees
were not only recipients of information or instructions; rather, in one
way or another, they themselves communicated, be it merely as a
secretary who typed up, edited, and forwarded a piece of shorthand
dictation. In his book *The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in
the United States*, published in 1962, Machlup gathered empirical
material to demonstrate that the American economy had entered a new
phase that was distinguished by the production, exchange, and
application of abstract, codified
knowledge.[^6^](#c1-note-0006){#c1-note-0006a} This opinion was no
longer entirely novel at the time, but it had never before been
presented in such an empirically detailed and comprehensive
manner.[^7^](#c1-note-0007){#c1-note-0007a} The extent of the knowledge
economy surprised Machlup himself: in his book, he concluded that as
much as 43 percent of all labor activity was already engaged in this
sector. This high number came about because, until then, no one had put
forward the idea of understanding such a variety of activities as a
single unit.
Machlup\'s categorization was indeed quite innovative, for the dynamics
that propelled the sectors that he associated with one another not only
were very different but also had originated as an integral component in
the development of the industrial production of goods. They were more of
an extension of such production than a break with it. The production and
circulation of goods had been expanding and accelerating as early as the
nineteenth century, though at highly divergent rates from one region or
sector to another. New markets were created in order to distribute goods
that were being produced in greater numbers; new infrastructure for
transportation and communication was established in order to serve these
large markets, which were mostly in the form of national territories
(including their colonies). This []{#Page_14 type="pagebreak"
title="14"}enabled even larger factories to be built in order to
exploit, to an even greater extent, the cost advantages of mass
production. In order to control these complex processes, new professions
arose with different types of competencies and working conditions. The
office became a workplace for an increasing number of people -- men and
women alike -- who, in one form or another, had something to do with
information processing and communication. Yet all of this required not
only new management techniques. Production and products also became more
complex, so that entire corporate sectors had to be restructured.
Whereas the first decisive inventions of the industrial era were still
made by more or less educated tinkerers, during the last third of the
nineteenth century, invention itself came to be institutionalized. In
Germany, Siemens (founded in 1847 as the Telegraphen-Bauanstalt von
Siemens & Halske) exemplifies this transformation. Within 50 years, a
company that began in a proverbial workshop in a Berlin backyard became
a multinational high-tech corporation. It was in such corporate
laboratories, which were established around the year 1900, that the
"industrialization of invention" or the "scientification of industrial
production" took place.[^8^](#c1-note-0008){#c1-note-0008a} In other
words, even the processes employed in factories and the goods that they
produced became knowledge-intensive. Their invention, planning, and
production required a steadily growing expansion of activities, which
today we would refer to as research and development. The informatization
of the economy -- the acceleration of mass production, the comprehensive
application of scientific methods to the organization of labor, and the
central role of research and development in industry -- was hastened
enormously by a world war that was waged on an industrial scale to an
extent that had never been seen before.
Another important factor for the increasing significance of the
knowledge economy was the development of the consumer society. Over the
course of the last third of the nineteenth century, despite dramatic
regional and social disparities, an increasing number of people profited
from the economic growth that the Industrial Revolution had instigated.
Wages increased and basic needs were largely met, so that a new social
stratum arose, the middle class, which was able to spend part of its
income on other things. But on what? First, []{#Page_15 type="pagebreak"
title="15"}new needs had to be created. The more production capacities
increased, the more they had to be rethought in terms of consumption.
Thus, in yet another way, the economy became more knowledge-intensive.
It was now necessary to become familiar with, understand, and stimulate
the interests and preferences of consumers, in order to entice them to
purchase products that they did not urgently need. This knowledge did
little to enhance the material or logistical complexity of goods or
their production; rather, it was reflected in the increasingly extensive
communication about and through these goods. The beginnings of this
development were captured by Émile Zola in his 1883 novel *The Ladies\'
Paradise*, which was set in the new world of a semi-fictitious
department store bearing that name. In its opening scene, the young
protagonist Denise Baudu and her brother Jean, both of whom have just
moved to Paris from a provincial town, encounter for the first time the
artfully arranged women\'s clothing -- exhibited with all sorts of
tricks involving lighting, mirrors, and mannequins -- in the window
displays of the store. The sensuality of the staged goods is so
overwhelming that both of them are not only struck dumb, but Jean even
"blushes."
It was the economy of affects that brought blood to Jean\'s cheeks. At
that time, strategies for attracting the attention of customers did not
yet have a scientific and systematic basis. Just as the first inventions
in the age of industrialization were made by amateurs, so too was the
economy of affects developed intuitively and gradually rather than as a
planned or conscious paradigm shift. That it was possible to induce and
direct affects by means of targeted communication was the pioneering
discovery of the Austrian-American Edward Bernays. During the 1920s, he
combined the ideas of his uncle Sigmund Freud about unconscious
motivations with the sociological research methods of opinion surveys to
form a new discipline: market
research.[^9^](#c1-note-0009){#c1-note-0009a} It became the scientific
basis of a new field of activity, which he at first called "propaganda"
but then later referred to as "public
relations."[^10^](#c1-note-0010){#c1-note-0010a} Public communication,
be it for economic or political ends, was now placed on a systematic
foundation that came to distance itself more and more from the pure
"conveyance of information." Communication became a strategic field for
corporate and political disputes, and the mass media []{#Page_16
type="pagebreak" title="16"}became their locus of negotiation. Between
1880 and 1917, for instance, commercial advertising costs in the United
States increased by more than 800 percent, and the leading advertising
firms, using the same techniques with which they attracted consumers to
products, were successful in selling to the American public the idea of
their nation entering World War I. Thus, a media industry in the modern
sense was born, and it expanded along with the rapidly growing market
for advertising.[^11^](#c1-note-0011){#c1-note-0011a}
In his studies of labor markets conducted at the beginning of the 1960s,
Machlup brought these previously separate developments together and
thus explained the existence of an already advanced knowledge economy in
the United States. His arguments fell on extremely fertile soil, for an
intellectual transformation had taken place in other areas of science as
well. A few years earlier, for instance, cybernetics had given the
concepts "information" and "communication" their first scientifically
precise (if somewhat idiosyncratic) definitions and had assigned to them
a position of central importance in all scientific disciplines, not to
mention life in general.[^12^](#c1-note-0012){#c1-note-0012a} Machlup\'s
investigation seemed to confirm this in the case of the economy, given
that the knowledge economy was primarily concerned with information and
communication. Since then, numerous analyses, formulas, and slogans have
repeated, modified, refined, and criticized the idea that the
knowledge-based activities of the economy have become increasingly
important. In the 1970s this discussion was associated above all with
the notion of the "post-industrial
society,"[^13^](#c1-note-0013){#c1-note-0013a} in the 1980s the guiding
idea was the "information society,"[^14^](#c1-note-0014){#c1-note-0014a}
and in the 1990s the debate revolved around the "network
society"[^15^](#c1-note-0015){#c1-note-0015a} -- to name just the most
popular concepts. What these approaches have in common is that they each
diagnose a comprehensive societal transformation that, as regards the
creation of economic value or jobs, has shifted the balance from
productive to communicative activities. Accordingly, they presuppose
that we know how to distinguish the former from the latter. This is not
unproblematic, however, because in practice the two are usually tightly
intertwined. Moreover, whoever maintains that communicative activities
have taken the place of industrial production in our society has adopted
a very narrow point of []{#Page_17 type="pagebreak" title="17"}view.
Factory jobs have not simply disappeared; they have just been partially
relocated outside of Western economies. The assertion that communicative
activities are somehow of "greater value" hardly chimes with the reality
of today\'s new "service jobs," many of which pay no more than the
minimum wage.[^16^](#c1-note-0016){#c1-note-0016a} Critiques of this
sort, however, have done little to reduce the effectiveness of this
analysis -- especially its political effectiveness -- for it does more
than simply describe a condition. It also contains a set of political
instructions that imply or directly demand that precisely those sectors
should be promoted that it considers economically promising, and that
society should be reorganized accordingly. Since the 1970s, there has
thus been a feedback loop between scientific analysis and political
agendas. More often than not, it is hardly possible to distinguish
between the two. Especially in Britain and the United States, the
economic transformation of the 1980s was imposed insistently and with
political calculation (the weakening of labor unions).
There are, however, important differences between the developments of
the so-called "post-industrial society" of the 1970s and those of the
so-called "network society" of the 1990s, even if both terms are
supposed to stress the increased significance of information, knowledge,
and communication. With regard to the digital condition, the most
important of these differences are the greater flexibility of economic
activity in general and employment relations in particular, as well as
the dismantling of social security systems. Neither phenomenon played
much of a role in analyses of the early 1970s. The development since
then can be traced back to two currents that could not seem more
different from one another. At first, flexibility was demanded in the
name of a critique of the value system imposed by bureaucratic-bourgeois
society (including the traditional organization of the workforce). It
originated in the new social movements that had formed in the late
1960s. Later on, toward the end of the 1970s, it then became one of the
central points of the neoliberal critique of the welfare state. With
completely different motives, both sides sang the praises of autonomy
and spontaneity while rejecting the disciplinary nature of hierarchical
organization. They demanded individuality and diversity rather than
conformity to prescribed roles. Experimentation, openness to []{#Page_18
type="pagebreak" title="18"}new ideas, flexibility, and change were now
established as fundamental values with positive connotations. Both
movements operated with the attractive idea of personal freedom. The new
social movements understood this in a social sense as the freedom of
personal development and coexistence, whereas neoliberals understood it
in an economic sense as the freedom of the market. In the 1980s, the
neoliberal ideas prevailed in large part because some of the values,
strategies, and methods propagated by the new social movements were
removed from their political context and appropriated in order to
breathe new life -- a "new spirit" -- into capitalism and thus to rescue
industrial society from its crisis.[^17^](#c1-note-0017){#c1-note-0017a}
An army of management consultants, restructuring experts, and new
companies began to promote flat hierarchies, self-responsibility, and
innovation; with these aims in mind, they set about reorganizing large
corporations into small and flexible units. Labor and leisure were no
longer supposed to be separated, for all aspects of a given person could
be integrated into his or her work. In order to achieve economic success
in this new capitalism, it became necessary for every individual to
identify himself or herself with his or her profession. Large
corporations were restructured in such a way that entire departments
found themselves transformed into independent "profit centers." This
happened in the name of creating more leeway for decision-making and of
optimizing the entrepreneurial spirit on all levels, the goals being to
increase value creation and to provide management with more fine-grained
powers of intervention. These measures, in turn, created the need for
computers and the need for them to be networked. Large corporations
reacted in this way to the emergence of highly specialized small
companies which, by networking and cooperating with other firms,
succeeded in quickly and flexibly exploiting niches in the expanding
global markets. In the management literature of the 1980s, the
catchphrases for this were "company networks" and "flexible
specialization."[^18^](#c1-note-0018){#c1-note-0018a} By the middle of
the 1990s, the sociologist Manuel Castells was able to conclude that the
actual productive entity was no longer the individual company but rather
the network consisting of companies and corporate divisions of various
sizes. In Castells\'s estimation, the decisive advantage of the network
is its ability to customize its elements and their configuration
[]{#Page_19 type="pagebreak" title="19"}to suit the rapidly changing
requirements of the "project" at
hand.[^19^](#c1-note-0019){#c1-note-0019a} Aside from a few exceptions,
companies in their traditional forms came to function above all as
strategic control centers and as economic and legal units.
This economic structural transformation was already well under way when
the internet emerged as a mass medium around the turn of the millennium.
As a consequence, change became more radical and penetrated into an
increasing number of areas of value creation. The political agenda
oriented itself toward the vision of "creative industries," a concept
developed in 1997 by the newly elected British government under Tony
Blair. A Creative Industries Task Force was established right away, and
its first step was to identify "those activities which have their
origins in individual creativity, skill and talent and which have the
potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and
exploitation of intellectual
property."[^20^](#c1-note-0020){#c1-note-0020a} Like Fritz Machlup at
the beginning of the 1960s, the task force brought together existing
areas of activity into a new category. Such activities included
advertising, computer games, architecture, music, arts and antique
markets, publishing, design, software and computer services, fashion,
television and radio, and film and video. The latter were elevated to
matters of political importance on account of their potential to create
wealth and jobs. Not least because of this clever presentation of
categories -- no distinction was made between the BBC, an almighty
public-service provider, and fledgling companies in precarious
circumstances -- it was possible to proclaim not only that the creative
industries were contributing a relevant portion of the nation\'s
economic output, but also that this sector was growing at an especially
fast rate. It was reported that, in London, the creative industries were
already responsible for one out of every five new jobs. When compared
with traditional terms of employment as regards income, benefits, and
prospects for advancement, however, many of these positions entailed a
considerable downgrade for the employees in question (who were now
treated as independent contractors). This fact was either ignored or
explicitly interpreted as a sign of the sector\'s particular
dynamism.[^21^](#c1-note-0021){#c1-note-0021a} Around the turn of the
new millennium, the idea that individual creativity plays a central role
in the economy was given further traction by []{#Page_20
type="pagebreak" title="20"}the sociologist and consultant Richard
Florida, who argued that creativity was essential to the future of
cities and even announced the rise of the "creative class." As to the
preconditions that have to be met in order to tap into this source of
wealth, he devised a simple formula that would be easy for municipal
bureaucrats to understand: "technology, tolerance and talent." Talent,
as defined by Florida, is based on individual creativity and education
and manifests itself in the ability to generate new jobs. He was thus
able to declare talent a central element of economic
growth.[^22^](#c1-note-0022){#c1-note-0022a} In order to "unleash" these
resources, what we need in addition to technology is, above all,
tolerance; that is, "an open culture -- one that does not discriminate,
does not force people into boxes, allows us to be ourselves, and
validates various forms of family and of human
identity."[^23^](#c1-note-0023){#c1-note-0023a}
The idea that a public welfare state should ensure the social security
of individuals was considered obsolete. Collective institutions, which
could have provided a degree of stability for people\'s lifestyles, were
dismissed or regarded as bureaucratic obstacles. The more or less
directly evoked role model for all of this was the individual artist,
who was understood as an individual entrepreneur, a sort of genius
suitable for the masses. For Florida, a central problem was that,
according to his own calculations, only about a third of the people
living in North American and European cities were working in the
"creative sector," while the innate creativity of everyone else was
going to waste. Even today, the term "creative industry," along with the
assumption that the internet will provide increased opportunities,
serves to legitimize the effort to restructure all areas of the economy
according to the needs of the knowledge economy and to privilege the
network over the institution. In times of social cutbacks and empty
public purses, especially in municipalities, this message was warmly
received. One mayor, who as the first openly gay top politician in
Germany exemplified tolerance for diverse lifestyles, even adopted the
slogan "poor but sexy" for his city. Everyone was supposed to exploit
his or her own creativity to discover new niches and opportunities for
monetization -- a magic formula that was supposed to bring about a new
urban revival. Today there is hardly a city in Europe that does not
issue a report about its creative economy, []{#Page_21 type="pagebreak"
title="21"}and nearly all of these reports cite, directly or indirectly,
Richard Florida.
As already seen in the context of the knowledge economy, so too in the
case of creative industries do measurable social change, wishful
thinking, and political agendas blend together in such a way that it is
impossible to identify a single cause for the developments taking place.
The consequences, however, are significant. Over the last two
generations, the demands of the labor market have fundamentally changed.
Higher education and the ability to acquire new knowledge independently
are now, to an increasing extent, required and expected as
qualifications and personal attributes. The desired or enforced ability
to be flexible at work, the widespread cooperation across institutions,
the uprooted nature of labor, and the erosion of collective models for
social security have displaced many activities, which once took place
within clearly defined institutional or personal limits, into a new
interstitial space that is neither private nor public in the classical
sense. This is the space of networks, communities, and informal
cooperation -- the space of sharing and exchange that has since been
enabled by the emergence of ubiquitous digital communication. It allows
an increasing number of people, whether willingly or otherwise, to
envision themselves as active producers of information, knowledge,
capability, and meaning. And because it is associated in various ways
with the space of market-based exchange and with the bourgeois political
sphere, it has lasting effects on both. This interstitial space becomes
all the more important as fewer people are willing or able to rely on
traditional institutions for their economic security. For, within it,
personal and digital-based networks can and must be developed as
alternatives, regardless of whether they prove sustainable for the long
term. As a result, more and more actors, each with their own claims to
meaning, have been rushing away from the private personal sphere into
this new interstitial space. By now, this has become such a normal
practice that whoever is *not* active in this ever-expanding
interstitial space, which is rapidly becoming the main social sphere --
whoever, that is, lacks a publicly visible profile on social mass media
like Facebook, or does not number among those producing information and
meaning and is thus so inconspicuous online as []{#Page_22
type="pagebreak" title="22"}to yield no search results -- now stands out
in a negative light (or, in far fewer cases, acquires a certain prestige
on account of this very absence).
:::
::: {.section}
### The erosion of heteronormativity {#c1-sec-0004}
In this (sometimes more, sometimes less) public space for the continuous
production of social meaning (and its exploitation), there is no
question that the professional middle class is
over-represented.[^24^](#c1-note-0024){#c1-note-0024a} It would be
short-sighted, however, to reduce those seeking autonomy and the
recognition of individuality and social diversity to the role of poster
children for the new spirit of
capitalism.[^25^](#c1-note-0025){#c1-note-0025a} The new social
movements, for instance, initiated a social shift that has allowed an
increasing number of people to demand, if nothing else, the right to
participate in social life in a self-determined manner; that is,
according to their own standards and values.
Especially effective was the critique of patriarchal and heteronormative
power relations, modes of conduct, and
identities.[^26^](#c1-note-0026){#c1-note-0026a} In the context of the
political upheavals at the end of the 1960s, the new women\'s and gay
movements developed into influential actors. Their greatest achievement
was to establish alternative cultural forms, lifestyles, and strategies
of action in or around the mainstream of society. How this was done can
be demonstrated by tracing, for example, the development of the gay
movement in West Germany.
In the fall of 1969, the liberalization of Paragraph 175 of the German
Criminal Code came into effect. From then on, sexual activity between
adult men was no longer punishable by law (women were not mentioned in
this context). For the first time, a man could now express himself as a
homosexual outside of semi-private space without immediately being
exposed to the risk of criminal prosecution. This was a necessary
precondition for the ability to defend one\'s own rights. As early as
1971, the struggle for the recognition of gay life experiences reached
the broader public when Rosa von Praunheim\'s film *It Is Not the
Homosexual Who Is Perverse, but the Society in Which He Lives* was
screened at the Berlin International Film Festival and then, shortly
thereafter, broadcast on public television in North Rhine-Westphalia.
The film, which is firmly situated in the agitprop tradition,
[]{#Page_23 type="pagebreak" title="23"}follows a young provincial man
through the various milieus of Berlin\'s gay subcultures: from a
monogamous relationship to nightclubs and public bathrooms until, at the
end, he is enlightened by a political group of men who explain that it
is not possible to lead a free life in a niche, as his own emancipation
can only be achieved by a transformation of society as a whole. The film
closes with a not-so-subtle call to action: "Out of the closets, into
the streets!" Von Praunheim understood this emancipation to be a process
that encompassed all areas of life and had to be carried out in public;
it could only achieve success, moreover, in solidarity with other
freedom movements such as the Black Panthers in the United States and
the new women\'s movement. The goal, according to this film, is to
articulate one\'s own identity as a specific and differentiated identity
with its own experiences, values, and reference systems, and to anchor
this identity within a society that not only tolerates it but also
recognizes it as having equal validity.
At first, however, the film triggered vehement controversies, even
within the gay scene. The objection was that it attacked the gay
subculture, which was not yet prepared to defend itself publicly against
discrimination. Despite or (more likely) because of these controversies,
more than 50 groups of gay activists soon formed in Germany. Such
groups, largely composed of left-wing alternative students, included,
for instance, the Homosexuelle Aktion Westberlin (HAW) and the Rote
Zelle Schwul (RotZSchwul) in Frankfurt am
Main.[^27^](#c1-note-0027){#c1-note-0027a} One focus of their activities
was to have Paragraph 175 struck entirely from the legal code (which was
not achieved until 1994). This cause was framed within a general
struggle to overcome patriarchy and capitalism. At the earliest gay
demonstrations in Germany, which took place in Münster in April 1972,
protesters rallied behind the following slogan: "Brothers and sisters,
gay or not, it is our duty to fight capitalism." This was understood as
a necessary subordination to the greater struggle against what was known
in the terminology of left-wing radical groups as the "main
contradiction" of capitalism (that between capital and labor), and it
led to strident differences within the gay movement. The dispute
escalated during the next year. After the so-called *Tuntenstreit*, or
"Battle of the Queens," which was []{#Page_24 type="pagebreak"
title="24"}initiated by activists from Italy and France who had appeared
in drag at the closing ceremony of the HAW\'s Spring Meeting in West
Berlin, the gay movement was divided, or at least moving in a new
direction. At the heart of the matter were the following questions: "Is
there an inherent (many speak of an autonomous) position that gays hold
with respect to the issue of homosexuality? Or can a position on
homosexuality only be derived in association with the traditional
workers\' movement?"[^28^](#c1-note-0028){#c1-note-0028a} In other
words, was discrimination against homosexuality part of the social
divide caused by capitalism (that is, one of its "ancillary
contradictions") and thus only to be overcome by overcoming capitalism
itself, or was it something unrelated to the "essence" of capitalism, an
independent conflict requiring different strategies and methods? This
conflict could never be fully resolved, but the second position, which
was more interested in overcoming legal, social, and cultural
discrimination than in struggling against economic exploitation, and
which focused specifically on the social liberation of gays, proved to
be far more dynamic in the long term. This was not least because both
the old and new left were themselves not free of homophobia and because
the entire radical student movement of the 1970s fell into crisis.
Over the course of the 1970s and 1980s, "aesthetic self-empowerment" was
realized through the efforts of artistic and (increasingly) commercial
producers of images, texts, and
sounds.[^29^](#c1-note-0029){#c1-note-0029a} Activists, artists, and
intellectuals developed a language with which they could speak
assertively in public about topics that had previously been taboo.
Inspired by the expression "gay pride," which originated in the United
States, they began to use the term *schwul* ("gay"), which until then
had possessed negative connotations, with growing confidence. They
founded numerous gay and lesbian cultural initiatives, theaters,
publishing houses, magazines, bookstores, meeting places, and other
associations in order to counter the misleading or (in their eyes)
outright false representations of the mass media with their own
multifarious media productions. In doing so, they typically followed a
dual strategy: on the one hand, they wanted to create a space for the
members of the movement in which it would be possible to formulate and
live different identities; on the other hand, they were fighting to be
accepted by society at large. While []{#Page_25 type="pagebreak"
title="25"}a broader and broader spectrum of gay positions, experiences,
and aesthetics was becoming visible to the public, the connection to
left-wing radical contexts became weaker. Founded as early as 1974, and
likewise in West Berlin, the General Homosexual Working Group
(Allgemeine Homosexuelle Arbeitsgemeinschaft) sought to integrate gay
politics into mainstream society by defining the latter -- on the basis
of bourgeois, individual rights -- as a "politics of
anti-discrimination." These efforts achieved a milestone in 1980 when,
in the run-up to the parliamentary election, a podium discussion was
held with representatives of all major political parties on the topic of
the law governing sexual offences. The discussion took place in the
Beethovenhalle in Bonn, which was the largest venue for political events
in the former capital. Several participants considered the event to be a
"disaster,"[^30^](#c1-note-0030){#c1-note-0030a} for it revived a number
of internal conflicts (not least that between revolutionary and
integrative positions). Yet the fact remains that representatives were
present from every political party, and this alone was indicative of an
unprecedented amount of public awareness for those demanding equal
rights.
The struggle against discrimination and for social recognition reached
an entirely new level of urgency with the outbreak of HIV/AIDS. In 1983,
the magazine *Der Spiegel* devoted its first cover story to the disease,
thus bringing it to the awareness of the broader public. In the same
year, the non-profit organization Deutsche Aids-Hilfe was founded to
prevent further cases of discrimination, for *Der Spiegel* was not the
only publication at the time to refer to AIDS as a "homosexual
epidemic."[^31^](#c1-note-0031){#c1-note-0031a} The struggle against
HIV/AIDS required a comprehensive mobilization. Funding had to be raised
in order to deal with the social repercussions of the epidemic, to teach
people about safe sexual practices for everyone and to direct research
toward discovering causes and developing potential cures. The immediate
threat that AIDS represented, especially while so little was known about
the illness and its treatment remained a distant hope, created an
impetus for mobilization that led to alliances between the gay movement,
the healthcare system, and public authorities. Thus, the AIDS Inquiry
Committee, sponsored by the conservative Christian Democratic Union,
concluded in 1988 that, in the fight against the illness, "the
homosexual subculture is []{#Page_26 type="pagebreak"
title="26"}especially important. This informal structure should
therefore neither be impeded nor repressed but rather, on the contrary,
recognized and supported."[^32^](#c1-note-0032){#c1-note-0032a} The AIDS
crisis proved to be a catalyst for advancing the integration of gays
into society and for expanding what could be regarded as acceptable
lifestyles, opinions, and cultural practices. As a consequence,
homosexuals began to appear more frequently in the media, though their
presence would never match that of heterosexuals. As of 1985, the
television show *Lindenstraße* featured an openly gay protagonist, and
the first kiss between men was aired in 1987. The episode still provoked
a storm of protest -- Bayerische Rundfunk refused to broadcast it a
second time -- but this was already a rearguard action and the
integration of gays (and lesbians) into the social mainstream continued.
In 1993, the first gay and lesbian city festival took place in Berlin,
and the first Rainbow Parade was held in Vienna in 1996. In 2002, the
Cologne Pride Day involved 1.2 million participants and attendees, thus
surpassing for the first time the attendance at the traditional Rose
Monday parade. By the end of the 1990s, the sociologist Rüdiger Lautmann
was already prepared to maintain: "To be homosexual has become
increasingly normalized, even if homophobia lives on in the depths of
the collective disposition."[^33^](#c1-note-0033){#c1-note-0033a} This
normalization was also reflected in a study published by the Ministry of
Justice in the year 2000, which stressed "the similarity between
homosexual and heterosexual relationships" and, on this basis, made an
argument against discrimination.[^34^](#c1-note-0034){#c1-note-0034a}
Around the year 2000, however, the classical gay movement had already
passed its peak. A profound transformation had begun to take place in
the middle of the 1990s. It lost its character as a new social movement
(in the style of the 1970s) and began to splinter inwardly and
outwardly. One could say that it transformed from a mass movement into a
multitude of variously networked communities. The clearest sign of this
transformation is the abbreviation "LGBT" (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and
transgender), which, since the mid-1990s, has represented the internal
heterogeneity of the movement as it has shifted toward becoming a
network.[^35^](#c1-note-0035){#c1-note-0035a} At this point, the more
radical actors were already speaking against the normalization of
homosexuality. Queer theory, for example, was calling into question the
"essentialist" definition of gender []{#Page_27 type="pagebreak"
title="27"}-- that is, any definition reducing it to an immutable
essence -- with respect to both its physical dimension (sex) and its
social and cultural dimension (gender
proper).[^36^](#c1-note-0036){#c1-note-0036a} It thus opened up a space
for the articulation of experiences, self-descriptions, and lifestyles
that, on every level, are located beyond the classical attributions of
men and women. A new generation of intellectuals, activists, and artists
took the stage and developed -- yet again through acts of aesthetic
self-empowerment -- a language that enabled them to import, with
confidence, different self-definitions into the public sphere. An
example of this is the adoption of inclusive plural forms in German
(*Aktivist\_innen* "activists," *Künstler\_innen* "artists"), which draw
attention to the gaps and possibilities between male and female
identities that are also expressed in the language itself. Just as with
the terms "gay" or *schwul* some 30 years before, in this case, too, an
important element was the confident and public adoption and semantic
conversion of a formerly insulting word ("queer") by the very people and
communities against whom it used to be
directed.[^37^](#c1-note-0037){#c1-note-0037a} Likewise observable in
these developments was the simultaneity of social (amateur) and
artistic/scientific (professional) cultural production. The goal,
however, was less to produce a clear antithesis than it was to oppose
rigid attributions by underscoring mutability, hybridity, and
uniqueness. Both the scope of what could be expressed in public and the
circle of potential speakers expanded yet again. And, at least to some
extent, the drag queen Conchita Wurst popularized complex gender
constructions that went beyond the simple woman/man dualism. All of that
said, the assertion by Rüdiger Lautmann quoted above -- "homophobia
lives on in the depths of the collective disposition" -- continued to
hold true.
If the gay movement is representative of the social liberation of the
1970s and 1980s, then it is possible to regard its transformation into
the LGBT movement during the 1990s -- with its multiplicity and fluidity
of identity models and its stress on mutability and hybridity -- as a
sign of the reinvention of this project within the context of an
increasingly dominant digital condition. With this transformation,
however, the diversification and fluidification of cultural practices
and social roles have not yet come to an end. Ways of life that were
initially subcultural and facing existential pressure []{#Page_28
type="pagebreak" title="28"}are gradually entering the mainstream. They
are expanding the range of readily available models of identity for
anyone who might be interested, be it with respect to family forms
(e.g., patchwork families, adoption by same-sex couples), diets (e.g.,
vegetarianism and veganism), healthcare (e.g., anti-vaccination), or
other principles of life and belief. All of them are seeking public
recognition for a new frame of reference for social meaning that has
originated from their own activity. This is necessarily a process
characterized by conflicts and various degrees of resistance, including
right-wing populism that seeks to defend "traditional values," but many
of these movements will ultimately succeed in providing more people with
the opportunity to speak in public, thus broadening the palette of
themes that are considered to be important and legitimate.
:::
::: {.section}
### Beyond center and periphery {#c1-sec-0005}
In order to reach a better understanding of the complexity involved in
the expanding social basis of cultural production, it is necessary to
shift yet again to a different level. For, just as it would be myopic to
examine the multiplication of cultural producers only in terms of
professional knowledge workers from the middle class, it would likewise
be insufficient to situate this multiplication exclusively in the
centers of the West. The entire system of categories that justified the
differentiation between the cultural "center" and the cultural
"periphery" has begun to falter. This complex and multilayered process
has been formulated and analyzed by the theory of "post-colonialism."
Long before digital media made the challenge of cultural multiplicity a
quotidian issue in the West, proponents of this theory had developed
languages and terminologies for negotiating different positions without
needing to impose a hierarchical order.
Since the 1970s, the theoretical current of post-colonialism has been
examining the cultural and epistemic dimensions of colonialism that,
even after its end as a territorial system, have remained responsible
for the continuation of dependent relations and power differentials. For
my purposes -- which are to develop a European perspective on the
factors ensuring that more and more people are able to participate in
cultural []{#Page_29 type="pagebreak" title="29"}production -- two
points are especially relevant because their effects reverberate in
Europe itself. First is the deconstruction of the categories "West" (in
the sense of the center) and "East" (in the sense of the periphery). And
second is the focus on hybridity as a specific way for non-Western
actors to deal with the dominant cultures of former colonial powers,
which have continued to determine significant portions of globalized
culture. The terms "West" and "East," "center" and "periphery," do not
simply describe existing conditions; rather, they are categories that
contribute, in an important way, to the creation of the very conditions
that they presume to describe. This may sound somewhat circular, but it
is precisely from this circularity that such cultural classifications
derive their strength. The world that they illuminate is immersed in
their own light. The category "East" -- or, to use the term of the
literary theorist Edward Said,
"orientalism"[^38^](#c1-note-0038){#c1-note-0038a} -- is a system of
representation that pervades Western thinking. Within this system,
Europe or the West (as the center) and the East (as the periphery)
represent asymmetrical and antithetical concepts. This construction
achieves a dual effect. As a self-description, on the one hand, it
contributes to the formation of our own identity, for Europeans
attribute to themselves and to their continent such features as
"rationality," "order," and "progress," while on the other hand
identifying the alternative with "superstition," "chaos," or
"stagnation." The East, moreover, is used as an exotic projection screen
for our own suppressed desires. According to Said, a representational
system of this sort can only take effect if it becomes "hegemonic"; that
is, if it is perceived as self-evident and no longer as an act of
attribution but rather as one of description, even and precisely by
those against whom the system discriminates. Said\'s accomplishment is
to have worked out how far-reaching this system was and, in many areas,
it remains so today. It extended (and extends) from scientific
disciplines, whose researchers discussed (until the 1980s) the theory of
"oriental despotism,"[^39^](#c1-note-0039){#c1-note-0039a} to literature
and art -- the motif of the harem was especially popular, particularly
in paintings of the late nineteenth
century[^40^](#c1-note-0040){#c1-note-0040a} -- all the way to everyday
culture, where, as of 1913 in the United States, the cigarette brand
Camel (introduced to compete with the then-leading brand, Fatima) was
meant to evoke the []{#Page_30 type="pagebreak" title="30"}mystique and
sensuality of the Orient.[^41^](#c1-note-0041){#c1-note-0041a} This
system of representation, however, was more than a means of describing
oneself and others; it also served to legitimize the allocation of all
knowledge and agency on to one side, that of the West. Such an order was
not restricted to culture; it also created and legitimized a sense of
domination for colonial projects.[^42^](#c1-note-0042){#c1-note-0042a}
This cultural legitimation, as Said points out, also persists after the
end of formal colonial domination and continues to marginalize the
postcolonial subjects. As before, they are unable to speak for
themselves and therefore remain in the dependent periphery, which is
defined by their subordinate position in relation to the center. Said
directed the focus of critique to this arrangement of center and
periphery, which he saw as being (re)produced and legitimized on the
cultural level. From this arose the demand that everyone should have the
right to speak, to place him- or herself in the center. To achieve this,
it was necessary first of all to develop a language -- indeed, a
cultural landscape -- that can manage without a hegemonic center and is
thus oriented toward multiplicity instead of
uniformity.[^43^](#c1-note-0043){#c1-note-0043a}
A somewhat different approach has been taken by the literary theorist
Homi K. Bhabha. He proceeds from the idea that the colonized never fully
passively adopt the culture of the colonialists -- the "English book,"
as he calls it. Their previous culture is never simply wiped out and
replaced by another. What always and necessarily occurs is rather a
process of hybridization. This concept, according to Bhabha,
::: {.extract}
suggests that all of culture is constructed around negotiations and
conflicts. Every cultural practice involves an attempt -- sometimes
good, sometimes bad -- to establish authority. Even classical works of
art, such as a painting by Brueghel or a composition by Beethoven, are
concerned with the establishment of cultural authority. Now, this poses
the following question: How does one function as a negotiator when
one\'s own sense of agency is limited, for instance, on account of being
excluded or oppressed? I think that, even in the role of the underdog,
there are opportunities to upend the imposed cultural authorities -- to
accept some aspects while rejecting others. It is in this way that
symbols of authority are hybridized and made into something of one\'s
own. For me, hybridization is not simply a mixture but rather a
[]{#Page_31 type="pagebreak" title="31"}strategic and selective
appropriation of meanings; it is a way to create space for negotiators
whose freedom and equality are
endangered.[^44^](#c1-note-0044){#c1-note-0044a}
:::
Hybridization is thus a cultural strategy for evading marginality that
is imposed from the outside: subjects, who from the dominant perspective
are incapable of doing so, appropriate certain aspects of culture for
themselves and transform them into something else. What is decisive is
that this hybrid, created by means of active and unauthorized
appropriation, opposes the dominant version and the resulting speech is
thus legitimized from another -- that is, from one\'s own -- position.
In this way, a cultural engagement is set under way and the superiority
of one meaning or another is called into question. Who has the right to
determine how and why a relationship with others should be entered,
which resources should be appropriated from them, and how these
resources should be used? At the heart of the matter lie the abilities
of speech and interpretation; these can be seized in order to create
space for a "cultural hybridity that entertains difference without an
assumed or imposed hierarchy."[^45^](#c1-note-0045){#c1-note-0045a}
At issue is thus a strategy for breaking down hegemonic cultural
conditions, which distribute agency in a highly uneven manner, and for
turning one\'s own cultural production -- which has been dismissed by
cultural authorities as flawed, misconceived, or outright ignorant --
into something negotiable and independently valuable. Bhabha is thus
interested in fissures, differences, diversity, multiplicity, and
processes of negotiation that generate something like shared meaning --
culture, as he defines it -- instead of conceiving of it as something
that precedes these processes and is threatened by them. Accordingly, he
proceeds not from the idea of unity, which is threatened whenever
"others" are empowered to speak and needs to be preserved, but rather
from the irreducible multiplicity that, through laborious processes, can
be brought into temporary and limited consensus. Bhabha\'s vision of
culture is one without immutable authorities, interpretations, and
truths. In theory, everything can be brought to the table. This is not a
situation in which anything goes, yet the central meaning of
negotiation, the contextuality of consensus, and the mutability of every
frame of reference []{#Page_32 type="pagebreak" title="32"}-- none of
which can be shared equally by everyone -- are always potentially
negotiable.
Post-colonialism draws attention to the "disruptive power of the
excluded-included third," which becomes especially virulent when it
"emerges in the middle of semantic
structures."[^46^](#c1-note-0046){#c1-note-0046a} The recognition of
this power reveals the increasing cultural independence of those
formerly colonized, and it also transforms the cultural self-perception
of the West, for, even in Western nations that were not significant
colonial powers, there are multifaceted tensions between dominant
cultures and those who are on the defensive against discrimination and
attributions by others. Instead of relying on the old recipe of
integration through assimilation (that is, the dissolution of the
"other"), the right to self-determined difference is being called for
more emphatically. In such a manner, collective identities, such as
national identities, are freed from their questionable appeals to
cultural homogeneity and essentiality, and reconceived in terms of the
experience of immanent difference. Instead of one binding and
unnegotiable frame of reference for everyone, which hierarchizes
individual positions and makes them appear unified, a new order without
such limitations needs to be established. Ultimately, the aim is to
provide nothing less than an "alternative reading of
modernity,"[^47^](#c1-note-0047){#c1-note-0047a} which influences both
the construction of the past and the modalities of the future. For
European culture in particular, such a project is an immense challenge.
Of course, these demands do not derive their everyday relevance
primarily from theory but rather from the experiences of
(de)colonization, migration, and globalization. Multifaceted as it is,
however, the theory does provide forms and languages for articulating
these phenomena, legitimizing new positions in public debates, and
attacking persistent mechanisms of cultural marginalization. It helps to
empower broader societal groups to become actively involved in cultural
processes, namely people, such as migrants and their children, whose
identity and experience are essentially shaped by non-Western cultures.
The latter have been giving voice to their experiences more frequently
and with greater confidence in all areas of public life, be it in
politics, literature, music, or
art.[^48^](#c1-note-0048){#c1-note-0048a} In Germany, for instance, the
films by Fatih Akin (*Head-On* from 2004 and *Soul Kitchen* from 2009,
to []{#Page_33 type="pagebreak" title="33"}name just two), in which the
experience of immigration is represented as part of the German
experience, have reached a wide public audience. In 2002, the group
Kanak Attak organized a series of conferences with the telling motto *no
integración*, and these did much to introduce postcolonial positions to
the debates taking place in German-speaking
countries.[^49^](#c1-note-0049){#c1-note-0049a} For a long time,
politicians with "migration backgrounds" were considered to be competent
in only one area, namely integration policy. This has since changed,
though not entirely. In 2008, for instance, Cem Özdemir was elected
co-chair of the Green Party and thus shares responsibility for all of
its political positions. Developments of this sort have been enabled
(and strengthened) by a shift in society\'s self-perception. In 2014,
Cemile Giousouf, the integration commissioner for the conservative
CDU/CSU alliance in the German Parliament, was able to make the
following statement without inciting any controversy: "Over the past few
years, Germany has become a modern land of
immigration."[^50^](#c1-note-0050){#c1-note-0050a} A remarkable
proclamation. Not ten years earlier, her party colleague Norbert Lammert
had expressed, in his function as parliamentary president, interest in
reviving the debate about the term "leading culture." The increasingly
well-educated migrants of the first, second, or third generation no
longer accept the choice of being either marginalized as an exotic
representative of the "other" or entirely assimilated. Rather, they are
insisting on being able to introduce their specific experience as a
constitutive contribution to the formation of the present -- in
association and in conflict with other contributions, but at the same
level and with the same legitimacy. It is no surprise that various forms
of discrimination and violence against "foreigners" not only continue
in everyday life but have also been increasing in reaction to this new
situation. Ultimately, established claims to power are being called into
question.
To summarize, at least three secular historical tendencies or movements,
some of which can be traced back to the late nineteenth century but each
of which gained considerable momentum during the last third of the
twentieth (the spread of the knowledge economy, the erosion of
heteronormativity, and the focus of post-colonialism on cultural
hybridity), have greatly expanded the sphere of those who actively
negotiate []{#Page_34 type="pagebreak" title="34"}social meaning. In
large part, the patterns and cultural foundations of these processes
developed long before the internet. Through the use of the internet, and
through the experiences of dealing with it, they have encroached upon
far greater portions of all societies.
:::
:::
::: {.section}
The Culturalization of the World {#c1-sec-0006}
--------------------------------
The number of participants in cultural processes, however, is not the
only thing that has increased. Parallel to that development, the field
of the cultural has expanded as well -- that is, those areas of life
that are not simply characterized by unalterable necessities, but rather
contain or generate competing options and thus require conscious
decisions.
The term "culturalization of the economy" refers to the central position
of knowledge-based, meaning-based, and affect-oriented processes in the
creation of value. With the emergence of consumption as the driving
force behind the production of goods and the concomitant necessity of
having not only to satisfy existing demands but also to create new ones,
the cultural and affective dimensions of the economy began to gain
significance. I have already discussed the beginnings of product
staging, advertising, and public relations. In addition to all of the
continuities that remain with us from that time, it is also possible to
point out a number of major changes that consumer society has undergone
since the late 1960s. These changes can be delineated by examining the
greater role played by design, which has been called the "core
discipline of the creative
economy."[^51^](#c1-note-0051){#c1-note-0051a}
As a field of its own, design originated alongside industrialization,
when, in collaborative processes, the activities of planning and
designing were separated from those of carrying out
production.[^52^](#c1-note-0052){#c1-note-0052a} It was not until the
modern era that designers consciously endeavored to seek new forms for
the logic inherent to mass production. With the aim of economic
efficiency, they intended their designs to optimize the clearly defined
functions of anonymous and endlessly reproducible objects. At the end of
the nineteenth century, the architect Louis Sullivan, whose buildings
still distinguish the skyline of Chicago, condensed this new attitude
into the famous axiom []{#Page_35 type="pagebreak" title="35"}"form
follows function." Mies van der Rohe, working as an architect in Chicago
in the middle of the twentieth century, supplemented this with a pithy
and famous formulation of his own: "less is more." The rationality of
design, in the sense of isolating and improving specific functions, and
the economical use of resources were of chief importance to modern
(industrial) designers. Even the ten design principles of Dieter Rams,
who led the design division of the consumer products company Braun from
1965 to 1991 -- one of the main sources of inspiration for Jonathan Ive,
Apple\'s chief design officer -- aimed to make products "usable,"
"understandable," "honest," and "long-lasting." "Good design," according
to his guiding principle, "is as little design as
possible."[^53^](#c1-note-0053){#c1-note-0053a} This orientation toward
the technical and functional promised to solve problems for everyone in
a long-term and binding manner, for the inherent material and design
qualities of an object were supposed to make it independent from
changing times and from the tastes of consumers.
::: {.section}
### Beyond the object {#c1-sec-0007}
At the end of the 1960s, a new generation of designers rebelled against
this industrial and instrumental rationality, which was now felt to be
authoritarian, soulless, and reductionist. In the works associated with
"anti-design" or "radical design," the objectives of the discipline were
redefined and a new formal language was developed. In the place of
technical and functional optimization, recombination -- ecological
recycling or the postmodern interplay of forms -- emerged as a design
method and aesthetic strategy. Moreover, the aspiration of design
shifted from the individual object to its entire social and material
environment. The processes of design and production, which had been
closed off from one another and restricted to specialists, were opened
up precisely to encourage the participation of non-designers, be it
through interdisciplinary cooperation with other types of professions or
through the empowerment of laymen. The objectives of design were
radically expanded: rather than ending with the completion of an
individual product, it was now supposed to engage with society. In the
sense of cybernetics, this was regarded as a "system," controlled by
feedback processes, []{#Page_36 type="pagebreak" title="36"}which
connected social, technical, and biological dimensions to one
another.[^54^](#c1-note-0054){#c1-note-0054a} Design, according to this
new approach, was meant to be a "socially significant
activity."[^55^](#c1-note-0055){#c1-note-0055a}
Embedded in the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s, this new
generation of designers was curious about the social and political
potential of their discipline, and about possibilities for promoting
flexibility and autonomy instead of rigid industrial efficiency. Design
was no longer expected to solve problems once and for all, for such an
idea did not correspond to the self-perception of an open and mutable
society. Rather, it was expected to offer better opportunities for
enabling people to react to continuously changing conditions. A radical
proposal was developed by the Italian designer Enzo Mari, who in 1974
published his handbook *Autoprogettazione* (Self-Design). It contained
19 simple designs with which people could make, on their own,
aesthetically and functionally sophisticated furniture out of pre-cut
pieces of wood. In this case, the designs themselves were less important
than the critique of conventional design as elitist and of consumer
society as alienated and wasteful. Mari\'s aim was to reconceive the
relations among designers, the manufacturing industry, and users.
Increasingly, design came to be understood as a holistic and open
process. Victor Papanek, the founder of ecological design, took things a
step further. For him, design was "basic to all human activity. The
planning and patterning of any act towards a desired, foreseeable end
constitutes the design process. Any attempt to separate design, to make
it a thing-by-itself, works counter to the inherent value of design as
the primary underlying matrix of
life."[^56^](#c1-note-0056){#c1-note-0056a}
Potentially all aspects of life could therefore fall under the purview
of design. This came about from the desire to oppose industrialism,
which was blind to its catastrophic social and ecological consequences,
with a new and comprehensive manner of seeing and acting that was
unrestricted by economics.
Toward the end of the 1970s, this expanded notion of design owed less
and less to emancipatory social movements, and its socio-political goals
began to fall by the wayside. Three fundamental patterns survived,
however, which go beyond design and remain characteristic of the
culturalization []{#Page_37 type="pagebreak" title="37"}of the economy:
the discovery of the public as emancipated users and active
participants; the use of appropriation, transformation, and
recombination as methods for creating ever-new aesthetic
differentiations; and, finally, the intention of shaping the lifeworld
of the user.[^57^](#c1-note-0057){#c1-note-0057a}
As these patterns became depoliticized and commercialized, the focus of
designing the "lifeworld" shifted more and more toward designing the
"experiential world." By the end of the 1990s, this had become so
normalized that even management consultants could assert that
"\[e\]xperiences represent an existing but previously unarticulated
*genre of economic output*."[^58^](#c1-note-0058){#c1-note-0058a} It was
possible to define the dimensions of the experiential world in various
ways. For instance, it could be clearly delimited and product-oriented,
like the flagship stores introduced by Nike in 1990, which, with their
elaborate displays, were meant to turn shopping into an experience. This
experience, as the company\'s executives hoped, radiated outward and
influenced how the brand was perceived as a whole. The experiential
world could also, however, be conceived in somewhat broader terms, for
instance by designing entire institutions around the idea of creating a
more attractive work environment and thereby increasing the commitment
of employees. This approach is widespread today in creative industries
and has become popularized through countless stories about ping-pong
tables, gourmet cafeterias, and massage rooms in certain offices. In
this case, the process of creativity is applied back to itself in order
to systematize and optimize a given workplace\'s basis of operation. The
development is comparable to the "invention of invention" that
characterized industrial research around the end of the nineteenth
century, though now the concept has been relocated to the field of
knowledge production.
Yet the "experiential world" can be expanded even further, for instance
when entire cities attempt to make themselves attractive to
international clientele and compete with others by building spectacular
museums or sporting arenas. Displays in cities, as well as a few other
central locations, are regularly constructed in order to produce a
particular experience. This also entails, however, that certain forms of
use that fail to fit the "urban
script"[^59^](#c1-note-0059){#c1-note-0059a} are pushed to the margins
or driven away.[^60^](#c1-note-0060){#c1-note-0060a} Thus, today, there
is hardly a single area of life to []{#Page_38 type="pagebreak"
title="38"}which the strategies and methods of design do not have
access, and this access occurs at all levels. For some time, design has
not been a purely visible matter, restricted to material objects; it
rather forms and controls all of the senses. Cities, for example, have
come to be understood increasingly as "sound spaces" and have
accordingly been reconfigured with the goal of modulating their various
noises.[^61^](#c1-note-0061){#c1-note-0061a} Yet design is no longer
just a matter of objects, processes, and experiences. By now, in the
context of reproductive medicine, it has even been applied to the
biological foundations of life ("designer babies"). I will revisit this
topic below.
:::
Of course, design is not the only field of culture that has imposed
itself over society as a whole. A similar development has occurred in
the field of advertising, which, since the 1970s, has been integrated
into many more physical and social spaces and by now has a broad range
of methods at its disposal. Advertising is no longer found simply on
billboards or in display windows. In the form of "guerilla marketing" or
"product placement," it has penetrated every space and occupied every
discourse -- by blending with political messages, for instance -- and
can now even be spread, as "viral marketing," by the addressees of the
advertisements themselves. Similar processes can be observed in the
fields of art, fashion, music, theater, and sports. This has taken place
perhaps most radically in the field of "gaming," which has drawn upon
technical progress in the most direct possible manner and, with the
spread of powerful computers and mobile applications, has left behind
the confines of the traditional playing field. In alternate reality
games, the realm of the virtual and fictitious has also been
transcended, as physical spaces have been overlaid with their various
scripts.[^62^](#c1-note-0062){#c1-note-0062a}
This list could be extended, but the basic trend is clear enough,
especially as the individual fields overlap and mutually influence one
another. They are blending into a single interdependent field for
generating social meaning in the form of economic activity. Moreover,
through digitalization and networking, many new opportunities have
arisen for large-scale involvement by the public in design processes.
Thanks []{#Page_39 type="pagebreak" title="39"}to new communication
technologies and flexible production processes, today\'s users can
personalize and create products to suit their wishes. Here, the spectrum
extends from tiny batches of creative-industrial products all the way to
global processes of "mass customization," in which factory-based mass
production is combined with personalization. One of the first
applications of this was introduced in 1999 when, through its website, a
sporting-goods company allowed customers to design certain elements of a
shoe by altering it within a set of guidelines. This was taken a step
further by the idea of "user-centered innovation," which relies on the
specific knowledge of users to enhance a product, with the additional
hope of discovering unintended applications and transforming these into
new areas of business.[^63^](#c1-note-0063){#c1-note-0063a} It has also
become possible for end users to take over the design process from the
beginning, which has become considerably easier with the advent of
specialized platforms for exchanging knowledge, alongside semi-automated
production tools such as mechanical mills and 3D printers.
Digitalization, which has allowed all content to be processed, and
networking, which has created an endless amount of content ("raw
material"), have turned appropriation and recombination into general
methods of cultural production.[^64^](#c1-note-0064){#c1-note-0064a}
This phenomenon will be examined more closely in the next chapter.
Both the involvement of users in the production process and the methods
of appropriation and recombination are extremely information-intensive
and communication-intensive. Without the corresponding technological
infrastructure, neither could be achieved efficiently or on a large
scale. This was evident in the 1970s, when such approaches never made it
beyond subcultures and conceptual studies. With today\'s search engines,
every single user can trawl through an amount of information that, just
a generation ago, would have been unmanageable even by professional
archivists. A broad array of communication platforms (together with
flexible production capacities and efficient logistics) not only weakens
the contradiction between mass fabrication and personalization; it also
allows users to network directly with one another in order to develop
specialized knowledge together and thus to enable themselves to
intervene directly in design processes, both as []{#Page_40
type="pagebreak" title="40"}willing participants in and as critics of
flexible global production processes.
:::
:::
::: {.section}
The Technologization of Culture {#c1-sec-0009}
-------------------------------
That society is dependent on complex information technologies in order
to organize its constitutive processes is, in itself, nothing new.
Rather, this began as early as the late nineteenth century. It is
directly correlated with the expansion and acceleration of the
circulation of goods, which came about through industrialization. As the
historian and sociologist James Beniger has noted, this led to a
"control crisis," for administrative control centers were faced with the
problem of losing sight of what was happening in their own factories,
with their suppliers, and in the important markets of the time.
Management was in a bind: decisions had to be made either on the basis
of insufficient information or too late. The existing administrative and
control mechanisms could no longer deal with the rapidly increasing
complexity and time-sensitive nature of extensively organized production
and distribution. The office became more important, and ever more people
were needed there to fulfill a growing number of functions. Yet this was
not enough for the crisis to subside. The old administrative methods,
which involved manual information processing, simply could no longer
keep up. The crisis reached its first dramatic peak in 1889 in the
United States, with the realization that the census data from the year
1880 had not yet been analyzed when the next census was already
scheduled to take place during the subsequent year. In the same year,
the Secretary of the Interior organized a conference to investigate
faster methods of data processing. Two methods were tested for making
manual labor more efficient, one of which had the potential to achieve
greater efficiency by means of novel data-processing machines. The
latter system emerged as the clear victor; developed by an engineer
named Hermann Hollerith, it mechanically processed and stored data on
punch cards. The idea was based on Hollerith\'s observations of the
coupling and decoupling of railroad cars, which he interpreted as
modular units that could be combined in any desired order. The punch
card transferred this approach to information []{#Page_41
type="pagebreak" title="41"}management. Data were no longer stored in
fixed, linear arrangements (tables and lists) but rather in small units
(the punch cards) that, like railroad cars, could be combined in any
given way. The increase in efficiency -- with respect to speed *and*
flexibility -- was enormous, and nearly a hundred of Hollerith\'s
machines were used by the Census
Bureau.[^65^](#c1-note-0065){#c1-note-0065a} This marked a turning point
in the history of information processing, with technical means no longer
being used exclusively to store data, but to process data as well. This
was the only way to avoid the impending crisis, ensuring that
bureaucratic management could maintain centralized control. Hollerith\'s
machines proved to be a resounding success and were implemented in many
more branches of government and corporate administration, where
data-intensive processes had increased so rapidly they could not have
been managed without such machines. This growth was accompanied by that
of Hollerith\'s Tabulating Machine Company, which he founded in 1896 and
which, after a number of mergers, was renamed in 1924 as the
International Business Machines Corporation (IBM). Throughout the
following decades, dependence on information-processing machines only
deepened. The growing number of social, commercial, and military
processes could only be managed by means of information technology. This
largely took place, however, outside of public view, namely in the
specialized divisions of large government and private organizations.
These were the only institutions in command of the necessary resources
for operating the complex technical infrastructure -- so-called
mainframe computers -- that was essential to automatic information
processing.
::: {.section}
### The independent media {#c1-sec-0010}
As with so much else, this situation began to change in the 1960s. Mass
media and information-processing technologies began to attract
criticism, even though all of the involved subcultures, media activists,
and hackers continued to act independently from one another until the
1990s. The freedom-oriented social movements of the 1960s began to view
the mass media as part of the political system against which they were
struggling. The connections among the economy, politics, and the media
were becoming more apparent, not []{#Page_42 type="pagebreak"
title="42"}least because many mass media companies, especially those in
Germany related to the Springer publishing house, were openly inimical
to these social movements. Critical theories arose that, borrowing
Louis Althusser\'s influential term, regarded the media as part of the
"ideological state apparatus"; that is, as one of the authorities whose
task is to influence people to accept social relations to such a degree
that the "repressive state apparatuses" (the police, the military, etc.)
form a constant background in everyday
life.[^66^](#c1-note-0066){#c1-note-0066a} Similarly influential,
Antonio Gramsci\'s theory of "cultural hegemony" emphasized the
condition in which the governed are manipulated to form a cultural
consensus with the ruling class; they accept the latter\'s
presuppositions (and the politics which are thus justified) even though,
by doing so, they are forced to suffer economic
disadvantages.[^67^](#c1-note-0067){#c1-note-0067a} Guy Debord and the
Situationists attributed to the media a central role in the new form of
rule known as "the spectacle," the glittery surfaces and superficial
manifestations of which served to conceal society\'s true
relations.[^68^](#c1-note-0068){#c1-note-0068a} In doing so, they
aligned themselves with the critique of the "culture industry," which
had been formulated by Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno at the
beginning of the 1940s and had become a widely discussed key text by the
1960s.
Their differences aside, these perspectives were united in that they no
longer understood the "public" as a neutral sphere, in which citizens
could inform themselves freely and form their opinions, but rather as
something that was created with specific intentions and consequences.
From this grew an interest in "counter-publics"; that is, in forums
where other actors could appear and negotiate theories of their own. The
mass media thus became an important instrument for organizing the
bourgeois--capitalist public, but they were also responsible for the
development of alternatives. Media, according to one of the core ideas
of these new approaches, are less a sphere in which an external reality
is depicted; rather, they are themselves a constitutive element of
reality.
:::
::: {.section}
### Media as lifeworlds {#c1-sec-0011}
Another branch of new media theories, that of Marshall McLuhan and the
Toronto School of Communication,[^69^](#c1-note-0069){#c1-note-0069a}
[]{#Page_43 type="pagebreak" title="43"}reached a similar conclusion on
different grounds. In 1964, McLuhan aroused a great deal of attention
with his slogan "the medium is the message." He maintained that every
medium of communication, by means of its media-specific characteristics,
directly affected the consciousness, self-perception, and worldview of
every individual.[^70^](#c1-note-0070){#c1-note-0070a} This, he
believed, happens independently of and in addition to whatever specific
message a medium might be conveying. From this perspective, reality does
not exist outside of media, given that media codetermine our personal
relation to and behavior in the world. For McLuhan and the Toronto
School, media were thus not channels for transporting content but rather
the all-encompassing environments -- galaxies -- in which we live.
Such ideas were circulating much earlier and were intensively developed
by artists, many of whom were beginning to experiment with new
electronic media. An important starting point in this regard was the
1963 exhibit *Exposition of Music -- Electronic Television* by the
Korean artist Nam June Paik, who was then collaborating with Karlheinz
Stockhausen in Düsseldorf. Among other things, Paik presented 12
television sets, the screens of which were "distorted" by magnets. Here,
however, "distorted" is a problematic term, for, as Paik explicitly
noted, the electronic images were "a beautiful slap in the face of
classic dualism in philosophy since the time of Plato. \[...\] Essence
AND existence, essentia AND existentia. In the case of the electron,
however, EXISTENTIA IS ESSENTIA."[^71^](#c1-note-0071){#c1-note-0071a}
Paik no longer understood the electronic image on the television screen
as a portrayal or representation of anything. Rather, it engendered in
the moment of its appearance an autonomous reality beyond and
independent of its representational function. A whole generation of
artists began to explore forms of existence in electronic media, which
they no longer understood as pure media of information. In his work
*Video Corridor* (1969--70), Bruce Nauman stacked two monitors at the
end of a corridor that was approximately 10 meters long but only 50
centimeters wide. On the lower monitor ran a video showing the empty
hallway. The upper monitor displayed an image captured by a camera
installed at the entrance of the hall, about 3 meters high. If the
viewer moved down the corridor toward the two []{#Page_44
type="pagebreak" title="44"}monitors, he or she would thus be recorded
by the latter camera. Yet the closer one came to the monitor, the
farther one would be from the camera, so that one\'s image on the
monitor would become smaller and smaller. Recorded from behind, viewers
would thus watch themselves walking away from themselves. Surveillance
by others, self-surveillance, recording, and disappearance were directly
and intuitively connected with one another and thematized as fundamental
issues of electronic media.
Toward the end of the 1960s, the easier availability and mobility of
analog electronic production technologies promoted the search for
counter-publics and the exploration of media as comprehensive
lifeworlds. In 1967, Sony introduced its first Portapak system: a
battery-powered, self-contained recording system -- consisting of a
camera, a cord, and a recorder -- with which it was possible to make
(black-and-white) video recordings outside of a studio. Although the
recording apparatus, which required additional devices for editing and
projection, was offered at the relatively expensive price of \$1,500
(which corresponds to about €8,000 today), it was still affordable for
interested groups. Compared with the situation of traditional film
cameras, these new cameras considerably lowered the initial hurdle for
media production, for video tapes were not only much cheaper than film
reels (and could be used for multiple recordings); they also made it
possible to view recorded material immediately and on location. This
enabled the production of works that were far more intuitive and
spontaneous than earlier ones. The 1970s saw the formation of many video
groups, media workshops, and other initiatives for the independent
production of electronic media. Through their own distribution,
festivals, and other channels, such groups created alternative public
spheres. The latter became especially prominent in the United States
where, at the end of the 1960s, the providers of cable networks were
legally obligated to establish public-access channels, on which citizens
were able to operate self-organized and non-commercial television
programs. This gave rise to a considerable public-access movement there,
which at one point extended across 4,000 cities and was responsible for
producing programs from and for these different
communities.[^72[]{#Page_45 type="pagebreak"
title="45"}^](#c1-note-0072){#c1-note-0072a}
What these initiatives shared in common, in Western Europe and the
United States, was their attempt to close the gap between the
consumption and production of media, to activate the public, and at
least in part to experiment with the media themselves. Non-professional
producers were empowered with the ability to control who told their
stories and how this happened. Groups that previously had no access to
the medial public sphere now had opportunities to represent themselves
and their own interests. By working together on their own productions,
such groups demystified the medium of television and simultaneously
equipped it with a critical consciousness.
Especially well received in Germany was the work of Hans Magnus
Enzensberger, who in 1970 argued (on the basis of Bertolt Brecht\'s
radio theory) in favor of distinguishing between "repressive" and
"emancipatory" uses of media. For him, the emancipatory potential of
media lay in the fact that "every receiver is \[...\] a potential
transmitter" that can participate "interactively" in "collective
production."[^73^](#c1-note-0073){#c1-note-0073a} In the same year, the
first German video group, Telewissen, debuted in public with a
demonstration in downtown Darmstadt. In 1980, at the peak of the
movement for independent video production, there were approximately a
hundred such groups throughout (West) Germany. The lack of distribution
channels, however, represented a nearly insuperable obstacle and ensured
that many independent productions were seldom viewed outside of
small-scale settings. Tapes had to be exchanged between groups through
the mail, and they were mainly shown at gatherings and events, and in
bars. The dynamic of alternative media shifted toward a small subculture
(though one networked throughout all of Europe) of pirate radio and
television broadcasters. At the beginning of the 1980s and in the space
of Radio Dreyeckland in Freiburg, which had been founded in 1977 as
Radio Verte Fessenheim, operations began at Germany\'s first pirate or
citizens\' radio station, which regularly broadcast information about
the political protest movements that had arisen against the use of
nuclear power in Fessenheim (France), Wyhl (Germany), and Kaiseraugst
(Switzerland). The epicenter of the scene, however, was located in
Amsterdam, where the group known as Rabotnik TV, which was an offshoot
[]{#Page_46 type="pagebreak" title="46"}of the squatter scene there,
would illegally feed its signal through official television stations
after their programming had ended at night (many stations then stopped
broadcasting at midnight). In 1988, the group acquired legal
broadcasting slots on the cable network and reached up to 50,000 viewers
with their weekly experimental shows, which largely consisted of footage
appropriated freely from elsewhere.[^74^](#c1-note-0074){#c1-note-0074a}
Early in 1990, the pirate television station Kanal X was created in
Leipzig; it produced its own citizens\' television programming in the
quasi-lawless milieu of the GDR before
reunification.[^75^](#c1-note-0075){#c1-note-0075a}
These illegal, independent, or public-access stations only managed to
establish themselves as real mass media to a very limited extent.
Nevertheless, they played an important role in sensitizing an entire
generation of media activists, whose opportunities expanded as the means
of production became both better and cheaper. In the name of "tactical
media," a new generation of artistic and political media activists came
together in the middle of the
1990s.[^76^](#c1-note-0076){#c1-note-0076a} They combined the "camcorder
revolution," which in the late 1980s had made video equipment available
to broader swaths of society, stirring visions of democratic media
production, with the newly arrived medium of the internet. Despite still
struggling with numerous technical difficulties, they remained constant
in their belief that the internet would solve the hitherto intractable
problem of distributing content. The transition from analog to digital
media lowered the production hurdle yet again, not least through the
ongoing development of improved software. Now, many stages of production
that had previously required professional or semi-professional expertise
and equipment could also be carried out by engaged laymen. As a
consequence, the focus of interest broadened to include not only the
development of alternative production groups but also the possibility of
a flexible means of rapid intervention in existing structures. Media --
both television and the internet -- were understood as environments in
which one could act without directly representing a reality outside of
the media. Television was analyzed down to its own legalities, which
could then be manipulated to affect things beyond the media.
Increasingly, culture jamming and the campaigns of so-called
communication guerrillas were blurring the difference between media and
political activity.[^77[]{#Page_47 type="pagebreak"
title="47"}^](#c1-note-0077){#c1-note-0077a}
This difference was dissolved entirely by a new generation of
politically motivated artists, activists, and hackers, who transferred
the tactics of civil disobedience -- blockading a building with a
sit-in, for instance -- to the
internet.[^78^](#c1-note-0078){#c1-note-0078a} When, in 1994, the
Zapatista Army of National Liberation rose up in the south of Mexico,
several media projects were created to support its mostly peaceful
opposition and to make the movement known in Europe and North America.
As part of this loose network, in 1998 the American artist collective
Electronic Disturbance Theater developed a relatively simple computer
program called FloodNet that enabled networked sympathizers to shut down
websites, such as those of the Mexican government, in a targeted and
temporary manner. The principle was easy enough: the program would
automatically reload a certain website over and over again in order to
exhaust the capacities of its network
servers.[^79^](#c1-note-0079){#c1-note-0079a} The goal was not to
destroy data but rather to disturb the normal functioning of an
institution in order to draw attention to the activities and interests
of the protesters.
:::
::: {.section}
### Networks as places of action {#c1-sec-0012}
What this new generation of media activists shared in common with the
hackers and pioneers of computer networks was the idea that
communication media are spaces for agency. During the 1960s, these
programmers were also in search of alternatives. The difference during
the 1960s is that they did not pursue these alternatives in
counter-publics, but rather in alternative lifestyles and communication.
The rejection of bureaucracy as a form of social organization played a
significant role in the critique of industrial society formulated by
freedom-oriented social movements. At the beginning of the previous
century, Max Weber had still regarded bureaucracy as a clear sign of
progress toward a rational and methodical
organization.[^80^](#c1-note-0080){#c1-note-0080a} He based this
assessment on processes that were impersonal, rule-bound, and
transparent (in the sense that they were documented with files). But
now, in the 1960s, bureaucracy was being criticized as soulless,
alienated, oppressive, non-transparent, and unfit for an increasingly
complex society. Whereas the first four of these points are in basic
agreement with Weber\'s thesis about "disenchanting" []{#Page_48
type="pagebreak" title="48"}the world, the last point represents a
radical departure from his analysis. Bureaucracies were no longer
regarded as hyper-efficient but rather as inefficient, and their size
and rule-bound nature were no longer seen as strengths but rather as
decisive weaknesses. The social bargain of offering prosperity and
security in exchange for subordination to hierarchical relations struck
many as being anything but attractive, and what blossomed instead was a
broad interest in alternative forms of coexistence. New institutions
were expected to be more flexible and more open. The desire to step away
from the system was widespread, and many (mostly young) people set about
doing exactly that. Alternative ways of life -- communes, shared
apartments, and cooperatives -- were explored in the country and in
cities. They were meant to provide the individual with greater autonomy
and the opportunity to develop his or her own unique potential. Despite
all of the differences between these concepts of life, they nevertheless
shared something of a common denominator: the promise of
reconceptualizing social institutions and the fundamentals of
coexistence, with the aim of reformulating them in such a way as to
allow everyone\'s personal potential to develop fully in the here and
now.
According to critics of such alternatives, bureaucracy was necessary in
order to organize social life as it radically reduced the world\'s
complexity by forcing it through the bottleneck of official procedures.
However, the price paid for such efficiency involved the atrophying of
human relationships, which had to be subordinated to rigid processes
that were incapable of registering unique characteristics and
differences and were unable to react in a timely manner to changing
circumstances.
In the 1960s, many countercultural attempts to find new forms of
organization placed personal and open communication at the center of
their efforts. Each individual was understood as a singular person with
untapped potential rather than a carrier of abstract and clearly defined
functions. It was soon realized, however, that every common activity and
every common decision entailed processes that were time-intensive and
communication-intensive. As soon as a group exceeded a certain size, it
became practically impossible for it to reach any consensus. As a result
of these experiences, an entire worldview emerged that propagated
"smallness" as a central []{#Page_49 type="pagebreak" title="49"}value
("small is beautiful"). It was thought that in this way society might
escape from bureaucracy with its ostensibly disastrous consequences for
humanity and the environment.[^81^](#c1-note-0081){#c1-note-0081a} But
this belief did not last for long. For, unlike the majority of European
alternative movements, the counterculture in the United States was not
overwhelmingly critical of technology. On the contrary, many actors
there sought suitable technologies for solving the practical problems of
social organization. At the end of the 1960s, a considerable amount of
attention was devoted to the field of basic technological research. This
field brought together the interests of the military, academics,
businesses, and activists from the counterculture. The common ground for
all of them was a cybernetic vision of institutions, or, in the words of
the historian Fred Turner:
::: {.extract}
a picture of humans and machines as dynamic, collaborating elements in a
single, highly fluid, socio-technical system. Within that system,
control emerged not from the mind of a commanding officer, but from the
complex, probabilistic interactions of humans, machines and events
around them. Moreover, the mechanical elements of the system in question
-- in this case, the predictor -- enabled the human elements to achieve
what all Americans would agree was a worthwhile goal. \[...\] Over the
coming decades, this second vision of benevolent man-machine systems, of
circular flows of information, would emerge as a driving force in the
establishment of the military--industrial--academic complex and as a
model of an alternative to that
complex.[^82^](#c1-note-0082){#c1-note-0082a}
:::
This complex was possible because, as a theory, cybernetics was
formulated in extraordinarily abstract terms, so much so that a whole
variety of competing visions could be associated with
it.[^83^](#c1-note-0083){#c1-note-0083a} With cybernetics as a
meta-science, it was possible to investigate the common features of
technical, social, and biological
processes.[^84^](#c1-note-0084){#c1-note-0084a} They were analyzed as
open, interactive, and information-processing systems. It was especially
consequential that cybernetics defined control and communication as the
same thing, namely as activities oriented toward informational
feedback.[^85^](#c1-note-0085){#c1-note-0085a} The heterogeneous legacy
of cybernetics and its synonymous treatment of the terms "communication"
and "control" continue to influence information technology and the
internet today.[]{#Page_50 type="pagebreak" title="50"}
The various actors who contributed to the development of the internet
shared a common interest for forms of organization based on the
comprehensive, dynamic, and open exchange of information. Both on the
micro and macro level (and this is decisive at this point),
decentralized and flexible communication technologies were meant to
become the foundation of new organizational models. Militaries feared
attacks on their command and communication centers; academics wanted to
broaden their culture of autonomy, collaboration among peers, and the
free exchange of information; businesses were looking for new areas of
activity; and countercultural activists were longing for new forms of
peaceful coexistence.[^86^](#c1-note-0086){#c1-note-0086a} They all
rejected the bureaucratic model, and the counterculture provided them
with the central catchword for their alternative vision: community.
Though rather difficult to define, it was a powerful and positive term
that somehow promised the opposite of bureaucracy: humanity,
cooperation, horizontality, mutual trust, and consensus. Now, however,
humanity was expected to be reconfigured as a community in cooperation
with and inseparable from machines. And what was yearned for had become
a liberating symbiosis of man and machine, an idea that the author
Richard Brautigan was quick to mock in his poem "All Watched Over by
Machines of Loving Grace" from 1967:
Here, Brautigan is ridiculing both the impatience (*the sooner the
better!*) and the naïve optimism (*harmony, clear sky*) of the
countercultural activists. Primarily, he regarded the underlying vision
as an innocent but amusing fantasy and not as a potential threat against
which something had to be done. And there were also reasons to believe
that, ultimately, the new communities would be free from the coercive
nature that []{#Page_51 type="pagebreak" title="51"}had traditionally
characterized the downside of community experiences. It was thought that
the autonomy and freedom of the individual could be regained in and by
means of the community. The conditions for this were that participation
in the community had to be voluntary and that the rules of participation
had to be self-imposed. I will return to this topic in greater detail
below.
In line with their solution-oriented engineering culture and the
results-focused military funders who by and large set the agenda, a
relatively small group of computer scientists now took it upon
themselves to establish the technological foundations for new
institutions. This was not an abstract goal for the distant future;
rather, they wanted to change everyday practices as soon as possible. It
was around this time that advanced technology became the basis of social
communication, which now adopted forms that would have been
inconceivable (not to mention impracticable) without these
preconditions. Of course, effective communication technologies already
existed at the time. Large corporations had begun long before then to
operate their own computing centers. In contrast to the latter, however,
the new infrastructure could also be used by individuals outside of
established institutions and could be implemented for all forms of
communication and exchange. This idea gave rise to a pragmatic culture
of horizontal, voluntary cooperation. The clearest summary of this early
ethos -- which originated at the unusual intersection of military,
academic, and countercultural interests -- was offered by David D.
Clark, a computer scientist who for some time coordinated the
development of technical standards for the internet: "We reject: kings,
presidents and voting. We believe in: rough consensus and running
code."[^88^](#c1-note-0088){#c1-note-0088a}
All forms of classical, formal hierarchies and their methods for
resolving conflicts -- commands (by kings and presidents) and votes --
were dismissed. Implemented in their place was a pragmatics of open
cooperation that was oriented around two guiding principles. The first
was that different views should be discussed without a single individual
being able to block any final decisions. Such was the meaning of the
expression "rough consensus." The second was that, in accordance with
the classical engineering tradition, the focus should remain on concrete
solutions that had to be measured against one []{#Page_52
type="pagebreak" title="52"}another on the basis of transparent
criteria. Such was the meaning of the expression "running code." In
large part, this method was possible because the group oriented around
these principles was, internally, relatively homogeneous: it consisted
of top-notch computer scientists -- all of them men -- at respected
American universities and research centers. For this very reason, many
potential and fundamental conflicts were avoided, at least at first.
This internal homogeneity lends rather dark undertones to their sunny
vision, but this was hardly recognized at the time. Today these
undertones are far more apparent, and I will return to them below.
Not only were technical protocols developed on the basis of these
principles, but organizational forms as well. Along with the Internet
Engineering Task Force (which he directed), Clark created the so-called
Request-for-Comments documents, with which ideas could be presented to
interested members of the community and simultaneous feedback could be
collected in order to work through the ideas in question and thus reach
a rough consensus. If such a consensus could not be reached -- if, for
instance, an idea failed to resonate with anyone or was too
controversial -- then the matter would be dropped. The feedback was
organized as a form of many-to-many communication through email lists,
newsgroups, and online chat systems. This proved to be so effective that
horizontal communication within large groups or between multiple groups
could take place without resulting in chaos. This therefore invalidated
the traditional trend that social units, once they reach a certain size,
would necessarily introduce hierarchical structures for the sake of
reducing complexity and communication. In other words, the foundations
were laid for larger numbers of (changing) people to organize flexibly
and with the aim of building an open consensus. For Manuel Castells,
this combination of organizational flexibility and scalability in size
is the decisive innovation that was enabled by the rise of the network
society.[^89^](#c1-note-0089){#c1-note-0089a} At the same time, however,
this meant that forms of organization spread that could only be possible
on the basis of technologies that have formed (and continue to form)
part of the infrastructure of the internet. Digital technology and the
social activity of individual users were linked together to an
unprecedented extent. Social and cultural agendas were now directly
related []{#Page_53 type="pagebreak" title="53"}to and entangled with
technical design. Each of the four original interest groups -- the
military, scientists, businesses, and the counterculture -- implemented
new technologies to pursue their own projects, which partly complemented
and partly contradicted one another. As we know today, the first three
groups still cooperate closely with each other. To a great extent, this
has allowed the military and corporations, which are willingly supported
by researchers in need of funding, to determine the technology and thus
aspects of the social and cultural agendas that depend on it.
The software developers\' immediate environment experienced its first
major change in the late 1970s. Software, which for many had been a mere
supplement to more expensive and highly specialized hardware, became a
marketable good with stringent licensing restrictions. A new generation
of businesses, led by Bill Gates, suddenly began to label cooperation
among programmers as theft.[^90^](#c1-note-0090){#c1-note-0090a}
Previously it had been par for the course, and above all necessary, for
programmers to share software with one another. The former culture of
horizontal cooperation between developers transformed into a
hierarchical and commercially oriented relation between developers and
users (many of whom, at least at the beginning, had developed programs
of their own). For the first time, copyright came to play an important
role in digital culture. In order to survive in this environment, the
practice of open cooperation had to be placed on a new legal foundation.
Copyright law, which served to separate programmers (producers) from
users (consumers), had to be neutralized or circumvented. The first step
in this direction was taken in 1984 by the activist and programmer
Richard Stallman. Composed by Stallman, the GNU General Public License
was and remains a brilliant hack that uses the letter of copyright law
against its own spirit. This happens in the form of a license that
defines "four freedoms":
1. The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom
0).
2. The freedom to study how the program works and change it so it does
your computing as you wish (freedom 1).
3. The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor
(freedom 2).[]{#Page_54 type="pagebreak" title="54"}
4. The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others
(freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance
to benefit from your changes.[^91^](#c1-note-0091){#c1-note-0091a}
Thanks to this license, people who were personally unacquainted and did
not share a common social environment could now cooperate (freedoms 2
and 3) and simultaneously remain autonomous and unrestricted (freedoms 0
and 1). For many, the tension between the need to develop complex
software in large teams and the desire to maintain one\'s own autonomy
represented an incentive to try out new forms of
cooperation.[^92^](#c1-note-0092){#c1-note-0092a}
Stallman\'s influence was at first limited to a small circle of
programmers. In the middle of the 1980s, the goal of developing a
completely free operating system seemed a distant one. Communication
between those interested in doing so was often slow and complicated. In
part, program codes still had to be sent by mail. It was not until the
beginning of the 1990s that students in technical departments at many
universities could access the
internet.[^93^](#c1-note-0093){#c1-note-0093a} One of the first to use
these new opportunities in an innovative way was a Finnish student named
Linus Torvalds. He built upon Stallman\'s work and programmed a kernel,
which, as the most important module of an operating system, governs the
interaction between hardware and software. He published the first free
version of this in 1991 and encouraged anyone interested to give him
feedback.[^94^](#c1-note-0094){#c1-note-0094a} And it poured in.
Torvalds reacted promptly and issued new versions of his software in
quick succession. Instead of understanding his software as a finished
product, he treated it like an open-ended process. This, in turn,
motivated even more developers to participate, because they saw that
their contributions were being adopted swiftly, which led to the
formation of an open community of interested programmers who swapped
ideas over the internet and continued writing software. In order to
maintain an overview of the different versions of the program, which
appeared in parallel with one another, it soon became necessary to
employ specialized platforms. The fusion of social processes --
horizontal and voluntary cooperation among developers -- and
technological platforms, which enabled this form of cooperation
[]{#Page_55 type="pagebreak" title="55"}by providing archives, filter
functions, and search capabilities that made it possible to organize
large amounts of data, was thus advanced even further. The programmers
were no longer primarily working on the development of the internet
itself, which by then was functioning quite reliably, but were rather
using the internet to apply their cooperative principles to other
arenas. By the end of the 1990s, the free-software movement had
established a new, internet-based form of organization and had
demonstrated its efficiency in practice: horizontal, informal
communities of actors -- voluntary, autonomous, and focused on a common
interest -- that, on the basis of high-tech infrastructure, could
include thousands of people without having to create formal hierarchies.
:::
:::
::: {.section}
From the Margins to the Center of Society {#c1-sec-0013}
-----------------------------------------
It was around this same time that the technologies in question, which
were already no longer very new, entered mainstream society. Within a
few years, the internet became part of everyday life. Three years before
the turn of the millennium, only about 6 percent of the entire German
population used the internet, often only occasionally. Three years after
the millennium, the number of users already exceeded 53 percent. Since
then, this share has increased even further. In 2014, it was more than
97 percent for people under the age of
40.[^95^](#c1-note-0095){#c1-note-0095a} Parallel to these developments,
data transfer rates increased considerably, broadband connections ousted
the need for dial-up modems, and the internet was suddenly "here" and no
longer "there." With the spread of mobile devices, especially since the
year 2007 when the first iPhone was introduced, digital communication
became available both extensively and continuously. Since then, the
internet has been ubiquitous. The amount of time that users spend online
has increased and, with the rapid ascent of social mass media such as
Facebook, people have been online in almost every situation and
circumstance in life.[^96^](#c1-note-0096){#c1-note-0096a} The internet,
like water or electricity, has become for many people a utility that is
simply taken for granted.
In a BBC survey from 2010, 80 percent of those polled believed that
internet access -- a precondition for participating []{#Page_56
type="pagebreak" title="56"}in the now dominant digital condition --
should be regarded as a fundamental human right. This idea was most
popular in South Korea (96 percent) and Mexico (94 percent), while in
Germany at least 72 percent were of the same
opinion.[^97^](#c1-note-0097){#c1-note-0097a}
On the basis of this new infrastructure, which is now relevant in all
areas of life, the cultural developments described above have been
severed from the specific historical conditions from which they emerged
and have permeated society as a whole. Expressivity -- the ability to
communicate something "unique" -- is no longer a trait of artists and
knowledge workers alone, but rather something that is required by an
increasingly broader stratum of society and is already being taught in
schools. Users of social mass media must produce (themselves). The
development of specific, differentiated identities and the demand that
each be treated equally are no longer promoted exclusively by groups who
have to struggle against repression, existential threats, and
marginalization, but have penetrated deeply into the former mainstream,
not least because the present forms of capitalism have learned to profit
from the spread of niches and segmentation. When even conservative
parties have abandoned the idea of a "leading culture," then cultural
differences can no longer be classified by enforcing an absolute and
indisputable hierarchy, the top of which is occupied by specific
(geographical and cultural) centers. Rather, a space has been opened up
for endless negotiations, a space in which -- at least in principle --
everything can be called into question. This is not, of course, a
peaceful and egalitarian process. In addition to the practical hurdles
that exist in polarizing societies, there are also violent backlashes
and new forms of fundamentalism that are attempting once again to remove
certain religious, social, cultural, or political dimensions of
existence from the discussion. Yet these can only be understood in light
of a sweeping cultural transformation that has already reached
mainstream society.[^98^](#c1-note-0098){#c1-note-0098a} In other words,
the digital condition has become quotidian and dominant. It forms a
cultural constellation that determines all areas of life, and its
characteristic features are clearly recognizable. These will be the
focus of the next chapter.[]{#Page_57 type="pagebreak" title="57"}
:::
::: {.section .notesList}
[1](#c1-note-0001a){#c1-note-0001} Kathrin Passig and Sascha Lobo,
*Internet: Segen oder Fluch* (Berlin: Rowohlt, 2012) \[--trans.\].
[2](#c1-note-0002a){#c1-note-0002} The expression "heteronormatively
behaving" is used here to mean that, while in the public eye, the
behavior of the people []{#Page_177 type="pagebreak" title="177"}in
question conformed to heterosexual norms regardless of their personal
sexual orientations.
[3](#c1-note-0003a){#c1-note-0003} No order is ever entirely closed
off. In this case, too, there was also room for exceptions and for
collective moments of greater cultural multiplicity. That said, the
social openness of the end of the 1920s, for instance, was restricted to
particular milieus within large cities and was accordingly short-lived.
[4](#c1-note-0004a){#c1-note-0004} Fritz Machlup, *The Political
Economy of Monopoly: Business, Labor and Government Policies*
(Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1952).
[5](#c1-note-0005a){#c1-note-0005} Machlup was a student of Ludwig von
Mises, the most influential representative of this radically
individualist school. See Hans-Hermann Hoppe, "Die Österreichische
Schule und ihre Bedeutung für die moderne Wirtschaftswissenschaft," in
Karl-Dieter Grüske (ed.), *Die Gemeinwirtschaft: Kommentarband zur
Neuauflage von Ludwig von Mises' "Die Gemeinwirtschaft"* (Düsseldorf:
Verlag Wirtschaft und Finanzen, 1996), pp. 65--90.
[6](#c1-note-0006a){#c1-note-0006} Fritz Machlup, *The Production and
Distribution of Knowledge in the United States* (New York: John Wiley &
Sons, 1962).
[7](#c1-note-0007a){#c1-note-0007} The term "knowledge worker" had
already been introduced to the discussion a few years before; see Peter
Drucker, *Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New* (New York: Harper,
1959).
[8](#c1-note-0008a){#c1-note-0008} Peter Ecker, "Die
Verwissenschaftlichung der Industrie: Zur Geschichte der
Industrieforschung in den europäischen und amerikanischen
Elektrokonzernen 1890--1930," *Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte*
35 (1990): 73--94.
[9](#c1-note-0009a){#c1-note-0009} Edward Bernays was the son of
Sigmund Freud\'s sister Anna and Ely Bernays, the brother of Freud\'s
wife, Martha Bernays.
[10](#c1-note-0010a){#c1-note-0010} Edward L. Bernays, *Propaganda*
(New York: Horace Liverlight, 1928).
[11](#c1-note-0011a){#c1-note-0011} James Beniger, *The Control
Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information
Society* (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), p. 350.
[12](#c1-note-0012a){#c1-note-0012} Norbert Wiener, *Cybernetics: Or
Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine* (New York: J.
Wiley, 1948).
[13](#c1-note-0013a){#c1-note-0013} Daniel Bell, *The Coming of
Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting* (New York:
Basic Books, 1973).
[14](#c1-note-0014a){#c1-note-0014} Simon Nora and Alain Minc, *The
Computerization of Society: A Report to the President of France*
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1980).
[15](#c1-note-0015a){#c1-note-0015} Manuel Castells, *The Rise of the
Network Society* (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996).
[16](#c1-note-0016a){#c1-note-0016} Hans-Dieter Kübler, *Mythos
Wissensgesellschaft: Gesellschaftlicher Wandel zwischen Information,
Medien und Wissen -- Eine Einführung* (Wiesbaden: Verlag für
Sozialwissenschaften, 2009).[]{#Page_178 type="pagebreak" title="178"}
[17](#c1-note-0017a){#c1-note-0017} Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello,
*The New Spirit of Capitalism*, trans. Gregory Elliott (London: Verso,
2005).
[18](#c1-note-0018a){#c1-note-0018} Michael Piore and Charles Sabel,
*The Second Industrial Divide: Possibilities of Prosperity* (New York:
Basic Books, 1984).
[19](#c1-note-0019a){#c1-note-0019} Castells, *The Rise of the Network
Society*. For a critical evaluation of Castells\'s work, see Felix
Stalder, *Manuel Castells and the Theory of the Network Society*
(Cambridge: Polity, 2006).
[20](#c1-note-0020a){#c1-note-0020} "UK Creative Industries Mapping
Documents" (1998); quoted from Terry Flew, *The Creative Industries:
Culture and Policy* (Los Angeles, CA: Sage, 2012), pp. 9--10.
[21](#c1-note-0021a){#c1-note-0021} The rise of the creative
industries, and the hope that they inspired among politicians, did not
escape criticism. Among the first works to draw attention to the
precarious nature of working in such industries was Angela McRobbie\'s
*British Fashion Design: Rag Trade or Image Industry?* (New York:
Routledge, 1998).
[22](#c1-note-0022a){#c1-note-0022} This definition is not without a
degree of tautology, given that economic growth is based on talent,
which itself is defined by its ability to create new jobs; that is,
economic growth. At the same time, he employs the term "talent" in an
extremely narrow sense. Apparently, if something has nothing to do with
job creation, it also has nothing to do with talent or creativity. All
forms of creativity are thus measured and compared according to a common
criterion.
[23](#c1-note-0023a){#c1-note-0023} Richard Florida, *Cities and the
Creative Class* (New York: Routledge, 2005), p. 5.
[24](#c1-note-0024a){#c1-note-0024} One study has reached the
conclusion that, despite mass participation, "a new form of
communicative elite has developed, namely digitally and technically
versed actors who inform themselves in this way, exchange ideas and thus
gain influence. For them, the possibilities of platforms mainly
represent an expansion of useful tools. Above all, the dissemination of
digital technology makes it easier for versed and highly networked
individuals to convey their news more simply -- and, for these groups of
people, it lowers the threshold for active participation." Michael
Bauer, "Digitale Technologien und Partizipation," in Clara Landler et
al. (eds), *Netzpolitik in Österreich: Internet, Macht, Menschenrechte*
(Krems: Donau-Universität Krems, 2013), pp. 219--24, at 224
\[--trans.\].
[25](#c1-note-0025a){#c1-note-0025} Boltanski and Chiapello, *The New
Spirit of Capitalism*.
[26](#c1-note-0026a){#c1-note-0026} According to Wikipedia,
"Heteronormativity is the belief that people fall into distinct and
complementary genders (man and woman) with natural roles in life. It
assumes that heterosexuality is the only sexual orientation or only
norm, and states that sexual and marital relations are most (or only)
fitting between people of opposite sexes."[]{#Page_179 type="pagebreak"
title="179"}
[27](#c1-note-0027a){#c1-note-0027} Jannis Plastargias, *RotZSchwul:
Der Beginn einer Bewegung (1971--1975)* (Berlin: Querverlag, 2015).
[28](#c1-note-0028a){#c1-note-0028} Helmut Ahrens et al. (eds),
*Tuntenstreit: Theoriediskussion der Homosexuellen Aktion Westberlin*
(Berlin: Rosa Winkel, 1975), p. 4.
[29](#c1-note-0029a){#c1-note-0029} Susanne Regener and Katrin Köppert
(eds), *Privat/öffentlich: Mediale Selbstentwürfe von Homosexualität*
(Vienna: Turia + Kant, 2013).
[30](#c1-note-0030a){#c1-note-0030} Such, for instance, was the
assessment of Manfred Bruns, the spokesperson for the Lesbian and Gay
Association in Germany, in his text "Schwulenpolitik früher" (link no
longer active). From today\'s perspective, however, the main problem
with this event was the unclear position of the Green Party with respect
to pedophilia. See Franz Walter et al. (eds), *Die Grünen und die
Pädosexualität: Eine bundesdeutsche Geschichte* (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck
& Ruprecht, 2014).
[32](#c1-note-0032a){#c1-note-0032} Quoted from Frank Niggemeier, "Gay
Pride: Schwules Selbstbewußtsein aus dem Village," in Bernd Polster
(ed.), *West-Wind: Die Amerikanisierung Europas* (Cologne: Dumont,
1995), pp. 179--87, at 184 \[--trans.\].
[33](#c1-note-0033a){#c1-note-0033} Quoted from Regener and Köppert,
*Privat/öffentlich*, p. 7 \[--trans.\].
[34](#c1-note-0034a){#c1-note-0034} Hans-Peter Buba and László A.
Vaskovics, *Benachteiligung gleichgeschlechtlich orientierter Personen
und Paare: Studie im Auftrag des Bundesministerium der Justiz* (Cologne:
Bundesanzeiger, 2001).
[35](#c1-note-0035a){#c1-note-0035} This process of internal
differentiation has not yet reached its conclusion, and thus the
acronyms have become longer and longer: LGBPTTQQIIAA+ stands for
"lesbian, gay, bisexual, pansexual, transgender, transsexual, queer,
questioning, intersex, intergender, asexual, ally."
[36](#c1-note-0036a){#c1-note-0036} Judith Butler, *Gender Trouble:
Feminism and the Subversion of Identity* (New York: Routledge, 1989).
[37](#c1-note-0037a){#c1-note-0037} Andreas Krass, "Queer Studies: Eine
Einführung," in Krass (ed.), *Queer denken: Gegen die Ordnung der
Sexualität* (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2003), pp. 7--27.
[38](#c1-note-0038a){#c1-note-0038} Edward W. Said, *Orientalism* (New
York: Vintage Books, 1978).
[39](#c1-note-0039a){#c1-note-0039} Kark August Wittfogel, *Oriental
Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power* (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1957).
[40](#c1-note-0040a){#c1-note-0040} Silke Förschler, *Bilder des Harem:
Medienwandel und kultereller Austausch* (Berlin: Reimer, 2010).
[41](#c1-note-0041a){#c1-note-0041} The selection and effectiveness of
these images is not a coincidence. Camel was one of the first brands of
cigarettes for []{#Page_180 type="pagebreak" title="180"}which
advertising, in the sense described above, was used in a systematic
manner.
[42](#c1-note-0042a){#c1-note-0042} This would not exclude feelings of
regret about the loss of an exotic and romantic way of life, such as
those of T. E. Lawrence, whose activities in the Near East during the
First World War were memorialized in the film *Lawrence of Arabia*
(1962).
[43](#c1-note-0043a){#c1-note-0043} Said has often been criticized,
however, for portraying orientalism so dominantly that there seems to be
no way out of the existing dependent relations. For an overview of the
debates that Said has instigated, see María do Mar Castro Varela and
Nikita Dhawan, *Postkoloniale Theorie: Eine kritische Einführung*
(Bielefeld: Transcript, 2005), pp. 37--46.
[44](#c1-note-0044a){#c1-note-0044} "Migration führt zu 'hybrider'
Gesellschaft" (an interview with Homi K. Bhabha), *ORF Science*
(November 9, 2007), online \[--trans.\].
[45](#c1-note-0045a){#c1-note-0045} Homi K. Bhabha, *The Location of
Culture* (New York: Routledge, 1994), p. 4.
[46](#c1-note-0046a){#c1-note-0046} Elisabeth Bronfen and Benjamin
Marius, "Hybride Kulturen: Einleitung zur anglo-amerikanischen
Multikulturismusdebatte," in Bronfen et al. (eds), *Hybride Kulturen*
(Tübingen: Stauffenburg), pp. 1--30, at 8 \[--trans.\].
[47](#c1-note-0047a){#c1-note-0047} "What Is Postcolonial Thinking? An
Interview with Achille Mbembe," *Eurozine* (December 2006), online.
[48](#c1-note-0048a){#c1-note-0048} Migrants have always created their
own culture, which deals in various ways with the experience of
migration itself, but non-migrant populations have long tended to ignore
this. Things have now begun to change in this regard, for instance
through Imra Ayata and Bülent Kullukcu\'s compilation of songs by the
Turkish diaspora of the 1970s and 1980s: *Songs of Gastarbeiter*
(Munich: Trikont, 2013).
[49](#c1-note-0049a){#c1-note-0049} The conference programs can be
found at: \<\>.
[50](#c1-note-0050a){#c1-note-0050} "Deutschland entwickelt sich zu
einem attraktiven Einwanderungsland für hochqualifizierte Zuwanderer,"
press release by the CDU/CSU Alliance in the German Parliament (June 4,
2014), online \[--trans.\].
[51](#c1-note-0051a){#c1-note-0051} Andreas Reckwitz, *Die Erfindung
der Kreativität: Zum Prozess gesellschaftlicher Ästhetisierung* (Berlin:
Suhrkamp, 2011), p. 180 \[--trans.\]. An English translation of this
book is forthcoming: *The Invention of Creativity: Modern Society and
the Culture of the New*, trans. Steven Black (Cambridge: Polity, 2017).
[52](#c1-note-0052a){#c1-note-0052} Gert Selle, *Geschichte des Design
in Deutschland* (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2007).
[53](#c1-note-0053a){#c1-note-0053} "Less Is More: The Design Ethos of
Dieter Rams," *SFMOMA* (June 29, 2011), online.[]{#Page_181
type="pagebreak" title="181"}
[54](#c1-note-0054a){#c1-note-0054} The cybernetic perspective was
introduced to the field of design primarily by Buckminster Fuller. See
Diedrich Diederichsen and Anselm Franke, *The Whole Earth: California
and the Disappearance of the Outside* (Berlin: Sternberg, 2013).
[55](#c1-note-0055a){#c1-note-0055} Clive Dilnot, "Design as a Socially
Significant Activity: An Introduction," *Design Studies* 3/3 (1982):
139--46.
[56](#c1-note-0056a){#c1-note-0056} Victor J. Papanek, *Design for the
Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change* (New York: Pantheon, 1972),
p. 2.
[57](#c1-note-0057a){#c1-note-0057} Reckwitz, *Die Erfindung der
Kreativität*.
[58](#c1-note-0058a){#c1-note-0058} B. Joseph Pine and James H.
Gilmore, *The Experience Economy: Work Is Theater and Every Business Is
a Stage* (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1999), p. ix (the
emphasis is original).
[59](#c1-note-0059a){#c1-note-0059} Mona El Khafif, *Inszenierter
Urbanismus: Stadtraum für Kunst, Kultur und Konsum im Zeitalter der
Erlebnisgesellschaft* (Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, 2013).
[60](#c1-note-0060a){#c1-note-0060} Konrad Becker and Martin Wassermair
(eds), *Phantom Kulturstadt* (Vienna: Löcker, 2009).
[61](#c1-note-0061a){#c1-note-0061} See, for example, Andres Bosshard,
*Stadt hören: Klangspaziergänge durch Zürich* (Zurich: NZZ Libro,
2009).
[62](#c1-note-0062a){#c1-note-0062} "An alternate realty game (ARG),"
according to Wikipedia, "is an interactive networked narrative that uses
the real world as a platform and employs transmedia storytelling to
deliver a story that may be altered by players\' ideas or actions."
[63](#c1-note-0063a){#c1-note-0063} Eric von Hippel, *Democratizing
Innovation* (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005).
[64](#c1-note-0064a){#c1-note-0064} It is often the case that the
involvement of users simply serves to increase the efficiency of
production processes and customer service. Many activities that were
once undertaken at the expense of businesses now have to be carried out
by the customers themselves. See Günter Voss, *Der arbeitende Kunde:
Wenn Konsumenten zu unbezahlten Mitarbeitern werden* (Frankfurt am Main:
Campus, 2005).
[65](#c1-note-0065a){#c1-note-0065} Beniger, *The Control Revolution*,
pp. 411--16.
[66](#c1-note-0066a){#c1-note-0066} Louis Althusser, "Ideology and
Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation)," in
Althusser, *Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays*, trans. Ben Brewster
(New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971), pp. 127--86.
[67](#c1-note-0067a){#c1-note-0067} Florian Becker et al. (eds),
*Gramsci lesen! Einstiege in die Gefängnishefte* (Hamburg: Argument,
2013), pp. 20--35.
[68](#c1-note-0068a){#c1-note-0068} Guy Debord, *The Society of the
Spectacle*, trans. Fredy Perlman and Jon Supak (Detroit: Black & Red,
1977).
[69](#c1-note-0069a){#c1-note-0069} Derrick de Kerckhove, "McLuhan and
the Toronto School of Communication," *Canadian Journal of
Communication* 14/4 (1989): 73--9.[]{#Page_182 type="pagebreak"
title="182"}
[70](#c1-note-0070a){#c1-note-0070} Marshall McLuhan, *Understanding
Media: The Extensions of Man* (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964).
[71](#c1-note-0071a){#c1-note-0071} Nam Jun Paik, "Exposition of Music
-- Electronic Television" (leaflet accompanying the exhibition). Quoted
from Zhang Ga, "Sounds, Images, Perception and Electrons," *Douban*
(March 3, 2016), online.
[72](#c1-note-0072a){#c1-note-0072} Laura R. Linder, *Public Access
Television: America\'s Electronic Soapbox* (Westport, CT: Praeger,
1999).
[73](#c1-note-0073a){#c1-note-0073} Hans Magnus Enzensberger,
"Constituents of a Theory of the Media," in Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick
Montfort (eds), *The New Media Reader* (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003),
pp. 259--75.
[74](#c1-note-0074a){#c1-note-0074} Paul Groot, "Rabotnik TV,"
*Mediamatic* 2/3 (1988), online.
[75](#c1-note-0075a){#c1-note-0075} Inke Arns, "Social Technologies:
Deconstruction, Subversion and the Utopia of Democratic Communication,"
*Medien Kunst Netz* (2004), online.
[76](#c1-note-0076a){#c1-note-0076} The term was coined at a series of
conferences titled The Next Five Minutes (N5M), which were held in
Amsterdam from 1993 to 2003. See \<\>.
[77](#c1-note-0077a){#c1-note-0077} Mark Dery, *Culture Jamming:
Hacking, Slashing and Sniping in the Empire of Signs* (Westfield: Open
Media, 1993); Luther Blisset et al., *Handbuch der
Kommunikationsguerilla*, 5th edn (Berlin: Assoziationen A, 2012).
[78](#c1-note-0078a){#c1-note-0078} Critical Art Ensemble, *Electronic
Civil Disobedience and Other Unpopular Ideas* (New York: Autonomedia,
1996).
[79](#c1-note-0079a){#c1-note-0079} Today this method is known as a
"distributed denial of service attack" (DDOS).
[80](#c1-note-0080a){#c1-note-0080} Max Weber, *Economy and Society: An
Outline of Interpretive Sociology*, trans. Guenther Roth and Claus
Wittich (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1978), pp. 26--8.
[81](#c1-note-0081a){#c1-note-0081} Ernst Friedrich Schumacher, *Small
Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered*, 8th edn (New York:
Harper Perennial, 2014).
[82](#c1-note-0082a){#c1-note-0082} Fred Turner, *From Counterculture
to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Movement and the Rise of
Digital Utopianism* (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006), p.
21. In this regard, see also the documentary films *Das Netz* by Lutz
Dammbeck (2003) and *All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace* by
Adam Curtis (2011).
[83](#c1-note-0083a){#c1-note-0083} It was possible to understand
cybernetics as a language of free markets or also as one of centralized
planned economies. See Slava Gerovitch, *From Newspeak to Cyberspeak: A
History of Soviet Cybernetics* (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002). The
great interest of Soviet scientists in cybernetics rendered the term
rather suspicious in the West, where it was disassociated from
artificial intelligence.[]{#Page_183 type="pagebreak" title="183"}
[84](#c1-note-0084a){#c1-note-0084} Claus Pias, "The Age of
Cybernetics," in Pias (ed.), *Cybernetics: The Macy Conferences
1946--1953* (Zurich: Diaphanes, 2016), pp. 11--27.
[85](#c1-note-0085a){#c1-note-0085} Norbert Wiener, one of the
cofounders of cybernetics, explained this as follows in 1950: "In giving
the definition of Cybernetics in the original book, I classed
communication and control together. Why did I do this? When I
communicate with another person, I impart a message to him, and when he
communicates back with me he returns a related message which contains
information primarily accessible to him and not to me. When I control
the actions of another person, I communicate a message to him, and
although this message is in the imperative mood, the technique of
communication does not differ from that of a message of fact.
Furthermore, if my control is to be effective I must take cognizance of
any messages from him which may indicate that the order is understood
and has been obeyed." Norbert Wiener, *The Human Use of Human Beings:
Cybernetics and Society*, 2nd edn (London: Free Association Books,
1989), p. 16.
[86](#c1-note-0086a){#c1-note-0086} Though presented here as distinct,
these interests could in fact be held by one and the same person. In
*From Counterculture to Cyberculture*, for instance, Turner discusses
"countercultural entrepreneurs."
[87](#c1-note-0087a){#c1-note-0087} Richard Brautigan, "All Watched
Over by Machines of Loving Grace," in *All Watched Over by Machines of
Loving Grace*, by Brautigan (San Francisco: The Communication Company,
1967).
[88](#c1-note-0088a){#c1-note-0088} David D. Clark, "A Cloudy Crystal
Ball: Visions of the Future," *Internet Engineering Taskforce* (July
1992), online.
[89](#c1-note-0089a){#c1-note-0089} Castells, *The Rise of the Network
Society*.
[90](#c1-note-0090a){#c1-note-0090} Bill Gates, "An Open Letter to
Hobbyists," *Homebrew Computer Club Newsletter* 2/1 (1976): 2.
[91](#c1-note-0091a){#c1-note-0091} Richard Stallman, "What Is Free
Software?", *GNU Operating System*, online.
[92](#c1-note-0092a){#c1-note-0092} The fundamentally cooperative
nature of programming was recognized early on. See Gerald M. Weinberg,
*The Psychology of Computer Programming*, rev. edn (New York: Dorset
House, 1998 \[originally published in 1971\]).
[93](#c1-note-0093a){#c1-note-0093} On the history of free software,
see Volker Grassmuck, *Freie Software: Zwischen Privat- und
Gemeineigentum* (Berlin: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2002).
[94](#c1-note-0094a){#c1-note-0094} In his first email on the topic, he
wrote: "Hello everybody out there \[...\]. I'm doing a (free) operating
system (just a hobby, won\'t be big and professional like gnu) \[...\].
This has been brewing since April, and is starting to get ready. I\'d
like any feedback on things people like/dislike." Linus Torvalds, "What
[]{#Page_184 type="pagebreak" title="184"}Would You Like to See Most in
Minix," *Usenet Group* (August 1991), online.
[96](#c1-note-0096a){#c1-note-0096} From 1997 to 2003, the average use
of online media in Germany climbed from 76 to 138 minutes per day, and
by 2013 it reached 169 minutes. Over the same span of time, the average
frequency of use increased from 3.3 to 4.4 days per week, and by 2013 it
was 5.8. From 2007 to 2013, the percentage of people who were members of
private social networks like Facebook grew from 15 percent to 46
percent. Of these, nearly 60 percent -- around 19 million people -- used
such services on a daily basis. The source of this information is the
article cited in the previous note.
[97](#c1-note-0097a){#c1-note-0097} "Internet Access Is 'a Fundamental
Right'," *BBC News* (8 March 2010), online.
[98](#c1-note-0098a){#c1-note-0098} Manuel Castells, *The Power of
Identity* (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), pp. 7--22.
:::
:::
[II]{.chapterNumber} [Forms]{.chapterTitle} {#c2}
::: {.section}
With the emergence of the internet around the turn of the millennium as
an omnipresent infrastructure for communication and coordination,
previously independent cultural developments began to spread beyond
their specific original contexts, mutually influencing and enhancing one
another, and becoming increasingly intertwined. Out of a disconnected
conglomeration of more or less marginalized practices, a new and
specific cultural environment thus took shape, usurping or marginalizing
an ever greater variety of cultural constellations. The following
discussion will focus on three *forms* of the digital condition; that
is, on those formal qualities that (notwithstanding all of its internal
conflicts and contradictions) lend a particular shape to this cultural
environment as a whole: *referentiality*, *communality*, and
*algorithmicity*. It is only because most of the cultural processes
operating under the digital condition are characterized by common formal
features such as these that it is reasonable to speak of the digital
condition in the singular.
"Referentiality" is a method with which individuals can inscribe
themselves into cultural processes and constitute themselves as
producers. Understood as shared social meaning, the arena of culture
entails that such an undertaking cannot be limited to the individual.
Rather, it takes place within a larger framework whose existence and
development depend on []{#Page_58 type="pagebreak" title="58"}communal
formations. "Algorithmicity" denotes those aspects of cultural processes
that are (pre-)arranged by the activities of machines. Algorithms
transform the vast quantities of data and information that characterize
so many facets of present-day life into dimensions and formats that can
be registered by human perception. It is impossible to read the content
of billions of websites. Therefore we turn to services such as Google\'s
search algorithm, which reduces the data flood ("big data") to a
manageable amount and translates it into a format that humans can
understand ("small data"). Without them, human beings could not
comprehend or do anything within a culture built around digital
technologies, but they influence our understanding and activity in an
ambivalent way. They create new dependencies by pre-sorting and making
the (informational) world available to us, yet simultaneously ensure our
autonomy by providing the preconditions that enable us to act.
:::
In the digital condition, one of the methods (if not *the* most
fundamental method) enabling humans to participate -- alone or in groups
-- in the collective negotiation of meaning is the system of creating
references. In a number of arenas, referential processes play an
important role in the assignment of both meaning and form. According to
the art historian André Rottmann, for instance, "one might claim that
working with references has in recent years become the dominant
production-aesthetic model in contemporary
art."[^1^](#c2-note-0001){#c2-note-0001a} This burgeoning engagement
with references, however, is hardly restricted to the world of
contemporary art. Referentiality is a feature of many processes that
encompass the operations of various genres of professional and everyday
culture. In its essence, it is the use of materials that are already
equipped with meaning -- as opposed to so-called raw material -- to
create new meanings. The referential techniques used to achieve this are
extremely diverse, a fact reflected in the numerous terms that exist to
describe them: re-mix, re-make, re-enactment, appropriation, sampling,
meme, imitation, homage, tropicália, parody, quotation, post-production,
re-performance, []{#Page_59 type="pagebreak" title="59"}camouflage,
(non-academic) research, re-creativity, mashup, transformative use, and
so on.
These processes have two important aspects in common: the
recognizability of the sources and the freedom to deal with them however
one likes. The first creates an internal system of references from which
meaning and aesthetics are derived in an essential
manner.[^2^](#c2-note-0002){#c2-note-0002a} The second is the
precondition enabling the creation of something that is both new and on
the same level as the re-used material. This represents a clear
departure from the historical--critical method, which endeavors to embed
a source in its original context in order to re-determine its meaning,
but also a departure from classical forms of rendition such as
translations, adaptations (for instance, adapting a book for a film), or
cover versions, which, though they translate a work into another
language or medium, still attempt to preserve its original meaning.
Re-mixes produced by DJs are one example of the referential treatment of
source material. In his book on the history of DJ culture, the
journalist Ulf Poschardt notes: "The remixer isn\'t concerned with
salvaging authenticity, but with creating a new
authenticity."[^3^](#c2-note-0003){#c2-note-0003a} For instead of
distancing themselves from the past, which would follow the (Western)
logic of progress or the spirit of the avant-garde, these processes
refer explicitly to precursors and to existing material. In one and the
same gesture, both one\'s own new position and the context and cultural
tradition that is being carried on in one\'s own work are constituted
performatively; that is, through one\'s own activity in the moment. I
will discuss this phenomenon in greater depth below.
To work with existing cultural material is, in itself, nothing new. In
modern montages, artists likewise drew upon available texts, images, and
treated materials. Yet there is an important difference: montages were
concerned with bringing together seemingly incongruous but stable
"finished pieces" in a more or less unmediated and fragmentary manner.
This is especially clear in the collages by the Dadaists or in
Expressionist literature such as Alfred Döblin\'s *Berlin
Alexanderplatz*. In these works, the experience of Modernity\'s many
fractures -- its fragmentation and turmoil -- was given a new aesthetic
form. In his reference to montages, Adorno thus observed that the
"negation of synthesis becomes a principle []{#Page_60 type="pagebreak"
title="60"}of form."[^4^](#c2-note-0004){#c2-note-0004a} At least for a
brief moment, he considered them an adequate expression for the
impossibility of reconciling the contradictions of capitalist culture.
Influenced by Adorno, the literary theorist Peter Bürger went so far as
to call the montage the true "paradigm of
modernity."[^5^](#c2-note-0005){#c2-note-0005a} In today\'s referential
processes, on the contrary, pieces are not brought together as much as
they are integrated into one another by being altered, adapted, and
transformed. Unlike the older arrangement, it is not the fissures
between elements that are foregrounded but rather their synthesis in the
present. Conchita Wurst, the bearded diva, is not torn between two
conflicting poles. Rather, she represents a successful synthesis --
something new and harmonious that distinguishes itself by showcasing
elements of the old order (man/woman) and simultaneously transcending
them.
This synthesis, however, is usually just temporary, for at any time it
can itself serve as material for yet another rendering. Of course, this
is far easier to pull off with digital objects than with analog objects,
though these categories have become increasingly porous and thus
increasingly problematic as opposites. More and more objects exist both
in an analog and in a digital form. Think of photographs and slides,
which have become so easy to digitalize. Even three-dimensional objects
can now be scanned and printed. In the future, programmable materials
with controllable and reversible features will cause the difference
between the two domains to vanish: analog is becoming more and more
digital.
Montages and referential processes can only become widespread methods
if, in a given society, cultural objects are available in three
different respects. The first is economic and organizational: they must
be affordable and easily accessible. Whoever is unable to afford books
or get hold of them by some other means will not be able to reconfigure
any texts. The second is cultural: working with cultural objects --
which can always create deviations from the source in unpredictable ways
-- must not be treated as taboo or illegal, but rather as an everyday
activity without any special preconditions. It is much easier to
manipulate a text from a secular newspaper than one from a religious
canon. The third is material: it must be possible to use the material
and to change it.[^6[]{#Page_61 type="pagebreak"
title="61"}^](#c2-note-0006){#c2-note-0006a}
In terms of this third form of availability, montages differ from
referential processes, for cultural objects can be integrated into one
another -- instead of simply being placed side by side -- far more
readily when they are digitally coded. Information is digitally coded
when it is stored by means of a limited system of discrete (that is,
separated by finite intervals or distances) signs that are meaningless
in themselves. This allows information to be copied from one carrier to
another without any loss and it allows the respective signs, whether
individually or in groups, to be arranged freely. Seen in this way,
digital coding is not necessarily bound to computers but can rather be
realized with all materials: a mosaic is a digital process in which
information is coded by means of variously colored tiles, just as a
digital image consists of pixels. In the case of the mosaic, of course,
the resolution is far lower. Alphabetic writing is a form of coding
linguistic information by means of discrete signs that are, in
themselves, meaningless. Consequently, Florian Cramer has argued that
"every form of literature that is recorded alphabetically and not based
on analog parameters such as ideograms or orality is already digital in
that it is stored in discrete
signs."[^7^](#c2-note-0007){#c2-note-0007a} However, the specific
features of the alphabet, as Marshall McLuhan repeatedly underscored,
did not fully develop until the advent of the printing
press.[^8^](#c2-note-0008){#c2-note-0008a} It was the printing press, in
other words, that first abstracted written signs from analog handwriting
and transformed them into standardized symbols that could be repeated
without any loss of information. In this practical sense, the printing
press made writing digital, with the result that dealing with texts soon
became radically different.
::: {.section}
### Information overload 1.0 {#c2-sec-0003}
The printing press made texts available in the three respects mentioned
above. For one thing, their number increased rapidly, while their price
significantly sank. During the first two generations after Gutenberg\'s
invention -- that is, between 1450 and 1500 -- more books were produced
than during the thousand years
before.[^9^](#c2-note-0009){#c2-note-0009a} And that was just the
beginning. Dealing with books and their content changed from the ground
up. In manuscript culture, every new copy represented a potential
degradation of the original, and therefore []{#Page_62 type="pagebreak"
title="62"}the oldest sources (those that had undergone as little
corruption as possible) were valued above all. With the advent of print
culture, the idea took hold that texts could be improved by the process
of editing, not least because the availability of old sources, through
reprints and facsimiles, had also improved dramatically. Pure
reproduction was mechanized and overcome as a cultural challenge.
According to the historian Elizabeth Eisenstein, one of the first
consequences of the greatly increased availability of the printed book
was that it overcame the "tyranny of major authorities, which was common
in small libraries."[^10^](#c2-note-0010){#c2-note-0010a} Scientists
were now able to compare texts with one another and critique them to an
unprecedented extent. Their general orientation turned around: instead
of looking back in order to preserve what they knew, they were now
looking ahead toward what they might not (yet) know.
In order to organize this information flood of rapidly amassing texts,
it was necessary to create new conventions: books were now specified by
their author, publisher, and date of publication, not to mention
furnished with page numbers. This enabled large numbers of texts to be
catalogued and every individual text -- indeed, every single passage --
to be referenced.[^11^](#c2-note-0011){#c2-note-0011a} Scientists could
legitimize the pursuit of new knowledge by drawing attention to specific
mistakes or gaps in existing texts. In the scientific culture that was
developing at the time, the close connection between old and new
material was not simply regarded as something positive; it was also
urgently prescribed as a method of argumentation. Every text had to
contain an internal system of references, and this was the basis for the
development of schools, disciplines, and specific discourses.
The digital character of printed writing also made texts available in
the third respect mentioned above. Because discrete signs could be
reproduced without any loss of information, it was possible not only to
make perfect copies but also to remove content from one carrier and
transfer it to another. Materials were no longer simply arranged
sequentially, as in medieval compilations and almanacs, but manipulated
to give rise to a new and independent fluid text. A set of conventions
was developed -- one that remains in use today -- for modifying embedded
or quoted material in order for it []{#Page_63 type="pagebreak"
title="63"}to fit into its new environment. In this manner, quotations
could be altered in such a way that they could be integrated seamlessly
into a new text while remaining recognizable as direct citations.
Several of these conventions, for instance the use of square brackets to
indicate additions ("\[ \]") or ellipses to indicate omissions ("..."),
are also used in this very book. At the same time, the conventions for
making explicit references led to the creation of an internal reference
system that made the singular position of the new text legible within a
collective field of work. "Printing," to quote Elizabeth Eisenstein once
again, "encouraged forms of combinatory activity which were social as
well as intellectual. It changed relationships between men of learning
as well as between systems of
ideas."[^12^](#c2-note-0012){#c2-note-0012a} Exchange between scholars,
in the form of letters and visits, intensified. The seventeenth century
saw the formation of the *respublica literaria* or the "Republic of
Letters," a loose network of scholars devoted to promoting the ideas of
the Enlightenment. Beginning in the eighteenth century, the rapidly
growing number of scientific fields was arranged and institutionalized
into clearly distinct disciplines. In the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, diverse media-technical innovations made images, sounds, and
moving images available, though at first only in analog formats. These
created the preconditions that enabled the montage in all of its forms
-- film cuts, collages, readymades, *musique concrète*, found-footage
films, literary cut-ups, and artistic assemblages (to name only the
best-known genres) -- to become the paradigm of Modernity.
:::
::: {.section}
### Information overload 2.0 {#c2-sec-0004}
It was not until new technical possibilities for recording, storing,
processing, and reproduction appeared over the course of the 1990s that
it also became increasingly possible to code and edit images, audio, and
video digitally. Through the networking that was taking place not far
behind, society was flooded with an unprecedented amount of digitally
coded information *of every sort*, and the circulation of this
information accelerated. This was not, however, simply a quantitative
change but also and above all a qualitative one. Cultural materials
became available in a comprehensive []{#Page_64 type="pagebreak"
title="64"}sense -- economically and organizationally, culturally
(despite legal problems), and materially (because digitalized). Today it
would not be bold to predict that nearly every text, image, or sound
will soon exist in a digital form. Most of the new reproducible works
are already "born digital" and digitally distributed, or they are
physically produced according to digital instructions. Many initiatives
are working to digitalize older, analog works. We are now anchored in
the digital.
Among the numerous digitalization projects currently under way, the most
ambitious is that of Google Books, which, since its launch in 2004, has
digitalized around 20 million books from the collections of large
libraries and prepared them for full-text searches. Right from the
start, a fierce debate arose about the legal and cultural acceptability
of this project. One concern was whether Google\'s process infringed
upon the rights of the authors and publishers of the scanned books or
whether, according to American law, it qualified as "fair use," in which
case there would be no obligation for the company to seek authorization
or offer compensation. The second main concern was whether it would be
culturally or politically appropriate for a private corporation to hold
a de facto monopoly over the digital heritage of book culture. The first
issue incited a complex legal battle that, in 2013, was decided in
Google\'s favor by a judge on the United States District Court in New
York.[^13^](#c2-note-0013){#c2-note-0013a} At the heart of the second
issue was the question of how a public library should look in the
twenty-first century.[^14^](#c2-note-0014){#c2-note-0014a} In November
of 2008, the European Commission and the cultural minister of the
European Union launched the virtual Europeana library, which occurred
after a number of European countries had already invested hundreds of
millions of euros in various digitalization
initiatives.[^15^](#c2-note-0015){#c2-note-0015a} Today, Europeana
serves as a common access point to the online archives of around 2,500
European cultural institutions. By the end of 2015, its digital holdings
had grown to include more than 40 million objects. This is still,
however, a relatively small number, for it has been estimated that
European archives and museums contain more than 220 million
natural-historical and more than 260 million cultural-historical
objects. In the United States, discussions about the future of libraries
[]{#Page_65 type="pagebreak" title="65"}led to the 2013 launch of the
Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), which, like Europeana,
provides common access to the digitalized holdings of archives, museums,
and libraries. By now, more than 14 million items can be viewed there.
In one way or another, however, both the private and the public projects
of this sort have been limited by binding copyright laws. The librarian
and book historian Robert Darnton, one of the most prominent advocates
of the Digital Public Library of America, has accordingly stated: "The
main impediment to the DPLA\'s growth is legal, not financial. Copyright
laws could exclude everything published after 1964, most works published
after 1923, and some that go back as far as
1873."[^16^](#c2-note-0016){#c2-note-0016a} The legal situation in
Europe is similar to that in the United States. It, too, massively
obstructs the work of public
institutions.[^17^](#c2-note-0017){#c2-note-0017a} In many cases, this
has had the absurd consequence that certain materials, though they have
been fully digitalized, may only be accessed in part or exclusively
inside the facilities of a particular institution. Whereas companies
such as Google can afford to wage long legal battles, and in the
meantime create precedents, public institutions must proceed with great
caution, not least to avoid the accusation of using public funds to
violate copyright laws. Thus, they tend to fade into the background and
leave users, who are unfamiliar with the complex legal situation, with
the impression that they are even more out-of-date than they often are.
Informal actors, who explicitly operate beyond the realm of copyright
law, are not faced with such restrictions. UbuWeb, for instance, which
is the largest online archive devoted to the history of
twentieth-century avant-garde art, was not created by an art museum but
rather by the initiative of an individual artist, Kenneth Goldsmith.
Since 1996, he has been collecting historically relevant materials that
were no longer in distribution and placing them online for free and
without any stipulations. He forgoes the process of obtaining the rights
to certain works of art because, as he remarks on the website, "Let\'s
face it, if we had to get permission from everyone on UbuWeb, there
would be no UbuWeb."[^18^](#c2-note-0018){#c2-note-0018a} It would
simply be too demanding to do so. Because he pursues the project without
any financial interest and has saved so much []{#Page_66
type="pagebreak" title="66"}from oblivion, his efforts have provoked
hardly any legal difficulties. On the contrary, UbuWeb has become so
important that Goldsmith has begun to receive more and more material
directly from artists and their heirs, who would like certain works not
to be forgotten. Nevertheless, or perhaps for this very reason,
Goldsmith repeatedly stresses the instability of his archive, which
could disappear at any moment if he loses interest in maintaining it or
if something else happens. Users are therefore able to download works
from UbuWeb and archive, on their own, whatever items they find most
important. Of course, this fragility contradicts the idea of an archive
as a place for long-term preservation. Yet such a task could only be
undertaken by an institution that is oriented toward the long term.
Because of the existing legal conditions, however, it is hardly likely
that such an institution will come about.
Whereas Goldsmith is highly adept at operating within a niche that not
only tolerates but also accepts the violation of formal copyright
claims, large websites responsible for the uncontrolled dissemination of
digital content do not bother with such niceties. Their purpose is
rather to ensure that all popular content is made available digitally
and for free, whether legally or not. These sites, too, have experienced
uninterrupted growth. By the end of 2015, dozens of millions of people
were simultaneously using the BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay -- the
largest nodal point for file-sharing networks during the last decade --
to exchange several million digital files with one
another.[^19^](#c2-note-0019){#c2-note-0019a} And this was happening
despite protracted attempts to block or close down the file-sharing site
by legal means and despite a variety of competing services. Even when
the founders of the website were sentenced in Sweden to pay large fines
(around €3 million) and to serve time in prison, the site still did not
disappear from the internet.[^20^](#c2-note-0020){#c2-note-0020a} At the
same time, new providers have entered the market of free access; their
method is not to facilitate distributed downloads but rather to offer,
on account of the drastically reduced cost of data transfers, direct
streaming. Although some of these services are relatively easy to locate
and some have been legally banned -- the best-known case in Germany
being that of the popular site kino.to -- more of them continue to
appear.[^21^](#c2-note-0021){#c2-note-0021a} Moreover, this phenomenon
[]{#Page_67 type="pagebreak" title="67"}is not limited to music and
films, but encompasses all media formats. For instance, it is
foreseeable that the number of freely available plans for 3D objects
will increase along with the popularity of 3D printing. It has almost
escaped notice, however, that so-called "shadow libraries" have been
popping up everywhere; the latter are not accessible to the public but
rather to members, for instance, of closed exchange platforms or of
university intranets. Few seminars take place any more without a corpus
of scanned texts, regardless of whether this practice is legal or
not.[^22^](#c2-note-0022){#c2-note-0022a}
The lines between these different mechanisms of access are highly
permeable. Content acquired legally can make its way to file-sharing
networks as an illegal copy; content available for free can be sold in
special editions; content from shadow libraries can make its way to
publicly accessible sites; and, conversely, content that was once freely
available can disappear into shadow libraries. As regards free access,
the details of this rapidly changing landscape are almost
inconsequential, for the general trend that has emerged from these
various dynamics -- legal and illegal, public and private -- is
unambiguous: in a comprehensive and practical sense, cultural works of
all sorts will become freely available despite whatever legal and
technical restrictions might be in place. Whether absolutely all
material will be made available in this way is not the decisive factor,
at least not for the individual, for, as the German Library Association
has stated, "it is foreseeable that non-digitalized material will
increasingly escape the awareness of users, who have understandably come
to appreciate the ubiquitous availability and more convenient
processability of the digital versions of analog
objects."[^23^](#c2-note-0023){#c2-note-0023a} In this context of excess
information, it is difficult to determine whether a particular work or a
crucial reference is missing, given that a multitude of other works and
references can be found in their place.
At the same time, prodigious amounts of new material are being produced
that, before the era of digitalization and networks, never could have
existed at all or never would have left the private sphere. An example
of this is amateur photography. This is nothing new in itself; as early
as 1899, Kodak was marketing its films and apparatus with the slogan
"You press the button, we do the rest," and ever since, []{#Page_68
type="pagebreak" title="68"}drawers and albums have been overflowing
with photographs. With the advent of digitalization, however, certain
economic and material limitations ceased to exist that, until then, had
caused most private photographers to think twice about how many shots
they wanted to take. After all, they had to pay for the film to be
developed and then store the pictures somewhere. Cameras also became
increasingly "intelligent," which improved the technical quality of
photographs. Even complex procedures such as increasing the level of
detail or the contrast ratio -- the difference between an image\'s
brightest and darkest points -- no longer require any specialized
knowledge of photochemical processes in the darkroom. Today, such
features are often pre-installed in many cameras as an option (high
dynamic range). Ever since the introduction of built-in digital cameras
for smartphones, anyone with such a device can take pictures everywhere
and at any time and then store them digitally. Images can then be posted
on online platforms and shared with others. By the middle of 2015,
Flickr -- the largest but certainly not the only specialized platform of
this sort -- had more than 112 million registered users participating in
more than 2 million groups. Every user has access to free storage space
for about half a million of his or her own pictures. At that point, in
other words, the platform was equipped to manage more than 55 billion
photographs. Around 3.5 million images were being uploaded every day,
many of which could be accessed by anyone. This may seem like a lot, but
in reality it is just a small portion of the pictures that are posted
online on a daily basis. Around that same time -- again, the middle of
2015 -- approximately 350 million pictures were being posted on Facebook
*every day*. The total number of photographs saved there has been
estimated to be 250 billion. In addition, there are also large platforms
for professional "stock photos" (supplies of pre-produced images that
are supposed to depict generic situations) and the databanks of
professional agencies such Getty Images or Corbis. All of these images
can be found easily and acquired quickly (though not always for free).
Yet photography is not unique in this regard. In all fields, the number
of cultural artifacts available to the public on specialized platforms
has been increasing rapidly in recent years.[]{#Page_69 type="pagebreak"
title="69"}
:::
::: {.section}
### The great disorder {#c2-sec-0005}
The old orders that had been responsible for filtering, organizing, and
publishing cultural material -- culture industries, mass media,
libraries, museums, archives, etc. -- are incapable of managing almost
any aspect of this deluge. They can barely function as gatekeepers any
more between those realms that, with their help, were once defined as
"private" and "public." Their decisions about what is or is not
important matter less and less. Moreover, having already been subjected
to a decades-long critique, their rules, which had been relatively
binding and formative over long periods of time, are rapidly losing
practical significance.
Even Europeana, a relatively small project based on traditional museums
and archives and with a mandate to make the European cultural heritage
available online, has contributed to the disintegration of established
orders: it indiscriminately brings together 2,500 previously separated
institutions. The specific semantic contexts that formerly shaped the
history and orientation of institutions have been dissolved or reduced
to dry meta-data, and millions upon millions of cultural artifacts are
now equidistant from one another. Instead of certain artifacts being
firmly anchored in a location, for instance in an ethnographic
collection devoted to the colonial history of France, it is now possible
for everything to exist side by side. Europeana is not an archive in the
traditional sense, or even a museum with a fixed and meaningful order;
rather, it is just a standard database. Everything in it is just one
search request away, and every search generates a unique order in the
form of a sequence of visible artifacts. As a result, individual objects
are freed from those meta-narratives, created by the museums and
archives that preserve them, which situate them within broader contexts
and assign more or less clear meanings to them. They consequently become
more open to interpretation. A search result does not articulate an
interpretive field of reference but merely a connection, created by
constantly changing search algorithms, between a request and the corpus
of material, which is likewise constantly changing.
Precisely because it offers so many different approaches to more or less
freely combinable elements of information, []{#Page_70 type="pagebreak"
title="70"}the order of the database no longer really provides a
framework for interpreting search results in a meaningful way.
Altogether, the meaning of many objects and signs is becoming even more
uncertain. On the one hand, this is because the connection to their
original context is becoming fragile; on the other hand, it is because
they can appear in every possible combination and in the greatest
variety of reception contexts. In less official archives and in less
specialized search engines, the dissolution of context is far more
pronounced than it is in the case of the Europeana project. For the sake
of orienting its users, for instance, YouTube provides the date when a
video has been posted, but there is no indication of when a video was
actually produced. Further information provided about a video, for
example in the comments section, is essentially unreliable. It might be
true -- or it might not. The internet researcher David Weinberger has
called this the "new digital disorder," which, at least for many users,
is an entirely apt description.[^24^](#c2-note-0024){#c2-note-0024a} For
individuals, this disorder has created both the freedom to establish
their own orders and the obligation of doing so, regardless of whether
or not they are ready for the task.
This tension between freedom and obligation is at its strongest online,
where the excess of culture and its more or less free availability are
immediate and omnipresent. In fact, everything that can be retrieved
online is culture in the sense that everything -- from the deepest layer
of hardware to the most superficial tweet -- has been made by someone
with a particular intention, and everything has been made to fit a
particular order. And it is precisely this excess of often contradictory
meanings and limited, regional, and incompatible orders that leads to
disorder and meaninglessness. This is not limited to the online world,
however, because the latter is not self-contained. In an essential way,
digital media also serve to organize the material world. On the basis of
extremely complex and opaque yet highly efficient logistical and
production processes, people are also confronted with constantly
changing material things about whose origins and meanings they have
little idea. Even something as simple to produce as yoghurt usually has
a thousand kilometers behind it before it ends up on a shelf in the
supermarket. The logistics that enable this are oriented toward
flexibility; []{#Page_71 type="pagebreak" title="71"}they bring elements
together as efficiently as possible. It is nearly impossible for final
customers to find out anything about the ingredients. Customers are
merely supposed to be oriented by signs and notices such as "new" or "as
before," "natural," and "healthy," which are written by specialists and
meant to manipulate shoppers as much as the law allows. Even here, in
corporeal everyday life, every individual has to deal with a surge of
excess and disorder that threatens to erode the original meaning
conferred on every object -- even where such meaning was once entirely
unproblematic, as in the case of
yoghurt.[^25^](#c2-note-0025){#c2-note-0025a}
:::
::: {.section}
### Selecting and organizing {#c2-sec-0006}
In this situation, the creation of one\'s own system of references has
become a ubiquitous and generally accessible method for organizing all
of the ambivalent things that one encounters on a given day. Such things
are thus arranged within a specific context of meaning that also
(co)determines one\'s own relation to the world and subjective position
in it. Referentiality takes place through three types of activity, the
first being simply to attract attention to certain things, which affirms
(at least implicitly) that they are important. With every single picture
posted on Flickr, every tweet, every blog post, every forum post, and
every status update, the user is doing exactly that; he or she is
communicating to others: "Look over here! I think this is important!" Of
course, there is nothing new to filtering and allocating meaning. What
is new, however, is that these processes are no longer being carried out
primarily by specialists at editorial offices, museums, or archives, but
have become daily requirements for a large portion of the population,
regardless of whether they possess the material and cultural resources
that are necessary for the task.
:::
::: {.section}
### The loop through the body {#c2-sec-0007}
Given the flood of information that perpetually surrounds everyone, the
act of focusing attention and reducing vast numbers of possibilities
into something concrete has become a productive achievement, however
banal each of these micro-activities might seem on its own, and even if,
at first, []{#Page_72 type="pagebreak" title="72"}the only concern might
be to focus the attention of the person doing it. The value of this
(often very brief) activity is that it singles out elements from the
uniform sludge of unmanageable complexity. Something plucked out in this
way gains value because it has required the use of a resource that
cannot be reproduced, that exists outside of the world of information
and that is invariably limited for every individual: our own lifetime.
Every status update that is not machine-generated means that someone has
invested time, be it only a second, in order to point to this and not to
something else. Thus, a process of validating what exists in the excess
takes place in connection with the ultimate scarcity -- our own
lifetimes, our own bodies. Even if the value generated by this act is
minimal or diffuse, it is still -- to borrow from Gregory Bateson\'s
famous definition of information -- a difference that makes a difference
in this stream of equivalencies and
meaninglessness.[^26^](#c2-note-0026){#c2-note-0026a} This singling out
-- this use of one\'s own body to generate meaning -- does not, however,
take place by means of mere micro-activities throughout the day; it is
also a defining aspect of complex cultural strategies. In recent years,
re-enactment (that is, the re-staging of historical situations and
events) has established itself as a common practice in contemporary art.
Unlike traditional re-enactments, such as those of historically
significant battles, which attempt to represent the past as faithfully
as possible, "artistic re-enactments," according to the curator Inke
Arns, "are not an affirmative confirmation of the past; rather, they are
*questionings* of the present through reaching back to historical
events," especially as they are represented in images and other forms of
documentation. Thanks to search engines and databases, such
representations are more or less always present, though in the form of
indeterminate images, ambivalent documents, and contentious
interpretations. Artists in this situation, as Arns explains,
::: {.extract}
do not ask the naïve question about what really happened outside of the
history represented in the media -- the "authenticity" beyond the images
-- instead, they ask what the images we see might mean concretely to us,
if we were to experience these situations personally. In this way the
artistic reenactment confronts the general feeling of insecurity about
the meaning []{#Page_73 type="pagebreak" title="73"}of images by using a
paradoxical approach: through erasing distance to the images and at the
same time distancing itself from the
images.[^27^](#c2-note-0027){#c2-note-0027a}
:::
This paradox manifests itself in that the images are appropriated and
sublated through the use of one\'s own body in the re-enactments. They
simultaneously refer to the past and create a new reality in the
present. In perhaps the best-known re-enactment of this type, the artist
Jeremy Deller revived, in 2001, the Battle of Orgreave, one of the
central episodes of the British miners\' strike of 1984 and 1985. This
historical event is regarded as a turning point in the protracted
conflict between Margaret Thatcher\'s government and the labor unions --
a key moment in the implementation of Great Britain\'s neoliberal
regime, which is still in effect today. In Deller\'s re-enactment, the
heart of the matter is not historical accuracy, which is always
controversial in such epoch-changing events. Rather, he focuses on the
former participants -- the miners and police officers alike, who, along
with non-professional actors, lived through the situation again -- in
order to explore both the distance from the events and their
representation in the media, as well as their ongoing biographical and
societal presence.[^28^](#c2-note-0028){#c2-note-0028a}
Elaborate practices of embodying medial images through processes of
appropriation and distancing have also found their way into popular
culture, for instance in so-called "cosplay." The term, which is a
contraction of the words "costume" and "play," was coined by a Japanese
man named Nobuyuki Takahashi. In 1984, while attending the World Science
Fiction Convention in Los Angeles, he used the word to describe the
practice of certain attendees to dress up as their favorite characters.
Participants in cosplay embody fictitious figures -- mostly from the
worlds of science fiction, comics/manga, or computer games -- by donning
home-made costumes and striking characteristic
poses.[^29^](#c2-note-0029){#c2-note-0029a} The often considerable
effort that goes into this is mostly reflected in the costumes, not in
the choreography or dramaturgy of the performance. What is significant
is that these costumes are usually not exact replicas but are rather
freely adapted by each player to represent the character as he or she
interprets it to be. Accordingly, "Cosplay is a form of appropriation
[]{#Page_74 type="pagebreak" title="74"}that transforms, actualizes and
performs an existing story in close connection to the fan\'s own
identity."[^30^](#c2-note-0030){#c2-note-0030a} This practice,
admittedly, goes back quite far in the history of fan culture, but it
has experienced a striking surge through the opportunity for fans to
network with one another around the world, to produce costumes and
images of professional quality, and to place themselves on the same
level as their (fictitious) idols. By now it has become a global
subculture whose members are active not only online but also at hundreds
of conventions throughout the world. In Germany, an annual cosplay
competition has been held since 2007 (it is organized by the Frankfurt
Book Fair and Animexx, the country\'s largest manga and anime
community). The scene, which has grown and branched out considerably
over the past few years, has slowly begun to professionalize, with
shops, books, and players who make paid appearances. Even in fan
culture, stars are born. As soon as the subculture has exceeded a
certain size, this gradual onset of commercialization will undoubtedly
lead to tensions within the community. For now, however, two of its
noteworthy features remain: the power of the desire to appropriate, in a
bodily manner, characters from vast cultural universes, and the
widespread combination of free interpretation and meticulous attention
to detail.
:::
::: {.section}
### Lineages and transformations {#c2-sec-0008}
Because of the great effort tha they require, re-enactment and cosplay
are somewhat extreme examples of singling out, appropriating, and
referencing. As everyday activities that almost take place incidentally,
however, these three practices usually do not make any significant or
lasting differences. Yet they do not happen just once, but over and over
again. They accumulate and thus constitute referentiality\'s second type
of activity: the creation of connections between the many things that
have attracted attention. In such a way, paths are forged through the
vast complexity. These paths, which can be formed, for instance, by
referring to different things one after another, likewise serve to
produce and filter meaning. Things that can potentially belong in
multiple contexts are brought into a single, specific context. For the
individual []{#Page_75 type="pagebreak" title="75"}producer, this is how
fields of attention, reference systems, and contexts of meaning are
first established. In the third step, the things that have been selected
and brought together are changed. Perhaps something is removed to modify
the meaning, or perhaps something is added that was previously absent or
unavailable. Either way, referential culture is always producing
something new.
These processes are applied both within individual works (referentiality
in a strict sense) and within currents of communication that consist of
numerous molecular acts (referentiality in a broader sense). This latter
sort of compilation is far more widespread than the creation of new
re-mix works. Consider, for example, the billionfold sequences of status
updates, which sometimes involve a link to an interesting video,
sometimes a post of a photograph, then a short list of favorite songs, a
top 10 chart from one\'s own feed, or anything else. Such methods of
inscribing oneself into the world by means of references, combinations,
or alterations are used to create meaning through one\'s own activity in
the world and to constitute oneself in it, both for one\'s self and for
others. In a culture that manifests itself to a great extent through
mediatized communication, people have to constitute themselves through
such acts, if only by posting
"selfies."[^31^](#c2-note-0031){#c2-note-0031a} Not to do so would be to
risk invisibility and being forgotten.
On this basis, a genuine digital folk culture of re-mixing and mashups
has formed in recent years on online platforms, in game worlds, but also
through cultural-economic productions of individual pieces or short
series. It is generated and maintained by innumerable people with
varying degrees of intensity and ambition. Its common feature with
traditional folk culture, in choirs or elsewhere, is that production
and reception (but also reproduction and creation) largely coincide.
Active participation admittedly requires a certain degree of
proficiency, interest, and engagement, but usually not any extraordinary
talent. Many classical institutions such as museums and archives have
been attempting to take part in this folk culture by setting up their
own re-mix services. They know that the "public" is no longer able or
willing to limit its engagement with works of art and cultural history
to one of quiet contemplation. At the end of 2013, even []{#Page_76
type="pagebreak" title="76"}the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin
initiated a re-mix competition. A year earlier, the Rijksmuseum in
Amsterdam launched so-called "Rijksstudios." Since then, the museum has
made available on its website more than 200,000 high-resolution images
from its collection. Users are free to use these to create their own
re-mixes online and share them with others. Interestingly, the
Rijksmuseum does not distinguish between the work involved in
transforming existing pieces and that involved in curating its own
online gallery.
Referential processes have no beginning and no end. Any material that is
used to make something new has a pre-history of its own, even if its
traces are lost in clouds of uncertainty. Upon closer inspection, this
cloud might clear a little bit, but it is extremely uncommon for a
genuine beginning -- a *creatio ex nihilo* -- to be revealed. This
raises the question of whether there can really be something like
originality in the emphatic sense.[^32^](#c2-note-0032){#c2-note-0032a}
Regardless of the answer to this question, the fact that by now many
people select, combine, and alter objects on a daily basis has led to a
slow shift in our perception and sensibilities. In light of the
experiences that so many people are creating, the formerly exotic
theories of deconstruction suddenly seem anything but outlandish. Nearly
half a century ago, Roland Barthes defined the text as a fabric of
quotations, and this incited vehement
opposition.[^33^](#c2-note-0033){#c2-note-0033a} "But of course," one
would be inclined to say today, "that can be statistically proven
through software analysis!" Amazon identifies books by means of their
"statistically improbable phrases"; that is, by means of textual
elements that are highly unlikely to occur elsewhere. This implies, of
course, that books contain many textual elements that are highly likely
to be found in other texts, without suggesting that such elements would
have to be regarded as plagiarism.
In the Gutenberg Galaxy, with its fixation on writing, the earliest
textual document is usually understood to represent a beginning. If no
references to anything before can be identified, the text is then
interpreted as a closed entity, as a new text. Thus, fairy tales and
sagas, which are typical elements of oral culture, are still more
strongly associated with the names of those who recorded them than with
the names of those who narrated them. This does not seem very convincing
today. In recent years, literary historians have made strong []{#Page_77
type="pagebreak" title="77"}efforts to shift the focus of attention to
the people (mostly women) who actually told certain fairy tales. In
doing so, they have been able to work out to what extent the respective
narrators gave shape to specific stories, which were written down as
common versions, and to what extent these stories reflect their
narrators\' personal histories.[^34^](#c2-note-0034){#c2-note-0034a}
Today, after more than 40 years of deconstructionist theory and a change
in our everyday practices, it is no longer controversial to read works
-- even by canonical figures like Wagner or Mozart -- in such a way as
to highlight the other works, either by the artists in question or by
other artists, that are contained within
them.[^35^](#c2-note-0035){#c2-note-0035a} This is not an expression of
decreased appreciation but rather an indication that, as Zygmunt Bauman
has stressed, "The way human beings understand the world tends to be at
all times *praxeomorphic*: it is always shaped by the know-how of the
day, by what people can do and how they usually go about doing
it."[^36^](#c2-note-0036){#c2-note-0036a} And the everyday practice of
today is one of singling out, bringing together, altering, and adding.
Accordingly, not only has our view of current cultural production
shifted; our view of cultural history has shifted as well. As always,
the past is made to suit the sensibilities of the present.
As a rule, however, things that have no beginning also have no end. This
is not only because they can in turn serve as elements for other new
contexts of meaning, but also because the attention paid to the context
in which they take on specific meaning is sensitive to the work that has
to be done to maintain the context itself. Even timelessness is an
elaborate everyday business. The attempt to rescue works of art from the
ravages of time -- to preserve them forever -- means that they regularly
need to be restored. Every restoration inevitably stirs a debate about
whether the planned interventions are appropriate and about how to deal
with the traces of previous interventions, which, from the current
perspective, often seem to be highly problematic. Whereas, just a
generation ago, preservationists ensured that such interventions
remained visible (as articulations of the historical fissures that are
typical of Modernity), today greater emphasis is placed on reducing
their visibility and re-creating the illusion of an "original condition"
(without, however, impeding any new functionality that a piece might
have in the present). []{#Page_78 type="pagebreak" title="78"}The
historically faithful restoration of the Berlin City Palace, and yet its
repurposed function as a museum and meeting place, are typical of this
new attitude in dealing with our historical heritage.
In everyday activity, too, the never-ending necessity of this work can
be felt at all times. Here the issue is not timelessness, but rather
that the established contexts of meaning quickly become obsolete and
therefore have to be continuously affirmed, expanded, and changed in
order to maintain the relevance of the field that they define. This
lends referentiality a performative character that combines productive
and reproductive dimensions. That which is not constantly used and
renewed simply disappears. Often, however, this only means that it will
sink into an endless archive and become unrealized potential until
someone reactivates it, breathes new life into it, rouses it from its
slumber, and incorporates it into a newly relevant context of meaning.
"To be relevant," according to the artist Eran Schaerf, "things must be
recyclable."[^37^](#c2-note-0037){#c2-note-0037a}
Alone, everyone is overwhelmed by the task of having to generate meaning
against this backdrop of all-encompassing meaninglessness. First, the
challenge is too great for any individual to overcome; second, meaning
itself is only created intersubjectively. While it can admittedly be
asserted by a single person, others have to confirm it before it can
become a part of culture. For this reason, the actual subject of
cultural production under the digital condition is not the individual
but rather the next-largest unit.
:::
:::
As an individual, it is impossible to orient oneself within a complex
environment. Meaning -- as well as the ability to act -- can only be
created, reinforced, and altered in exchange with others. This is
nothing noteworthy; biologically and culturally, people are social
beings. What has changed historically is how people are integrated into
larger contexts, how processes of exchange are organized, and what every
individual is expected to do in order to become a fully fledged
participant in these processes. For nearly 50 years, traditional
[]{#Page_79 type="pagebreak" title="79"}institutions -- that is,
hierarchically and bureaucratically organized civic institutions such
as established churches, labor unions, and political parties -- have
continuously been losing members.[^38^](#c2-note-0038){#c2-note-0038a}
In tandem with this, the overall commitment to the identities, family
values, and lifestyles promoted by these institutions has likewise been
in decline. The great mechanisms of socialization from the late stages
of the Gutenberg Galaxy have been losing more and more of their
influence, though at different speeds and to different extents. All
told, however, explicitly and collectively normative impulses are
decreasing, while others (implicitly economic, above all) are on the
rise. According to mainstream sociology, a cause or consequence of this
is the individualization and atomization of society. As early as the
middle of the 1980s, Ulrich Beck claimed: "In the individualized society
the individual must therefore learn, on pain of permanent disadvantage,
to conceive of himself or herself as the center of action, as the
planning office with respect to his/her own biography, abilities,
orientations, relationships and so
on."[^39^](#c2-note-0039){#c2-note-0039a} Over the past three decades,
the dominant neoliberal political orientation, with its strong stress on
the freedom of the individual -- to realize oneself as an individual
actor in the allegedly open market and in opposition to allegedly
domineering collective mechanisms -- has radicalized these tendencies
even further. The ability to act, however, is not only a question of
one\'s personal attitude but also of material resources. And it is this
same neoliberal politics that deprives so many people of the resources
needed to take advantage of these new freedoms in their own lives. As a
result they suffer, in Ulrich Beck\'s terms, "permanent disadvantage."
Under the digital condition, this process has permeated the finest
structures of social life. Individualization, commercialization, and the
production of differences (through design, for instance) are ubiquitous.
Established civic institutions are not alone in being hollowed out;
relatively new collectives are also becoming more differentiated, a
development that I outlined above with reference to the transformation
of the gay movement into the LGBT community. Yet nevertheless, or
perhaps for this very reason, new forms of communality are being formed
in these offshoots -- in the small activities of everyday life. And
these new communal formations -- rather []{#Page_80 type="pagebreak"
title="80"}than individual people -- are the actual subjects who create
the shared meaning that we call culture.
::: {.section}
### The problem of the "community" {#c2-sec-0010}
I have chosen the rather cumbersome expression "communal formation" in
order to avoid the term "community" (*Gemeinschaft*), although the
latter is used increasingly often in discussions of digital cultures and
has played an important role, from the beginning, in conceptions of
networking. Viewed analytically, however, "community" is a problematic
term because it is almost hopelessly overloaded. Particularly in the
German-speaking tradition, Ferdinand Tönnies\'s polar distinction
between "community" (*Gemeinschaft*) and "society" (*Gesellschaft*),
which he introduced in 1887, remains
influential.[^40^](#c2-note-0040){#c2-note-0040a} Tönnies contrasted two
fundamentally different and exclusive types of social relations. Whereas
community is characterized by the overlapping multidimensional nature of
social relationships, society is defined by the functional separation of
its sectors and spheres. Community embeds every individual into complex
social relationships, all of which tend to be simultaneously present. In
the traditional village community ("communities of place," in Tönnies\'s
terms), neighbors are involved with one another, for better or for
worse, both on a familiar basis and economically or religiously. Every
activity takes place on several different levels at the same time.
Communities are comprehensive social institutions that penetrate all
areas of life, endowing them with meaning. Through mutual dependency,
they create stability and security, but they also obstruct change and
hinder social mobility. Because everyone is connected with each other,
no can leave his or her place without calling into question the
arrangement as a whole. Communities are thus structurally conservative.
Because every human activity is embedded in multifaceted social
relationships, every change requires adjustments across the entire
interrelational web -- a task that is not easy to accomplish.
Accordingly, the traditional communities of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries fiercely opposed the establishment of capitalist
society. In order to impose the latter, the old community structures
were broken apart with considerable violence. This is what Marx
[]{#Page_81 type="pagebreak" title="81"}and Engels were referring to in
that famous passage from *The Communist Manifesto*: "All the settled,
age-old relations with their train of time-honoured preconceptions and
viewpoints are dissolved. \[...\] Everything feudal and fixed goes up in
smoke, everything sacred is
profaned."[^41^](#c2-note-0041){#c2-note-0041a}
The defining feature of society, on the contrary, is that it frees the
individual from such multifarious relationships. Society, according to
Tönnies, separates its members from one another. Although they
coordinate their activity with others, they do so in order to pursue
partial, short-term, and personal goals. Not only are people separated,
but so too are different areas of life. In a market-oriented society,
for instance, the economy is conceptualized as an independent sphere. It
can therefore break away from social connections to be organized simply
by limited formal or legal obligations between actors who, beyond these
obligations, have nothing else to do with one another. Costs or benefits
that inadvertently affect people who are uninvolved in a given market
transaction are referred to by economists as "externalities," and market
participants do not need to care about these because they are strictly
pursuing their own private interests. One of the consequences of this
form of social relationship is a heightened social dynamic, for now it
is possible to introduce changes into one area of life without
considering its effects on other areas. In the end, the dissolution of
mutual obligations, increased uncertainty, and the reduction of many
social connections go hand in hand with what Marx and Engels referred to
in *The Communist Manifesto* as "unfeeling hard cash."
From this perspective, the historical development looks like an
ambivalent process of modernization in which society (dynamic, but cold)
is erected over the ruins of community (static, but warm). This is an
unusual combination of romanticism and progress-oriented thinking, and
the problems with this influential perspective are numerous. There is,
first, the matter of its dichotomy; that is, its assumption that there
can only be these two types of arrangement, community and society. Or
there is the notion that the one form can be completely ousted by the
other, even though aspects of community and aspects of society exist at
the same time in specific historical situations, be it in harmony or in
conflict.[^42^](#c2-note-0042){#c2-note-0042a} []{#Page_82
type="pagebreak" title="82"}These impressions, however, which are so
firmly associated with the German concept of *Gemeinschaft*, make it
rather difficult to comprehend the new forms of communality that have
developed in the offshoots of networked life. This is because, at least
for now, these latter forms do not represent a genuine alternative to
societal types of social
connectedness.[^43^](#c2-note-0043){#c2-note-0043a} The English word
"community" is somewhat more open. The opposition between community and
society resonates with it as well, although the dichotomy is not as
clear-cut. American communitarianism, for instance, considers the
difference between community and society to be gradual and not
categorical. Its primary aim is to strengthen civic institutions and
mechanisms, and it regards community as an intermediary level between
the individual and society.[^44^](#c2-note-0044){#c2-note-0044a} But
there is a related English term, which seems even more productive for my
purposes, namely "community of practice," a concept that is more firmly
grounded in the empirical observation of concrete social relationships.
The term was introduced at the beginning of the 1990s by the social
researchers Jean Lave and Étienne Wenger. They observed that, in most
cases, professional learning (for instance, in their case study of
midwives) does not take place as a one-sided transfer of knowledge or
proficiency, but rather as an open exchange, often outside of the formal
learning environment, between people with different levels of knowledge
and experience. In this sense, learning is an activity that, though
distinguishable, cannot easily be separated from other "normal"
activities of everyday life. As Lave and Wenger stress, however, the
community of practice is not only a social space of exchange; it is
rather, and much more fundamentally, "an intrinsic condition for the
existence of knowledge, not least because it provides the interpretive
support necessary for making sense of its
heritage."[^45^](#c2-note-0045){#c2-note-0045a} Communities of practice
are thus always epistemic communities that form around certain ways of
looking at the world and one\'s own activity in it. What constitutes a
community of practice is thus the joint acquisition, development, and
preservation of a specific field of practice that contains abstract
knowledge, concrete proficiencies, the necessary material and social
resources, guidelines, expectations, and room to interpret one\'s own
activity. All members are active participants in the constitution of
this field, and this reinforces the stress on []{#Page_83
type="pagebreak" title="83"}practice. Each of them, however, brings
along different presuppositions and experiences, for their situations
are embedded within numerous and specific situations of life or work.
The processes within the community are mostly informal, and yet they are
thoroughly structured, for authority is distributed unequally and is
based on the extent to which the members value each other\'s (and their
own) levels of knowledge and experience. At first glance, then, the term
"community of practice" seems apt to describe the meaning-generating
communal formations that are at issue here. It is also somewhat
problematic, however, because, having since been subordinated to
management strategies, its use is now narrowly applied to professional
learning and managing knowledge.[^46^](#c2-note-0046){#c2-note-0046a}
From these various notions of community, it is possible to develop the
following way of looking at new types of communality: they are formed in
a field of practice, characterized by informal yet structured exchange,
focused on the generation of new ways of knowing and acting, and
maintained through the reflexive interpretation of their own activity.
This last point in particular -- the communal creation, preservation,
and alteration of the interpretive framework in which actions,
processes, and objects acquire a firm meaning and connection -- can be
seen as the central role of communal formations.
Communication is especially significant to them. Individuals must
continuously communicate in order to constitute themselves within the
fields and practices, or else they will remain invisible. The mass of
tweets, updates, emails, blogs, shared pictures, texts, posts on
collaborative platforms, and databases (etc.) that are necessary for
this can only be produced and processed by means of digital
technologies. In this act of incessant communication, which is a
constitutive element of social existence, the personal desire for
self-constitution and orientation becomes enmeshed with the outward
pressure of having to be present and available to form a new and binding
set of requirements. This relation between inward motivation and outward
pressure can vary highly, depending on the character of the communal
formation and the position of the individual within it (although it is
not the individual who determines what successful communication is, what
represents a contribution to the communal formation, or in which form
one has to be present). []{#Page_84 type="pagebreak" title="84"}Such
decisions are made by other members of the formation in the form of
positive or negative feedback (or none at all), and they are made with
recourse to the interpretive framework that has been developed in
common. These communal and continuous acts of learning, practicing, and
orientation -- the exchange, that is, between "novices" and "experts" on
the same field, be it concerned with internet politics, illegal street
racing, extreme right-wing music, body modification, or a free
encyclopedia -- serve to maintain the framework of shared meaning,
expand the constituted field, recruit new members, and adapt the
framework of interpretation and activity to changing conditions. Such
communal formations constitute themselves; they preserve and modify
themselves by constantly working out the foundations of their
constitution. This may sound circular, for the process of reflexive
self-constitution -- "autopoiesis" in the language of systems theory --
is circular in the sense that control is maintained through continuous,
self-generating feedback. Self-referentiality is a structural feature of
these formations.
:::
::: {.section}
### Singularity and communality {#c2-sec-0011}
The new communal formations are informal forms of organization that are
based on voluntary action. No one is born into them, and no one
possesses the authority to force anyone else to join or remain against
his or her will, or to assign anyone with tasks that he or she might be
unwilling to do. Such a formation is not an enclosed disciplinary
institution in Foucault\'s sense,[^47^](#c2-note-0047){#c2-note-0047a}
and, within it, power is not exercised through commands, as in the
classical sense formulated by Max
Weber.[^48^](#c2-note-0048){#c2-note-0048a} The condition of not being
locked up and not being subordinated can, at least at first, represent
for the individual a gain in freedom. Under a given set of conditions,
everyone can (and must) choose which formations to participate in, and
he or she, in doing so, will have a better or worse chance to influence
the communal field of reference.
On the everyday level of communicative self-constitution and creating a
personal cognitive horizon -- in innumerable streams, updates, and
timelines on social mass media -- the most important resource is the
attention of others; that is, their feedback and the mutual recognition
that results from it. []{#Page_85 type="pagebreak" title="85"}And this
recognition may simply be in the form of a quickly clicked "like," which
is the smallest unit that can assure the sender that, somewhere out
there, there is a receiver. Without the latter, communication has no
meaning. The situation is somewhat menacing if no one clicks the "like"
button beneath a post or a photo. It is a sign that communication has
broken, and the result is the dissolution of one\'s own communicatively
constituted social existence. In this context, the boundaries are
blurred between the categories of information, communication, and
activity. Making information available always involves the active --
that is, communicating -- person, and not only in the case of ubiquitous
selfies, for in an overwhelming and chaotic environment, as discussed
above, selection itself is of such central importance that the
differences between the selected and the selecting become fluid,
particularly when the goal of the latter is to experience confirmation
from others. In this back-and-forth between one\'s own presence and the
validation of others, one\'s own motives and those of the community are
not in opposition but rather mutually depend on one another. Condensed
to simple norms and to a basic set of guidelines within the context of
an image-oriented social mass media service, the rule (or better:
friendly tip) that one need not but probably ought to follow is this:
::: {.extract}
Be an active member of the Instagram community to receive likes and
comments. Take time to comment on a friend\'s photo, or to like photos.
If you do this, others will reciprocate. If you never acknowledge your
followers\' photos, then they won\'t acknowledge
you.[^49^](#c2-note-0049){#c2-note-0049a}
:::
The context of this widespread and highly conventional piece of advice
is not, for instance, a professional marketing campaign; it is simply
about personally positioning oneself within a social network. The goal
is to establish one\'s own, singular, identity. The process required to
do so is not primarily inward-oriented; it is not based on questions
such as: "Who am I really, apart from external influences?" It is rather
outward-oriented. It takes place through making connections with others
and is concerned with questions such as: "Who is in my network, and what
is my position within it?" It is []{#Page_86 type="pagebreak"
title="86"}revealing that none of the tips in the collection cited above
offers advice about achieving success within a community of
photographers; there are not suggestions, for instance, about how to
take high-quality photographs. With smart cameras and built-in filters
for post-production, this is not especially challenging any more,
especially because individual pictures, to be examined closely and on
their own terms, have become less important gauges of value than streams
of images that are meant to be quickly scrolled through. Moreover, the
function of the critic, who once monopolized the right to interpret and
evaluate an image for everyone, is no longer of much significance.
Instead, the quality of a picture is primarily judged according to
whether "others like it"; that is, according to its performance in the
ongoing popularity contest within a specific niche. But users do not
rely on communal formations and the feedback they provide just for the
sharing and evaluation of pictures. Rather, this dynamic has come to
determine more and more facets of life. Users experience the
constitution of singularity and communality, in which a person can be
perceived as such, as simultaneous and reciprocal processes. A million
times over and nearly subconsciously (because it is so commonplace),
they engage in a relationship between the individual and others that no
longer really corresponds to the liberal opposition between
individuality and society, between personal and group identity. Instead
of viewing themselves as exclusive entities (either in terms of the
emphatic affirmation of individuality or its dissolution within a
homogeneous group), the new formations require that the production of
difference and commonality takes place
simultaneously.[^50^](#c2-note-0050){#c2-note-0050a}
:::
::: {.section}
### Authenticity and subjectivity {#c2-sec-0012}
Because members have decided to participate voluntarily in the
community, their expressions and actions are regarded as authentic, for
it is implicitly assumed that, in making these gestures, they are not
following anyone else\'s instructions but rather their own motivations.
The individual does not act as a representative or functionary of an
organization but rather as a private and singular (that is, unique)
person. While at a gathering of the Occupy movement, a sure way to be
kicked out to is to stick stubbornly to a party line, even if this way
[]{#Page_87 type="pagebreak" title="87"}of thinking happens to agree
with that of the movement. Not only at Occupy gatherings, however, but
in all new communal formations it is expected that everyone there is
representing his or her own interests. As most people are aware, this
assumption is theoretically naïve and often proves to be false in
practice. Even spontaneity can be calculated, and in many cases it is.
Nevertheless, the expectation of authenticity is relevant because it
creates a minimum of trust. As the basis of social trust, such
contra-factual expectations exist elsewhere as well. Critical readers of
newspapers, for instance, must assume that what they are reading has
been well researched and is presented as objectively as possible, even
though they know that objectivity is theoretically a highly problematic
concept -- to this extent, postmodern theory has become common knowledge
-- and that newspapers often pursue (hidden) interests or lead
campaigns. Yet without such contra-factual assumptions, the respective
orders of knowledge and communication would not function, for they
provide the normative framework within which deviations can be
perceived, criticized, and sanctioned.
In a seemingly traditional manner, the "authentic self" is formulated
with reference to one\'s inner world, for instance to personal
knowledge, interests, or desires. As the core of personality, however,
this inner world no longer represents an immutable and essential
characteristic but rather a temporary position. Today, even someone\'s
radical reinvention can be regarded as authentic. This is the central
difference from the classical, bourgeois conception of the subject. The
self is no longer understood in essentialist terms but rather
performatively. Accordingly, the main demand on the individual who
voluntarily opts to participate in a communal formation is no longer to
be self-aware but rather to be
self-motivated.[^51^](#c2-note-0051){#c2-note-0051a} Nor is it necessary
any more for one\'s core self to be coherent. It is not a contradiction
to appear in various communal formations, each different from the next,
as a different "I myself," for every formation is comprehensive, in that
it appeals to the whole person, and simultaneously partial, in that it
is oriented toward a particular goal and not toward all areas of life.
As in the case of re-mixes and other referential processes, the concern
here is not to preserve authenticity but rather to create it in the
moment. The success or failure []{#Page_88 type="pagebreak"
title="88"}of these efforts is determined by the continuous feedback of
others -- one like after another.
These practices have led to a modified form of subject constitution for
which some sociologists, engaged in empirical research, have introduced
the term "networked individualism."[^52^](#c2-note-0052){#c2-note-0052a}
The idea is based on the observation that people in Western societies
(the case studies were mostly in North America) are defining their
identity less and less by their family, profession, or other stable
collective, but rather increasingly in terms of their personal social
networks; that is, according to the communal formations in which they
are active as individuals and in which they are perceived as singular
people. In this regard, individualization and atomization no longer
necessarily go hand in hand. On the contrary, the intertwined nature of
personal identity and communality can be experienced on an everyday
level, given that both are continuously created, adapted, and affirmed
by means of personal communication. This makes the networks in question
simultaneously fragile and stable. Fragile because they require the
ongoing presence of every individual and because communication can break
down quickly. Stable because the networks of relationships that can
support a single person -- as regards the number of those included,
their geographical distribution, and the duration of their cohesion --
have expanded enormously by means of digital communication technologies.
Here the issue is not that of close friendships, whose number remains
relatively constant for most people and over long periods of
time,[^53^](#c2-note-0053){#c2-note-0053a} but rather so-called "weak
ties"; that is, more or less loose acquaintances that can be tapped for
new information and resources that do not exist within one\'s close
circle of friends.[^54^](#c2-note-0054){#c2-note-0054a} The more they
are expanded, the more sustainable and valuable these networks become,
for they bring together a large number of people and thus multiply the
material and organizational resources that are (potentially) accessible
to the individual. It is impossible to make a sweeping statement as to
whether these formations actually represent communities in a
comprehensive sense and how stable they really are, especially in times
of crisis, for this is something that can only be found out on a
case-by-case basis. It is relevant that the development of personal
networks []{#Page_89 type="pagebreak" title="89"}has not taken place in
a vacuum. The disintegration of institutions that were formerly
influential in the formation of identity and meaning began long before
the large-scale spread of networks. For most people, there is no other
choice but to attempt to orient and organize oneself, regardless of how
provisional or uncertain this may be. Or, as Manuel Castells somewhat
melodramatically put it, "At the turn of the millennium, the king and
the queen, the state and civil society, are both naked, and their
children-citizens are wandering around a variety of foster
homes."[^55^](#c2-note-0055){#c2-note-0055a}
:::
::: {.section}
### Space and time as a communal practice {#c2-sec-0013}
Although participation in a communal formation is voluntary, it is not
unselfish. Quite the contrary: an important motivation is to gain access
to a formation\'s constitutive field of practice and to the resources
associated with it. A communal formation ultimately does more than
simply steer the attention of its members toward one another. Through
the common production of culture, it also structures how the members
perceive the world and how they are able to design themselves and their
potential actions in it. It is thus a cooperative mechanism of
filtering, interpretation, and constitution. Through the everyday
referential work of its members, the community selects a manageable
amount of information from the excess of potentially available
information and brings it into a meaningful context, whereby it
validates the selection itself and orients the activity of each of its
members.
The new communal formations consist of self-referential worlds whose
constructive common practice affects the foundations of social activity
itself -- the constitution of space and time. How? The spatio-temporal
horizon of digital communication is a global (that is, placeless) and
ongoing present. The technical vision of digital communication is always
the here and now. With the instant transmission of information,
everything that is not "here" is inaccessible and everything that is not
"now" has disappeared. Powerful infrastructure has been built to achieve
these effects: data centers, intercontinental networks of cables,
satellites, high-performance nodes, and much more. Through globalized
high-frequency trading, actors in the financial markets have realized
this []{#Page_90 type="pagebreak" title="90"}technical vision to its
broadest extent by creating a never-ending global present whose expanse
is confined to milliseconds. This process is far from coming to an end,
for massive amounts of investment are allocated to accomplish even the
smallest steps toward this goal. On November 3, 2015, a 4,600-kilometer,
300-million-dollar transatlantic telecommunications cable (Hibernia
Express) was put into operation between London and New York -- the first
in more than 10 years -- with the single goal of accelerating automated
trading between the two places by 5.2 milliseconds.
For social and biological processes, this technical horizon of space and
time is neither achievable nor desirable. Such processes, on the
contrary, are existentially dependent on other spatial and temporal
orders. Yet because of the existence of this non-geographical and
atemporal horizon, the need -- as well as the possibility -- has arisen
to redefine the parameters of space and time themselves in order to
counteract the mire of technically defined spacelessness and
timelessness. If space and time are not simply to vanish in this
spaceless, ongoing present, how then should they be defined? Communal
formations create spaces for action not least by determining their own
geographies and temporal rhythms. They negotiate what is near and far
and also which places are disregarded (that is, not even perceived). If
every place is communicatively (and physically) reachable, every person
must decide which place he or she would like to reach in practice. This,
however, is not an individual decision but rather a task that can only
be approached collectively. Those places which are important and thus
near are determined by communal formations. This takes place in the form
of a rough consensus through the blogs that "one" has to read, the
exhibits that "one" has to see, the events and conferences that "one"
has to attend, the places that "one" has to visit before they are
overrun by tourists, the crises in which "the West" has to intervene,
the targets that "lend themselves" to a terrorist attack, and so on. On
its own, however, selection is not enough. Communal formations are
especially powerful when they generate the material and organizational
resources that are necessary for their members to implement their shared
worldview through actions -- to visit, for instance, the places that
have been chosen as important. This can happen if they enable access
[]{#Page_91 type="pagebreak" title="91"}to stipends, donations, price
reductions, ride shares, places to stay, tips, links, insider knowledge,
public funds, airlifts, explosives, and so on. It is in this way that
each formation creates its respective spatial constructs, which define
distances in a great variety of ways. At the same time that war-torn
Syria is unreachably distant even for seasoned reporters and their
staff, veritable travel agencies are being set up in order to bring
Western jihadists there in large numbers.
Things are similar for the temporal dimensions of social and biological
processes. Permanent presence is a temporality that is inimical to life
but, under its influence, temporal rhythms have to be redefined as well.
What counts as fast? What counts as slow? In what order should things
proceed? On the everyday level, for instance, the matter can be as
simple as how quickly to respond to an email. Because the transmission
of information hardly takes any time, every delay is a purely social
creation. But how much is acceptable? There can be no uniform answer to
this. The members of each communal formation have to negotiate their own
rules with one another, even in areas of life that are otherwise highly
formalized. In an interview with the magazine *Zeit*, for instance, a
lawyer with expertise in labor law was asked whether a boss may require
employees to be reachable at all times. Instead of answering by
referring to any binding legal standards, the lawyer casually advised
that this was a matter of flexible negotiation: "Express your misgivings
openly and honestly about having to be reachable after hours and,
together with your boss, come up with an agreeable rule to
follow."[^56^](#c2-note-0056){#c2-note-0056a} If only it were that easy.
Temporalities that, in many areas, were once simply taken for granted by
everyone on account of the factuality of things now have to be
culturally determined -- that is, explicitly negotiated -- in a greater
number of contexts. Under the conditions of capitalism, which is always
creating new competitions and incentives, one consequence is the
often-lamented "acceleration of time." We are asked to produce, consume,
or accomplish more and more in less and less
time.[^57^](#c2-note-0057){#c2-note-0057a} This change in the
structuring of time is not limited to linear acceleration. It reaches
deep into the foundations of life and has even reconfigured biological
processes themselves. Today there is an entire industry that specializes
in freezing the stem []{#Page_92 type="pagebreak" title="92"}cells of
newborns in liquid nitrogen -- that is, in suspending cellular
biological time -- in case they might be needed later on in life for a
transplant or for the creation of artificial organs. Children can be
born even if their physical mothers are already dead. Or they can be
"produced" from ova that have been stored for many years at minus 196
degrees.[^58^](#c2-note-0058){#c2-note-0058a} At the same time,
questions now have to be addressed every day whose grand temporal
dimensions were once the matter of myth. In the case of atomic energy,
for instance, there is the issue of permanent disposal. Where can we
deposit nuclear waste for the next hundred thousand years without it
causing catastrophic damage? How can the radioactive material even be
transported there, wherever that is, within the framework of everday
traffic laws?[^59^](#c2-note-0059){#c2-note-0059a}
The construction of temporal dimensions and sequences has thus become an
everyday cultural question. Whereas throughout Europe, for example,
committees of experts and ethicists still meet to discuss reproductive
medicine and offer their various recommendations, many couples are
concerned with the specific question of whether or how they can fulfill
their wish to have children. Without a coherent set of rules, questions
such as these have to be answered by each individual with recourse to
his or her personally relevant communal formation. If there is no
cultural framework that at least claims to be binding for everyone, then
the individual must negotiate independently within each communal
formation with the goal of acquiring the resources necessary to act
according to communal values and objectives.
:::
These three functions -- selection, interpretation, and the constitutive
ability to act -- make communal formations the true subject of the
digital condition. In principle, these functions are nothing new;
rather, they are typical of fields that are organized without reference
to external or irrefutable authorities. The state of scholarship, for
instance, is determined by what is circulated in refereed publications.
In this case, "refereed" means that scientists at the same professional
rank mutually evaluate each other\'s work. The scientific community (or
better: the sub-community of a specialized discourse) []{#Page_93
type="pagebreak" title="93"}evaluates the contributions of individual
scholars. They decide what should be considered valuable, and this
consensus can theoretically be revised at any time. It is based on a
particular catalog of criteria, on an interpretive framework that
provides lines of inquiry, methods, appraisals, and conventions of
presentation. With every article, this framework is confirmed and
reconstituted. If the framework changes, this can lead in the most
extreme case to a paradigm shift, which overturns fundamental
orientations, assumptions, and
certainties.[^60^](#c2-note-0060){#c2-note-0060a} The result of this is
not only a change in how scientific contributions are evaluated but also
a change in how the external world is perceived and what activities are
possible in it. Precisely because the sciences claim to define
themselves, they have the ability to revise their own foundations.
The sciences were the first large sphere of society to achieve
comprehensive cultural autonomy; that is, the ability to determine its
own binding meaning. Art was the second that began to organize itself on
the basis of internal feedback. It was during the era of Romanticism
that artists first laid claim to autonomy. They demanded "to absolve art
from all conditions, to represent it as a realm -- indeed as the only
realm -- in which truth and beauty are expressed in their pure form, a
realm in which everything truly human is
transcended."[^61^](#c2-note-0061){#c2-note-0061a} With the spread of
photography in the second half of the nineteenth century, art also
liberated itself from its final task, which was hoisted upon it from the
outside, namely the need to represent external reality. Instead of
having to represent the external world, artists could now focus on their
own subjectivity. This gave rise to a radical individualism, which found
its clearest summation in Marcel Duchamp\'s assertion that only the
artist could determine what is art. This he claimed in 1917 by way of
explaining how an industrially produced urinal, exhibited as a signed
piece with the title "Fountain," could be considered a work of art.
With the rise of the knowledge economy and the expansion of cultural
fields, including the field of art and the artists active within it,
this individualism quickly swelled to unmanageable levels. As a
consequence, the task of defining what should be regarded as art shifted
from the individual artist to the curator. It now fell upon the latter
to select a few works from the surplus of competing scenes and thus
bring temporary []{#Page_94 type="pagebreak" title="94"}order to the
constantly diversifying and changing world of contemporary art. This
order was then given expression in the form of exhibits, which were
intended to be more than the sum of their parts. The beginning of this
practice can be traced to the 1969 exhibition When Attitudes Become
Form, which was curated by Harald Szeemann for the Kunsthalle Bern (it
was also sponsored by Philip Morris). The works were not neatly
separated from one another and presented without reference to their
environment, but were connected with each other both spatially and in
terms of their content. The effect of the exhibition could be felt at
least as much through the collection of works as a whole as it could
through the individual pieces, many of which had been specially
commissioned for the exhibition itself. It not only cemented Szeemann\'s
reputation as one of the most significant curators of the twentieth
century; it also completely redefined the function of the curator as a
central figure within the art system.
This was more than 40 years ago and in a system that functioned
differently from that of today. The distance from this exhibition, but
also its ongoing relevance, was negotiated, significantly, in a
re-enactment at the 2013 Biennale in Venice. For this, the old rooms at
the Kunsthalle Bern were reconstructed in the space of the Fondazione
Prada in such a way that both could be seen simultaneously. As is
typical with such re-enactments, the curators of the project described
its goals in terms of appropriation and distancing: "This was the
challenge: how could we find and communicate a limit to a non-limit,
creating a place that would reflect exactly the architectural structures
of the Kunsthalle, but also an asymmetrical space with respect to our
time and imbued with an energy and tension equivalent to that felt at
Bern?"[^62^](#c2-note-0062){#c2-note-0062a}
Curation -- that is, selecting works and associating them with one
another -- has become an omnipresent practice in the art system. No
exhibition takes place any more without a curator. Nevertheless,
curators have lost their extraordinary
position,[^63^](#c2-note-0063){#c2-note-0063a} with artists taking on
more of this work themselves, not only because the boundaries between
artistic and curatorial activities have become fluid but also because
many artists explicitly co-produce the context of their work by
incorporating a multitude of references into their pieces. It is with
precisely this in mind that André Rottmann, in the []{#Page_95
type="pagebreak" title="95"}quotation cited at the beginning of this
chapter, can assert that referentiality has become the dominant
production-aesthetic model in contemporary art. This practice enables
artists to objectify themselves by explicitly placing themselves into a
historical and social context. At the same time, it also enables them to
subjectify the historical and social context by taking the liberty to
select and arrange the references
themselves.[^64^](#c2-note-0064){#c2-note-0064a}
Such strategies are no longer specific to art. Self-generated spaces of
reference and agency are now deeply embedded in everyday life. The
reason for this is that a growing number of questions can no longer be
answered in a generally binding way (such as those about what
constitutes fine art), while the enormous expansion of the cultural
requires explicit decisions to be made in more aspects of life. The
reaction to this dilemma has been radical subjectivation. This has not,
however, been taking place at the level of the individual but rather at
that of communal formations. There is now a patchwork of answers to
large questions and a multitude of reactions to large challenges, all of
which are limited in terms of their reliability and scope.
:::
Even though participation in new formations is voluntary and serves the
interests of their members, it is not without preconditions. The most
important of these is acceptance, the willing adoption of the
interpretive framework that is generated by the communal formation. The
latter is formed from the social, cultural, legal, and technical
protocols that lend to each of these formations its concrete
constitution and specific character. Protocols are common sets of rules;
they establish, according to the network theorist Alexander Galloway,
"the essential points necessary to enact an agreed-upon standard of
action." They provide, he goes on, "etiquette for autonomous
agents."[^65^](#c2-note-0065){#c2-note-0065a} Protocols are
simultaneously voluntary and binding; they allow actors to meet
eye-to-eye instead of entering into hierarchical relations with one
another. If everyone voluntarily complies with the protocols, then it is
not necessary for one actor to give instructions to another. Whoever
accepts the relevant protocols can interact with others who do the same;
whoever opts not to []{#Page_96 type="pagebreak" title="96"}accept them
will remain on the outside. Protocols establish, for example, common
languages, technical standards, or social conventions. The fundamental
protocol for the internet is the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet
Protocol (TCP/IP). This suite of protocols defines the common language
for exchanging data. Every device that exchanges information over the
internet -- be it a smartphone, a supercomputer in a data center, or a
networked thermostat -- has to use these protocols. In growing areas of
social contexts, the common language is English. Whoever wishes to
belong has to speak it increasingly often. In the natural sciences,
communication now takes place almost exclusively in English. Non-native
speakers who accept this norm may pay a high price: they have to learn a
new language and continually improve their command of it or else resign
themselves to being unable to articulate things as they would like --
not to mention losing the possibility of expressing something for which
another language would perhaps be more suitable, or forfeiting
traditions that cannot be expressed in English. But those who refuse to
go along with these norms pay an even higher price, risking
self-marginalization. Those who "voluntarily" accept conventions gain
access to a field of practice, even though within this field they may be
structurally disadvantaged. But unwillingness to accept such
conventions, with subsequent denial of access to this field, might have
even greater disadvantages.[^66^](#c2-note-0066){#c2-note-0066a}
In everyday life, the factors involved with this trade-off are often
presented in the form of subtle cultural codes. For instance, in order
to participate in a project devoted to the development of free software,
it is not enough for someone to possess the necessary technical
knowledge; he or she must also be able to fit into a wide-ranging
informal culture with a characteristic style of expression, humor, and
preferences. Ultimately, software developers do not form a professional
corps in the traditional sense -- in which functionaries meet one
another in the narrow and regulated domain of their profession -- but
rather a communal formation in which the engagement of the whole person,
both one\'s professional and social self, is scrutinized. The
abolishment of the separation between different spheres of life,
requiring interaction of a more holistic nature, is in fact a key
attraction of []{#Page_97 type="pagebreak" title="97"}these communal
formations and is experienced by some as a genuine gain in freedom. In
this situation, one is no longer subjected to rules imposed from above
but rather one is allowed to -- and indeed ought to -- be authentically
pursuing his or her own interests.
But for others the experience can be quite the opposite because the
informality of the communal formation also allows forms of exclusion and
discrimination that are no longer acceptable in formally organized
realms of society. Discrimination is more difficult to identify when it
takes place within the framework of voluntary togetherness, for no one
is forced to participate. If you feel uncomfortable or unwelcome, you
are free to leave at any time. But this is a specious argument. The
areas of free software or Wikipedia are difficult places for women. In
these clubby atmospheres of informality, they are often faced with
blatant sexism, and this is one of the reasons why many women choose to
stay away from such projects.[^67^](#c2-note-0067){#c2-note-0067a} In
2007, according to estimates by the American National Center for Women &
Information Technology, whereas approximately 27 percent of all jobs
related to computer science were held by women, their representation at
the same time was far lower in the field of free software -- on average
less than 2 percent. And for years, the proportion of women who edit
texts on Wikipedia has hovered at around 10
percent.[^68^](#c2-note-0068){#c2-note-0068a}
The consequences of such widespread, informal, and elusive
discrimination are not limited to the fact that certain values and
prejudices of the shared culture are included in these products, while
different viewpoints and areas of knowledge are
excluded.[^69^](#c2-note-0069){#c2-note-0069a} What is more, those who
are excluded or do not wish to expose themselves to discrimination (and
thus do not even bother to participate in any communal formations) do
not receive access to the resources that circulate there (attention and
support, valuable and timely knowledge, or job offers). Many people are
thus faced with the choice of either enduring the discrimination within
a community or remaining on the outside and thus invisible. That this
decision is made on a voluntary basis and on one\'s own responsibility
hardly mitigates the coercive nature of the situation. There may be a
choice, but it would be misleading to call it a free one.[]{#Page_98
type="pagebreak" title="98"}
:::
::: {.section}
### The power of sociability {#c2-sec-0016}
In order to explain the peculiar coercive nature of the (nominally)
voluntary acceptance of protocols, rules, and norms, the political
scientist David Singh Grewal, drawing on the work of Max Weber and
Michel Foucault, has distinguished between the "power of sovereignty"
and the "power of sociability."[^70^](#c2-note-0070){#c2-note-0070a}
The former develops on the basis of dominance and subordination, as
imposed by authorities, police officers, judges, or other figures within
formal hierarchies. Their power is anchored in disciplinary
institutions, and the dictum of this sort of power is: "You must!" The
power of sociability, on the contrary, functions by prescribing the
conditions or protocols under which people are able to enter into an
exchange with one another. The dictum of this sort of power is: "You
can!" The more people accept certain protocols and standards, the more
powerful these become. Accordingly, the sociability that they structure
also becomes more comprehensive, and those not yet involved have to ask
themselves all the more urgently whether they can afford not to accept
these protocols and standards. Whereas the first type of power is
ultimately based on the monopoly of violence and on repression, the
second is founded on voluntary submission. When the entire internet
speaks TCP/IP, then an individual\'s decision to use it may be voluntary
in nominal terms, but at the same time it is an indispensable
precondition for existing within the network at all. Protocols exert
power without there having to be anyone present to possess the power in
question. Whereas the sovereign can be located, the effects of
sociability\'s power are diffuse and omnipresent. They are not
repressive but rather constitutive. No one forces a scientist to publish
in English or a woman editor to tolerate disparaging remarks on
Wikipedia. People accept these often implicit behavioral norms (sexist
comments are permitted, for instance) out of their own interests in
order to acquire access to the resources circulating within the networks
and to constitute themselves within it. In this regard, Singh
distinguishes between the "intrinsic" and "extrinsic" reasons for
abiding by certain protocols.[^71^](#c2-note-0071){#c2-note-0071a} In
the first case, the motivation is based on a new protocol being better
suited than existing protocols for carrying out []{#Page_99
type="pagebreak" title="99"}a specific objective. People thus submit
themselves to certain rules because they are especially efficient,
transparent, or easy to use. In the second case, a protocol is accepted
not because but in spite of its features. It is simply a precondition
for gaining access to a space of agency in which resources and
opportunities are available that cannot be found anywhere else. In the
first case, it is possible to speak subjectively of voluntariness,
whereas the second involves some experience of impersonal compunction.
One is forced to do something that might potentially entail grave
disadvantages in order to have access, at least, to another level of
opportunities or to create other advantages for oneself.
:::
::: {.section}
### Homogeneity, difference and authority {#c2-sec-0017}
Protocols are present on more than a technical level; as interpretive
frameworks, they structure viewpoints, rules, and patterns of behavior
on all levels. Thus, they provide a degree of cultural homogeneity, a
set of commonalities that lend these new formations their communal
nature. Viewed from the outside, these formations therefore seem
inclined toward consensus and uniformity, for their members have already
accepted and internalized certain aspects in common -- the protocols
that enable exchange itself -- whereas everyone on the outside has not
done so. When everyone is speaking in English, the conversation sounds
quite monotonous to someone who does not speak the language.
Viewed from the inside, the experience is something different: in order
to constitute oneself within a communal formation, not only does one
have to accept its rules voluntarily and in a self-motivated manner; one
also has to make contributions to the reproduction and development of
the field. Everyone is urged to contribute something; that is, to
produce, on the basis of commonalities, differences that simultaneously
affirm, modify, and enhance these commonalities. This leads to a
pronounced and occasionally highly competitive internal differentiation
that can only be understood, however, by someone who has accepted the
commonalities. To an outsider, this differentiation will seem
irrelevant. Whoever is not well versed in the universe of *Star Wars*
will not understand why the various character interpretations at
[]{#Page_100 type="pagebreak" title="100"}cosplay conventions, which I
discussed above, might be brilliant or even controversial. To such a
person, they will all seem equally boring and superficial.
These formations structure themselves internally through the production
of differences; that is, by constantly changing their common ground.
Those who are able to add many novel aspects to the common resources
gain a degree of authority. They assume central positions and they
influence, through their behavior, the development of the field more
than others do. However, their authority, influence, and de facto power
are not based on any means of coercion. As Niklas Luhmann noted, "In the
end, one participant\'s achievements in making selections \[...\] are
accepted by another participant \[...\] as a limitation of the latter\'s
potential experiences and activities without him having to make the
selection on his own."[^72^](#c2-note-0072){#c2-note-0072a} Even this is
a voluntary and self-interested act: the members of the formation
recognize that this person has contributed more to the common field and
to the resources within it. This, in turn, is to everyone\'s advantage,
for each member would ultimately like to make use of the field\'s
resources to achieve his or her own goals. This arrangement, which can
certainly take on hierarchical qualities, is experienced as something
meritocratically legitimized and voluntarily
accepted.[^73^](#c2-note-0073){#c2-note-0073a} In the context of free
software, there has therefore been some discussion of "benevolent
dictators."[^74^](#c2-note-0074){#c2-note-0074a} The matter of
"dictators" is raised because projects are often led by charismatic
figures without a formal mandate. They are "benevolent" because their
position of authority is based on the fact that a critical mass of
participating producers has voluntarily subordinated itself for its own
self-interest. If the consensus breaks over whose contributions have
been carrying the most weight, then the formation will be at risk of
losing its internal structure and splitting apart ("forking," in the
jargon of free software).
:::
:::
Through personal communication, referential processes in communal
formations create cultural zones of various sizes and scopes. They
expand into the empty spaces that have been created by the erosion of
established institutions and []{#Page_101 type="pagebreak"
title="101"}processes, and once these new processes have been
established the process of erosion intensifies. Multiple processes of
exchange take place alongside one another, creating a patchwork of
interconnected, competing, or entirely unrelated spheres of meaning,
each with specific goals and resources and its own preconditions and
potentials. The structures of knowledge, order, and activity that are
generated by this are holistic as well as partial and limited. The
participants in such structures are simultaneously addressed on many
levels that were once functionally separated; previously independent
spheres, such as work and leisure, are now mixed together, but usually
only with respect to the subdivisions of one\'s own life. And, at first,
the structures established in this way are binding only for active
participants.
::: {.section}
### Exiting the "Library of Babel" {#c2-sec-0019}
For one person alone, however, these new processes would not be able to
generate more than a local island of meaning from the enormous clamor of
chaotic spheres of information. In his 1941 story "The Library of
Babel," Jorge Luis Borges fashioned a fitting image for such a
situation. He depicts the world as a library of unfathomable and
possibly infinite magnitude. The characters in the story do not know
whether there is a world outside of the library. There are reasons to
believe that there is, and reasons that suggest otherwise. The library
houses the complete collection of all possible books that can be written
on exactly 410 pages. Contained in these volumes is the promise that
there is "no personal or universal problem whose eloquent solution
\[does\] not exist," for every possible combination of letters, and thus
also every possible pronouncement, is recorded in one book or another.
No catalog has yet been found for the library (though it must exist
somewhere), and it is impossible to identify any order in its
arrangement of books. The "men of the library," according to Borges,
wander round in search of the one book that explains everything, but
their actual discoveries are far more modest. Only once in a while are
books found that contain more than haphazard combinations of signs. Even
small regularities within excerpts of texts are heralded as sensational
discoveries, and it is around these discoveries that competing
[]{#Page_102 type="pagebreak" title="102"}schools of interpretation
develop. Despite much labor and effort, however, the knowledge gained is
minimal and fragmentary, so the prevailing attitude in the library is
bleak. By the time of the narrator\'s generation, "nobody expects to
discover anything."[^75^](#c2-note-0075){#c2-note-0075a}
Although this vision has now been achieved from a quantitative
perspective -- no one can survey the "library" of digital information,
which in practical terms is infinitely large, and all of the growth
curves continue to climb steeply -- today\'s cultural reality is
nevertheless entirely different from that described by Borges. Our
ability to deal with massive amounts of data has radically improved, and
thus our faith in the utility of information is not only unbroken but
rather gaining strength. What is new is precisely such large quantities
of data ("big data"), which, as we are promised or forewarned, will lead
to new knowledge, to a comprehensive understanding of the world, indeed
even to "omniscience."[^76^](#c2-note-0076){#c2-note-0076a} This faith
in data is based above all on the fact that the two processes described
above -- referentiality and communality -- are not the only new
mechanisms for filtering, sorting, aggregating, and evaluating things.
Beneath or ahead of the social mechanisms of decentralized and networked
cultural production, there are algorithmic processes that pre-sort the
immeasurably large volumes of data and convert them into a format that
can be apprehended by individuals, evaluated by communities, and
invested with meaning.
Strictly speaking, it is impossible to maintain a categorical
distinction between social processes that take place in and by means of
technological infrastructures and technical processes that are socially
constructed. In both cases, social actors attempt to realize their own
interests with the resources at their disposal. The methods of
(attempted) realization, the available resources, and the formulation of
interests mutually influence one another. The technological resources
are inscribed in the formulation of goals. These open up fields of
imagination and desire, which in turn inspire technical
development.[^77^](#c2-note-0077){#c2-note-0077a} Although it is
impossible to draw clear theoretical lines, the attempt to make such a
distinction can nevertheless be productive in practice, for in this way
it is possible to gain different perspectives about the same object of
investigation.[]{#Page_103 type="pagebreak" title="103"}
:::
::: {.section}
### The rise of algorithms {#c2-sec-0020}
An algorithm is a set of instructions for converting a given input into
a desired output by means of a finite number of steps: algorithms are
used to solve predefined problems. For a set of instructions to become
an algorithm, it has to be determined in three different respects.
First, the necessary steps -- individually and as a whole -- have to be
described unambiguously and completely. To do this, it is usually
necessary to use a formal language, such as mathematics, or a
programming language, in order to avoid the characteristic imprecision
and ambiguity of natural language and to ensure instructions can be
followed without interpretation. Second, it must be possible in practice
to execute the individual steps together. For this reason, every
algorithm is tied to the context of its realization. If the context
changes, so do the operating processes that can be formalized as
algorithms and thus also the ways in which algorithms can partake in the
constitution of the world. Third, it must be possible to execute an
operating instruction mechanically so that, under fixed conditions, it
always produces the same result.
Defined in such general terms, it would also be possible to understand
the instruction manual for a typical piece of Ikea furniture as an
algorithm. It is a set of instructions for creating, with a finite
number of steps, a specific and predefined piece of furniture (output)
from a box full of individual components (input). The instructions are
composed in a formal language, pictograms, which define each step as
unambiguously as possible, and they can be executed by a single person
with simple tools. The process can be repeated, for the final result is
always the same: a Billy box will always yield a Billy shelf. In this
case, a person takes over the role of a machine, which (unambiguous
pictograms aside) can lead to problems, be it that scratches and other
traces on the finished piece of furniture testify to the unique nature
of the (unsuccessful) execution, or that, inspired by the micro-trend of
"Ikea hacking," the official instructions are intentionally ignored.
Because such imprecision is supposed to be avoided, the most important
domain of algorithms in practice is mathematics and its implementation
on the computer. The term []{#Page_104 type="pagebreak"
title="104"}"algorithm" derives from the Persian mathematician,
astronomer, and geographer Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī. His book *On
the Calculation with Hindu Numerals*, which was written in Baghdad in
825, was known widely in the Western Middle Ages through a Latin
translation and made the essential contribution of introducing
Indo-Arabic numerals and the number zero to Europe. The work begins
with the formula *dixit algorizmi* ... ("Algorismi said ..."). During
the Middle Ages, *algorizmi* or *algorithmi* soon became a general term
for advanced methods of
calculation.[^78^](#c2-note-0078){#c2-note-0078a}
The modern effort to build machines that could mechanically carry out
instructions achieved its first breakthrough with Gottfried Wilhelm
Leibniz. He has often been credited with making the following remark:
"It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labour
of calculation which could be done by any peasant with the aid of a
machine."[^79^](#c2-note-0079){#c2-note-0079a} This vision already
contains a distinction between higher cognitive and interpretive
activities, which are regarded as being truly human, and lower processes
that involve pure execution and can therefore be mechanized. To this
end, Leibniz himself developed the first calculating machine, which
could carry out all four of the basic types of arithmetic. He was not
motivated to do this by the practical necessities of production and
business (although conceptually groundbreaking, Leibniz\'s calculating
machine remained, on account of its mechanical complexity, a unique item
and was never used).[^80^](#c2-note-0080){#c2-note-0080a} In the
estimation of the philosopher Sybille Krämer, calculating machines "were
rather speculative masterpieces of a century that, like none before it,
was infatuated by the idea of mechanizing 'intellectual'
processes."[^81^](#c2-note-0081){#c2-note-0081a} Long before machines
were implemented on a large scale to increase the efficiency of material
production, Leibniz had already speculated about using them to enhance
intellectual labor. And this vision has never since disappeared. Around
a century and a half later, the English polymath Charles Babbage
formulated it anew, now in direct connection with industrial
mechanization and its imperative of time-saving
efficiency.[^82^](#c2-note-0082){#c2-note-0082a} Yet he, too, failed to
overcome the problem of practically realizing such a machine.
The decisive step that turned the vision of calculating machines into
reality was made by Alan Turing in 1937. With []{#Page_105
type="pagebreak" title="105"}a theoretical model, he demonstrated that
every algorithm could be executed by a machine as long as it could read
an incremental set of signs, manipulate them according to established
rules, and then write them out again. The validity of his model did not
depend on whether the machine would be analog or digital, mechanical or
electronic, for the rules of manipulation were not at first conceived as
being a fixed component of the machine itself (that is, as being
implemented in its hardware). The electronic and digital approach came
to be preferred because it was hoped that even the instructions could be
read by the machine itself, so that the machine would be able to execute
not only one but (theoretically) every written algorithm. The
Hungarian-born mathematician John von Neumann made it his goal to
implement this idea. In 1945, he published a model in which the program
(the algorithm) and the data (the input and output) were housed in a
common storage device. Thus, both could be manipulated simultaneously
without having to change the hardware. In this way, he converted the
"Turing machine" into the "universal Turing machine"; that is, the
modern computer.[^83^](#c2-note-0083){#c2-note-0083a}
Gordon Moore, the co-founder of the chip manufacturer Intel,
prognosticated 20 years later that the complexity of integrated circuits
and thus the processing power of computer chips would double every 18 to
24 months. Since the 1970s, his prediction has been known as Moore\'s
Law and has essentially been correct. This technical development has
indeed taken place exponentially, not least because the semi-conductor
industry has been oriented around
it.[^84^](#c2-note-0084){#c2-note-0084a} An IBM 360/40 mainframe
computer, which was one of the first of its kind to be produced on a
large scale, could make approximately 40,000 calculations per second and
its cost, when it was introduced to the market in 1965, was \$1.5
million per unit. Just 40 years later, a standard server (with a
quad-core Intel processor) could make more than 40 billion calculations
per second, and this at a price of little more than \$1,500. This
amounts to an increase in performance by a factor of a million and a
corresponding price reduction by a factor of a thousand; that is, an
improvement in the price-to-performance ratio by a factor of a billion.
With inflation taken into consideration, this factor would be even
higher. No less dramatic were the increases in performance -- or rather
[]{#Page_106 type="pagebreak" title="106"}the price reductions -- in the
area of data storage. In 1980, it cost more than \$400,000 to store a
gigabyte of data, whereas 30 years later it would cost just 10 cents to
do the same -- a price reduction by a factor of 4 million. And in both
areas, this development has continued without pause.
These increases in performance have formed the material basis for the
rapidly growing number of activities carried out by means of algorithms.
We have now reached a point where Leibniz\'s distinction between
creative mental functions and "simple calculations" is becoming
increasingly fuzzy. Recent discussions about the allegedly threatening
"domination of the computer" have been kindled less by the increased use
of algorithms as such than by the gradual blurring of this distinction
with new possibilities to formalize and mechanize increasing areas of
creative thinking.[^85^](#c2-note-0085){#c2-note-0085a} Activities that
not long ago were reserved for human intelligence, such as composing
texts or analyzing the content of images, are now frequently done by
machines. As early as 2010, a program called Stats Monkey was introduced
to produce short reports about baseball games. All that the program
needs for this is comprehensive data about the games, which can be
accumulated mechanically and which have since become more detailed due
to improved image recognition and sensors. From these data, the program
extracts the decisive moments and players of a game, recognizes
characteristic patterns throughout the course of play (such as
"extending an early lead," "a dramatic comeback," etc.), and on this
basis generates its own report. Regarding the reports themselves, a
number of variables can be determined in advance, for instance whether
the story should be written from the perspective of a neutral observer
or from the standpoint of one of the two teams. If writing about little
league games, the program can be instructed to ignore the errors made by
children -- because no parent wants to read about those -- and simply
focus on their heroics. The algorithm was soon patented, and a start-up
business was created from the original interdisciplinary research
project: Narrative Science. In addition to sport reports it now offers
texts of all sorts, but above all financial reports -- another field for
which there is a great deal of available data. These texts have been
published by reputable media outlets such as the business magazine
*Forbes*, in which their authorship []{#Page_107 type="pagebreak"
title="107"}is credited to "Narrative Science." Although these
contributions are still limited to relatively simple topics, this will
not remain the case for long. When asked about the percentage of news
that would be written by computers 15 years from now, Narrative
Science\'s chief technology officer and co-founder Kristian Hammond
confidently predicted "\[m\]ore than 90 percent." He added that, within
the next five years, an algorithm could even win a Pulitzer
Prize.[^86^](#c2-note-0086){#c2-note-0086a} This may be blatant hype and
self-promotion but, as a general estimation, Hammond\'s assertion is not
entirely beyond belief. It remains to be seen whether algorithms will
replace or simply supplement traditional journalism. Yet because media
companies are now under strong financial pressure, it is certainly
reasonable to predict that many journalistic texts will be automated in
the future. Entirely different applications, however, have also been
conceived. Alexander Pschera, for instance, foresees a new age in the
relationship between humans and nature, for, as soon as animals are
equipped with transmitters and sensors and are thus able to tell their
own stories through the appropriate software, they will be regarded as
individuals and not merely as generic members of a
species.[^87^](#c2-note-0087){#c2-note-0087a}
We have not yet reached this point. However, given that the CIA has also
expressed interest in Narrative Science and has invested in it through
its venture-capital firm In-Q-Tel, there are indications that
applications are being developed beyond the field of journalism. For the
purpose of spreading propaganda, for instance, algorithms can easily be
used to create a flood of entries on online forums and social mass
media.[^88^](#c2-note-0088){#c2-note-0088a} Narrative Science is only
one of many companies offering automated text analysis and production.
As implemented by IBM and other firms, so-called E-discovery software
promises to reduce dramatically the amount of time and effort required
to analyze the constantly growing numbers of files that are relevant to
complex legal cases. Without such software, it would be impossible in
practice for lawyers to deal with so many documents. Numerous bots
(automated editing programs) are active in the production of Wikipedia
as well. Whereas, in the German edition, bots are forbidden from writing
their own articles, this is not the case in the Swedish version.
Measured by the number of entries, the latter is now the second-largest
edition of the online encyclopedia in the []{#Page_108 type="pagebreak"
title="108"}world, for, in the summer of 2013, a single bot contributed
more than 200,000 articles to it.[^89^](#c2-note-0089){#c2-note-0089a}
Since 2013, moreover, the company Epagogix has offered software that
uses historical data to evaluate the market potential of film scripts.
At least one major Hollywood studio uses this software behind the backs
of scriptwriters and directors, for, according to the company\'s CEO,
the latter would be "nervous" to learn that their creative work was
being analyzed in such a way.[^90^](#c2-note-0090){#c2-note-0090a}
Think, too, of the typical statement that is made at the beginning of a
call to a telephone hotline -- "This call may be recorded for training
purposes." Increasingly, this training is not intended for the employees
of the call center but rather for algorithms. The latter are expected to
learn how to recognize the personality type of the caller and, on that
basis, to produce an appropriate script to be read by its poorly
educated and part-time human
co-workers.[^91^](#c2-note-0091){#c2-note-0091a} Another example is the
use of algorithms to grade student
essays,[^92^](#c2-note-0092){#c2-note-0092a} or ... But there is no need
to expand this list any further. Even without additional references to
comparable developments in the fields of image, sound, language, and
film analysis, it is clear by now that, on many fronts, the borders
between the creative and the mechanical have
shifted.[^93^](#c2-note-0093){#c2-note-0093a}
:::
The algorithms used for such tasks, however, are no longer simple
sequences of static instructions. They are no longer repeated unchanged,
over and over again, but are dynamic and adaptive to a high degree. The
computing power available today is used to write programs that modify
and improve themselves semi-automatically and in response to feedback.
What this means can be illustrated by the example of evolutionary and
self-learning algorithms. An evolutionary algorithm is developed in an
iterative process that continues to run until the desired result has
been achieved. In most cases, the values of the variables of the first
generation of algorithms are chosen at random in order to diminish the
influence of the programmer\'s presuppositions on the results. These
cannot be avoided entirely, however, because the type of variables
(independent of their value) has to be determined in the first place. I
will return to this problem later on. This is []{#Page_109
type="pagebreak" title="109"}followed by a phase of evaluation: the
output of every tested algorithm is evaluated according to how close it
is to the desired solution. The best are then chosen and combined with
one another. In addition, mutations (that is, random changes) are
introduced. These steps are then repeated as often as necessary until,
according to the specifications in question, the algorithm is
"sufficient" or cannot be improved any further. By means of intensive
computational processes, algorithms are thus "cultivated"; that is,
large numbers of these are tested instead of a single one being designed
analytically and then implemented. At the heart of this pursuit is a
functional solution that proves itself experimentally and in practice,
but about which it might no longer be possible to know why it functions
or whether it actually is the best possible solution. The fundamental
methods behind this process largely derive from the 1970s (the first
stage of artificial intelligence), the difference being that today they
can be carried out far more effectively. One of the best-known examples
of an evolutionary algorithm is that of Google Flu Trends. In order to
predict which regions will be especially struck by the flu in a given
year, it evaluates the geographic distribution of internet searches for
particular terms ("cold remedies," for instance). To develop the
program, Google tested 450 million different models until one emerged
that could reliably identify local flu epidemics one to two weeks ahead
of the national health authorities.[^94^](#c2-note-0094){#c2-note-0094a}
In pursuits of this magnitude, the necessary processes can only be
administered by computer programs. The series of tests are no longer
conducted by programmers but rather by algorithms. In short, algorithms
are implemented in order to write new algorithms or determine their
variables. If this reflexive process, in turn, is built into an
algorithm, then the latter becomes "self-learning": the programmers do
not set the rules for its execution but rather the rules according to
which the algorithm is supposed to know how to accomplish a particular
goal. In many cases, the solution strategies are so complex that they
are incomprehensible in retrospect. They can no longer be tested
logically, only experimentally. Such algorithms are essentially black
boxes -- objects that can only be understood by their outer behavior but
whose internal structure cannot be known.[]{#Page_110 type="pagebreak"
title="110"}
Automatic facial recognition, as used in surveillance technologies and
for authorizing access to certain things, is based on the fact that
computers can evaluate large numbers of facial images, first to produce
a general model for a face, then to identify the variables that make a
face unique and therefore recognizable. With so-called "unsupervised" or
"deep-learning" algorithms, some developers and companies have even
taken this a step further: computers are expected to extract faces from
unstructured images -- that is, from volumes of images that contain
images both with faces and without them -- and to do so without
possessing in advance any model of the face in question. So far, the
extraction and evaluation of unknown patterns from unstructured material
has only been achieved in the case of very simple patterns -- with edges
or surfaces in images, for instance -- for it is extremely complex and
computationally intensive to program such learning processes. In recent
years, however, there have been enormous leaps in available computing
power, and both the data inputs and the complexity of the learning
models have increased exponentially. Today, on the basis of simple
patterns, algorithms are developing improved recognition of the complex
content of images. They are refining themselves on their own. The term
"deep learning" is meant to denote this very complexity. In 2012, Google
was able to demonstrate the performance capacity of its new programs in
an impressive manner: from a collection of randomly chosen YouTube
videos, analyzed in a cluster by 1,000 computers with 16,000 processors,
it was possible to create a model in just three days that increased
facial recognition in unstructured images by 70
percent.[^95^](#c2-note-0095){#c2-note-0095a} Of course, the algorithm
does not "know" what a face is, but it reliably recognizes a class of
forms that humans refer to as a face. One advantage of a model that is
not created on the basis of prescribed parameters is that it can also
identify faces in non-standard situations (for instance if a person is
in the background, if a face is half-concealed, or if it has been
recorded at a sharp angle). Thanks to this technique, it is possible to
search the content of images directly and not, as before, primarily by
searching their descriptions. Such algorithms are also being used to
identify people in images and to connect them in social networks with
the profiles of the people in question, and this []{#Page_111
type="pagebreak" title="111"}without any cooperation from the users
themselves. Such algorithms are also expected to assist in directly
controlling activity in "unstructured" reality, for instance in
self-driving cars or other autonomous mobile applications that are of
great interest to the military in particular.
Algorithms of this sort can react and adjust themselves directly to
changes in the environment. This feedback, however, also shortens the
timeframe within which they are able to generate repetitive and
therefore predictable results. Thus, algorithms and their predictive
powers can themselves become unpredictable. Stock markets have
frequently experienced so-called "sub-second extreme events"; that is,
price fluctuations that happen in less than a
second.[^96^](#c2-note-0096){#c2-note-0096a} Dramatic "flash crashes,"
however, such as that which occurred on May 6, 2010, when the Dow Jones
Index dropped almost a thousand points in a few minutes (and was thus
perceptible to humans), have not been terribly
uncommon.[^97^](#c2-note-0097){#c2-note-0097a} With the introduction of
voice commands on mobile phones (Apple\'s Siri, for example, which came
out in 2011), programs based on self-learning algorithms have now
reached the public at large and have infiltrated increased areas of
everyday life.
:::
Orders generated by algorithms are a constitutive element of the digital
condition. On the one hand, the mechanical pre-sorting of the
(informational) world is a precondition for managing immense and
unstructured amounts of data. On the other hand, these large amounts of
data and the computing centers in which they are stored and processed
provide the material precondition for developing increasingly complex
algorithms. Necessities and possibilities are mutually motivating one
another.[^98^](#c2-note-0098){#c2-note-0098a}
Perhaps the best-known algorithms that sort the digital infosphere and
make it usable in its present form are those of search engines, above
all Google\'s PageRank. Thanks to these, we can find our way around in a
world of unstructured information and transfer increasingly larger parts
of the (informational) world into the order of unstructuredness without
giving rise to the "Library of Babel." Here, "unstructured" means that
there is no prescribed order such as (to stick []{#Page_112
type="pagebreak" title="112"}with the image of the library) a cataloging
system that assigns to each book a specific place on a shelf. Rather,
the books are spread all over the place and are dynamically arranged,
each according to a search, so that the appropriate books for each
visitor are always standing ready at the entrance. Yet the metaphor of
books being strewn all about is problematic, for "unstructuredness" does
not simply mean the absence of any structure but rather the presence of
another type of order -- a meta-structure, a potential for order -- out
of which innumerable specific arrangements can be generated on an ad hoc
basis. This meta-structure is created by algorithms. They subsequently
derive from it an actual order, which the user encounters, for instance,
when he or she scrolls through a list of hits produced by a search
engine. What the user does not see are the complex preconditions for
assembling the search results. By the middle of 2014, according to the
company\'s own information, the Google index alone included more than a
hundred million gigabytes of data.
Originally (that is, in the second half of the 1990s), PageRank
functioned in such a way that the algorithm analyzed the structure of
links on the World Wide Web, first by noting the number of links that
referred to a given document, and second by evaluating the "relevance"
of the site that linked to the document in question. The relevance of a
site, in turn, was determined by the number of links that led to it.
From these two variables, every document registered by the search engine
was assigned a value, the PageRank. The latter served to present the
documents found with a given search term as a hierarchical list (search
results), whereby the document with the highest value was listed
first.[^99^](#c2-note-0099){#c2-note-0099a} This algorithm was extremely
successful because it reduced the unfathomable chaos of the World Wide
Web to a task that could be managed without difficulty by an individual
user: inputting a search term and selecting from one of the presented
"hits." The simplicity of the user\'s final choice, together with the
quality of the algorithmic pre-selection, quickly pushed Google past its
competition.
Underlying this process is the assumption that every link is an
indication of relevance, and that links from frequently linked (that is,
popular) sources are more important than those from less frequently
linked (that is, unpopular) sources. []{#Page_113 type="pagebreak"
title="113"}The advantage of this assumption is that it can be
understood in terms of purely quantitative variables and it is not
necessary to have any direct understanding of a document\'s content or
of the context in which it exists.
In the middle of the 1990s, when the first version of the PageRank
algorithm was developed, the problem of judging the relevance of
documents whose content could only partially be evaluated was not a new
one. Science administrators at universities and funding agencies had
been facing this difficulty since the 1950s. During the rise of the
knowledge economy, the number of scientific publications increased
rapidly. Scientific fields, perspectives, and methods also multiplied
and diversified during this time, so that even experts could not survey
all of the work being done in their own areas of
research.[^100^](#c2-note-0100){#c2-note-0100a} Thus, instead of reading
and evaluating the content of countless new publications, they shifted
their analysis to a higher level of abstraction. They began to count how
often an article or book was cited and applied this information to
assess the value of a given author or
publication.[^101^](#c2-note-0101){#c2-note-0101a} The underlying
assumption was (and remains) that only important things are referenced,
and therefore every citation and every reference can be regarded as an
indirect vote for something\'s relevance.
In both cases -- classifying a chaotic sphere of information and
administering an expanding industry of knowledge -- the challenge is to
develop dynamic orders for rapidly changing fields, enabling the
evaluation of the importance of individual documents without knowledge
of their content. Because the analysis of citations or links operates on
a purely quantitative basis, large amounts of data can be quickly
structured with them, and especially relevant positions can be
determined. The second advantage of this approach is that it does not
require any assumptions about the contours of different fields or their
relationships to one another. This enables the organization of
disordered or dynamic content. In both cases, references made by the
actors themselves are used: citations in a scientific text, links on
websites. Their value for establishing the order of a field as a whole,
however, is only visible in the aggregate, for instance in the frequency
with which a given article is
cited.[^102^](#c2-note-0102){#c2-note-0102a} In both cases, the shift
from analyzing "data" (the content of documents in the traditional
sense) to []{#Page_114 type="pagebreak" title="114"}analyzing
"meta-data" (describing documents in light of their relationships to one
another) is a precondition for being able to make any use at all of
growing amounts of information.[^103^](#c2-note-0103){#c2-note-0103a}
This shift introduced a new level of abstraction. Information is no
longer understood as a representation of external reality; its
significance is not evaluated with regard to the relation between
"information" and "the world," for instance with a qualitative criterion
such as "true"/"false." Rather, the sphere of information is treated as
a self-referential, closed world, and documents are accordingly only
evaluated in terms of their position within this world, though with
quantitative criteria such as "central"/"peripheral."
Even though the PageRank algorithm was highly effective and assisted
Google\'s rapid ascent to a market-leading position, at the beginning it
was still relatively simple and its mode of operation was at least
partially transparent. It followed the classical statistical model of an
algorithm. A document or site referred to by many links was considered
more important than one to which fewer links
referred.[^104^](#c2-note-0104){#c2-note-0104a} The algorithm analyzed
the given structural order of information and determined the position of
every document therein, and this was largely done independently of the
context of the search and without making any assumptions about it. This
approach functioned relatively well as long as the volume of information
did not exceed a certain size, and as long as the users and their
searches were somewhat similar to one another. In both respects, this is
no longer the case. The amount of information to be pre-sorted is
increasing, and users are searching in all possible situations and
places for everything under the sun. At the time Google was founded, no
one would have thought to check the internet, quickly and while on
one\'s way, for today\'s menu at the restaurant round the corner. Now,
thanks to smartphones, this is an obvious thing to do.
:::
In order to react to such changes in user behavior -- and simultaneously
to advance it further -- Google\'s search algorithm is constantly being
modified. It has become increasingly complex and has assimilated a
greater amount of contextual []{#Page_115 type="pagebreak"
title="115"}information, which influences the value of a site within
PageRank and thus the order of search results. The algorithm is no
longer a fixed object or unchanging recipe but is transforming into a
dynamic process, an opaque cloud composed of multiple interacting
algorithms that are continuously refined (between 500 and 600 times a
year, according to some estimates). These ongoing developments are so
extensive that, since 2003, several new versions of the algorithm cloud
have appeared each year with their own names. In 2014 alone, Google
carried out 13 large updates, more than ever
before.[^105^](#c2-note-0105){#c2-note-0105a}
These changes continue to bring about new levels of abstraction, so that
the algorithm takes into account additional variables such as the time
and place of a search, alongside a person\'s previously recorded
behavior -- but also his or her involvement in social environments, and
much more. Personalization and contextualization were made part of
Google\'s search algorithm in 2005. At first it was possible to choose
whether or not to use these. Since 2009, however, they have been a fixed
and binding component for everyone who conducts a search through
Google.[^106^](#c2-note-0106){#c2-note-0106a} By the middle of 2013, the
search algorithm had grown to include at least 200
variables.[^107^](#c2-note-0107){#c2-note-0107a} What is relevant is
that the algorithm no longer determines the position of a document
within a dynamic informational world that exists for everyone
externally. Instead, it now assigns a rank to their content within a
dynamic and singular universe of information that is tailored to every
individual user. For every person, an entirely different order is
created instead of just an excerpt from a previously existing order. The
world is no longer being represented; it is generated uniquely for every
user and then presented. Google is not the only company that has gone
down this path. Orders produced by algorithms have become increasingly
oriented toward creating, for each user, his or her own singular world.
Facebook, dating services, and other social mass media have been
pursuing this approach even more radically than Google.
:::
::: {.section}
### From the data shadow to the synthetic profile {#c2-sec-0024}
This form of generating the world requires not only detailed information
about the external world (that is, the reality []{#Page_116
type="pagebreak" title="116"}shared by everyone) but also information
about every individual\'s own relation to the
latter.[^108^](#c2-note-0108){#c2-note-0108a} To this end, profiles are
established for every user, and the more extensive they are, the better
they are for the algorithms. A profile created by Google, for instance,
identifies the user on three levels: as a "knowledgeable person" who is
informed about the world (this is established, for example, by recording
a person\'s searches, browsing behavior, etc.), as a "physical person"
who is located and mobile in the world (a component established, for
example, by tracking someone\'s location through a smartphone, sensors
in a smart home, or body signals), and as a "social person" who
interacts with other people (a facet that can be determined, for
instance, by following someone\'s activity on social mass
media).[^109^](#c2-note-0109){#c2-note-0109a}
Unlike the situation in the 1990s, however, these profiles are no longer
simply representations of singular people -- they are not "digital
personas" or "data shadows." They no longer represent what is
conventionally referred to as "individuality," in the sense of a
spatially and temporally uniform identity. On the one hand, profiles
rather consist of sub-individual elements -- of fragments of recorded
behavior that can be evaluated on the basis of a particular search
without promising to represent a person as a whole -- and they consist,
on the other hand, of clusters of multiple people, so that the person
being modeled can simultaneously occupy different positions in time.
This temporal differentiation enables predictions of the following sort
to be made: a person who has already done *x* will, with a probability
of *y*, go on to engage in activity *z*. It is in this way that Amazon
assembles its book recommendations, for the company knows that, within
the cluster of people that constitutes part of every person\'s profile,
a certain percentage of them have already gone through this sequence of
activity. Or, as the data-mining company Science Rockstars (!) once
pointedly expressed on its website, "Your next activity is a function of
the behavior of others and your own past."
Google and other providers of algorithmically generated orders have been
devoting increased resources to the prognostic capabilities of their
programs in order to make the confusing and potentially time-consuming
step of the search obsolete. The goal is to minimize a rift that comes
to light []{#Page_117 type="pagebreak" title="117"}in the act of
searching, namely that between the world as everyone experiences it --
plagued by uncertainty, for searching implies "not knowing something" --
and the world of algorithmically generated order, in which certainty
prevails, for everything has been well arranged in advance. Ideally,
questions should be answered before they are asked. The first attempt by
Google to eliminate this rift is called Google Now, and its slogan is
"The right information at just the right time." The program, which was
originally developed as an app but has since been made available on
Chrome, Google\'s own web browser, attempts to anticipate, on the basis
of existing data, a user\'s next step, and to provide the necessary
information before it is searched for in order that such steps take
place efficiently. Thus, for instance, it draws upon information from a
user\'s calendar in order to figure out where he or she will have to go
next. On the basis of real-time traffic data, it will then suggest the
optimal way to get there. For those driving cars, the amount of traffic
on the road will be part of the equation. This is ascertained by
analyzing the motion profiles of other drivers, which will allow the
program to determine whether the traffic is flowing or stuck in a jam.
If enough historical data is taken into account, the hope is that it
will be possible to redirect cars in such a way that traffic jams should
no longer occur.[^110^](#c2-note-0110){#c2-note-0110a} For those who use
public transport, Google Now evaluates real-time data about the
locations of various transport services. With this information, it will
suggest the optimal route and, depending on the calculated travel time,
it will send a reminder (sometimes earlier, sometimes later) when it is
time to go. That which Google is just experimenting with and testing in
a limited and unambiguous context is already part of Facebook\'s
everyday operations. With its EdgeRank algorithm, Facebook already
organizes everyone\'s newsfeed, entirely in the background and without
any explicit user interaction. On the basis of three variables -- user
affinity (previous interactions between two users), content weight (the
rate of interaction between all users and a specific piece of content),
and currency (the age of a post) -- the algorithm selects content from
the status updates made by one\'s friends to be displayed on one\'s own
page.[^111^](#c2-note-0111){#c2-note-0111a} In this way, Facebook
ensures that the stream of updates remains easy to scroll through, while
also -- it is safe []{#Page_118 type="pagebreak" title="118"}to assume
-- leaving enough room for advertising. This potential for manipulation,
which algorithms possess as they work away in the background, will be
the topic of my next section.
:::
::: {.section}
### Variables and correlations {#c2-sec-0025}
Every complex algorithm contains a multitude of variables and usually an
even greater number of ways to make connections between them. Every
variable and every relation, even if they are expressed in technical or
mathematical terms, codifies assumptions that express a specific
position in the world. There can be no purely descriptive variables,
just as there can be no such thing as "raw
data."[^112^](#c2-note-0112){#c2-note-0112a} Both -- data and variables
-- are always already "cooked"; that is, they are engendered through
cultural operations and formed within cultural
categories.[^113^](#c2-note-0113){#c2-note-0113a} With every use of
produced data and with every execution of an algorithm, the assumptions
embedded in them are activated, and the positions contained within them
have effects on the world that the algorithm generates and presents.
As already mentioned, the early version of the PageRank algorithm was
essentially based on the rather simple assumption that frequently linked
content is more relevant than content that is only seldom linked to, and
that links to sites that are themselves frequently linked to should be
given more weight than those found on sites with fewer links to them.
Replacing the qualitative criterion of "relevance" with the quantitative
criterion of "popularity" not only proved to be tremendously practical
but also extremely consequential, for search engines not only describe
the world; they create it as well. That which search engines put at the
top of this list is not just already popular but will remain so. A third
of all users click on the first search result, and around 95 percent do
not look past the first 10.[^114^](#c2-note-0114){#c2-note-0114a} Even
the earliest version of the PageRank algorithm did not represent
existing reality but rather (co-)constituted it.
Popularity, however, is not the only element with which algorithms
actively give shape to the user\'s world. A search engine can only sort,
weigh, and make available that portion of information which has already
been incorporated into its index. Everything else remains invisible. The
relation between []{#Page_119 type="pagebreak" title="119"}the recorded
part of the internet (the "surface web") and the unrecorded part (the
"deep web") is difficult to determine. Estimates have varied between
ratios of 1:5 and 1:500.[^115^](#c2-note-0115){#c2-note-0115a} There are
many reasons why content might be inaccessible to search engines.
Perhaps the information has been saved in formats that search engines
cannot read or can only poorly read, or perhaps it has been hidden
behind proprietary barriers such as paywalls. In order to expand the
realm of things that can be exploited by their algorithms, the operators
of search engines offer extensive guidance about how providers should
design their sites so that search tools can find them in an optimal
manner. It is not necessary to follow this guidance, but given the
central role of search engines in sorting and filtering information, it
is clear that they exercise a great deal of power by setting the
standards.[^116^](#c2-note-0116){#c2-note-0116a}
That the individual must "voluntarily" submit to this authority is
typical of the power of networks, which do not give instructions but
rather constitute preconditions. Yet it is in the interest of (almost)
every producer of information to optimize its position in a search
engine\'s index, and thus there is a strong incentive to accept the
preconditions in question. Considering, moreover, the nearly
monopolistic character of many providers of algorithmically generated
orders and the high price that one would have to pay if one\'s own site
were barely (or not at all) visible to others, the term "voluntary"
begins to take on a rather foul taste. This is a more or less subtle way
of pre-formatting the world so that it can be optimally recorded by
algorithms.[^117^](#c2-note-0117){#c2-note-0117a}
The providers of search engines usually justify such methods in the name
of offering "more efficient" services and "more relevant" results.
Ostensibly technical and neutral terms such as "efficiency" and
"relevance" do little, however, to conceal the political nature of
defining variables. Efficient with respect to what? Relevant for whom?
These are issues that are decided without much discussion by the
developers and institutions that regard the algorithms as their own
property. Every now and again such questions incite public debates,
mostly when the interests of one provider happen to collide with those
of its competition. Thus, for instance, the initiative known as
FairSearch has argued that Google abuses its market power as a search
engine to privilege its []{#Page_120 type="pagebreak" title="120"}own
content and thus to showcase it prominently in search
results.[^118^](#c2-note-0118){#c2-note-0118a} FairSearch\'s
representatives alleged, for example, that Google favors its own map
service in the case of address searches and its own price comparison
service in the case of product searches. The argument had an effect. In
November of 2010, the European Commission initiated an antitrust
investigation against Google. In 2014, a settlement was proposed that
would have required the American internet giant to pay certain
concessions, but the members of the Commission, the EU Parliament, and
consumer protection agencies were not satisfied with the agreement. In
April 2015, the anti-trust proceedings were recommenced by a newly
appointed Commission, its reasoning being that "Google does not apply to
its own comparison shopping service the system of penalties which it
applies to other comparison shopping services on the basis of defined
parameters, and which can lead to the lowering of the rank in which they
appear in Google\'s general search results
pages."[^119^](#c2-note-0119){#c2-note-0119a} In other words, the
Commission accused the company of manipulating search results to its own
advantage and the disadvantage of users.
This is not the only instance in which the political side of search
algorithms has come under public scrutiny. In the summer of 2012, Google
announced that sites with higher numbers of copyright removal notices
would henceforth appear lower in its
rankings.[^120^](#c2-note-0120){#c2-note-0120a} The company thus
introduced explicitly political and economic criteria in order to
influence what, according to the standards of certain powerful players
(such as film studios), users were able to
view.[^121^](#c2-note-0121){#c2-note-0121a} In this case, too, it would
be possible to speak of the personalization of searching, except that
the heart of the situation was not the natural person of the user but
rather the juridical person of the copyright holder. It was according to
the latter\'s interests and preferences that searching was being
reoriented. Amazon has employed similar tactics. In 2014, the online
merchant changed its celebrated recommendation algorithm with the goal
of reducing the presence of books released by irritating publishers that
dared to enter into price negotiations with the
company.[^122^](#c2-note-0122){#c2-note-0122a}
Controversies over the methods of Amazon or Google, however, are the
exception rather than the rule. Necessary (but never neutral) decisions
about recording and evaluating data []{#Page_121 type="pagebreak"
title="121"}with algorithms are being made almost all the time without
any discussion whatsoever. The logic of the original PageRank algorithm
was criticized as early as the year 2000 for essentially representing
the commercial logic of mass media, systematically disadvantaging
less-popular though perhaps otherwise relevant information, and thus
undermining the "substantive vision of the web as an inclusive
democratic space."[^123^](#c2-note-0123){#c2-note-0123a} The changes to
the search algorithm that have been adopted since then may have modified
this tendency, but they have certainly not weakened it. In addition to
concentrating on what is popular, the new variables privilege recently
uploaded and constantly updated content. The selection of search results
is now contingent upon the location of the user, and it takes into
account his or her social networking. It is oriented toward the average
of a dynamically modeled group. In other words, Google\'s new algorithm
favors that which is gaining popularity within a user\'s social network.
The global village is thus becoming more and more
provincial.[^124^](#c2-note-0124){#c2-note-0124a}
:::
::: {.section}
### Data behaviorism {#c2-sec-0026}
Algorithms such as Google\'s thus reiterate and reinforce a tendency
that has already been apparent on both the level of individual users and
that of communal formations: in order to deal with the vast amounts and
complexity of information, they direct their gaze inward, which is not
to say toward the inner being of individual people. As a level of
reference, the individual person -- with an interior world and with
ideas, dreams, and wishes -- is irrelevant. For algorithms, people are
black boxes that can only be understood in terms of their reactions to
stimuli. Consciousness, perception, and intention do not play any role
for them. In this regard, the legal philosopher Antoinette Rouvroy has
written about "data behaviorism."[^125^](#c2-note-0125){#c2-note-0125a}
With this, she is referring to the gradual return of a long-discredited
approach to behavioral psychology that postulated that human behavior
could be explained, predicted, and controlled purely by our outwardly
observable and measurable actions.[^126^](#c2-note-0126){#c2-note-0126a}
Psychological dimensions were ignored (and are ignored in this new
version of behaviorism) because it is difficult to observe them
empirically. Accordingly, this approach also did away with the need
[]{#Page_122 type="pagebreak" title="122"}to question people directly or
take into account their subjective experiences, thoughts, and feelings.
People were regarded (and are so again today) as unreliable, as poor
judges of themselves, and as only partly honest when disclosing
information. Any strictly empirical science, or so the thinking went,
required its practitioners to disregard everything that did not result
in physical and observable action. From this perspective, it was
possible to break down even complex behavior into units of stimulus and
reaction. This led to the conviction that someone observing another\'s
activity always knows more than the latter does about himself or herself
for, unlike the person being observed, whose impressions can be
inaccurate, the observer is in command of objective and complete
information. Even early on, this approach faced a wave of critique. It
was held to be mechanistic, reductionist, and authoritarian because it
privileged the observing scientist over the subject. In practice, it
quickly ran into its own limitations: it was simply too expensive and
complicated to gather data about human behavior.
Yet that has changed radically in recent years. It is now possible to
measure ever more activities, conditions, and contexts empirically.
Algorithms like Google\'s or Amazon\'s form the technical backdrop for
the revival of a mechanistic, reductionist, and authoritarian approach
that has resurrected the long-lost dream of an objective view -- the
view from nowhere.[^127^](#c2-note-0127){#c2-note-0127a} Every critique
of this positivistic perspective -- that every measurement result, for
instance, reflects not only the measured but also the measurer -- is
brushed aside with reference to the sheer amounts of data that are now
at our disposal.[^128^](#c2-note-0128){#c2-note-0128a} This attitude
substantiates the claim of those in possession of these new and
comprehensive powers of observation (which, in addition to Google and
Facebook, also includes the intelligence services of Western nations),
namely that they know more about individuals than individuals know about
themselves, and are thus able to answer our questions before we ask
them. As mentioned above, this is a goal that Google expressly hopes to
achieve.
At issue with this "inward turn" is thus the space of communal
formations, which is constituted by the sum of all of the activities of
their interacting participants. In this case, however, a communal
formation is not consciously created []{#Page_123 type="pagebreak"
title="123"}and maintained in a horizontal process, but rather
synthetically constructed as a computational function. Depending on the
context and the need, individuals can either be assigned to this
function or removed from it. All of this happens behind the user\'s back
and in accordance with the goals and positions that are relevant to the
developers of a given algorithm, be it to optimize profit or
surveillance, create social norms, improve services, or whatever else.
The results generated in this way are sold to users as a personalized
and efficient service that provides a quasi-magical product. Out of the
enormous haystack of searchable information, results are generated that
are made to seem like the very needle that we have been looking for. At
best, it is only partially transparent how these results came about and
which positions in the world are strengthened or weakened by them. Yet,
as long as the needle is somewhat functional, most users are content,
and the algorithm registers this contentedness to validate itself. In
this dynamic world of unmanageable complexity, users are guided by a
sort of radical, short-term pragmatism. They are happy to have the world
pre-sorted for them in order to improve their activity in it. Regarding
the matter of whether the information being provided represents the
world accurately or not, they are unable to formulate an adequate
assessment for themselves, for it is ultimately impossible to answer
this question without certain resources. Outside of rapidly shrinking
domains of specialized or everyday knowledge, it is becoming
increasingly difficult to gain an overview of the world without
mechanisms that pre-sort it. Users are only able to evaluate search
results pragmatically; that is, in light of whether or not they are
helpful in solving a concrete problem. In this regard, it is not
paramount that they find the best solution or the correct answer but
rather one that is available and sufficient. This reality lends an
enormous amount of influence to the institutions and processes that
provide the solutions and answers.[]{#Page_124 type="pagebreak"
title="124"}
:::
:::
::: {.section .notesList}
[1](#c2-note-0001a){#c2-note-0001} André Rottmann, "Reflexive Systems
of Reference: Approximations to 'Referentialism' in Contemporary Art,"
trans. Gerrit Jackson, in Dirk Snauwaert et al. (eds), *Rehabilitation:
The Legacy of the Modern Movement* (Ghent: MER, 2010), pp. 97--106, at
99.
[2](#c2-note-0002a){#c2-note-0002} The recognizability of the sources
distinguishes these processes from plagiarism. The latter operates with
the complete opposite aim, namely that of borrowing sources without
acknowledging them.
[4](#c2-note-0004a){#c2-note-0004} Theodor W. Adorno, *Aesthetic
Theory*, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor (Minneapolis, MN: University of
Minnesota Press, 1997), p. 151.
[5](#c2-note-0005a){#c2-note-0005} Peter Bürger, *Theory of the
Avant-Garde*, trans. Michael Shaw (Minneapolis, MN: University of
Minnesota Press, 1984).
[6](#c2-note-0006a){#c2-note-0006} Felix Stalder, "Neun Thesen zur
Remix-Kultur," *i-rights.info* (May 25, 2009), online.
[7](#c2-note-0007a){#c2-note-0007} Florian Cramer, *Exe.cut(up)able
Statements: Poetische Kalküle und Phantasmen des selbstausführenden
Texts* (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2011), pp. 9--10 \[--trans.\]
[8](#c2-note-0008a){#c2-note-0008} McLuhan stressed that, despite using
the alphabet, every manuscript is unique because it not only depended on
the sequence of letters but also on the individual ability of a given
scribe to []{#Page_185 type="pagebreak" title="185"}lend these letters a
particular shape. With the rise of the printing press, the alphabet shed
these last elements of calligraphy and became typography.
[9](#c2-note-0009a){#c2-note-0009} Elisabeth L. Eisenstein, *The
Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe* (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1983), p. 15.
[10](#c2-note-0010a){#c2-note-0010} Eisenstein, *The Printing
Revolution in Early Modern Europe*, p. 204.
[11](#c2-note-0011a){#c2-note-0011} The fundamental aspects of these
conventions were formulated as early as the beginning of the sixteenth
century; see Michael Giesecke, *Der Buchdruck in der frühen Neuzeit:
Eine historische Fallstudie über die Durchsetzung neuer Informations-
und Kommunikationstechnologien* (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1991), pp.
420--40.
[12](#c2-note-0012a){#c2-note-0012} Eisenstein, *The Printing
Revolution in Early Modern Europe*, p. 49.
[13](#c2-note-0013a){#c2-note-0013} In April 2014, the Authors Guild --
the association of American writers that had sued Google -- filed an
appeal to overturn the decision and made a public statement demanding
that a new organization be established to license the digital rights of
out-of-print books. See "Authors Guild: Amazon was Google's Target,"
*The Authors Guild: Industry & Advocacy News* (April 11, 2014), online.
In October 2015, however, the next-highest authority -- the United
States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit -- likewise decided in
Google\'s favor. The Authors Guild promptly announced its intention to
take the case to the Supreme Court.
[14](#c2-note-0014a){#c2-note-0014} Jean-Noël Jeanneney, *Google and
the Myth of Universal Knowledge: A View from Europe*, trans. Teresa
Lavender Fagan (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2007).
[15](#c2-note-0015a){#c2-note-0015} Within the framework of the Images
for the Future project (2007--14), the Netherlands alone invested more
than €170 million to digitize the collections of the most important
audiovisual archives. Over 10 years, the cost of digitizing the entire
cultural heritage of Europe has been estimated to be around €100
billion. See Nick Poole, *The Cost of Digitising Europe\'s Cultural
Heritage: A Report for the Comité des Sages of the European Commission*
(November 2010), online.
[16](#c2-note-0016a){#c2-note-0016} Richard Darnton, "The National
Digital Public Library Is Launched!", *New York Review of Books* (April
25, 2013), online.
[17](#c2-note-0017a){#c2-note-0017} According to estimates by the
British Library, so-called "orphan works" alone -- that is, works still
legally protected but whose right holders are unknown -- make up around
40 percent of the books in its collection that still fall under
copyright law. In an effort to alleviate this problem, the European
Parliament and the European Commission issued a directive []{#Page_186
type="pagebreak" title="186"}in 2012 concerned with "certain permitted
uses of orphan works." This has allowed libraries and archives to make
works available online without permission if, "after carrying out
diligent searches," the copyright holders cannot be found. What
qualifies as a "diligent search," however, is so strictly formulated
that the German Library Association has called the directive
"impracticable." Deutscher Bibliotheksverband, "Rechtlinie über
bestimmte zulässige Formen der Nutzung verwaister Werke" (February 27,
2012), online.
[19](#c2-note-0019a){#c2-note-0019} The numbers in this area of
activity are notoriously unreliable, and therefore only rough estimates
are possible. It seems credible, however, that the Pirate Bay was
attracting around a billion page views per month by the end of 2013.
That would make it the seventy-fourth most popular internet destination.
See Ernesto, "Top 10 Most Popular Torrent Sites of 2014" (January 4,
2014), online.
[20](#c2-note-0020a){#c2-note-0020} See the documentary film *TPB AFK:
The Pirate Bay Away from Keyboard* (2013), directed by Simon Klose.
[21](#c2-note-0021a){#c2-note-0021} In technical terms, there is hardly
any difference between a "stream" and a "download." In both cases, a
complete file is transferred to the user\'s computer and played.
[22](#c2-note-0022a){#c2-note-0022} The practice is legal in Germany
but illegal in Austria, though digitized texts are routinely made
available there in seminars. See Seyavash Amini Khanimani and Nikolaus
Forgó, "Rechtsgutachten über die Erforderlichkeit einer freien
Werknutzung im österreichischen Urheberrecht zur Privilegierung
elektronisch unterstützter Lehre," *Forum Neue Medien Austria* (January
2011), online.
[23](#c2-note-0023a){#c2-note-0023} Deutscher Bibliotheksverband,
"Digitalisierung" (2015), online \[--trans\].
[24](#c2-note-0024a){#c2-note-0024} David Weinberger, *Everything Is
Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder* (New York: Times
Books, 2007).
[25](#c2-note-0025a){#c2-note-0025} This is not a question of material
wealth. Those who are economically or socially marginalized are
confronted with the same phenomenon. Their primary experience of this
excess is with cheap goods and junk.
[26](#c2-note-0026a){#c2-note-0026} See Gregory Bateson, "Form,
Substance and Difference," in Bateson, *Steps to an Ecology of Mind:
Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution and
Epistemology* (London: Jason Aronson, 1972), pp. 455--71, at 460:
"\[I\]n fact, what we mean by information -- the elementary unit of
information -- is *a difference which makes a difference*" (the emphasis
is original).
[27](#c2-note-0027a){#c2-note-0027} Inke Arns and Gabriele Horn,
*History Will Repeat Itself* (Frankfurt am Main: Revolver, 2007), p.
42.[]{#Page_187 type="pagebreak" title="187"}
[28](#c2-note-0028a){#c2-note-0028} See the film *The Battle of
Orgreave* (2001), directed by Mike Figgis.
[29](#c2-note-0029a){#c2-note-0029} Theresa Winge, "Costuming the
Imagination: Origins of Anime and Manga Cosplay," *Mechademia* 1 (2006),
pp. 65--76.
[30](#c2-note-0030a){#c2-note-0030} Nicolle Lamerichs, "Stranger than
Fiction: Fan Identity in Cosplay," *Transformative Works and Cultures* 7
(2011), online.
[31](#c2-note-0031a){#c2-note-0031} The *Oxford English Dictionary*
defines "selfie" as a "photographic self-portrait; *esp*. one taken with
a smartphone or webcam and shared via social media."
[32](#c2-note-0032a){#c2-note-0032} Odin Kroeger et al. (eds),
*Geistiges Eigentum und Originalität: Zur Politik der Wissens- und
Kulturproduktion* (Vienna: Turia + Kant, 2011).
[33](#c2-note-0033a){#c2-note-0033} Roland Barthes, "The Death of the
Author," in Barthes, *Image -- Music -- Text*, trans. Stephen Heath
(London: Fontana Press, 1977), pp. 142--8.
[34](#c2-note-0034a){#c2-note-0034} Heinz Rölleke and Albert
Schindehütte, *Es war einmal: Die wahren Märchen der Brüder Grimm und
wer sie ihnen erzählte* (Frankfurt am Main: Eichborn, 2011); and Heiner
Boehncke, *Marie Hassenpflug: Eine Märchenerzählerin der Brüder Grimm*
(Darmstadt: Von Zabern, 2013).
[35](#c2-note-0035a){#c2-note-0035} Hansjörg Ewert, "Alles nur
geklaut?", *Zeit Online* (February 26, 2013), online. This is not a new
realization but has long been a special area of research for
musicologists. What is new, however, is that it is no longer
controversial outside of this narrow disciplinary discourse. See Peter
J. Burkholder, "The Uses of Existing Music: Musical Borrowing as a
Field," *Notes* 50 (1994), pp. 851--70.
[36](#c2-note-0036a){#c2-note-0036} Zygmunt Bauman, *Liquid Modernity*
(Cambridge: Polity, 2000), p. 56.
[37](#c2-note-0037a){#c2-note-0037} Quoted from Eran Schaerf\'s audio
installation *FM-Scenario: Reality Race* (2013), online.
[38](#c2-note-0038a){#c2-note-0038} The number of members, for
instance, of the two large political parties in Germany, the Social
Democratic Party and the Christian Democratic Union, reached its peak at
the end of the 1970s or the beginning of the 1980s. Both were able to
increase their absolute numbers for a brief time at the beginning of the
1990s, when the Christian Democratic Party even reached its absolute
high point, but this can be explained by a surge in new members after
reunification. By 2010, both parties already had fewer members than
Greenpeace, whose 580,000 members make it Germany's largest NGO.
Parallel to this, between 1970 and 2010, the proportion of people
without any religious affiliations shrank to approximately 37 percent.
That there are more churches and political parties today is indicative
of how difficult []{#Page_188 type="pagebreak" title="188"}it has become
for any single organization to attract broad strata of society.
[39](#c2-note-0039a){#c2-note-0039} Ulrich Beck, *Risk Society: Towards
a New Modernity*, trans. Mark Ritter (London: SAGE, 1992), p. 135.
[40](#c2-note-0040a){#c2-note-0040} Ferdinand Tönnies, *Community and
Society*, trans. Charles P. Loomis (East Lansing: Michigan State
University Press, 1957).
[41](#c2-note-0041a){#c2-note-0041} Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels,
"The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848)," trans. Terrell Carver, in
*The Cambridge Companion to the Communist Manifesto*, ed. Carver and
James Farr (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 237--60,
at 239. For Marx and Engels, this was -- like everything pertaining to
the dynamics of capitalism -- a thoroughly ambivalent development. For,
in this case, it finally forced people "to take a down-to-earth view of
their circumstances, their multifarious relationships" (ibid.).
[42](#c2-note-0042a){#c2-note-0042} As early as the 1940s, Karl Polanyi
demonstrated in *The Great Transformation* (New York: Farrar & Rinehart,
1944) that the idea of strictly separated spheres, which are supposed to
be so typical of society, is in fact highly ideological. He argued above
all that the attempt to implement this separation fully and consistently
in the form of the free market would destroy the foundations of society
because both the life of workers and the environment of the market
itself would be regarded as externalities. For a recent adaptation of
this argument, see David Graeber, *Debt: The First 5000 Years* (New
York: Melville House, 2011).
[43](#c2-note-0043a){#c2-note-0043} Tönnies's persistent influence can
be felt, for instance, in Zygmunt Bauman's negative assessment of the
compunction to strive for community in his *Community: Seeking Safety in
an Insecure World* (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001).
[44](#c2-note-0044a){#c2-note-0044} See, for example, Amitai Etzioni,
*The Third Way to a Good Society* (London: Demos, 2000).
[45](#c2-note-0045a){#c2-note-0045} Jean Lave and Étienne Wenger,
*Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation* (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 98.
[46](#c2-note-0046a){#c2-note-0046} Étienne Wenger, *Cultivating
Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge* (Boston, MA:
Harvard Business School Press, 2000).
[47](#c2-note-0047a){#c2-note-0047} The institutions of the
disciplinary society -- schools, factories, prisons and hospitals, for
instance -- were closed. Whoever was inside could not get out.
Participation was obligatory, and instructions had to be followed. See
Michel Foucault, *Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison*,
trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977).[]{#Page_189
type="pagebreak" title="189"}
[48](#c2-note-0048a){#c2-note-0048} Weber famously defined power as
follows: "Power is the probability that one actor within a social
relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite
resistance, regardless of the basis on which this probability rests."
Max Weber, *Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology*,
trans. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 1978), p. 53.
[49](#c2-note-0049a){#c2-note-0049} For those in complete despair, the
following tip is provided: "To get more likes, start liking the photos
of random people." Such a strategy, it seems, is more likely to increase
than decrease one's hopelessness. The quotations are from "How to Get
More Likes on Your Instagram Photos," *WikiHow* (2016), online.
[50](#c2-note-0050a){#c2-note-0050} Jeremy Gilbert, *Democracy and
Collectivity in an Age of Individualism* (London: Pluto Books, 2013).
[52](#c2-note-0052a){#c2-note-0052} Harrison Rainie and Barry Wellman,
*Networked: The New Social Operating System* (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
2012). The term is practical because it is easy to understand, but it is
also conceptually contradictory. An individual (an indivisible entity)
cannot be defined in terms of a distributed network. With a nod toward
Gilles Deleuze, the cumbersome but theoretically more precise term
"dividual" (the divisible) has also been used. See Gerald Raunig,
"Dividuen des Facebook: Das neue Begehren nach Selbstzerteilung," in
Oliver Leistert and Theo Röhle (eds), *Generation Facebook: Über das
Leben im Social Net* (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2011), pp. 145--59.
[53](#c2-note-0053a){#c2-note-0053} Jariu Saramäki et al., "Persistence
of Social Signatures in Human Communication," *Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America* 111
(2014): 942--7.
[54](#c2-note-0054a){#c2-note-0054} The term "weak ties" derives from a
study of where people find out information about new jobs. As the study
shows, this information does not usually come from close friends, whose
level of knowledge often does not differ much from that of the person
looking for a job, but rather from loose acquaintances, whose living
environments do not overlap much with one\'s own and who can therefore
make information available from outside of one\'s own network. See Mark
Granovetter, "The Strength of Weak Ties," *American Journal of
Sociology* 78 (1973): 1360--80.
[55](#c2-note-0055a){#c2-note-0055} Castells, *The Power of Identity*,
420.
[56](#c2-note-0056a){#c2-note-0056} Ulf Weigelt, "Darf der Chef
ständige Erreichbarkeit verlangen?" *Zeit Online* (June 13, 2012),
online \[--trans.\].[]{#Page_190 type="pagebreak" title="190"}
[57](#c2-note-0057a){#c2-note-0057} Hartmut Rosa, *Social Acceleration:
A New Theory of Modernity*, trans. Jonathan Trejo-Mathys (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2013).
[58](#c2-note-0058a){#c2-note-0058} This technique -- "social freezing"
-- has already become so standard that it is now regarded as way to help
women achieve a better balance between work and family life. See Kolja
Rudzio "Social Freezing: Ein Kind von Apple," *Zeit Online* (November 6,
2014), online.
[59](#c2-note-0059a){#c2-note-0059} See the film *Into Eternity*
(2009), directed by Michael Madsen.
[60](#c2-note-0060a){#c2-note-0060} Thomas S. Kuhn, *The Structure of
Scientific Revolutions*, 3rd edn (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press, 1996).
[61](#c2-note-0061a){#c2-note-0061} Werner Busch and Peter Schmoock,
*Kunst: Die Geschichte ihrer Funktionen* (Weinheim: Quadriga/Beltz,
1987), p. 179 \[--trans.\].
[62](#c2-note-0062a){#c2-note-0062} "'When Attitude Becomes Form' at
the Fondazione Prada," *Contemporary Art Daily* (September 18, 2013),
online.
[63](#c2-note-0063a){#c2-note-0063} Owing to the hyper-capitalization
of the art market, which has been going on since the 1990s, this role
has shifted somewhat from curators to collectors, who, though validating
their choices more on financial than on argumentative grounds, are
essentially engaged in the same activity. Today, leading curators
usually work closely together with collectors and thus deal with more
money than the first generation of curators ever could have imagined.
[64](#c2-note-0064a){#c2-note-0064} Diedrich Diederichsen, "Showfreaks
und Monster," *Texte zur Kunst* 71 (2008): 69--77.
[65](#c2-note-0065a){#c2-note-0065} Alexander R. Galloway, *Protocol:
How Control Exists after Decentralization* (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
2004), pp. 7, 75.
[66](#c2-note-0066a){#c2-note-0066} Even the *Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung* -- at least in its online edition -- has begun to publish more
and more articles in English. The newspaper has accepted the
disadvantage of higher editorial costs in order to remain relevant in
the increasingly globalized debate.
[67](#c2-note-0067a){#c2-note-0067} Joseph Reagle, "'Free as in
Sexist?' Free Culture and the Gender Gap," *First Monday* 18 (2013),
online.
[68](#c2-note-0068a){#c2-note-0068} Wikipedia\'s own "Editor Survey"
from 2011 reports a women\'s quota of 9 percent. Other studies have come
to a slightly higher number. See Benjamin Mako Hill and Aaron Shaw, "The
Wikipedia Gender Gap Revisited: Characterizing Survey Response Bias with
Propensity Score Estimation," *PLOS ONE* 8 (July 26, 2013), online. The
problem is well known, and the Wikipedia Foundation has been making
efforts to correct matters. In 2011, its goal was to increase the
participation of women to 25 percent by 2015. This has not been
achieved.[]{#Page_191 type="pagebreak" title="191"}
[69](#c2-note-0069a){#c2-note-0069} Shyong (Tony) K. Lam et al. (2011),
"WP: Clubhouse? An Exploration of Wikipedia's Gender Imbalance,"
*WikiSym* 11 (2011), online.
[70](#c2-note-0070a){#c2-note-0070} David Singh Grewal, *Network Power:
The Social Dynamics of Globalization* (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 2008).
[71](#c2-note-0071a){#c2-note-0071} Ibid., p. 29.
[72](#c2-note-0072a){#c2-note-0072} Niklas Luhmann, *Macht im System*
(Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2013), p. 52 \[--trans.\].
[73](#c2-note-0073a){#c2-note-0073} Mathieu O\'Neil, *Cyberchiefs:
Autonomy and Authority in Online Tribes* (London: Pluto Press, 2009).
[74](#c2-note-0074a){#c2-note-0074} Eric Steven Raymond, "The Cathedral
and the Bazaar," *First Monday* 3 (1998), online.
[75](#c2-note-0075a){#c2-note-0075} Jorge Luis Borges, "The Library of
Babel," trans. Anthony Kerrigan, in Borges, *Ficciones* (New York: Grove
Weidenfeld, 1962), pp. 79--88.
[76](#c2-note-0076a){#c2-note-0076} Heinrich Geiselberger and Tobias
Moorstedt (eds), *Big Data: Das neue Versprechen der Allwissenheit*
(Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2013).
[77](#c2-note-0077a){#c2-note-0077} This is one of the central tenets
of science and technology studies. See, for instance, Geoffrey C. Bowker
and Susan Leigh Star, *Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its
Consequences* (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999).
[78](#c2-note-0078a){#c2-note-0078} Sybille Krämer, *Symbolische
Maschinen: Die Idee der Formalisierung in geschichtlichem Abriß*
(Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1988), 50--69.
[79](#c2-note-0079a){#c2-note-0079} Quoted from Doron Swade, "The
'Unerring Certainty of Mechanical Agency': Machines and Table Making in
the Nineteenth Century," in Martin Campbell-Kelly et al. (eds), *The
History of Mathematical Tables: From Sumer to Spreadsheets* (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 145--76, at 150.
[80](#c2-note-0080a){#c2-note-0080} The mechanical construction
suggested by Leibniz was not to be realized as a practically usable (and
therefore patentable) calculating machine until 1820, by which point it
was referred to as an "arithmometer."
[82](#c2-note-0082a){#c2-note-0082} Charles Babbage, *On the Economy of
Machinery and Manufactures* (London: Charles Knight, 1832), p. 153: "We
have already mentioned what may, perhaps, appear paradoxical to some of
our readers -- that the division of labour can be applied with equal
success to mental operations, and that it ensures, by its adoption, the
same economy of time."
[83](#c2-note-0083a){#c2-note-0083} This structure, which is known as
"Von Neumann architecture," continues to form the basis of almost all
computers.
[84](#c2-note-0084a){#c2-note-0084} "Gordon Moore Says Aloha to
Moore\'s Law," *The Inquirer* (April 13, 2005), online.[]{#Page_192
type="pagebreak" title="192"}
[85](#c2-note-0085a){#c2-note-0085} Miriam Meckel, *Next: Erinnerungen
an eine Zukunft ohne uns* (Reinbeck bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2011). One
could also say that this anxiety has been caused by the fact that the
automation of labor has begun to affect middle-class jobs as well.
[86](#c2-note-0086a){#c2-note-0086} Steven Levy, "Can an Algorithm
Write a Better News Story than a Human Reporter?" *Wired* (April 24,
2012), online.
[87](#c2-note-0087a){#c2-note-0087} Alexander Pschera, *Animal
Internet: Nature and the Digital Revolution*, trans. Elisabeth Laufer
(New York: New Vessel Press, 2016).
[88](#c2-note-0088a){#c2-note-0088} The American intelligence services
are not unique in this regard. *Spiegel* has reported that, in Russia,
entire "bot armies" have been mobilized for the "propaganda battle."
Benjamin Bidder, "Nemzow-Mord: Die Propaganda der russischen Hardliner,"
*Spiegel Online* (February 28, 2015), online.
[89](#c2-note-0089a){#c2-note-0089} Lennart Guldbrandsson, "Swedish
Wikipedia Surpasses 1 Million Articles with Aid of Article Creation
Bot," [blog.wikimedia.org](http://blog.wikimedia.org) (June 17, 2013),
online.
[90](#c2-note-0090a){#c2-note-0090} Thomas Bunnell, "The Mathematics of
Film," *Boom Magazine* (November 2007): 48--51.
[91](#c2-note-0091a){#c2-note-0091} Christopher Steiner, "Automatons
Get Creative," *Wall Street Journal* (August 17, 2012), online.
[93](#c2-note-0093a){#c2-note-0093} Ian Ayres, *Super Crunchers: How
Anything Can Be Predicted* (London: Bookpoint, 2007).
[94](#c2-note-0094a){#c2-note-0094} Each of these models was tested on
the basis of the 50 million most common search terms from the years
2003--8 and classified according to the time and place of the search.
The results were compared with data from the health authorities. See
Jeremy Ginsberg et al., "Detecting Influenza Epidemics Using Search
Engine Query Data," *Nature* 457 (2009): 1012--4.
[95](#c2-note-0095a){#c2-note-0095} In absolute terms, the rate of
correct hits, at 15.8 percent, was still relatively low. With the same
dataset, however, random guessing would only have an accuracy of 0.005
percent. See V. Le Quoc et al., "Building High-Level Features Using
Large-Scale Unsupervised Learning,"
[research.google.com](http://research.google.com) (2012), online.
[96](#c2-note-0096a){#c2-note-0096} Neil Johnson et al., "Abrupt Rise
of New Machine Ecology beyond Human Response Time," *Nature: Scientific
Reports* 3 (2013), online. The authors counted 18,520 of these events
between January 2006 and February 2011; that is, about 15 per day on
average.
[97](#c2-note-0097a){#c2-note-0097} Gerald Nestler, "Mayhem in Mahwah:
The Case of the Flash Crash; or, Forensic Re-performance in Deep Time,"
in Anselm []{#Page_193 type="pagebreak" title="193"}Franke et al. (eds),
*Forensis: The Architecture of Public Truth* (Berlin: Sternberg Press,
2014), pp. 125--46.
[98](#c2-note-0098a){#c2-note-0098} Another facial recognition
algorithm by Google provides a good impression of the rate of progress.
As early as 2011, the latter was able to identify dogs in images with 80
percent accuracy. Three years later, this rate had not only increased to
93.5 percent (which corresponds to human capabilities), but the
algorithm could also identify more than 200 different types of dog,
something that hardly any person can do. See Robert McMillan, "This Guy
Beat Google\'s Super-Smart AI -- But It Wasn\'t Easy," *Wired* (January
15, 2015), online.
[99](#c2-note-0099a){#c2-note-0099} Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, "The
Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine," *Computer
Networks and ISDN Systems* 30 (1998): 107--17.
[100](#c2-note-0100a){#c2-note-0100} Eugene Garfield, "Citation Indexes
for Science: A New Dimension in Documentation through Association of
Ideas," *Science* 122 (1955): 108--11.
[101](#c2-note-0101a){#c2-note-0101} Since 1964, the data necessary for
this has been published as the Science Citation Index (SCI).
[102](#c2-note-0102a){#c2-note-0102} The assumption that the subjects
produce these structures indirectly and without any strategic intention
has proven to be problematic in both contexts. In the world of science,
there are so-called citation cartels -- groups of scientists who
frequently refer to one another\'s work in order to improve their
respective position in the SCI. Search engines have likewise given rise
to search engine optimizers, which attempt by various means to optimize
a website\'s evaluation by search engines.
[103](#c2-note-0103a){#c2-note-0103} Regarding the history of the SCI
and its influence on the early version of Google\'s PageRank, see Katja
Mayer, "Zur Soziometrik der Suchmaschinen: Ein historischer Überblick
der Methodik," in Konrad Becker and Felix Stalder (eds), *Deep Search:
Die Politik des Suchens jenseits von Google* (Innsbruck: Studienverlag,
2009), pp. 64--83.
[104](#c2-note-0104a){#c2-note-0104} A site with zero links to it could
not be registered by the algorithm at all, for the search engine indexed
the web by having its "crawler" follow the links itself.
[106](#c2-note-0106a){#c2-note-0106} Martin Feuz et al., "Personal Web
Searching in the Age of Semantic Capitalism: Diagnosing the Mechanisms
of Personalisation," *First Monday* 17 (2011), online.
[108](#c2-note-0108a){#c2-note-0108} Thus, it is not only the world of
advertising that motivates the collection of personal information. Such
information is also needed for the development of personalized
algorithms that []{#Page_194 type="pagebreak" title="194"}give order to
the flood of data. It can therefore be assumed that the rampant
collection of personal information will not cease or slow down even if
commercial demands happen to change, for instance to a business model
that is not based on advertising.
[109](#c2-note-0109a){#c2-note-0109} For a detailed discussion of how
these three levels are recorded, see Felix Stalder and Christine Mayer,
"Der zweite Index: Suchmaschinen, Personalisierung und Überwachung," in
Konrad Becker and Felix Stalder (eds), *Deep Search: Die Politik des
Suchens jenseits von Google* (Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 2009), pp.
112--31.
[110](#c2-note-0110a){#c2-note-0110} This raises the question of which
drivers should be sent on a detour, so that no traffic jam comes about,
and which should be shown the most direct route, which would now be
traffic-free.
[112](#c2-note-0112a){#c2-note-0112} Lisa Gitelman (ed.), *"Raw Data"
Is an Oxymoron* (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013).
[113](#c2-note-0113a){#c2-note-0113} The terms "raw," in the sense of
unprocessed, and "cooked," in the sense of processed, derive from the
anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, who introduced them to clarify the
difference between nature and culture. See Claude Lévi-Strauss, *The Raw
and the Cooked*, trans. John Weightman and Doreen Weightman (Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press, 1983).
[114](#c2-note-0114a){#c2-note-0114} Jessica Lee, "No. 1 Position in
Google Gets 33% of Search Traffic," *Search Engine Watch* (June 20,
2013), online.
[115](#c2-note-0115a){#c2-note-0115} One estimate that continues to be
cited quite often is already obsolete: Michael K. Bergman, "White Paper
-- The Deep Web: Surfacing Hidden Value," *Journal of Electronic
Publishing* 7 (2001), online. The more content is dynamically generated
by databases, the more questionable such estimates become. It is
uncontested, however, that only a small portion of online information is
registered by search engines.
[116](#c2-note-0116a){#c2-note-0116} Theo Röhle, "Die Demontage der
Gatekeeper: Relationale Perspektiven zur Macht der Suchmaschinen," in
Konrad Becker and Felix Stalder (eds), *Deep Search: Die Politik des
Suchens jenseits von Google* (Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 2009), pp.
133--48.
[117](#c2-note-0117a){#c2-note-0117} The phenomenon of preparing the
world to be recorded by algorithms is not restricted to digital
networks. As early as 1994 in Germany, for instance, a new sort of
typeface was introduced (the *Fälschungserschwerende Schrift*,
"forgery-impeding typeface") on license plates for the sake of machine
readability and facilitating automatic traffic control. To the human
eye, however, it appears somewhat misshapen and
disproportionate.[]{#Page_195 type="pagebreak" title="195"}
[118](#c2-note-0118a){#c2-note-0118} [Fairsearch.org](http://Fairsearch.org)
was officially supported by several of Google\'s competitors, including
Microsoft, TripAdvisor, and Oracle.
[119](#c2-note-0119a){#c2-note-0119} "Antitrust: Commission Sends
Statement of Objections to Google on Comparison Shopping Service,"
*European Commission: Press Release Database* (April 15, 2015), online.
[120](#c2-note-0120a){#c2-note-0120} Amit Singhal, "An Update to Our
Search Algorithms," *Google Inside Search* (August 10, 2012), online. By
the middle of 2014, according to some sources, Google had received
around 20 million requests to remove links from its index on account of
copyright violations.
[121](#c2-note-0121a){#c2-note-0121} Alexander Wragge, "Google-Ranking:
Herabstufung ist 'Zensur light'," *iRights.info* (August 23, 2012),
online.
[122](#c2-note-0122a){#c2-note-0122} Farhad Manjoo,"Amazon\'s Tactics
Confirm Its Critics\' Worst Suspicions," *New York Times: Bits Blog*
(May 23, 2014), online.
[123](#c2-note-0123a){#c2-note-0123} Lucas D. Introna and Helen
Nissenbaum, "Shaping the Web: Why the Politics of Search Engines
Matters," *Information Society* 16 (2000): 169--85, at 181.
[124](#c2-note-0124a){#c2-note-0124} Eli Pariser, *The Filter Bubble:
How the New Personalized Web Is Changing What We Read and How We Think*
(New York: Penguin, 2012).
[125](#c2-note-0125a){#c2-note-0125} Antoinette Rouvroy, "The End(s) of
Critique: Data-Behaviourism vs. Due-Process," in Katja de Vries and
Mireille Hildebrandt (eds), *Privacy, Due Process and the Computational
Turn: The Philosophy of Law Meets the Philosophy of Technology* (New
York: Routledge, 2013), pp. 143--65.
[126](#c2-note-0126a){#c2-note-0126} See B. F. Skinner, *Science and
Human Behavior* (New York: The Free Press, 1953), p. 35: "We undertake
to predict and control the behavior of the individual organism. This is
our 'dependent variable' -- the effect for which we are to find the
cause. Our 'independent variables' -- the causes of behavior -- are the
external conditions of which behavior is a function."
[127](#c2-note-0127a){#c2-note-0127} Nathan Jurgenson, "View from
Nowhere: On the Cultural Ideology of Big Data," *New Inquiry* (October
9, 2014), online.
[128](#c2-note-0128a){#c2-note-0128} danah boyd and Kate Crawford,
"Critical Questions for Big Data: Provocations for a Cultural,
Technological and Scholarly Phenomenon," *Information, Communication &
Society* 15 (2012): 662--79.
:::
:::
1. [Preface to the English Edition](#fpref)
2. [Acknowledgments](#ack)
3. [Introduction: After the End of the Gutenberg Galaxy](#cintro)
1. [Notes](#f6-ntgp-9999)
4. [I: Evolution](#c1)
1. [The Expansion of the Social Basis of Culture](#c1-sec-0002)
2. [The Culturalization of the World](#c1-sec-0006)
3. [The Technologization of Culture](#c1-sec-0009)
4. [From the Margins to the Center of Society](#c1-sec-0013)
5. [Notes](#c1-ntgp-9999)
5. [II: Forms](#c2)
1. [Referentiality](#c2-sec-0002)
2. [Communality](#c2-sec-0009)
3. [Algorithmicity](#c2-sec-0018)
4. [Notes](#c2-ntgp-9999)
6. [III: Politics](#c3)
1. [Post-democracy](#c3-sec-0002)
2. [Commons](#c3-sec-0011)
3. [Against a Lack of Alternatives](#c3-sec-0017)
4. [Notes](#c3-ntgp-9999)
[Preface to the English Edition]{.chapterTitle} {#fpref}
::: {.section}
This book posits that we in the societies of the (transatlantic) West
find ourselves in a new condition. I call it "the digital condition"
because it gained its dominance as computer networks became established
as the key infrastructure for virtually all aspects of life. However,
the emergence of this condition pre-dates computer networks. In fact, it
has deep historical roots, some of which go back to the late nineteenth
century, but it really came into being after the late 1960s. As many of
the cultural and political institutions shaped by the previous condition
-- which McLuhan called the Gutenberg Galaxy -- fell into crisis, new
forms of personal and collective orientation and organization emerged
which have been shaped by the affordances of this new condition. Both
the historical processes which unfolded over a very long time and the
structural transformation which took place in a myriad of contexts have
been beyond any deliberate influence. Although obviously caused by
social actors, the magnitude of such changes was simply too great, too
distributed, and too complex to be attributed to, or molded by, any
particular (set of) actor(s).
Yet -- and this is the core of what motivated me to write this book --
this does not mean that we have somehow moved beyond the political,
beyond the realm in which identifiable actors and their projects do
indeed shape our collective []{#Page_vii type="pagebreak"
title="vii"}existence, or that there are no alternatives to future
development already expressed within contemporary dynamics. On the
contrary, we can see very clearly that as the center -- the established
institutions shaped by the affordances of the previous condition -- is
crumbling, more economic and political projects are rushing in to fill
that void with new institutions that advance their competing agendas.
These new institutions are well adapted to the digital condition, with
its chaotic production of vast amounts of information and innovative
ways of dealing with that.
From this, two competing trajectories have emerged which are
simultaneously transforming the space of the political. First, I used
the term "post-democracy" because it expands possibilities, and even
requirements, of (personal) participation, while ever larger aspects of
(collective) decision-making are moved to arenas that are structurally
disconnected from those of participation. In effect, these arenas are
forming an authoritarian reality in which a small elite is vastly
empowered at the expense of everyone else. The purest incarnation of
this tendency can be seen in the commercial social mass media, such as
Facebook, Google, and the others, as they were newly formed in this
condition and have not (yet) had to deal with the complications of
transforming their own legacy.
For the other trajectory, I applied the term "commons" because it
expands both the possibilities of personal participation and agency, and
those of collective decision-making. This tendency points to a
redefinition of democracy beyond the hollowed-out forms of political
representation characterizing the legacy institutions of liberal
democracy. The purest incarnation of this tendency can be found in the
institutions that produce the digital commons, such as Wikipedia and the
various Free Software communities whose work has been and still is
absolutely crucial for the infrastructural dimensions of the digital
networks. They are the most advanced because, again, they have not had
to deal with institutional legacies. But both tendencies are no longer
confined to digital networks and are spreading across all aspects of
social life, creating a reality that is, on the structural level,
surprisingly coherent and, on the social and political level, full of
contradictions and thus opportunities.[]{#Page_viii type="pagebreak"
title="viii"}
I traced some aspects of these developments right up to early 2016, when
the German version of this book went into production. Since then a lot
has happened, but I resisted the temptation to update the book for the
English translation because ideas are always an expression of their
historical moment and, as such, updating either turns into a completely
new version or a retrospective adjustment of the historical record.
What has become increasingly obvious during 2016 and into 2017 is that
central institutions of liberal democracy are crumbling more quickly and
dramatically than was expected. The race to replace them has kicked into
high gear. The main events driving forward an authoritarian renewal of
politics took place on a national level, in particular the vote by the
UK to leave the EU (Brexit) and the election of Donald Trump to the
office of president of the United States of America. The main events
driving the renewal of democracy took place on a metropolitan level,
namely the emergence of a network of "rebel cities," led by Barcelona
and Madrid. There, community-based social movements established their
candidates in the highest offices. These cities are now putting in place
practical examples that other cities could emulate and adapt. For the
concerns of this book, the most important concept put forward is that of
"technological sovereignty": to bring the technological infrastructure,
and its developmental potential, back under the control of those who are
using it and are affected by it; that is, the citizens of the
metropolis.
Over the last 18 months, the imbalances between the two trajectories
have become even more extreme because authoritarian tendencies and
surveillance capitalism have been strengthened more quickly than the
commons-oriented practices could establish themselves. But it does not
change the fact that there are fundamental alternatives embedded in the
digital condition. Despite structural transformations that affect how we
do things, there is no inevitability about what we want to do
individually and, even more importantly, collectively.
::: {.section}
While it may be conventional to cite one person as the author of a book,
writing is a process with many collective elements. This book in
particular draws upon many sources, most of which I am no longer able to
acknowledge with any certainty. Far too often, important references came
to me in parenthetical remarks, in fleeting encounters, during trips, at
the fringes of conferences, or through discussions of things that,
though entirely new to me, were so obvious to others as not to warrant
any explication. Often, too, my thinking was influenced by long
conversations, and it is impossible for me now to identify the precise
moments of inspiration. As far as the themes of this book are concerned,
four settings were especially important. The international discourse
network "nettime," which has a mailing list of 4,500 members and which I
have been moderating since the late 1990s, represents an inexhaustible
source of internet criticism and, as a collaborative filter, has enabled
me to follow a wide range of developments from a particular point of
view. I am also indebted to the Zurich University of the Arts, where I
have taught for more than 10 years and where the students have been
willing to explain to me, again and again, what is already self-evident
to them. Throughout my time there, I have been able to observe a
dramatic shift. For today\'s students, the "new" is no longer new but
simply obvious, whereas they []{#Page_x type="pagebreak" title="x"}have
experienced many things previously regarded as normal -- such as
checking out a book from a library (instead of downloading it) -- as
needlessly complicated. In Vienna, the hub of my life, the World
Information Institute has for many years provided a platform for
conferences, publications, and interventions that have repeatedly raised
the stakes of the discussion and have brought together the most
interesting range of positions without regard to any disciplinary
boundaries. Housed in Vienna, too, is the Technopolitics Project, a
non-institutionalized circle of researchers and artists whose
discussions of techno-economic paradigms have informed this book in
fundamental ways and which has offered multiple opportunities for me to
workshop inchoate ideas.
Not everything, however, takes place in diffuse conversations and
networks. I was also able to rely on the generous support of several
individuals who, at one stage or another, read through, commented upon,
and made crucial improvements to the manuscript: Leonhard Dobusch,
Günther Hack, Katja Meier, Florian Cramer, Cornelia Sollfrank, Beat
Brogle, Volker Grassmuck, Ursula Stalder, Klaus Schönberger, Konrad
Becker, Armin Medosch, Axel Stockburger, and Gerald Nestler. Special
thanks are owed to Rebina Erben-Hartig, who edited the original German
manuscript and greatly improved its readability. I am likewise grateful
to Heinrich Greiselberger and Christian Heilbronn of the Suhrkamp
Verlag, whose faith in the book never wavered despite several delays.
Regarding the English version at hand, it has been a privilege to work
with a translator as skillful as Valentine Pakis. Over the past few
years, writing this book might have been the most important project in
my life had it not been for Andrea Mayr. In this regard, I have been
especially fortunate.[]{#Page_xi type="pagebreak"
title="xi"}[]{#Page_xii type="pagebreak" title="xii"}
:::
Introduction [After the End of the Gutenberg Galaxy]{.chapterTitle} []{.chapterSubTitle} {#cintro}
::: {.section}
The show had already been going on for more than three hours, but nobody
was bothered by this. Quite the contrary. The tension in the venue was
approaching its peak, and the ratings were through the roof. Throughout
all of Europe, 195 million people were watching the spectacle on
television, and the social mass media were gaining steam. On Twitter,
more than 47,000 messages were being sent every minute with the hashtag
\#Eurovision.[^1^](#f6-note-0001){#f6-note-0001a} The outcome was
decided shortly after midnight: Conchita Wurst, the bearded diva, was
announced the winner of the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest. Cheers erupted
as the public celebrated the victor -- but also itself. At long last,
there was more to the event than just another round of tacky television
programming ("This is Ljubljana calling!"). Rather, a statement was made
-- a statement in favor of tolerance and against homophobia, for
diversity and for the right to define oneself however one pleases. And
Europe sent this message in the midst of a crisis and despite ongoing
hostilities, not to mention all of the toxic rumblings that could be
heard about decadence, cultural decay, and Gayropa. Visibly moved, the
Austrian singer let out an exclamation -- "We are unity, and we are
unstoppable!" -- as she returned to the stage with wobbly knees to
accept the trophy.
With her aesthetically convincing performance, Conchita succeeded in
unleashing a strong desire for personal []{#Page_1 type="pagebreak"
title="1"}self-discovery, for community, and for overcoming stale
conventions. And she did this through a character that mainstream
society would have considered paradoxical and deviant not long ago but
has since come to understand: attractive beyond the dichotomy of man and
woman, explicitly artificial and yet entirely authentic. This peculiar
conflation of artificiality and naturalness is equally present in
Berndnaut Smilde\'s photographic work of a real indoor cloud (*Nimbus*,
2010) on the cover of this book. Conchita\'s performance was also on a
formal level seemingly paradoxical: extremely focused and completely
open. Unlike most of the other acts, she took the stage alone, and
though she hardly moved at all, she nevertheless incited the audience to
participate in numerous ways and genuinely to act out the motto of the
contest ("Join us!"). Throughout the early rounds of the competition,
the beard, which was at first so provocative, transformed into a
free-floating symbol that the public began to appropriate in various
ways. Men and women painted Conchita-like beards on their faces,
newspapers printed beards to be cut out, and fans crocheted beards. Not
only did someone Photoshop a beard on to a painting of Empress Sissi of
Austria, but King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands even tweeted a
deceptively realistic portrait of his wife, Queen Máxima, wearing a
beard. From one of the biggest stages of all, the evening of Wurst\'s
victory conveyed an impression of how much the culture of Europe had
changed in recent years, both in terms of its content and its forms.
That which had long been restricted to subcultural niches -- the
fluidity of gender identities, appropriation as a cultural technique,
or the conflation of reception and production, for instance -- was now
part of the mainstream. Even while sitting in front of the television,
this mainstream was no longer just a private audience but rather a
multitude of singular producers whose networked activity -- on location
or on social mass media -- lent particular significance to the occasion
as a moment of collective self-perception.
It is more than half a century since Marshall McLuhan announced the end
of the Modern era, a cultural epoch that he called the Gutenberg Galaxy
in honor of the print medium by which it was so influenced. What was
once just an abstract speculation of media theory, however, now
describes []{#Page_2 type="pagebreak" title="2"}the concrete reality of
our everyday life. What\'s more, we have moved well past McLuhan\'s
diagnosis: the erosion of old cultural forms, institutions, and
certainties is not just something we affirm, but new ones have already
formed whose contours are easy to identify not only in niche sectors but
in the mainstream. Shortly before Conchita\'s triumph, Facebook thus
expanded the gender-identity options for its billion-plus users from 2
to 60. In addition to "male" and "female," users of the English version
of the site can now choose from among the following categories:
::: {.extract}
Agender, Androgyne, Androgynes, Androgynous, Asexual, Bigender, Cis, Cis
Female, Cis Male, Cis Man, Cis Woman, Cisgender, Cisgender Female,
Cisgender Male, Cisgender Man, Cisgender Woman, Female to Male (FTM),
Female to Male Trans Man, Female to Male Transgender Man, Female to Male
Transsexual Man, Gender Fluid, Gender Neutral, Gender Nonconforming,
Gender Questioning, Gender Variant, Genderqueer, Hermaphrodite,
Intersex, Intersex Man, Intersex Person, Intersex Woman, Male to Female
(MTF), Male to Female Trans Woman, Male to Female Transgender Woman,
Male to Female Transsexual Woman, Neither, Neutrois, Non-Binary, Other,
Pangender, Polygender, T\*Man, Trans, Trans Female, Trans Male, Trans
Man, Trans Person, Trans\*Female, Trans\*Male, Trans\*Man,
Trans\*Person, Trans\*Woman, Transexual, Transexual Female, Transexual
Male, Transexual Man, Transexual Person, Transexual Woman, Transgender
Female, Transgender Person, Transmasculine, T\*Woman, Two\*Person,
Two-Spirit, Two-Spirit Person.
:::
This enormous proliferation of cultural possibilities is an expression
of what I will refer to below as the digital condition. Far from being
universally welcomed, its growing presence has also instigated waves of
nostalgia, diffuse resentments, and intellectual panic. Conservative and
reactionary movements, which oppose such developments and desire to
preserve or even re-create previous conditions, have been on the rise.
Likewise in 2014, for instance, a cultural dispute broke out in normally
subdued Baden-Würtemberg over which forms of sexual partnership should
be mentioned positively in the sexual education curriculum. Its impetus
was a working paper released at the end of 2013 by the state\'s
[]{#Page_3 type="pagebreak" title="3"}Ministry of Culture. Among other
things, it proposed that adolescents "should confront their own sexual
identity and orientation \[...\] from a position of acceptance with
respect to sexual diversity."[^2^](#f6-note-0002){#f6-note-0002a} In a
short period of time, a campaign organized mainly through social mass
media collected more than 200,000 signatures in opposition to the
proposal and submitted them to the petitions committee at the state
parliament. At that point, the government responded by putting the
initiative on ice. However, according to the analysis presented in this
book, leaving it on ice creates a precarious situation.
The rise and spread of the digital condition is the result of a
wide-ranging and irreversible cultural transformation, the beginnings of
which can in part be traced back to the nineteenth century. Since the
1960s, however, this shift has accelerated enormously and has
encompassed increasingly broader spheres of social life. More and more
people have been participating in cultural processes; larger and larger
dimensions of existence have become battlegrounds for cultural disputes;
and social activity has been intertwined with increasingly complex
technologies, without which it would hardly be possible to conceive of
these processes, let alone achieve them. The number of competing
cultural projects, works, reference points, and reference systems has
been growing rapidly. This, in turn, has caused an escalating crisis for
the established forms and institutions of culture, which are poorly
equipped to deal with such an inundation of new claims to meaning. Since
roughly the year 2000, many previously independent developments have
been consolidating, gaining strength and modifying themselves to form a
new cultural constellation that encompasses broad segments of society --
a new galaxy, as McLuhan might have
said.[^3^](#f6-note-0003){#f6-note-0003a} These days it is relatively
easy to recognize the specific forms that characterize it as a whole and
how these forms have contributed to new, contradictory and
conflict-laden political dynamics.
My argument, which is restricted to cultural developments in the
(transatlantic) West, is divided into three chapters. In the first, I
will outline the *historical* developments that have given rise to this
quantitative and qualitative change and have led to the crisis faced by
the institutions of the late phase of the Gutenberg Galaxy, which
defined the last third []{#Page_4 type="pagebreak" title="4"}of the
twentieth century.[^4^](#f6-note-0004){#f6-note-0004a} The expansion of
the social basis of cultural processes will be traced back to changes in
the labor market, to the self-empowerment of marginalized groups, and to
the dissolution of centralized cultural geography. The broadening of
cultural fields will be discussed in terms of the rise of design as a
general creative discipline, and the growing significance of complex
technologies -- as fundamental components of everyday life -- will be
tracked from the beginnings of independent media up to the development
of the internet as a mass medium. These processes, which at first
unfolded on their own and may have been reversible on an individual
basis, are integrated today and represent a socially dominant component
of the coherent digital condition. From the perspective of cultural
studies and media theory, the second chapter will delineate the already
recognizable features of this new culture. Concerned above all with the
analysis of forms, its focus is thus on the question of "how" cultural
practices operate. It is only because specific forms of culture,
exchange, and expression are prevalent across diverse varieties of
content, social spheres, and locations that it is even possible to speak
of the digital condition in the singular. Three examples of such forms
stand out in particular. *Referentiality* -- that is, the use of
existing cultural materials for one\'s own production -- is an essential
feature of many methods for inscribing oneself into cultural processes.
In the context of unmanageable masses of shifting and semantically open
reference points, the act of selecting things and combining them has
become fundamental to the production of meaning and the constitution of
the self. The second feature that characterizes these processes is
*communality*. It is only through a collectively shared frame of
reference that meanings can be stabilized, possible courses of action
can be determined, and resources can be made available. This has given
rise to communal formations that generate self-referential worlds, which
in turn modulate various dimensions of existence -- from aesthetic
preferences to the methods of biological reproduction and the rhythms of
space and time. In these worlds, the dynamics of network power have
reconfigured notions of voluntary and involuntary behavior, autonomy,
and coercion. The third feature of the new cultural landscape is its
*algorithmicity*. It is characterized, in other []{#Page_5
type="pagebreak" title="5"}words, by automated decision-making processes
that reduce and give shape to the glut of information, by extracting
information from the volume of data produced by machines. This extracted
information is then accessible to human perception and can serve as the
basis of singular and communal activity. Faced with the enormous amount
of data generated by people and machines, we would be blind were it not
for algorithms.
The third chapter will focus on *political dimensions*. These are the
factors that enable the formal dimensions described in the preceding
chapter to manifest themselves in the form of social, political, and
economic projects. Whereas the first chapter is concerned with long-term
and irreversible historical processes, and the second outlines the
general cultural forms that emerged from these changes with a certain
degree of inevitability, my concentration here will be on open-ended
dynamics that can still be influenced. A contrast will be made between
two political tendencies of the digital condition that are already quite
advanced: *post-democracy* and *commons*. Both take full advantage of
the possibilities that have arisen on account of structural changes and
have advanced them even further, though in entirely different
directions. "Post-democracy" refers to strategies that counteract the
enormously expanded capacity for social communication by disconnecting
the possibility to participate in things from the ability to make
decisions about them. Everyone is allowed to voice his or her opinion,
but decisions are ultimately made by a select few. Even though growing
numbers of people can and must take responsibility for their own
activity, they are unable to influence the social conditions -- the
social texture -- under which this activity has to take place. Social
mass media such as Facebook and Google will receive particular attention
as the most conspicuous manifestations of this tendency. Here, under new
structural provisions, a new combination of behavior and thought has
been implemented that promotes the normalization of post-democracy and
contributes to its otherwise inexplicable acceptance in many areas of
society. "Commons," on the contrary, denotes approaches for developing
new and comprehensive institutions that not only directly combine
participation and decision-making but also integrate economic, social,
and ethical spheres -- spheres that Modernity has tended to keep
apart.[]{#Page_6 type="pagebreak" title="6"}
Post-democracy and commons can be understood as two lines of development
that point beyond the current crisis of liberal democracy and represent
new political projects. One can be characterized as an essentially
authoritarian system, the other as a radical expansion and renewal of
democracy, from the notion of representation to that of participation.
Even though I have brought together a number of broad perspectives, I
have refrained from discussing certain topics that a book entitled *The
Digital Condition* might be expected to address, notably the matter of
copyright, for one example. This is easy to explain. As regards the new
forms at the heart of this book, none of these developments requires or
justifies copyright law in its present form. In any case, my thoughts on
the matter were published not long ago in another book, so there is no
need to repeat them here.[^5^](#f6-note-0005){#f6-note-0005a} The theme
of privacy will also receive little attention. This is not because I
share the view, held by proponents of "post-privacy," that it would be
better for all personal information to be made available to everyone. On
the contrary, this position strikes me as superficial and naïve. That
said, the political function of privacy -- to safeguard a degree of
personal autonomy from powerful institutions -- is based on fundamental
concepts that, in light of the developments to be described below,
urgently need to be updated. This is a task, however, that would take me
far beyond the scope of the present
book.[^6^](#f6-note-0006){#f6-note-0006a}
Before moving on to the first chapter, I should first briefly explain my
somewhat unorthodox understanding of the central concepts in the title
of the book -- "condition" and "digital." In what follows, the term
"condition" will be used to designate a cultural condition whereby the
processes of social meaning -- that is, the normative dimension of
existence -- are explicitly or implicitly negotiated and realized by
means of singular and collective activity. Meaning, however, does not
manifest itself in signs and symbols alone; rather, the practices that
engender it and are inspired by it are consolidated into artifacts,
institutions, and lifeworlds. In other words, far from being a symbolic
accessory or mere overlay, culture in fact directs our actions and gives
shape to society. By means of materialization and repetition, meaning --
both as claim and as reality -- is made visible, productive, and
negotiable. People are free to accept it, reject it, or ignore
[]{#Page_7 type="pagebreak" title="7"}it altogether. Social meaning --
that is, meaning shared by multiple people -- can only come about
through processes of exchange within larger or smaller formations.
Production and reception (to the extent that it makes any sense to
distinguish between the two) do not proceed linearly here, but rather
loop back and reciprocally influence one another. In such processes, the
participants themselves determine, in a more or less binding manner, how
they stand in relation to themselves, to each other, and to the world,
and they determine the frame of reference in which their activity is
oriented. Accordingly, culture is not something static or something that
is possessed by a person or a group, but rather a field of dispute that
is subject to the activities of multiple ongoing changes, each happening
at its own pace. It is characterized by processes of dissolution and
constitution that may be collaborative, oppositional, or simply
operating side by side. The field of culture is pervaded by competing
claims to power and mechanisms for exerting it. This leads to conflicts
about which frames of reference should be adopted for different fields
and within different social groups. In such conflicts,
self-determination and external determination interact until a point is
reached at which both sides are mutually constituted. This, in turn,
changes the conditions that give rise to shared meaning and personal
identity.
In what follows, this broadly post-structuralist perspective will inform
my discussion of the causes and formational conditions of cultural
orders and their practices. Culture will be conceived throughout as
something heterogeneous and hybrid. It draws from many sources; it is
motivated by the widest possible variety of desires, intentions, and
compulsions; and it mobilizes whatever resources might be necessary for
the constitution of meaning. This emphasis on the materiality of culture
is also reflected in the concept of the digital. Media are relational
technologies, which means that they facilitate certain types of
connection between humans and
objects.[^7^](#f6-note-0007){#f6-note-0007a} "Digital" thus denotes the
set of relations that, on the infrastructural basis of digital networks,
is realized today in the production, use, and transformation of
material and immaterial goods, and in the constitution and coordination
of personal and collective activity. In this regard, the focus is less
on the dominance of a certain class []{#Page_8 type="pagebreak"
title="8"}of technological artifacts -- the computer, for instance --
and even less on distinguishing between "digital" and "analog,"
"material" and "immaterial." Even in the digital condition, the analog
has not gone away. Rather, it has been re-evaluated and even partially
upgraded. The immaterial, moreover, is never entirely without
materiality. On the contrary, the fleeting impulses of digital
communication depend on global and unmistakably material infrastructures
that extend from mines beneath the surface of the earth, from which rare
earth metals are extracted, all the way into outer space, where
satellites are circling around above us. Such things may be ignored
because they are outside the experience of everyday life, but that does
not mean that they have disappeared or that they are of any less
significance. "Digital" thus refers to historically new possibilities
for constituting and connecting various human and non-human actors,
which is not limited to digital media but rather appears everywhere as a
relational paradigm that alters the realm of possibility for numerous
materials and actors. My understanding of the digital thus approximates
the concept of the "post-digital," which has been gaining currency over
the past few years within critical media cultures. Here, too, the
distinction between "new" and "old" media and all of the ideological
baggage associated with it -- for instance, that the new represents the
future while the old represents the past -- have been rejected. The
aesthetic projects that continue to define the image of the "digital" --
immateriality, perfection, and virtuality -- have likewise been
discarded.[^8^](#f6-note-0008){#f6-note-0008a} Above all, the
"post-digital" is a critical response to this techno-utopian aesthetic
and its attendant economic and political perspectives. According to the
cultural theorist Florian Cramer, the concept accommodates the fact that
"new ethical and cultural conventions which became mainstream with
internet communities and open-source culture are being retroactively
applied to the making of non-digital and post-digital media
products."[^9^](#f6-note-0009){#f6-note-0009a} He thus cites the trend
that process-based practices oriented toward open interaction, which
first developed within digital media, have since begun to appear in more
and more contexts and in an increasing number of
materials.[^10[]{#Page_9 type="pagebreak"
title="9"}^](#f6-note-0010){#f6-note-0010a}
For the historical, cultural-theoretical, and political perspectives
developed in this book, however, the concept of the post-digital is
somewhat problematic, for it requires the narrow context of media art
and its fixation on technology in order to become a viable
counter-position. Without this context, certain misunderstandings are
impossible to avoid. The prefix "post-," for instance, is often
interpreted in the sense that something is over or that we have at least
grasped the matters at hand and can thus turn to something new. The
opposite is true. The most enduringly relevant developments are only now
beginning to adopt a specific form, long after digital infrastructures
and the practices made popular by them have become part of our everyday
lives. Or, as the communication theorist and consultant Clay Shirky puts
it, "Communication tools don\'t get socially interesting until they get
technologically boring."[^11^](#f6-note-0011){#f6-note-0011a} For it is
only today, now that our fascination for this technology has waned and
its promises sound hollow, that culture and society are being defined by
the digital condition in a comprehensive sense. Before, this was the
case in just a few limited spheres. It is this hybridization and
solidification of the digital -- the presence of the digital beyond
digital media -- that lends the digital condition its dominance. As to
the concrete realities in which these things will materialize, this is
currently being decided in an open and ongoing process. The aim of this
book is to contribute to our understanding of this process.[]{#Page_10
type="pagebreak" title="10"}
:::
::: {.section .notesList}
[1](#f6-note-0001a){#f6-note-0001} Dan Biddle, "Five Million Tweets for
\#Eurovision 2014," *Twitter UK* (May 11, 2014), online.
[2](#f6-note-0002a){#f6-note-0002} Ministerium für Kultus, Jugend und
Sport -- Baden-Württemberg, "Bildungsplanreform 2015/2016 -- Verankerung
von Leitprinzipien," online \[--trans.\].
[3](#f6-note-0003a){#f6-note-0003} As early as 1995, Wolfgang Coy
suggested that McLuhan\'s metaphor should be supplanted by the concept
of the "Turing Galaxy," but this never caught on. See his introduction
to the German edition of *The Gutenberg Galaxy*: "Von der Gutenbergschen
zur Turingschen Galaxis: Jenseits von Buchdruck und Fernsehen," in
Marshall McLuhan, *Die Gutenberg Galaxis: Das Ende des Buchzeitalters*,
(Cologne: Addison-Wesley, 1995), pp. vii--xviii.[]{#Page_176
type="pagebreak" title="176"}
[4](#f6-note-0004a){#f6-note-0004} According to the analysis of the
Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells, this crisis began almost
simultaneously in highly developed capitalist and socialist societies,
and it did so for the same reason: the paradigm of "industrialism" had
reached the limits of its productivity. Unlike the capitalist societies,
which were flexible enough to tame the crisis and reorient their
economies, the socialism of the 1970s and 1980s experienced stagnation
until it ultimately, in a belated effort to reform, collapsed. See
Manuel Castells, *End of Millennium*, 2nd edn (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell,
2010), pp. 5--68.
[5](#f6-note-0005a){#f6-note-0005} Felix Stalder, *Der Autor am Ende
der Gutenberg Galaxis* (Zurich: Buch & Netz, 2014).
[6](#f6-note-0006a){#f6-note-0006} For my preliminary thoughts on this
topic, see Felix Stalder, "Autonomy and Control in the Era of
Post-Privacy," *Open: Cahier on Art and the Public Domain* 19 (2010):
78--86; and idem, "Privacy Is Not the Antidote to Surveillance,"
*Surveillance & Society* 1 (2002): 120--4. For a discussion of these
approaches, see the working paper by Maja van der Velden, "Personal
Autonomy in a Post-Privacy World: A Feminist Technoscience Perspective"
(2011), online.
[7](#f6-note-0007a){#f6-note-0007} Accordingly, the "new social" media
are mass media in the sense that they influence broadly disseminated
patterns of social relations and thus shape society as much as the
traditional mass media had done before them.
[8](#f6-note-0008a){#f6-note-0008} Kim Cascone, "The Aesthetics of
Failure: 'Post-Digital' Tendencies in Contemporary Computer Music,"
*Computer Music Journal* 24/2 (2000): 12--18.
[10](#f6-note-0010a){#f6-note-0010} In the field of visual arts,
similar considerations have been made regarding "post-internet art." See
Artie Vierkant, "The Image Object Post-Internet,"
[jstchillin.org](http://jstchillin.org) (December 2010), online; and Ian
Wallace, "What Is Post-Internet Art? Understanding the Revolutionary New
Art Movement," *Artspace* (March 18, 2014), online.
[11](#f6-note-0011a){#f6-note-0011} Clay Shirky, *Here Comes Everybody:
The Power of Organizing without Organizations* (New York: Penguin,
2008), p. 105.
:::
:::
::: {.section}
Many authors have interpreted the new cultural realities that
characterize our daily lives as a direct consequence of technological
developments: the internet is to blame! This assumption is not only
empirically untenable; it also leads to a problematic assessment of the
current situation. Apparatuses are represented as "central actors," and
this suggests that new technologies have suddenly revolutionized a
situation that had previously been stable. Depending on one\'s point of
view, this is then regarded as "a blessing or a
curse."[^1^](#c1-note-0001){#c1-note-0001a} A closer examination,
however, reveals an entirely different picture. Established cultural
practices and social institutions had already been witnessing the
erosion of their self-evident justification and legitimacy, long before
they were faced with new technologies and the corresponding demands
these make on individuals. Moreover, the allegedly new types of
coordination and cooperation are also not so new after all. Many of them
have existed for a long time. At first most of them were totally
separate from the technologies for which, later on, they would become
relevant. It is only in retrospect that these developments can be
identified as beginnings, and it can be seen that much of what we regard
today as novel or revolutionary was in fact introduced at the margins of
society, in cultural niches that were unnoticed by the dominant actors
and institutions. The new technologies thus evolved against a
[]{#Page_11 type="pagebreak" title="11"}background of processes of
societal transformation that were already under way. They could only
have been developed once a vision of their potential had been
formulated, and they could only have been disseminated where demand for
them already existed. This demand was created by social, political, and
economic crises, which were themselves initiated by changes that were
already under way. The new technologies seemed to provide many differing
and promising answers to the urgent questions that these crises had
prompted. It was thus a combination of positive vision and pressure that
motivated a great variety of actors to change, at times with
considerable effort, the established processes, mature institutions, and
their own behavior. They intended to appropriate, for their own
projects, the various and partly contradictory possibilities that they
saw in these new technologies. Only then did a new technological
infrastructure arise.
This, in turn, created the preconditions for previously independent
developments to come together, strengthening one another and enabling
them to spread beyond the contexts in which they had originated. Thus,
they moved from the margins to the center of culture. And by
intensifying the crisis of previously established cultural forms and
institutions, they became dominant and established new forms and
institutions of their own.
:::
::: {.section}
The Expansion of the Social Basis of Culture {#c1-sec-0002}
--------------------------------------------
Watching television discussions from the 1950s and 1960s today, one is
struck not only by the billows of cigarette smoke in the studio but also
by the homogeneous spectrum of participants. Usually, it was a group of
white and heteronormatively behaving men speaking with one
another,[^2^](#c1-note-0002){#c1-note-0002a} as these were the people
who held the important institutional positions in the centers of the
West. As a rule, those involved were highly specialized representatives
from the cultural, economic, scientific, and political spheres. Above
all, they were legitimized to appear in public to articulate their
opinions, which were to be regarded by others as relevant and worthy of
discussion. They presided over the important debates of their time. With
few exceptions, other actors and their deviant opinions -- there
[]{#Page_12 type="pagebreak" title="12"}has never been a time without
them -- were either not taken seriously at all or were categorized as
indecent, incompetent, perverse, irrelevant, backward, exotic, or
idiosyncratic.[^3^](#c1-note-0003){#c1-note-0003a} Even at that time,
the social basis of culture was beginning to expand, though the actors
at the center of the discourse had failed to notice this. Communicative
and cultural processes were gaining significance in more and more
places, and excluded social groups were self-consciously developing
their own language in order to intervene in the discourse. The rise of
the knowledge economy, the increasingly loud critique of
heteronormativity, and a fundamental cultural critique posed by
post-colonialism enabled a greater number of people to participate in
public discussions. In what follows, I will subject each of these three
phenomena to closer examination. In order to do justice to their
complexity, I will treat them on different levels: I will depict the
rise of the knowledge economy as a structural change in labor; I will
reconstruct the critique of heteronormativity by outlining the origins
and transformations of the gay movement in West Germany; and I will
discuss post-colonialism as a theory that introduced new concepts of
cultural multiplicity and hybridization -- concepts that are now
influencing the digital condition far beyond the limits of the
post-colonial discourse, and often without any reference to this
discourse at all.
::: {.section}
### The growth of the knowledge economy {#c1-sec-0003}
At the beginning of the 1950s, the Austrian-American economist Fritz
Machlup was immersed in his study of the political economy of
monopoly.[^4^](#c1-note-0004){#c1-note-0004a} Among other things, he was
concerned with patents and copyright law. In line with the neo-classical
Austrian School, he considered both to be problematic (because
state-created) monopolies.[^5^](#c1-note-0005){#c1-note-0005a} The
longer he studied the monopoly of the patent system in particular, the
more far-reaching its consequences seemed to him. He maintained that the
patent system was intertwined with something that might be called the
"economy of invention" -- ultimately, patentable insights had to be
produced in the first place -- and that this was in turn part of a much
larger economy of knowledge. The latter encompassed government agencies
as well as institutions of education, research, and development
[]{#Page_13 type="pagebreak" title="13"}(that is, schools, universities,
and certain corporate laboratories), which had been increasing steadily
in number since Roosevelt\'s New Deal. Yet it also included the
expanding media sector and those industries that were responsible for
providing technical infrastructure. Machlup subsumed all of these
institutions and sectors under the concept of the "knowledge economy," a
term of his own invention. Their common feature was that essential
aspects of their activities consisted in communicating things to other
people ("telling anyone anything," as he put it). Thus, the employees
were not only recipients of information or instructions; rather, in one
way or another, they themselves communicated, be it merely as a
secretary who typed up, edited, and forwarded a piece of shorthand
dictation. In his book *The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in
the United States*, published in 1962, Machlup gathered empirical
material to demonstrate that the American economy had entered a new
phase that was distinguished by the production, exchange, and
application of abstract, codified
knowledge.[^6^](#c1-note-0006){#c1-note-0006a} This opinion was no
longer entirely novel at the time, but it had never before been
presented in such an empirically detailed and comprehensive
manner.[^7^](#c1-note-0007){#c1-note-0007a} The extent of the knowledge
economy surprised Machlup himself: in his book, he concluded that as
much as 43 percent of all labor activity was already engaged in this
sector. This high number came about because, until then, no one had put
forward the idea of understanding such a variety of activities as a
single unit.
Machlup\'s categorization was indeed quite innovative, for the dynamics
that propelled the sectors that he associated with one another not only
were very different but also had originated as an integral component in
the development of the industrial production of goods. They were more of
an extension of such production than a break with it. The production and
circulation of goods had been expanding and accelerating as early as the
nineteenth century, though at highly divergent rates from one region or
sector to another. New markets were created in order to distribute goods
that were being produced in greater numbers; new infrastructure for
transportation and communication was established in order to serve these
large markets, which were mostly in the form of national territories
(including their colonies). This []{#Page_14 type="pagebreak"
title="14"}enabled even larger factories to be built in order to
exploit, to an even greater extent, the cost advantages of mass
production. In order to control these complex processes, new professions
arose with different types of competencies and working conditions. The
office became a workplace for an increasing number of people -- men and
women alike -- who, in one form or another, had something to do with
information processing and communication. Yet all of this required not
only new management techniques. Production and products also became more
complex, so that entire corporate sectors had to be restructured.
Whereas the first decisive inventions of the industrial era were still
made by more or less educated tinkerers, during the last third of the
nineteenth century, invention itself came to be institutionalized. In
Germany, Siemens (founded in 1847 as the Telegraphen-Bauanstalt von
Siemens & Halske) exemplifies this transformation. Within 50 years, a
company that began in a proverbial workshop in a Berlin backyard became
a multinational high-tech corporation. It was in such corporate
laboratories, which were established around the year 1900, that the
"industrialization of invention" or the "scientification of industrial
production" took place.[^8^](#c1-note-0008){#c1-note-0008a} In other
words, even the processes employed in factories and the goods that they
produced became knowledge-intensive. Their invention, planning, and
production required a steadily growing expansion of activities, which
today we would refer to as research and development. The informatization
of the economy -- the acceleration of mass production, the comprehensive
application of scientific methods to the organization of labor, and the
central role of research and development in industry -- was hastened
enormously by a world war that was waged on an industrial scale to an
extent that had never been seen before.
Another important factor for the increasing significance of the
knowledge economy was the development of the consumer society. Over the
course of the last third of the nineteenth century, despite dramatic
regional and social disparities, an increasing number of people profited
from the economic growth that the Industrial Revolution had instigated.
Wages increased and basic needs were largely met, so that a new social
stratum arose, the middle class, which was able to spend part of its
income on other things. But on what? First, []{#Page_15 type="pagebreak"
title="15"}new needs had to be created. The more production capacities
increased, the more they had to be rethought in terms of consumption.
Thus, in yet another way, the economy became more knowledge-intensive.
It was now necessary to become familiar with, understand, and stimulate
the interests and preferences of consumers, in order to entice them to
purchase products that they did not urgently need. This knowledge did
little to enhance the material or logistical complexity of goods or
their production; rather, it was reflected in the increasingly extensive
communication about and through these goods. The beginnings of this
development were captured by Émile Zola in his 1883 novel *The Ladies\'
Paradise*, which was set in the new world of a semi-fictitious
department store bearing that name. In its opening scene, the young
protagonist Denise Baudu and her brother Jean, both of whom have just
moved to Paris from a provincial town, encounter for the first time the
artfully arranged women\'s clothing -- exhibited with all sorts of
tricks involving lighting, mirrors, and mannequins -- in the window
displays of the store. The sensuality of the staged goods is so
overwhelming that both of them are not only struck dumb, but Jean even
blushes.
It was the economy of affects that brought blood to Jean\'s cheeks. At
that time, strategies for attracting the attention of customers did not
yet have a scientific and systematic basis. Just as the first inventions
in the age of industrialization were made by amateurs, so too was the
economy of affects developed intuitively and gradually rather than as a
planned or conscious paradigm shift. That it was possible to induce and
direct affects by means of targeted communication was the pioneering
discovery of the Austrian-American Edward Bernays. During the 1920s, he
combined the ideas of his uncle Sigmund Freud about unconscious
motivations with the sociological research methods of opinion surveys to
form a new discipline: market
research.[^9^](#c1-note-0009){#c1-note-0009a} It became the scientific
basis of a new field of activity, which he at first called "propaganda"
but then later referred to as "public
relations."[^10^](#c1-note-0010){#c1-note-0010a} Public communication,
be it for economic or political ends, was now placed on a systematic
foundation that came to distance itself more and more from the pure
"conveyance of information." Communication became a strategic field for
corporate and political disputes, and the mass media []{#Page_16
type="pagebreak" title="16"}became their locus of negotiation. Between
1880 and 1917, for instance, commercial advertising costs in the United
States increased by more than 800 percent, and the leading advertising
firms, using the same techniques with which they attracted consumers to
products, were successful in selling to the American public the idea of
their nation entering World War I. Thus, a media industry in the modern
sense was born, and it expanded along with the rapidly growing market
for advertising.[^11^](#c1-note-0011){#c1-note-0011a}
In his studies of labor markets conducted at the beginning of the 1960s,
Machlup brought these previously separate developments together and
thus explained the existence of an already advanced knowledge economy in
the United States. His arguments fell on extremely fertile soil, for an
intellectual transformation had taken place in other areas of science as
well. A few years earlier, for instance, cybernetics had given the
concepts "information" and "communication" their first scientifically
precise (if somewhat idiosyncratic) definitions and had assigned to them
a position of central importance in all scientific disciplines, not to
mention life in general.[^12^](#c1-note-0012){#c1-note-0012a} Machlup\'s
investigation seemed to confirm this in the case of the economy, given
that the knowledge economy was primarily concerned with information and
communication. Since then, numerous analyses, formulas, and slogans have
repeated, modified, refined, and criticized the idea that the
knowledge-based activities of the economy have become increasingly
important. In the 1970s this discussion was associated above all with
the notion of the "post-industrial
society,"[^13^](#c1-note-0013){#c1-note-0013a} in the 1980s the guiding
idea was the "information society,"[^14^](#c1-note-0014){#c1-note-0014a}
and in the 1990s the debate revolved around the "network
society"[^15^](#c1-note-0015){#c1-note-0015a} -- to name just the most
popular concepts. What these approaches have in common is that they each
diagnose a comprehensive societal transformation that, as regards the
creation of economic value or jobs, has shifted the balance from
productive to communicative activities. Accordingly, they presuppose
that we know how to distinguish the former from the latter. This is not
unproblematic, however, because in practice the two are usually tightly
intertwined. Moreover, whoever maintains that communicative activities
have taken the place of industrial production in our society has adopted
a very narrow point of []{#Page_17 type="pagebreak" title="17"}view.
Factory jobs have not simply disappeared; they have just been partially
relocated outside of Western economies. The assertion that communicative
activities are somehow of "greater value" hardly chimes with the reality
of today\'s new "service jobs," many of which pay no more than the
minimum wage.[^16^](#c1-note-0016){#c1-note-0016a} Critiques of this
sort, however, have done little to reduce the effectiveness of this
analysis -- especially its political effectiveness -- for it does more
than simply describe a condition. It also contains a set of political
instructions that imply or directly demand that precisely those sectors
should be promoted that it considers economically promising, and that
society should be reorganized accordingly. Since the 1970s, there has
thus been a feedback loop between scientific analysis and political
agendas. More often than not, it is hardly possible to distinguish
between the two. Especially in Britain and the United States, the
economic transformation of the 1980s was imposed insistently and with
political calculation (the weakening of labor unions).
There are, however, important differences between the developments of
the so-called "post-industrial society" of the 1970s and those of the
so-called "network society" of the 1990s, even if both terms are
supposed to stress the increased significance of information, knowledge,
and communication. With regard to the digital condition, the most
important of these differences are the greater flexibility of economic
activity in general and employment relations in particular, as well as
the dismantling of social security systems. Neither phenomenon played
much of a role in analyses of the early 1970s. The development since
then can be traced back to two currents that could not seem more
different from one another. At first, flexibility was demanded in the
name of a critique of the value system imposed by bureaucratic-bourgeois
society (including the traditional organization of the workforce). It
originated in the new social movements that had formed in the late
1960s. Later on, toward the end of the 1970s, it then became one of the
central points of the neoliberal critique of the welfare state. With
completely different motives, both sides sang the praises of autonomy
and spontaneity while rejecting the disciplinary nature of hierarchical
organization. They demanded individuality and diversity rather than
conformity to prescribed roles. Experimentation, openness to []{#Page_18
type="pagebreak" title="18"}new ideas, flexibility, and change were now
established as fundamental values with positive connotations. Both
movements operated with the attractive idea of personal freedom. The new
social movements understood this in a social sense as the freedom of
personal development and coexistence, whereas neoliberals understood it
in an economic sense as the freedom of the market. In the 1980s, the
neoliberal ideas prevailed in large part because some of the values,
strategies, and methods propagated by the new social movements were
removed from their political context and appropriated in order to
breathe new life -- a "new spirit" -- into capitalism and thus to rescue
industrial society from its crisis.[^17^](#c1-note-0017){#c1-note-0017a}
An army of management consultants, restructuring experts, and new
companies began to promote flat hierarchies, self-responsibility, and
innovation; with these aims in mind, they set about reorganizing large
corporations into small and flexible units. Labor and leisure were no
longer supposed to be separated, for all aspects of a given person could
be integrated into his or her work. In order to achieve economic success
in this new capitalism, it became necessary for every individual to
identify himself or herself with his or her profession. Large
corporations were restructured in such a way that entire departments
found themselves transformed into independent "profit centers." This
happened in the name of creating more leeway for decision-making and of
optimizing the entrepreneurial spirit on all levels, the goals being to
increase value creation and to provide management with more fine-grained
powers of intervention. These measures, in turn, created the need for
computers and the need for them to be networked. Large corporations
reacted in this way to the emergence of highly specialized small
companies which, by networking and cooperating with other firms,
succeeded in quickly and flexibly exploiting niches in the expanding
global markets. In the management literature of the 1980s, the
catchphrases for this were "company networks" and "flexible
specialization."[^18^](#c1-note-0018){#c1-note-0018a} By the middle of
the 1990s, the sociologist Manuel Castells was able to conclude that the
actual productive entity was no longer the individual company but rather
the network consisting of companies and corporate divisions of various
sizes. In Castells\'s estimation, the decisive advantage of the network
is its ability to customize its elements and their configuration
[]{#Page_19 type="pagebreak" title="19"}to suit the rapidly changing
requirements of the "project" at
hand.[^19^](#c1-note-0019){#c1-note-0019a} Aside from a few exceptions,
companies in their traditional forms came to function above all as
strategic control centers and as economic and legal units.
This economic structural transformation was already well under way when
the internet emerged as a mass medium around the turn of the millennium.
As a consequence, change became more radical and penetrated into an
increasing number of areas of value creation. The political agenda
oriented itself toward the vision of "creative industries," a concept
developed in 1997 by the newly elected British government under Tony
Blair. A Creative Industries Task Force was established right away, and
its first step was to identify "those activities which have their
origins in individual creativity, skill and talent and which have the
potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and
exploitation of intellectual
property."[^20^](#c1-note-0020){#c1-note-0020a} Like Fritz Machlup at
the beginning of the 1960s, the task force brought together existing
areas of activity into a new category. Such activities included
advertising, computer games, architecture, music, arts and antique
markets, publishing, design, software and computer services, fashion,
television and radio, and film and video. The latter were elevated to
matters of political importance on account of their potential to create
wealth and jobs. Not least because of this clever presentation of
categories -- no distinction was made between the BBC, an almighty
public-service provider, and fledgling companies in precarious
circumstances -- it was possible to proclaim not only that the creative
industries were contributing a relevant portion of the nation\'s
economic output, but also that this sector was growing at an especially
fast rate. It was reported that, in London, the creative industries were
already responsible for one out of every five new jobs. When compared
with traditional terms of employment as regards income, benefits, and
prospects for advancement, however, many of these positions entailed a
considerable downgrade for the employees in question (who were now
treated as independent contractors). This fact was either ignored or
explicitly interpreted as a sign of the sector\'s particular
dynamism.[^21^](#c1-note-0021){#c1-note-0021a} Around the turn of the
new millennium, the idea that individual creativity plays a central role
in the economy was given further traction by []{#Page_20
type="pagebreak" title="20"}the sociologist and consultant Richard
Florida, who argued that creativity was essential to the future of
cities and even announced the rise of the "creative class." As to the
preconditions that have to be met in order to tap into this source of
wealth, he devised a simple formula that would be easy for municipal
bureaucrats to understand: "technology, tolerance and talent." Talent,
as defined by Florida, is based on individual creativity and education
and manifests itself in the ability to generate new jobs. He was thus
able to declare talent a central element of economic
growth.[^22^](#c1-note-0022){#c1-note-0022a} In order to "unleash" these
resources, what we need in addition to technology is, above all,
tolerance; that is, "an open culture -- one that does not discriminate,
does not force people into boxes, allows us to be ourselves, and
validates various forms of family and of human
identity."[^23^](#c1-note-0023){#c1-note-0023a}
The idea that a public welfare state should ensure the social security
of individuals was considered obsolete. Collective institutions, which
could have provided a degree of stability for people\'s lifestyles, were
dismissed or regarded as bureaucratic obstacles. The more or less
directly evoked role model for all of this was the individual artist,
who was understood as an individual entrepreneur, a sort of genius
suitable for the masses. For Florida, a central problem was that,
according to his own calculations, only about a third of the people
living in North American and European cities were working in the
"creative sector," while the innate creativity of everyone else was
going to waste. Even today, the term "creative industry," along with the
assumption that the internet will provide increased opportunities,
serves to legitimize the effort to restructure all areas of the economy
according to the needs of the knowledge economy and to privilege the
network over the institution. In times of social cutbacks and empty
public purses, especially in municipalities, this message was warmly
received. One mayor, who as the first openly gay top politician in
Germany exemplified tolerance for diverse lifestyles, even adopted the
slogan "poor but sexy" for his city. Everyone was supposed to exploit
his or her own creativity to discover new niches and opportunities for
monetization -- a magic formula that was supposed to bring about a new
urban revival. Today there is hardly a city in Europe that does not
issue a report about its creative economy, []{#Page_21 type="pagebreak"
title="21"}and nearly all of these reports cite, directly or indirectly,
Richard Florida.
As already seen in the context of the knowledge economy, so too in the
case of creative industries do measurable social change, wishful
thinking, and political agendas blend together in such a way that it is
impossible to identify a single cause for the developments taking place.
The consequences, however, are significant. Over the last two
generations, the demands of the labor market have fundamentally changed.
Higher education and the ability to acquire new knowledge independently
are now, to an increasing extent, required and expected as
qualifications and personal attributes. The desired or enforced ability
to be flexible at work, the widespread cooperation across institutions,
the uprooted nature of labor, and the erosion of collective models for
social security have displaced many activities, which once took place
within clearly defined institutional or personal limits, into a new
interstitial space that is neither private nor public in the classical
sense. This is the space of networks, communities, and informal
cooperation -- the space of sharing and exchange that has since been
enabled by the emergence of ubiquitous digital communication. It allows
an increasing number of people, whether willingly or otherwise, to
envision themselves as active producers of information, knowledge,
capability, and meaning. And because it is associated in various ways
with the space of market-based exchange and with the bourgeois political
sphere, it has lasting effects on both. This interstitial space becomes
all the more important as fewer people are willing or able to rely on
traditional institutions for their economic security. For, within it,
personal and digital-based networks can and must be developed as
alternatives, regardless of whether they prove sustainable for the long
term. As a result, more and more actors, each with their own claims to
meaning, have been rushing away from the private personal sphere into
this new interstitial space. By now, this has become such a normal
practice that whoever is *not* active in this ever-expanding
interstitial space, which is rapidly becoming the main social sphere --
whoever, that is, lacks a publicly visible profile on social mass media
like Facebook, or does not number among those producing information and
meaning and is thus so inconspicuous online as []{#Page_22
type="pagebreak" title="22"}to yield no search results -- now stands out
in a negative light (or, in far fewer cases, acquires a certain prestige
on account of this very absence).
:::
::: {.section}
### The erosion of heteronormativity {#c1-sec-0004}
In this (sometimes more, sometimes less) public space for the continuous
production of social meaning (and its exploitation), there is no
question that the professional middle class is
over-represented.[^24^](#c1-note-0024){#c1-note-0024a} It would be
short-sighted, however, to reduce those seeking autonomy and the
recognition of individuality and social diversity to the role of poster
children for the new spirit of
capitalism.[^25^](#c1-note-0025){#c1-note-0025a} The new social
movements, for instance, initiated a social shift that has allowed an
increasing number of people to demand, if nothing else, the right to
participate in social life in a self-determined manner; that is,
according to their own standards and values.
Especially effective was the critique of patriarchal and heteronormative
power relations, modes of conduct, and
identities.[^26^](#c1-note-0026){#c1-note-0026a} In the context of the
political upheavals at the end of the 1960s, the new women\'s and gay
movements developed into influential actors. Their greatest achievement
was to establish alternative cultural forms, lifestyles, and strategies
of action in or around the mainstream of society. How this was done can
be demonstrated by tracing, for example, the development of the gay
movement in West Germany.
In the fall of 1969, the liberalization of Paragraph 175 of the German
Criminal Code came into effect. From then on, sexual activity between
adult men was no longer punishable by law (women were not mentioned in
this context). For the first time, a man could now express himself as a
homosexual outside of semi-private space without immediately being
exposed to the risk of criminal prosecution. This was a necessary
precondition for the ability to defend one\'s own rights. As early as
1971, the struggle for the recognition of gay life experiences reached
the broader public when Rosa von Praunheim\'s film *It Is Not the
Homosexual Who Is Perverse, but the Society in Which He Lives* was
screened at the Berlin International Film Festival and then, shortly
thereafter, broadcast on public television in North Rhine-Westphalia.
The film, which is firmly situated in the agitprop tradition,
[]{#Page_23 type="pagebreak" title="23"}follows a young provincial man
through the various milieus of Berlin\'s gay subcultures: from a
monogamous relationship to nightclubs and public bathrooms until, at the
end, he is enlightened by a political group of men who explain that it
is not possible to lead a free life in a niche, as his own emancipation
can only be achieved by a transformation of society as a whole. The film
closes with a not-so-subtle call to action: "Out of the closets, into
the streets!" Von Praunheim understood this emancipation to be a process
that encompassed all areas of life and had to be carried out in public;
it could only achieve success, moreover, in solidarity with other
freedom movements such as the Black Panthers in the United States and
the new women\'s movement. The goal, according to this film, is to
articulate one\'s own identity as a specific and differentiated identity
with its own experiences, values, and reference systems, and to anchor
this identity within a society that not only tolerates it but also
recognizes it as having equal validity.
At first, however, the film triggered vehement controversies, even
within the gay scene. The objection was that it attacked the gay
subculture, which was not yet prepared to defend itself publicly against
discrimination. Despite or (more likely) because of these controversies,
more than 50 groups of gay activists soon formed in Germany. Such
groups, largely composed of left-wing alternative students, included,
for instance, the Homosexuelle Aktion Westberlin (HAW) and the Rote
Zelle Schwul (RotZSchwul) in Frankfurt am
Main.[^27^](#c1-note-0027){#c1-note-0027a} One focus of their activities
was to have Paragraph 175 struck entirely from the legal code (which was
not achieved until 1994). This cause was framed within a general
struggle to overcome patriarchy and capitalism. At the earliest gay
demonstrations in Germany, which took place in Münster in April 1972,
protesters rallied behind the following slogan: "Brothers and sisters,
gay or not, it is our duty to fight capitalism." This was understood as
a necessary subordination to the greater struggle against what was known
in the terminology of left-wing radical groups as the "main
contradiction" of capitalism (that between capital and labor), and it
led to strident differences within the gay movement. The dispute
escalated during the next year. After the so-called *Tuntenstreit*, or
"Battle of the Queens," which was []{#Page_24 type="pagebreak"
title="24"}initiated by activists from Italy and France who had appeared
in drag at the closing ceremony of the HAW\'s Spring Meeting in West
Berlin, the gay movement was divided, or at least moving in a new
direction. At the heart of the matter were the following questions: "Is
there an inherent (many speak of an autonomous) position that gays hold
with respect to the issue of homosexuality? Or can a position on
homosexuality only be derived in association with the traditional
workers\' movement?"[^28^](#c1-note-0028){#c1-note-0028a} In other
words, was discrimination against homosexuality part of the social
divide caused by capitalism (that is, one of its "ancillary
contradictions") and thus only to be overcome by overcoming capitalism
itself, or was it something unrelated to the "essence" of capitalism, an
independent conflict requiring different strategies and methods? This
conflict could never be fully resolved, but the second position, which
was more interested in overcoming legal, social, and cultural
discrimination than in struggling against economic exploitation, and
which focused specifically on the social liberation of gays, proved to
be far more dynamic in the long term. This was not least because both
the old and new left were themselves not free of homophobia and because
the entire radical student movement of the 1970s fell into crisis.
Over the course of the 1970s and 1980s, "aesthetic self-empowerment" was
realized through the efforts of artistic and (increasingly) commercial
producers of images, texts, and
sounds.[^29^](#c1-note-0029){#c1-note-0029a} Activists, artists, and
intellectuals developed a language with which they could speak
assertively in public about topics that had previously been taboo.
Inspired by the expression "gay pride," which originated in the United
States, they began to use the term *schwul* ("gay"), which until then
had possessed negative connotations, with growing confidence. They
founded numerous gay and lesbian cultural initiatives, theaters,
publishing houses, magazines, bookstores, meeting places, and other
associations in order to counter the misleading or (in their eyes)
outright false representations of the mass media with their own
multifarious media productions. In doing so, they typically followed a
dual strategy: on the one hand, they wanted to create a space for the
members of the movement in which it would be possible to formulate and
live different identities; on the other hand, they were fighting to be
accepted by society at large. While []{#Page_25 type="pagebreak"
title="25"}a broader and broader spectrum of gay positions, experiences,
and aesthetics was becoming visible to the public, the connection to
left-wing radical contexts became weaker. Founded as early as 1974, and
likewise in West Berlin, the General Homosexual Working Group
(Allgemeine Homosexuelle Arbeitsgemeinschaft) sought to integrate gay
politics into mainstream society by defining the latter -- on the basis
of bourgeois, individual rights -- as a "politics of
anti-discrimination." These efforts achieved a milestone in 1980 when,
in the run-up to the parliamentary election, a podium discussion was
held with representatives of all major political parties on the topic of
the law governing sexual offences. The discussion took place in the
Beethovenhalle in Bonn, which was the largest venue for political events
in the former capital. Several participants considered the event to be a
"disaster,"[^30^](#c1-note-0030){#c1-note-0030a} for it revived a number
of internal conflicts (not least that between revolutionary and
integrative positions). Yet the fact remains that representatives were
present from every political party, and this alone was indicative of an
unprecedented amount of public awareness for those demanding equal
rights.
The struggle against discrimination and for social recognition reached
an entirely new level of urgency with the outbreak of HIV/AIDS. In 1983,
the magazine *Der Spiegel* devoted its first cover story to the disease,
thus bringing it to the awareness of the broader public. In the same
year, the non-profit organization Deutsche Aids-Hilfe was founded to
prevent further cases of discrimination, for *Der Spiegel* was not the
only publication at the time to refer to AIDS as a "homosexual
epidemic."[^31^](#c1-note-0031){#c1-note-0031a} The struggle against
HIV/AIDS required a comprehensive mobilization. Funding had to be raised
in order to deal with the social repercussions of the epidemic, to teach
people about safe sexual practices for everyone and to direct research
toward discovering causes and developing potential cures. The immediate
threat that AIDS represented, especially while so little was known about
the illness and its treatment remained a distant hope, created an
impetus for mobilization that led to alliances between the gay movement,
the healthcare system, and public authorities. Thus, the AIDS Inquiry
Committee, sponsored by the conservative Christian Democratic Union,
concluded in 1988 that, in the fight against the illness, "the
homosexual subculture is []{#Page_26 type="pagebreak"
title="26"}especially important. This informal structure should
therefore neither be impeded nor repressed but rather, on the contrary,
recognized and supported."[^32^](#c1-note-0032){#c1-note-0032a} The AIDS
crisis proved to be a catalyst for advancing the integration of gays
into society and for expanding what could be regarded as acceptable
lifestyles, opinions, and cultural practices. As a consequence,
homosexuals began to appear more frequently in the media, though their
presence would never match that of heterosexuals. As of 1985, the
television show *Lindenstraße* featured an openly gay protagonist, and
the first kiss between men was aired in 1987. The episode still provoked
a storm of protest -- Bayerische Rundfunk refused to broadcast it a
second time -- but this was already a rearguard action and the
integration of gays (and lesbians) into the social mainstream continued.
In 1993, the first gay and lesbian city festival took place in Berlin,
and the first Rainbow Parade was held in Vienna in 1996. In 2002, the
Cologne Pride Day involved 1.2 million participants and attendees, thus
surpassing for the first time the attendance at the traditional Rose
Monday parade. By the end of the 1990s, the sociologist Rüdiger Lautmann
was already prepared to maintain: "To be homosexual has become
increasingly normalized, even if homophobia lives on in the depths of
the collective disposition."[^33^](#c1-note-0033){#c1-note-0033a} This
normalization was also reflected in a study published by the Ministry of
Justice in the year 2000, which stressed "the similarity between
homosexual and heterosexual relationships" and, on this basis, made an
argument against discrimination.[^34^](#c1-note-0034){#c1-note-0034a}
Around the year 2000, however, the classical gay movement had already
passed its peak. A profound transformation had begun to take place in
the middle of the 1990s. It lost its character as a new social movement
(in the style of the 1970s) and began to splinter inwardly and
outwardly. One could say that it transformed from a mass movement into a
multitude of variously networked communities. The clearest sign of this
transformation is the abbreviation "LGBT" (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and
transgender), which, since the mid-1990s, has represented the internal
heterogeneity of the movement as it has shifted toward becoming a
network.[^35^](#c1-note-0035){#c1-note-0035a} At this point, the more
radical actors were already speaking against the normalization of
homosexuality. Queer theory, for example, was calling into question the
"essentialist" definition of gender []{#Page_27 type="pagebreak"
title="27"}-- that is, any definition reducing it to an immutable
essence -- with respect to both its physical dimension (sex) and its
social and cultural dimension (gender
proper).[^36^](#c1-note-0036){#c1-note-0036a} It thus opened up a space
for the articulation of experiences, self-descriptions, and lifestyles
that, on every level, are located beyond the classical attributions of
men and women. A new generation of intellectuals, activists, and artists
took the stage and developed -- yet again through acts of aesthetic
self-empowerment -- a language that enabled them to import, with
confidence, different self-definitions into the public sphere. An
example of this is the adoption of inclusive plural forms in German
(*Aktivist\_innen* "activists," *Künstler\_innen* "artists"), which draw
attention to the gaps and possibilities between male and female
identities that are also expressed in the language itself. Just as with
the terms "gay" or *schwul* some 30 years before, in this case, too, an
important element was the confident and public adoption and semantic
conversion of a formerly insulting word ("queer") by the very people and
communities against whom it used to be
directed.[^37^](#c1-note-0037){#c1-note-0037a} Likewise observable in
these developments was the simultaneity of social (amateur) and
artistic/scientific (professional) cultural production. The goal,
however, was less to produce a clear antithesis than it was to oppose
rigid attributions by underscoring mutability, hybridity, and
uniqueness. Both the scope of what could be expressed in public and the
circle of potential speakers expanded yet again. And, at least to some
extent, the drag queen Conchita Wurst popularized complex gender
constructions that went beyond the simple woman/man dualism. All of that
said, the assertion by Rüdiger Lautmann quoted above -- "homophobia
lives on in the depths of the collective disposition" -- continued to
hold true.
If the gay movement is representative of the social liberation of the
1970s and 1980s, then it is possible to regard its transformation into
the LGBT movement during the 1990s -- with its multiplicity and fluidity
of identity models and its stress on mutability and hybridity -- as a
sign of the reinvention of this project within the context of an
increasingly dominant digital condition. With this transformation,
however, the diversification and fluidification of cultural practices
and social roles have not yet come to an end. Ways of life that were
initially subcultural and facing existential pressure []{#Page_28
type="pagebreak" title="28"}are gradually entering the mainstream. They
are expanding the range of readily available models of identity for
anyone who might be interested, be it with respect to family forms
(e.g., patchwork families, adoption by same-sex couples), diets (e.g.,
vegetarianism and veganism), healthcare (e.g., anti-vaccination), or
other principles of life and belief. All of them are seeking public
recognition for a new frame of reference for social meaning that has
originated from their own activity. This is necessarily a process
characterized by conflicts and various degrees of resistance, including
right-wing populism that seeks to defend "traditional values," but many
of these movements will ultimately succeed in providing more people with
the opportunity to speak in public, thus broadening the palette of
themes that are considered to be important and legitimate.
:::
::: {.section}
### Beyond center and periphery {#c1-sec-0005}
In order to reach a better understanding of the complexity involved in
the expanding social basis of cultural production, it is necessary to
shift yet again to a different level. For, just as it would be myopic to
examine the multiplication of cultural producers only in terms of
professional knowledge workers from the middle class, it would likewise
be insufficient to situate this multiplication exclusively in the
centers of the West. The entire system of categories that justified the
differentiation between the cultural "center" and the cultural
"periphery" has begun to falter. This complex and multilayered process
has been formulated and analyzed by the theory of "post-colonialism."
Long before digital media made the challenge of cultural multiplicity a
quotidian issue in the West, proponents of this theory had developed
languages and terminologies for negotiating different positions without
needing to impose a hierarchical order.
Since the 1970s, the theoretical current of post-colonialism has been
examining the cultural and epistemic dimensions of colonialism that,
even after its end as a territorial system, have remained responsible
for the continuation of dependent relations and power differentials. For
my purposes -- which are to develop a European perspective on the
factors ensuring that more and more people are able to participate in
cultural []{#Page_29 type="pagebreak" title="29"}production -- two
points are especially relevant because their effects reverberate in
Europe itself. First is the deconstruction of the categories "West" (in
the sense of the center) and "East" (in the sense of the periphery). And
second is the focus on hybridity as a specific way for non-Western
actors to deal with the dominant cultures of former colonial powers,
which have continued to determine significant portions of globalized
culture. The terms "West" and "East," "center" and "periphery," do not
simply describe existing conditions; rather, they are categories that
contribute, in an important way, to the creation of the very conditions
that they presume to describe. This may sound somewhat circular, but it
is precisely from this circularity that such cultural classifications
derive their strength. The world that they illuminate is immersed in
their own light. The category "East" -- or, to use the term of the
literary theorist Edward Said,
"orientalism"[^38^](#c1-note-0038){#c1-note-0038a} -- is a system of
representation that pervades Western thinking. Within this system,
Europe or the West (as the center) and the East (as the periphery)
represent asymmetrical and antithetical concepts. This construction
achieves a dual effect. As a self-description, on the one hand, it
contributes to the formation of our own identity, for Europeans
attribute to themselves and to their continent such features as
"rationality," "order," and "progress," while on the other hand
identifying the alternative with "superstition," "chaos," or
"stagnation." The East, moreover, is used as an exotic projection screen
for our own suppressed desires. According to Said, a representational
system of this sort can only take effect if it becomes "hegemonic"; that
is, if it is perceived as self-evident and no longer as an act of
attribution but rather as one of description, even and precisely by
those against whom the system discriminates. Said\'s accomplishment is
to have worked out how far-reaching this system was and, in many areas,
it remains so today. It extended (and extends) from scientific
disciplines, whose researchers discussed (until the 1980s) the theory of
"oriental despotism,"[^39^](#c1-note-0039){#c1-note-0039a} to literature
and art -- the motif of the harem was especially popular, particularly
in paintings of the late nineteenth
century[^40^](#c1-note-0040){#c1-note-0040a} -- all the way to everyday
culture, where, as of 1913 in the United States, the cigarette brand
Camel (introduced to compete with the then-leading brand, Fatima) was
meant to evoke the []{#Page_30 type="pagebreak" title="30"}mystique and
sensuality of the Orient.[^41^](#c1-note-0041){#c1-note-0041a} This
system of representation, however, was more than a means of describing
oneself and others; it also served to legitimize the allocation of all
knowledge and agency on to one side, that of the West. Such an order was
not restricted to culture; it also created and legitimized a sense of
domination for colonial projects.[^42^](#c1-note-0042){#c1-note-0042a}
This cultural legitimation, as Said points out, also persists after the
end of formal colonial domination and continues to marginalize the
postcolonial subjects. As before, they are unable to speak for
themselves and therefore remain in the dependent periphery, which is
defined by their subordinate position in relation to the center. Said
directed the focus of critique to this arrangement of center and
periphery, which he saw as being (re)produced and legitimized on the
cultural level. From this arose the demand that everyone should have the
right to speak, to place him- or herself in the center. To achieve this,
it was necessary first of all to develop a language -- indeed, a
cultural landscape -- that can manage without a hegemonic center and is
thus oriented toward multiplicity instead of
uniformity.[^43^](#c1-note-0043){#c1-note-0043a}
A somewhat different approach has been taken by the literary theorist
Homi K. Bhabha. He proceeds from the idea that the colonized never fully
passively adopt the culture of the colonialists -- the "English book,"
as he calls it. Their previous culture is never simply wiped out and
replaced by another. What always and necessarily occurs is rather a
process of hybridization. This concept, according to Bhabha,
::: {.extract}
suggests that all of culture is constructed around negotiations and
conflicts. Every cultural practice involves an attempt -- sometimes
good, sometimes bad -- to establish authority. Even classical works of
art, such as a painting by Brueghel or a composition by Beethoven, are
concerned with the establishment of cultural authority. Now, this poses
the following question: How does one function as a negotiator when
one\'s own sense of agency is limited, for instance, on account of being
excluded or oppressed? I think that, even in the role of the underdog,
there are opportunities to upend the imposed cultural authorities -- to
accept some aspects while rejecting others. It is in this way that
symbols of authority are hybridized and made into something of one\'s
own. For me, hybridization is not simply a mixture but rather a
[]{#Page_31 type="pagebreak" title="31"}strategic and selective
appropriation of meanings; it is a way to create space for negotiators
whose freedom and equality are
endangered.[^44^](#c1-note-0044){#c1-note-0044a}
:::
Hybridization is thus a cultural strategy for evading marginality that
is imposed from the outside: subjects, who from the dominant perspective
are incapable of doing so, appropriate certain aspects of culture for
themselves and transform them into something else. What is decisive is
that this hybrid, created by means of active and unauthorized
appropriation, opposes the dominant version and the resulting speech is
thus legitimized from another -- that is, from one\'s own -- position.
In this way, a cultural engagement is set under way and the superiority
of one meaning or another is called into question. Who has the right to
determine how and why a relationship with others should be entered,
which resources should be appropriated from them, and how these
resources should be used? At the heart of the matter lie the abilities
of speech and interpretation; these can be seized in order to create
space for a "cultural hybridity that entertains difference without an
assumed or imposed hierarchy."[^45^](#c1-note-0045){#c1-note-0045a}
At issue is thus a strategy for breaking down hegemonic cultural
conditions, which distribute agency in a highly uneven manner, and for
turning one\'s own cultural production -- which has been dismissed by
cultural authorities as flawed, misconceived, or outright ignorant --
into something negotiable and independently valuable. Bhabha is thus
interested in fissures, differences, diversity, multiplicity, and
processes of negotiation that generate something like shared meaning --
culture, as he defines it -- instead of conceiving of it as something
that precedes these processes and is threatened by them. Accordingly, he
proceeds not from the idea of unity, which is threatened whenever
"others" are empowered to speak and needs to be preserved, but rather
from the irreducible multiplicity that, through laborious processes, can
be brought into temporary and limited consensus. Bhabha\'s vision of
culture is one without immutable authorities, interpretations, and
truths. In theory, everything can be brought to the table. This is not a
situation in which anything goes, yet the central meaning of
negotiation, the contextuality of consensus, and the mutability of every
frame of reference []{#Page_32 type="pagebreak" title="32"}-- none of
which can be shared equally by everyone -- are always potentially
negotiable.
Post-colonialism draws attention to the "disruptive power of the
excluded-included third," which becomes especially virulent when it
"emerges in the middle of semantic
structures."[^46^](#c1-note-0046){#c1-note-0046a} The recognition of
this power reveals the increasing cultural independence of those
formerly colonized, and it also transforms the cultural self-perception
of the West, for, even in Western nations that were not significant
colonial powers, there are multifaceted tensions between dominant
cultures and those who are on the defensive against discrimination and
attributions by others. Instead of relying on the old recipe of
integration through assimilation (that is, the dissolution of the
"other"), the right to self-determined difference is being called for
more emphatically. In such a manner, collective identities, such as
national identities, are freed from their questionable appeals to
cultural homogeneity and essentiality, and reconceived in terms of the
experience of immanent difference. Instead of one binding and
unnegotiable frame of reference for everyone, which hierarchizes
individual positions and makes them appear unified, a new order without
such limitations needs to be established. Ultimately, the aim is to
provide nothing less than an "alternative reading of
modernity,"[^47^](#c1-note-0047){#c1-note-0047a} which influences both
the construction of the past and the modalities of the future. For
European culture in particular, such a project is an immense challenge.
Of course, these demands do not derive their everyday relevance
primarily from theory but rather from the experiences of
(de)colonization, migration, and globalization. Multifaceted as it is,
however, the theory does provide forms and languages for articulating
these phenomena, legitimizing new positions in public debates, and
attacking persistent mechanisms of cultural marginalization. It helps to
empower broader societal groups to become actively involved in cultural
processes, namely people, such as migrants and their children, whose
identity and experience are essentially shaped by non-Western cultures.
The latter have been giving voice to their experiences more frequently
and with greater confidence in all areas of public life, be it in
politics, literature, music, or
art.[^48^](#c1-note-0048){#c1-note-0048a} In Germany, for instance, the
films by Fatih Akin (*Head-On* from 2004 and *Soul Kitchen* from 2009,
to []{#Page_33 type="pagebreak" title="33"}name just two), in which the
experience of immigration is represented as part of the German
experience, have reached a wide public audience. In 2002, the group
Kanak Attak organized a series of conferences with the telling motto *no
integración*, and these did much to introduce postcolonial positions to
the debates taking place in German-speaking
countries.[^49^](#c1-note-0049){#c1-note-0049a} For a long time,
politicians with "migration backgrounds" were considered to be competent
in only one area, namely integration policy. This has since changed,
though not entirely. In 2008, for instance, Cem Özdemir was elected
co-chair of the Green Party and thus shares responsibility for all of
its political positions. Developments of this sort have been enabled
(and strengthened) by a shift in society\'s self-perception. In 2014,
Cemile Giousouf, the integration commissioner for the conservative
CDU/CSU alliance in the German Parliament, was able to make the
following statement without inciting any controversy: "Over the past few
years, Germany has become a modern land of
immigration."[^50^](#c1-note-0050){#c1-note-0050a} A remarkable
proclamation. Not ten years earlier, her party colleague Norbert Lammert
had expressed, in his function as parliamentary president, interest in
reviving the debate about the term "leading culture." The increasingly
well-educated migrants of the first, second, or third generation no
longer accept the choice of being either marginalized as an exotic
representative of the "other" or entirely assimilated. Rather, they are
insisting on being able to introduce their specific experience as a
constitutive contribution to the formation of the present -- in
association and in conflict with other contributions, but at the same
level and with the same legitimacy. It is no surprise that various forms
of discrimination and violence against "foreigners" not only continue
in everyday life but have also been increasing in reaction to this new
situation. Ultimately, established claims to power are being called into
question.
To summarize, at least three secular historical tendencies or movements,
some of which can be traced back to the late nineteenth century but each
of which gained considerable momentum during the last third of the
twentieth (the spread of the knowledge economy, the erosion of
heteronormativity, and the focus of post-colonialism on cultural
hybridity), have greatly expanded the sphere of those who actively
negotiate []{#Page_34 type="pagebreak" title="34"}social meaning. In
large part, the patterns and cultural foundations of these processes
developed long before the internet. Through the use of the internet, and
through the experiences of dealing with it, they have encroached upon
far greater portions of all societies.
:::
:::
::: {.section}
The Culturalization of the World {#c1-sec-0006}
--------------------------------
The number of participants in cultural processes, however, is not the
only thing that has increased. Parallel to that development, the field
of the cultural has expanded as well -- that is, those areas of life
that are not simply characterized by unalterable necessities, but rather
contain or generate competing options and thus require conscious
decisions.
The term "culturalization of the economy" refers to the central position
of knowledge-based, meaning-based, and affect-oriented processes in the
creation of value. With the emergence of consumption as the driving
force behind the production of goods and the concomitant necessity of
having not only to satisfy existing demands but also to create new ones,
the cultural and affective dimensions of the economy began to gain
significance. I have already discussed the beginnings of product
staging, advertising, and public relations. In addition to all of the
continuities that remain with us from that time, it is also possible to
point out a number of major changes that consumer society has undergone
since the late 1960s. These changes can be delineated by examining the
greater role played by design, which has been called the "core
discipline of the creative
economy."[^51^](#c1-note-0051){#c1-note-0051a}
As a field of its own, design originated alongside industrialization,
when, in collaborative processes, the activities of planning and
designing were separated from those of carrying out
production.[^52^](#c1-note-0052){#c1-note-0052a} It was not until the
modern era that designers consciously endeavored to seek new forms for
the logic inherent to mass production. With the aim of economic
efficiency, they intended their designs to optimize the clearly defined
functions of anonymous and endlessly reproducible objects. At the end of
the nineteenth century, the architect Louis Sullivan, whose buildings
still distinguish the skyline of Chicago, condensed this new attitude
into the famous axiom []{#Page_35 type="pagebreak" title="35"}"form
follows function." Mies van der Rohe, working as an architect in Chicago
in the middle of the twentieth century, supplemented this with a pithy
and famous formulation of his own: "less is more." The rationality of
design, in the sense of isolating and improving specific functions, and
the economical use of resources were of chief importance to modern
(industrial) designers. Even the ten design principles of Dieter Rams,
who led the design division of the consumer products company Braun from
1965 to 1991 -- one of the main sources of inspiration for Jonathan Ive,
Apple\'s chief design officer -- aimed to make products "usable,"
"understandable," "honest," and "long-lasting." "Good design," according
to his guiding principle, "is as little design as
possible."[^53^](#c1-note-0053){#c1-note-0053a} This orientation toward
the technical and functional promised to solve problems for everyone in
a long-term and binding manner, for the inherent material and design
qualities of an object were supposed to make it independent from
changing times and from the tastes of consumers.
::: {.section}
### Beyond the object {#c1-sec-0007}
At the end of the 1960s, a new generation of designers rebelled against
this industrial and instrumental rationality, which was now felt to be
authoritarian, soulless, and reductionist. In the works associated with
"anti-design" or "radical design," the objectives of the discipline were
redefined and a new formal language was developed. In the place of
technical and functional optimization, recombination -- ecological
recycling or the postmodern interplay of forms -- emerged as a design
method and aesthetic strategy. Moreover, the aspiration of design
shifted from the individual object to its entire social and material
environment. The processes of design and production, which had been
closed off from one another and restricted to specialists, were opened
up precisely to encourage the participation of non-designers, be it
through interdisciplinary cooperation with other types of professions or
through the empowerment of laymen. The objectives of design were
radically expanded: rather than ending with the completion of an
individual product, it was now supposed to engage with society. In the
sense of cybernetics, this was regarded as a "system," controlled by
feedback processes, []{#Page_36 type="pagebreak" title="36"}which
connected social, technical, and biological dimensions to one
another.[^54^](#c1-note-0054){#c1-note-0054a} Design, according to this
new approach, was meant to be a "socially significant
activity."[^55^](#c1-note-0055){#c1-note-0055a}
Embedded in the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s, this new
generation of designers was curious about the social and political
potential of their discipline, and about possibilities for promoting
flexibility and autonomy instead of rigid industrial efficiency. Design
was no longer expected to solve problems once and for all, for such an
idea did not correspond to the self-perception of an open and mutable
society. Rather, it was expected to offer better opportunities for
enabling people to react to continuously changing conditions. A radical
proposal was developed by the Italian designer Enzo Mari, who in 1974
published his handbook *Autoprogettazione* (Self-Design). It contained
19 simple designs with which people could make, on their own,
aesthetically and functionally sophisticated furniture out of pre-cut
pieces of wood. In this case, the designs themselves were less important
than the critique of conventional design as elitist and of consumer
society as alienated and wasteful. Mari\'s aim was to reconceive the
relations among designers, the manufacturing industry, and users.
Increasingly, design came to be understood as a holistic and open
process. Victor Papanek, the founder of ecological design, took things a
step further. For him, design was "basic to all human activity. The
planning and patterning of any act towards a desired, foreseeable end
constitutes the design process. Any attempt to separate design, to make
it a thing-by-itself, works counter to the inherent value of design as
the primary underlying matrix of
life."[^56^](#c1-note-0056){#c1-note-0056a}
Potentially all aspects of life could therefore fall under the purview
of design. This came about from the desire to oppose industrialism,
which was blind to its catastrophic social and ecological consequences,
with a new and comprehensive manner of seeing and acting that was
unrestricted by economics.
Toward the end of the 1970s, this expanded notion of design owed less
and less to emancipatory social movements, and its socio-political goals
began to fall by the wayside. Three fundamental patterns survived,
however, which go beyond design and remain characteristic of the
culturalization []{#Page_37 type="pagebreak" title="37"}of the economy:
the discovery of the public as emancipated users and active
participants; the use of appropriation, transformation, and
recombination as methods for creating ever-new aesthetic
differentiations; and, finally, the intention of shaping the lifeworld
of the user.[^57^](#c1-note-0057){#c1-note-0057a}
As these patterns became depoliticized and commercialized, the focus of
designing the "lifeworld" shifted more and more toward designing the
"experiential world." By the end of the 1990s, this had become so
normalized that even management consultants could assert that
"\[e\]xperiences represent an existing but previously unarticulated
*genre of economic output*."[^58^](#c1-note-0058){#c1-note-0058a} It was
possible to define the dimensions of the experiential world in various
ways. For instance, it could be clearly delimited and product-oriented,
like the flagship stores introduced by Nike in 1990, which, with their
elaborate displays, were meant to turn shopping into an experience. This
experience, as the company\'s executives hoped, radiated outward and
influenced how the brand was perceived as a whole. The experiential
world could also, however, be conceived in somewhat broader terms, for
instance by designing entire institutions around the idea of creating a
more attractive work environment and thereby increasing the commitment
of employees. This approach is widespread today in creative industries
and has become popularized through countless stories about ping-pong
tables, gourmet cafeterias, and massage rooms in certain offices. In
this case, the process of creativity is applied back to itself in order
to systematize and optimize a given workplace\'s basis of operation. The
development is comparable to the "invention of invention" that
characterized industrial research around the end of the nineteenth
century, though now the concept has been relocated to the field of
knowledge production.
Yet the "experiential world" can be expanded even further, for instance
when entire cities attempt to make themselves attractive to
international clientele and compete with others by building spectacular
museums or sporting arenas. Displays in cities, as well as a few other
central locations, are regularly constructed in order to produce a
particular experience. This also entails, however, that certain forms of
use that fail to fit the "urban
script"[^59^](#c1-note-0059){#c1-note-0059a} are pushed to the margins
or driven away.[^60^](#c1-note-0060){#c1-note-0060a} Thus, today, there
is hardly a single area of life to []{#Page_38 type="pagebreak"
title="38"}which the strategies and methods of design do not have
access, and this access occurs at all levels. For some time, design has
not been a purely visible matter, restricted to material objects; it
rather forms and controls all of the senses. Cities, for example, have
come to be understood increasingly as "sound spaces" and have
accordingly been reconfigured with the goal of modulating their various
noises.[^61^](#c1-note-0061){#c1-note-0061a} Yet design is no longer
just a matter of objects, processes, and experiences. By now, in the
context of reproductive medicine, it has even been applied to the
biological foundations of life ("designer babies"). I will revisit this
topic below.
:::
Of course, design is not the only field of culture that has imposed
itself over society as a whole. A similar development has occurred in
the field of advertising, which, since the 1970s, has been integrated
into many more physical and social spaces and by now has a broad range
of methods at its disposal. Advertising is no longer found simply on
billboards or in display windows. In the form of "guerilla marketing" or
"product placement," it has penetrated every space and occupied every
discourse -- by blending with political messages, for instance -- and
can now even be spread, as "viral marketing," by the addressees of the
advertisements themselves. Similar processes can be observed in the
fields of art, fashion, music, theater, and sports. This has taken place
perhaps most radically in the field of "gaming," which has drawn upon
technical progress in the most direct possible manner and, with the
spread of powerful computers and mobile applications, has left behind
the confines of the traditional playing field. In alternate reality
games, the realm of the virtual and fictitious has also been
transcended, as physical spaces have been overlaid with their various
scripts.[^62^](#c1-note-0062){#c1-note-0062a}
This list could be extended, but the basic trend is clear enough,
especially as the individual fields overlap and mutually influence one
another. They are blending into a single interdependent field for
generating social meaning in the form of economic activity. Moreover,
through digitalization and networking, many new opportunities have
arisen for large-scale involvement by the public in design processes.
Thanks []{#Page_39 type="pagebreak" title="39"}to new communication
technologies and flexible production processes, today\'s users can
personalize and create products to suit their wishes. Here, the spectrum
extends from tiny batches of creative-industrial products all the way to
global processes of "mass customization," in which factory-based mass
production is combined with personalization. One of the first
applications of this was introduced in 1999 when, through its website, a
sporting-goods company allowed customers to design certain elements of a
shoe by altering it within a set of guidelines. This was taken a step
further by the idea of "user-centered innovation," which relies on the
specific knowledge of users to enhance a product, with the additional
hope of discovering unintended applications and transforming these into
new areas of business.[^63^](#c1-note-0063){#c1-note-0063a} It has also
become possible for end users to take over the design process from the
beginning, which has become considerably easier with the advent of
specialized platforms for exchanging knowledge, alongside semi-automated
production tools such as mechanical mills and 3D printers.
Digitalization, which has allowed all content to be processed, and
networking, which has created an endless amount of content ("raw
material"), have turned appropriation and recombination into general
methods of cultural production.[^64^](#c1-note-0064){#c1-note-0064a}
This phenomenon will be examined more closely in the next chapter.
Both the involvement of users in the production process and the methods
of appropriation and recombination are extremely information-intensive
and communication-intensive. Without the corresponding technological
infrastructure, neither could be achieved efficiently or on a large
scale. This was evident in the 1970s, when such approaches never made it
beyond subcultures and conceptual studies. With today\'s search engines,
every single user can trawl through an amount of information that, just
a generation ago, would have been unmanageable even by professional
archivists. A broad array of communication platforms (together with
flexible production capacities and efficient logistics) not only weakens
the contradiction between mass fabrication and personalization; it also
allows users to network directly with one another in order to develop
specialized knowledge together and thus to enable themselves to
intervene directly in design processes, both as []{#Page_40
type="pagebreak" title="40"}willing participants in and as critics of
flexible global production processes.
:::
:::
::: {.section}
The Technologization of Culture {#c1-sec-0009}
-------------------------------
That society is dependent on complex information technologies in order
to organize its constitutive processes is, in itself, nothing new.
Rather, this began as early as the late nineteenth century. It is
directly correlated with the expansion and acceleration of the
circulation of goods, which came about through industrialization. As the
historian and sociologist James Beniger has noted, this led to a
"control crisis," for administrative control centers were faced with the
problem of losing sight of what was happening in their own factories,
with their suppliers, and in the important markets of the time.
Management was in a bind: decisions had to be made either on the basis
of insufficient information or too late. The existing administrative and
control mechanisms could no longer deal with the rapidly increasing
complexity and time-sensitive nature of extensively organized production
and distribution. The office became more important, and ever more people
were needed there to fulfill a growing number of functions. Yet this was
not enough for the crisis to subside. The old administrative methods,
which involved manual information processing, simply could no longer
keep up. The crisis reached its first dramatic peak in 1889 in the
United States, with the realization that the census data from the year
1880 had not yet been analyzed when the next census was already
scheduled to take place during the subsequent year. In the same year,
the Secretary of the Interior organized a conference to investigate
faster methods of data processing. Two methods were tested for making
manual labor more efficient, one of which had the potential to achieve
greater efficiency by means of novel data-processing machines. The
latter system emerged as the clear victor; developed by an engineer
named Hermann Hollerith, it mechanically processed and stored data on
punch cards. The idea was based on Hollerith\'s observations of the
coupling and decoupling of railroad cars, which he interpreted as
modular units that could be combined in any desired order. The punch
card transferred this approach to information []{#Page_41
type="pagebreak" title="41"}management. Data were no longer stored in
fixed, linear arrangements (tables and lists) but rather in small units
(the punch cards) that, like railroad cars, could be combined in any
given way. The increase in efficiency -- with respect to speed *and*
flexibility -- was enormous, and nearly a hundred of Hollerith\'s
machines were used by the Census
Bureau.[^65^](#c1-note-0065){#c1-note-0065a} This marked a turning point
in the history of information processing, with technical means no longer
being used exclusively to store data, but to process data as well. This
was the only way to avoid the impending crisis, ensuring that
bureaucratic management could maintain centralized control. Hollerith\'s
machines proved to be a resounding success and were implemented in many
more branches of government and corporate administration, where
data-intensive processes had increased so rapidly they could not have
been managed without such machines. This growth was accompanied by that
of Hollerith\'s Tabulating Machine Company, which he founded in 1896 and
which, after a number of mergers, was renamed in 1924 as the
International Business Machines Corporation (IBM). Throughout the
following decades, dependence on information-processing machines only
deepened. The growing number of social, commercial, and military
processes could only be managed by means of information technology. This
largely took place, however, outside of public view, namely in the
specialized divisions of large government and private organizations.
These were the only institutions in command of the necessary resources
for operating the complex technical infrastructure -- so-called
mainframe computers -- that was essential to automatic information
processing.
::: {.section}
### The independent media {#c1-sec-0010}
As with so much else, this situation began to change in the 1960s. Mass
media and information-processing technologies began to attract
criticism, even though all of the involved subcultures, media activists,
and hackers continued to act independently from one another until the
1990s. The freedom-oriented social movements of the 1960s began to view
the mass media as part of the political system against which they were
struggling. The connections among the economy, politics, and the media
were becoming more apparent, not []{#Page_42 type="pagebreak"
title="42"}least because many mass media companies, especially those in
Germany related to the Springer publishing house, were openly inimical
to these social movements. Critical theories arose that, borrowing
Louis Althusser\'s influential term, regarded the media as part of the
"ideological state apparatus"; that is, as one of the authorities whose
task is to influence people to accept social relations to such a degree
that the "repressive state apparatuses" (the police, the military, etc.)
form a constant background in everyday
life.[^66^](#c1-note-0066){#c1-note-0066a} Similarly influential,
Antonio Gramsci\'s theory of "cultural hegemony" emphasized the
condition in which the governed are manipulated to form a cultural
consensus with the ruling class; they accept the latter\'s
presuppositions (and the politics which are thus justified) even though,
by doing so, they are forced to suffer economic
disadvantages.[^67^](#c1-note-0067){#c1-note-0067a} Guy Debord and the
Situationists attributed to the media a central role in the new form of
rule known as "the spectacle," the glittery surfaces and superficial
manifestations of which served to conceal society\'s true
relations.[^68^](#c1-note-0068){#c1-note-0068a} In doing so, they
aligned themselves with the critique of the "culture industry," which
had been formulated by Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno at the
beginning of the 1940s and had become a widely discussed key text by the
1960s.
Their differences aside, these perspectives were united in that they no
longer understood the "public" as a neutral sphere, in which citizens
could inform themselves freely and form their opinions, but rather as
something that was created with specific intentions and consequences.
From this grew an interest in "counter-publics"; that is, in forums
where other actors could appear and negotiate theories of their own. The
mass media thus became an important instrument for organizing the
bourgeois--capitalist public, but they were also responsible for the
development of alternatives. Media, according to one of the core ideas
of these new approaches, are less a sphere in which an external reality
is depicted; rather, they are themselves a constitutive element of
reality.
:::
::: {.section}
### Media as lifeworlds {#c1-sec-0011}
Another branch of new media theories, that of Marshall McLuhan and the
Toronto School of Communication,[^69^](#c1-note-0069){#c1-note-0069a}
[]{#Page_43 type="pagebreak" title="43"}reached a similar conclusion on
different grounds. In 1964, McLuhan aroused a great deal of attention
with his slogan "the medium is the message." He maintained that every
medium of communication, by means of its media-specific characteristics,
directly affected the consciousness, self-perception, and worldview of
every individual.[^70^](#c1-note-0070){#c1-note-0070a} This, he
believed, happens independently of and in addition to whatever specific
message a medium might be conveying. From this perspective, reality does
not exist outside of media, given that media codetermine our personal
relation to and behavior in the world. For McLuhan and the Toronto
School, media were thus not channels for transporting content but rather
the all-encompassing environments -- galaxies -- in which we live.
Such ideas were circulating much earlier and were intensively developed
by artists, many of whom were beginning to experiment with new
electronic media. An important starting point in this regard was the
1963 exhibit *Exposition of Music -- Electronic Television* by the
Korean artist Nam June Paik, who was then collaborating with Karlheinz
Stockhausen in Düsseldorf. Among other things, Paik presented 12
television sets, the screens of which were "distorted" by magnets. Here,
however, "distorted" is a problematic term, for, as Paik explicitly
noted, the electronic images were "a beautiful slap in the face of
classic dualism in philosophy since the time of Plato. \[...\] Essence
AND existence, essentia AND existentia. In the case of the electron,
however, EXISTENTIA IS ESSENTIA."[^71^](#c1-note-0071){#c1-note-0071a}
Paik no longer understood the electronic image on the television screen
as a portrayal or representation of anything. Rather, it engendered in
the moment of its appearance an autonomous reality beyond and
independent of its representational function. A whole generation of
artists began to explore forms of existence in electronic media, which
they no longer understood as pure media of information. In his work
*Video Corridor* (1969--70), Bruce Nauman stacked two monitors at the
end of a corridor that was approximately 10 meters long but only 50
centimeters wide. On the lower monitor ran a video showing the empty
hallway. The upper monitor displayed an image captured by a camera
installed at the entrance of the hall, about 3 meters high. If the
viewer moved down the corridor toward the two []{#Page_44
type="pagebreak" title="44"}monitors, he or she would thus be recorded
by the latter camera. Yet the closer one came to the monitor, the
farther one would be from the camera, so that one\'s image on the
monitor would become smaller and smaller. Recorded from behind, viewers
would thus watch themselves walking away from themselves. Surveillance
by others, self-surveillance, recording, and disappearance were directly
and intuitively connected with one another and thematized as fundamental
issues of electronic media.
Toward the end of the 1960s, the easier availability and mobility of
analog electronic production technologies promoted the search for
counter-publics and the exploration of media as comprehensive
lifeworlds. In 1967, Sony introduced its first Portapak system: a
battery-powered, self-contained recording system -- consisting of a
camera, a cord, and a recorder -- with which it was possible to make
(black-and-white) video recordings outside of a studio. Although the
recording apparatus, which required additional devices for editing and
projection, was offered at the relatively expensive price of \$1,500
(which corresponds to about €8,000 today), it was still affordable for
interested groups. Compared with the situation of traditional film
cameras, these new cameras considerably lowered the initial hurdle for
media production, for video tapes were not only much cheaper than film
reels (and could be used for multiple recordings); they also made it
possible to view recorded material immediately and on location. This
enabled the production of works that were far more intuitive and
spontaneous than earlier ones. The 1970s saw the formation of many video
groups, media workshops, and other initiatives for the independent
production of electronic media. Through their own distribution,
festivals, and other channels, such groups created alternative public
spheres. The latter became especially prominent in the United States
where, at the end of the 1960s, the providers of cable networks were
legally obligated to establish public-access channels, on which citizens
were able to operate self-organized and non-commercial television
programs. This gave rise to a considerable public-access movement there,
which at one point extended across 4,000 cities and was responsible for
producing programs from and for these different
communities.[^72[]{#Page_45 type="pagebreak"
title="45"}^](#c1-note-0072){#c1-note-0072a}
What these initiatives shared in common, in Western Europe and the
United States, was their attempt to close the gap between the
consumption and production of media, to activate the public, and at
least in part to experiment with the media themselves. Non-professional
producers were empowered with the ability to control who told their
stories and how this happened. Groups that previously had no access to
the medial public sphere now had opportunities to represent themselves
and their own interests. By working together on their own productions,
such groups demystified the medium of television and simultaneously
equipped it with a critical consciousness.
Especially well received in Germany was the work of Hans Magnus
Enzensberger, who in 1970 argued (on the basis of Bertolt Brecht\'s
radio theory) in favor of distinguishing between "repressive" and
"emancipatory" uses of media. For him, the emancipatory potential of
media lay in the fact that "every receiver is \[...\] a potential
transmitter" that can participate "interactively" in "collective
production."[^73^](#c1-note-0073){#c1-note-0073a} In the same year, the
first German video group, Telewissen, debuted in public with a
demonstration in downtown Darmstadt. In 1980, at the peak of the
movement for independent video production, there were approximately a
hundred such groups throughout (West) Germany. The lack of distribution
channels, however, represented a nearly insuperable obstacle and ensured
that many independent productions were seldom viewed outside of
small-scale settings. Tapes had to be exchanged between groups through
the mail, and they were mainly shown at gatherings and events, and in
bars. The dynamic of alternative media shifted toward a small subculture
(though one networked throughout all of Europe) of pirate radio and
television broadcasters. At the beginning of the 1980s and in the space
of Radio Dreyeckland in Freiburg, which had been founded in 1977 as
Radio Verte Fessenheim, operations began at Germany\'s first pirate or
citizens\' radio station, which regularly broadcast information about
the political protest movements that had arisen against the use of
nuclear power in Fessenheim (France), Wyhl (Germany), and Kaiseraugst
(Switzerland). The epicenter of the scene, however, was located in
Amsterdam, where the group known as Rabotnik TV, which was an offshoot
[]{#Page_46 type="pagebreak" title="46"}of the squatter scene there,
would illegally feed its signal through official television stations
after their programming had ended at night (many stations then stopped
broadcasting at midnight). In 1988, the group acquired legal
broadcasting slots on the cable network and reached up to 50,000 viewers
with their weekly experimental shows, which largely consisted of footage
appropriated freely from elsewhere.[^74^](#c1-note-0074){#c1-note-0074a}
Early in 1990, the pirate television station Kanal X was created in
Leipzig; it produced its own citizens\' television programming in the
quasi-lawless milieu of the GDR before
reunification.[^75^](#c1-note-0075){#c1-note-0075a}
These illegal, independent, or public-access stations only managed to
establish themselves as real mass media to a very limited extent.
Nevertheless, they played an important role in sensitizing an entire
generation of media activists, whose opportunities expanded as the means
of production became both better and cheaper. In the name of "tactical
media," a new generation of artistic and political media activists came
together in the middle of the
1990s.[^76^](#c1-note-0076){#c1-note-0076a} They combined the "camcorder
revolution," which in the late 1980s had made video equipment available
to broader swaths of society, stirring visions of democratic media
production, with the newly arrived medium of the internet. Despite still
struggling with numerous technical difficulties, they remained constant
in their belief that the internet would solve the hitherto intractable
problem of distributing content. The transition from analog to digital
media lowered the production hurdle yet again, not least through the
ongoing development of improved software. Now, many stages of production
that had previously required professional or semi-professional expertise
and equipment could also be carried out by engaged laymen. As a
consequence, the focus of interest broadened to include not only the
development of alternative production groups but also the possibility of
a flexible means of rapid intervention in existing structures. Media --
both television and the internet -- were understood as environments in
which one could act without directly representing a reality outside of
the media. Television was analyzed down to its own legalities, which
could then be manipulated to affect things beyond the media.
Increasingly, culture jamming and the campaigns of so-called
communication guerrillas were blurring the difference between media and
political activity.[^77[]{#Page_47 type="pagebreak"
title="47"}^](#c1-note-0077){#c1-note-0077a}
This difference was dissolved entirely by a new generation of
politically motivated artists, activists, and hackers, who transferred
the tactics of civil disobedience -- blockading a building with a
sit-in, for instance -- to the
internet.[^78^](#c1-note-0078){#c1-note-0078a} When, in 1994, the
Zapatista Army of National Liberation rose up in the south of Mexico,
several media projects were created to support its mostly peaceful
opposition and to make the movement known in Europe and North America.
As part of this loose network, in 1998 the American artist collective
Electronic Disturbance Theater developed a relatively simple computer
program called FloodNet that enabled networked sympathizers to shut down
websites, such as those of the Mexican government, in a targeted and
temporary manner. The principle was easy enough: the program would
automatically reload a certain website over and over again in order to
exhaust the capacities of its network
servers.[^79^](#c1-note-0079){#c1-note-0079a} The goal was not to
destroy data but rather to disturb the normal functioning of an
institution in order to draw attention to the activities and interests
of the protesters.
:::
::: {.section}
### Networks as places of action {#c1-sec-0012}
What this new generation of media activists shared in common with the
hackers and pioneers of computer networks was the idea that
communication media are spaces for agency. During the 1960s, these
programmers were also in search of alternatives. The difference during
the 1960s is that they did not pursue these alternatives in
counter-publics, but rather in alternative lifestyles and communication.
The rejection of bureaucracy as a form of social organization played a
significant role in the critique of industrial society formulated by
freedom-oriented social movements. At the beginning of the previous
century, Max Weber had still regarded bureaucracy as a clear sign of
progress toward a rational and methodical
organization.[^80^](#c1-note-0080){#c1-note-0080a} He based this
assessment on processes that were impersonal, rule-bound, and
transparent (in the sense that they were documented with files). But
now, in the 1960s, bureaucracy was being criticized as soulless,
alienated, oppressive, non-transparent, and unfit for an increasingly
complex society. Whereas the first four of these points are in basic
agreement with Weber\'s thesis about "disenchanting" []{#Page_48
type="pagebreak" title="48"}the world, the last point represents a
radical departure from his analysis. Bureaucracies were no longer
regarded as hyper-efficient but rather as inefficient, and their size
and rule-bound nature were no longer seen as strengths but rather as
decisive weaknesses. The social bargain of offering prosperity and
security in exchange for subordination to hierarchical relations struck
many as being anything but attractive, and what blossomed instead was a
broad interest in alternative forms of coexistence. New institutions
were expected to be more flexible and more open. The desire to step away
from the system was widespread, and many (mostly young) people set about
doing exactly that. Alternative ways of life -- communes, shared
apartments, and cooperatives -- were explored in the country and in
cities. They were meant to provide the individual with greater autonomy
and the opportunity to develop his or her own unique potential. Despite
all of the differences between these concepts of life, they nevertheless
shared something of a common denominator: the promise of
reconceptualizing social institutions and the fundamentals of
coexistence, with the aim of reformulating them in such a way as to
allow everyone\'s personal potential to develop fully in the here and
now.
According to critics of such alternatives, bureaucracy was necessary in
order to organize social life as it radically reduced the world\'s
complexity by forcing it through the bottleneck of official procedures.
However, the price paid for such efficiency involved the atrophying of
human relationships, which had to be subordinated to rigid processes
that were incapable of registering unique characteristics and
differences and were unable to react in a timely manner to changing
circumstances.
In the 1960s, many countercultural attempts to find new forms of
organization placed personal and open communication at the center of
their efforts. Each individual was understood as a singular person with
untapped potential rather than a carrier of abstract and clearly defined
functions. It was soon realized, however, that every common activity and
every common decision entailed processes that were time-intensive and
communication-intensive. As soon as a group exceeded a certain size, it
became practically impossible for it to reach any consensus. As a result
of these experiences, an entire worldview emerged that propagated
"smallness" as a central []{#Page_49 type="pagebreak" title="49"}value
("small is beautiful"). It was thought that in this way society might
escape from bureaucracy with its ostensibly disastrous consequences for
humanity and the environment.[^81^](#c1-note-0081){#c1-note-0081a} But
this belief did not last for long. For, unlike the majority of European
alternative movements, the counterculture in the United States was not
overwhelmingly critical of technology. On the contrary, many actors
there sought suitable technologies for solving the practical problems of
social organization. At the end of the 1960s, a considerable amount of
attention was devoted to the field of basic technological research. This
field brought together the interests of the military, academics,
businesses, and activists from the counterculture. The common ground for
all of them was a cybernetic vision of institutions, or, in the words of
the historian Fred Turner:
::: {.extract}
a picture of humans and machines as dynamic, collaborating elements in a
single, highly fluid, socio-technical system. Within that system,
control emerged not from the mind of a commanding officer, but from the
complex, probabilistic interactions of humans, machines and events
around them. Moreover, the mechanical elements of the system in question
-- in this case, the predictor -- enabled the human elements to achieve
what all Americans would agree was a worthwhile goal. \[...\] Over the
coming decades, this second vision of benevolent man-machine systems, of
circular flows of information, would emerge as a driving force in the
establishment of the military--industrial--academic complex and as a
model of an alternative to that
complex.[^82^](#c1-note-0082){#c1-note-0082a}
:::
This complex was possible because, as a theory, cybernetics was
formulated in extraordinarily abstract terms, so much so that a whole
variety of competing visions could be associated with
it.[^83^](#c1-note-0083){#c1-note-0083a} With cybernetics as a
meta-science, it was possible to investigate the common features of
technical, social, and biological
processes.[^84^](#c1-note-0084){#c1-note-0084a} They were analyzed as
open, interactive, and information-processing systems. It was especially
consequential that cybernetics defined control and communication as the
same thing, namely as activities oriented toward informational
feedback.[^85^](#c1-note-0085){#c1-note-0085a} The heterogeneous legacy
of cybernetics and its synonymous treatment of the terms "communication"
and "control" continue to influence information technology and the
internet today.[]{#Page_50 type="pagebreak" title="50"}
The various actors who contributed to the development of the internet
shared a common interest for forms of organization based on the
comprehensive, dynamic, and open exchange of information. Both on the
micro and macro level (and this is decisive at this point),
decentralized and flexible communication technologies were meant to
become the foundation of new organizational models. Militaries feared
attacks on their command and communication centers; academics wanted to
broaden their culture of autonomy, collaboration among peers, and the
free exchange of information; businesses were looking for new areas of
activity; and countercultural activists were longing for new forms of
peaceful coexistence.[^86^](#c1-note-0086){#c1-note-0086a} They all
rejected the bureaucratic model, and the counterculture provided them
with the central catchword for their alternative vision: community.
Though rather difficult to define, it was a powerful and positive term
that somehow promised the opposite of bureaucracy: humanity,
cooperation, horizontality, mutual trust, and consensus. Now, however,
humanity was expected to be reconfigured as a community in cooperation
with and inseparable from machines. And what was yearned for had become
a liberating symbiosis of man and machine, an idea that the author
Richard Brautigan was quick to mock in his poem "All Watched Over by
Machines of Loving Grace" from 1967:
Here, Brautigan is ridiculing both the impatience (*the sooner the
better!*) and the naïve optimism (*harmony, clear sky*) of the
countercultural activists. Primarily, he regarded the underlying vision
as an innocent but amusing fantasy and not as a potential threat against
which something had to be done. And there were also reasons to believe
that, ultimately, the new communities would be free from the coercive
nature that []{#Page_51 type="pagebreak" title="51"}had traditionally
characterized the downside of community experiences. It was thought that
the autonomy and freedom of the individual could be regained in and by
means of the community. The conditions for this were that participation
in the community had to be voluntary and that the rules of participation
had to be self-imposed. I will return to this topic in greater detail
below.
In line with their solution-oriented engineering culture and the
results-focused military funders who by and large set the agenda, a
relatively small group of computer scientists now took it upon
themselves to establish the technological foundations for new
institutions. This was not an abstract goal for the distant future;
rather, they wanted to change everyday practices as soon as possible. It
was around this time that advanced technology became the basis of social
communication, which now adopted forms that would have been
inconceivable (not to mention impracticable) without these
preconditions. Of course, effective communication technologies already
existed at the time. Large corporations had begun long before then to
operate their own computing centers. In contrast to the latter, however,
the new infrastructure could also be used by individuals outside of
established institutions and could be implemented for all forms of
communication and exchange. This idea gave rise to a pragmatic culture
of horizontal, voluntary cooperation. The clearest summary of this early
ethos -- which originated at the unusual intersection of military,
academic, and countercultural interests -- was offered by David D.
Clark, a computer scientist who for some time coordinated the
development of technical standards for the internet: "We reject: kings,
presidents and voting. We believe in: rough consensus and running
code."[^88^](#c1-note-0088){#c1-note-0088a}
All forms of classical, formal hierarchies and their methods for
resolving conflicts -- commands (by kings and presidents) and votes --
were dismissed. Implemented in their place was a pragmatics of open
cooperation that was oriented around two guiding principles. The first
was that different views should be discussed without a single individual
being able to block any final decisions. Such was the meaning of the
expression "rough consensus." The second was that, in accordance with
the classical engineering tradition, the focus should remain on concrete
solutions that had to be measured against one []{#Page_52
type="pagebreak" title="52"}another on the basis of transparent
criteria. Such was the meaning of the expression "running code." In
large part, this method was possible because the group oriented around
these principles was, internally, relatively homogeneous: it consisted
of top-notch computer scientists -- all of them men -- at respected
American universities and research centers. For this very reason, many
potential and fundamental conflicts were avoided, at least at first.
This internal homogeneity lends rather dark undertones to their sunny
vision, but this was hardly recognized at the time. Today these
undertones are far more apparent, and I will return to them below.
Not only were technical protocols developed on the basis of these
principles, but organizational forms as well. Along with the Internet
Engineering Task Force (which he directed), Clark created the so-called
Request-for-Comments documents, with which ideas could be presented to
interested members of the community and simultaneous feedback could be
collected in order to work through the ideas in question and thus reach
a rough consensus. If such a consensus could not be reached -- if, for
instance, an idea failed to resonate with anyone or was too
controversial -- then the matter would be dropped. The feedback was
organized as a form of many-to-many communication through email lists,
newsgroups, and online chat systems. This proved to be so effective that
horizontal communication within large groups or between multiple groups
could take place without resulting in chaos. This therefore invalidated
the traditional trend that social units, once they reach a certain size,
would necessarily introduce hierarchical structures for the sake of
reducing complexity and communication. In other words, the foundations
were laid for larger numbers of (changing) people to organize flexibly
and with the aim of building an open consensus. For Manuel Castells,
this combination of organizational flexibility and scalability in size
is the decisive innovation that was enabled by the rise of the network
society.[^89^](#c1-note-0089){#c1-note-0089a} At the same time, however,
this meant that forms of organization spread that could only be possible
on the basis of technologies that have formed (and continue to form)
part of the infrastructure of the internet. Digital technology and the
social activity of individual users were linked together to an
unprecedented extent. Social and cultural agendas were now directly
related []{#Page_53 type="pagebreak" title="53"}to and entangled with
technical design. Each of the four original interest groups -- the
military, scientists, businesses, and the counterculture -- implemented
new technologies to pursue their own projects, which partly complemented
and partly contradicted one another. As we know today, the first three
groups still cooperate closely with each other. To a great extent, this
has allowed the military and corporations, which are willingly supported
by researchers in need of funding, to determine the technology and thus
aspects of the social and cultural agendas that depend on it.
The software developers\' immediate environment experienced its first
major change in the late 1970s. Software, which for many had been a mere
supplement to more expensive and highly specialized hardware, became a
marketable good with stringent licensing restrictions. A new generation
of businesses, led by Bill Gates, suddenly began to label cooperation
among programmers as theft.[^90^](#c1-note-0090){#c1-note-0090a}
Previously it had been par for the course, and above all necessary, for
programmers to share software with one another. The former culture of
horizontal cooperation between developers transformed into a
hierarchical and commercially oriented relation between developers and
users (many of whom, at least at the beginning, had developed programs
of their own). For the first time, copyright came to play an important
role in digital culture. In order to survive in this environment, the
practice of open cooperation had to be placed on a new legal foundation.
Copyright law, which served to separate programmers (producers) from
users (consumers), had to be neutralized or circumvented. The first step
in this direction was taken in 1984 by the activist and programmer
Richard Stallman. Composed by Stallman, the GNU General Public License
was and remains a brilliant hack that uses the letter of copyright law
against its own spirit. This happens in the form of a license that
defines "four freedoms":
1. The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom
0).
2. The freedom to study how the program works and change it so it does
your computing as you wish (freedom 1).
3. The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor
(freedom 2).[]{#Page_54 type="pagebreak" title="54"}
4. The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others
(freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance
to benefit from your changes.[^91^](#c1-note-0091){#c1-note-0091a}
Thanks to this license, people who were personally unacquainted and did
not share a common social environment could now cooperate (freedoms 2
and 3) and simultaneously remain autonomous and unrestricted (freedoms 0
and 1). For many, the tension between the need to develop complex
software in large teams and the desire to maintain one\'s own autonomy
represented an incentive to try out new forms of
cooperation.[^92^](#c1-note-0092){#c1-note-0092a}
Stallman\'s influence was at first limited to a small circle of
programmers. In the middle of the 1980s, the goal of developing a
completely free operating system seemed a distant one. Communication
between those interested in doing so was often slow and complicated. In
part, program codes still had to be sent by mail. It was not until the
beginning of the 1990s that students in technical departments at many
universities could access the
internet.[^93^](#c1-note-0093){#c1-note-0093a} One of the first to use
these new opportunities in an innovative way was a Finnish student named
Linus Torvalds. He built upon Stallman\'s work and programmed a kernel,
which, as the most important module of an operating system, governs the
interaction between hardware and software. He published the first free
version of this in 1991 and encouraged anyone interested to give him
feedback.[^94^](#c1-note-0094){#c1-note-0094a} And it poured in.
Torvalds reacted promptly and issued new versions of his software in
quick succession. Instead of understanding his software as a finished
product, he treated it like an open-ended process. This, in turn,
motivated even more developers to participate, because they saw that
their contributions were being adopted swiftly, which led to the
formation of an open community of interested programmers who swapped
ideas over the internet and continued writing software. In order to
maintain an overview of the different versions of the program, which
appeared in parallel with one another, it soon became necessary to
employ specialized platforms. The fusion of social processes --
horizontal and voluntary cooperation among developers -- and
technological platforms, which enabled this form of cooperation
[]{#Page_55 type="pagebreak" title="55"}by providing archives, filter
functions, and search capabilities that made it possible to organize
large amounts of data, was thus advanced even further. The programmers
were no longer primarily working on the development of the internet
itself, which by then was functioning quite reliably, but were rather
using the internet to apply their cooperative principles to other
arenas. By the end of the 1990s, the free-software movement had
established a new, internet-based form of organization and had
demonstrated its efficiency in practice: horizontal, informal
communities of actors -- voluntary, autonomous, and focused on a common
interest -- that, on the basis of high-tech infrastructure, could
include thousands of people without having to create formal hierarchies.
:::
:::
::: {.section}
From the Margins to the Center of Society {#c1-sec-0013}
-----------------------------------------
It was around this same time that the technologies in question, which
were already no longer very new, entered mainstream society. Within a
few years, the internet became part of everyday life. Three years before
the turn of the millennium, only about 6 percent of the entire German
population used the internet, often only occasionally. Three years after
the millennium, the number of users already exceeded 53 percent. Since
then, this share has increased even further. In 2014, it was more than
97 percent for people under the age of
40.[^95^](#c1-note-0095){#c1-note-0095a} Parallel to these developments,
data transfer rates increased considerably, broadband connections ousted
the need for dial-up modems, and the internet was suddenly "here" and no
longer "there." With the spread of mobile devices, especially since the
year 2007 when the first iPhone was introduced, digital communication
became available both extensively and continuously. Since then, the
internet has been ubiquitous. The amount of time that users spend online
has increased and, with the rapid ascent of social mass media such as
Facebook, people have been online in almost every situation and
circumstance in life.[^96^](#c1-note-0096){#c1-note-0096a} The internet,
like water or electricity, has become for many people a utility that is
simply taken for granted.
In a BBC survey from 2010, 80 percent of those polled believed that
internet access -- a precondition for participating []{#Page_56
type="pagebreak" title="56"}in the now dominant digital condition --
should be regarded as a fundamental human right. This idea was most
popular in South Korea (96 percent) and Mexico (94 percent), while in
Germany at least 72 percent were of the same
opinion.[^97^](#c1-note-0097){#c1-note-0097a}
On the basis of this new infrastructure, which is now relevant in all
areas of life, the cultural developments described above have been
severed from the specific historical conditions from which they emerged
and have permeated society as a whole. Expressivity -- the ability to
communicate something "unique" -- is no longer a trait of artists and
knowledge workers alone, but rather something that is required by an
increasingly broader stratum of society and is already being taught in
schools. Users of social mass media must produce (themselves). The
development of specific, differentiated identities and the demand that
each be treated equally are no longer promoted exclusively by groups who
have to struggle against repression, existential threats, and
marginalization, but have penetrated deeply into the former mainstream,
not least because the present forms of capitalism have learned to profit
from the spread of niches and segmentation. When even conservative
parties have abandoned the idea of a "leading culture," then cultural
differences can no longer be classified by enforcing an absolute and
indisputable hierarchy, the top of which is occupied by specific
(geographical and cultural) centers. Rather, a space has been opened up
for endless negotiations, a space in which -- at least in principle --
everything can be called into question. This is not, of course, a
peaceful and egalitarian process. In addition to the practical hurdles
that exist in polarizing societies, there are also violent backlashes
and new forms of fundamentalism that are attempting once again to remove
certain religious, social, cultural, or political dimensions of
existence from the discussion. Yet these can only be understood in light
of a sweeping cultural transformation that has already reached
mainstream society.[^98^](#c1-note-0098){#c1-note-0098a} In other words,
the digital condition has become quotidian and dominant. It forms a
cultural constellation that determines all areas of life, and its
characteristic features are clearly recognizable. These will be the
focus of the next chapter.[]{#Page_57 type="pagebreak" title="57"}
:::
::: {.section .notesList}
[1](#c1-note-0001a){#c1-note-0001} Kathrin Passig and Sascha Lobo,
*Internet: Segen oder Fluch* (Berlin: Rowohlt, 2012) \[--trans.\].
[2](#c1-note-0002a){#c1-note-0002} The expression "heteronormatively
behaving" is used here to mean that, while in the public eye, the
behavior of the people []{#Page_177 type="pagebreak" title="177"}in
question conformed to heterosexual norms regardless of their personal
sexual orientations.
[3](#c1-note-0003a){#c1-note-0003} No order is ever entirely closed
off. In this case, too, there was also room for exceptions and for
collective moments of greater cultural multiplicity. That said, the
social openness of the end of the 1920s, for instance, was restricted to
particular milieus within large cities and was accordingly short-lived.
[4](#c1-note-0004a){#c1-note-0004} Fritz Machlup, *The Political
Economy of Monopoly: Business, Labor and Government Policies*
(Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1952).
[5](#c1-note-0005a){#c1-note-0005} Machlup was a student of Ludwig von
Mises, the most influential representative of this radically
individualist school. See Hans-Hermann Hoppe, "Die Österreichische
Schule und ihre Bedeutung für die moderne Wirtschaftswissenschaft," in
Karl-Dieter Grüske (ed.), *Die Gemeinwirtschaft: Kommentarband zur
Neuauflage von Ludwig von Mises' "Die Gemeinwirtschaft"* (Düsseldorf:
Verlag Wirtschaft und Finanzen, 1996), pp. 65--90.
[6](#c1-note-0006a){#c1-note-0006} Fritz Machlup, *The Production and
Distribution of Knowledge in the United States* (New York: John Wiley &
Sons, 1962).
[7](#c1-note-0007a){#c1-note-0007} The term "knowledge worker" had
already been introduced to the discussion a few years before; see Peter
Drucker, *Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New* (New York: Harper,
1959).
[8](#c1-note-0008a){#c1-note-0008} Peter Ecker, "Die
Verwissenschaftlichung der Industrie: Zur Geschichte der
Industrieforschung in den europäischen und amerikanischen
Elektrokonzernen 1890--1930," *Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte*
35 (1990): 73--94.
[9](#c1-note-0009a){#c1-note-0009} Edward Bernays was the son of
Sigmund Freud\'s sister Anna and Ely Bernays, the brother of Freud\'s
wife, Martha Bernays.
[10](#c1-note-0010a){#c1-note-0010} Edward L. Bernays, *Propaganda*
(New York: Horace Liverlight, 1928).
[11](#c1-note-0011a){#c1-note-0011} James Beniger, *The Control
Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information
Society* (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), p. 350.
[12](#c1-note-0012a){#c1-note-0012} Norbert Wiener, *Cybernetics: Or
Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine* (New York: J.
Wiley, 1948).
[13](#c1-note-0013a){#c1-note-0013} Daniel Bell, *The Coming of
Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting* (New York:
Basic Books, 1973).
[14](#c1-note-0014a){#c1-note-0014} Simon Nora and Alain Minc, *The
Computerization of Society: A Report to the President of France*
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1980).
[15](#c1-note-0015a){#c1-note-0015} Manuel Castells, *The Rise of the
Network Society* (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996).
[16](#c1-note-0016a){#c1-note-0016} Hans-Dieter Kübler, *Mythos
Wissensgesellschaft: Gesellschaftlicher Wandel zwischen Information,
Medien und Wissen -- Eine Einführung* (Wiesbaden: Verlag für
Sozialwissenschaften, 2009).[]{#Page_178 type="pagebreak" title="178"}
[17](#c1-note-0017a){#c1-note-0017} Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello,
*The New Spirit of Capitalism*, trans. Gregory Elliott (London: Verso,
2005).
[18](#c1-note-0018a){#c1-note-0018} Michael Piore and Charles Sabel,
*The Second Industrial Divide: Possibilities of Prosperity* (New York:
Basic Books, 1984).
[19](#c1-note-0019a){#c1-note-0019} Castells, *The Rise of the Network
Society*. For a critical evaluation of Castells\'s work, see Felix
Stalder, *Manuel Castells and the Theory of the Network Society*
(Cambridge: Polity, 2006).
[20](#c1-note-0020a){#c1-note-0020} "UK Creative Industries Mapping
Documents" (1998); quoted from Terry Flew, *The Creative Industries:
Culture and Policy* (Los Angeles, CA: Sage, 2012), pp. 9--10.
[21](#c1-note-0021a){#c1-note-0021} The rise of the creative
industries, and the hope that they inspired among politicians, did not
escape criticism. Among the first works to draw attention to the
precarious nature of working in such industries was Angela McRobbie\'s
*British Fashion Design: Rag Trade or Image Industry?* (New York:
Routledge, 1998).
[22](#c1-note-0022a){#c1-note-0022} This definition is not without a
degree of tautology, given that economic growth is based on talent,
which itself is defined by its ability to create new jobs; that is,
economic growth. At the same time, he employs the term "talent" in an
extremely narrow sense. Apparently, if something has nothing to do with
job creation, it also has nothing to do with talent or creativity. All
forms of creativity are thus measured and compared according to a common
criterion.
[23](#c1-note-0023a){#c1-note-0023} Richard Florida, *Cities and the
Creative Class* (New York: Routledge, 2005), p. 5.
[24](#c1-note-0024a){#c1-note-0024} One study has reached the
conclusion that, despite mass participation, "a new form of
communicative elite has developed, namely digitally and technically
versed actors who inform themselves in this way, exchange ideas and thus
gain influence. For them, the possibilities of platforms mainly
represent an expansion of useful tools. Above all, the dissemination of
digital technology makes it easier for versed and highly networked
individuals to convey their news more simply -- and, for these groups of
people, it lowers the threshold for active participation." Michael
Bauer, "Digitale Technologien und Partizipation," in Clara Landler et
al. (eds), *Netzpolitik in Österreich: Internet, Macht, Menschenrechte*
(Krems: Donau-Universität Krems, 2013), pp. 219--24, at 224
\[--trans.\].
[25](#c1-note-0025a){#c1-note-0025} Boltanski and Chiapello, *The New
Spirit of Capitalism*.
[26](#c1-note-0026a){#c1-note-0026} According to Wikipedia,
"Heteronormativity is the belief that people fall into distinct and
complementary genders (man and woman) with natural roles in life. It
assumes that heterosexuality is the only sexual orientation or only
norm, and states that sexual and marital relations are most (or only)
fitting between people of opposite sexes."[]{#Page_179 type="pagebreak"
title="179"}
[27](#c1-note-0027a){#c1-note-0027} Jannis Plastargias, *RotZSchwul:
Der Beginn einer Bewegung (1971--1975)* (Berlin: Querverlag, 2015).
[28](#c1-note-0028a){#c1-note-0028} Helmut Ahrens et al. (eds),
*Tuntenstreit: Theoriediskussion der Homosexuellen Aktion Westberlin*
(Berlin: Rosa Winkel, 1975), p. 4.
[29](#c1-note-0029a){#c1-note-0029} Susanne Regener and Katrin Köppert
(eds), *Privat/öffentlich: Mediale Selbstentwürfe von Homosexualität*
(Vienna: Turia + Kant, 2013).
[30](#c1-note-0030a){#c1-note-0030} Such, for instance, was the
assessment of Manfred Bruns, the spokesperson for the Lesbian and Gay
Association in Germany, in his text "Schwulenpolitik früher" (link no
longer active). From today\'s perspective, however, the main problem
with this event was the unclear position of the Green Party with respect
to pedophilia. See Franz Walter et al. (eds), *Die Grünen und die
Pädosexualität: Eine bundesdeutsche Geschichte* (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck
& Ruprecht, 2014).
[32](#c1-note-0032a){#c1-note-0032} Quoted from Frank Niggemeier, "Gay
Pride: Schwules Selbstbewußtsein aus dem Village," in Bernd Polster
(ed.), *West-Wind: Die Amerikanisierung Europas* (Cologne: Dumont,
1995), pp. 179--87, at 184 \[--trans.\].
[33](#c1-note-0033a){#c1-note-0033} Quoted from Regener and Köppert,
*Privat/öffentlich*, p. 7 \[--trans.\].
[34](#c1-note-0034a){#c1-note-0034} Hans-Peter Buba and László A.
Vaskovics, *Benachteiligung gleichgeschlechtlich orientierter Personen
und Paare: Studie im Auftrag des Bundesministerium der Justiz* (Cologne:
Bundesanzeiger, 2001).
[35](#c1-note-0035a){#c1-note-0035} This process of internal
differentiation has not yet reached its conclusion, and thus the
acronyms have become longer and longer: LGBPTTQQIIAA+ stands for
[36](#c1-note-0036a){#c1-note-0036} Judith Butler, *Gender Trouble:
Feminism and the Subversion of Identity* (New York: Routledge, 1989).
[37](#c1-note-0037a){#c1-note-0037} Andreas Krass, "Queer Studies: Eine
Einführung," in Krass (ed.), *Queer denken: Gegen die Ordnung der
Sexualität* (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2003), pp. 7--27.
[38](#c1-note-0038a){#c1-note-0038} Edward W. Said, *Orientalism* (New
York: Vintage Books, 1978).
[39](#c1-note-0039a){#c1-note-0039} Kark August Wittfogel, *Oriental
Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power* (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1957).
[40](#c1-note-0040a){#c1-note-0040} Silke Förschler, *Bilder des Harem:
Medienwandel und kultereller Austausch* (Berlin: Reimer, 2010).
[41](#c1-note-0041a){#c1-note-0041} The selection and effectiveness of
these images is not a coincidence. Camel was one of the first brands of
cigarettes for []{#Page_180 type="pagebreak" title="180"}which
advertising, in the sense described above, was used in a systematic
manner.
[42](#c1-note-0042a){#c1-note-0042} This would not exclude feelings of
regret about the loss of an exotic and romantic way of life, such as
those of T. E. Lawrence, whose activities in the Near East during the
First World War were memorialized in the film *Lawrence of Arabia*
(1962).
[43](#c1-note-0043a){#c1-note-0043} Said has often been criticized,
however, for portraying orientalism so dominantly that there seems to be
no way out of the existing dependent relations. For an overview of the
debates that Said has instigated, see María do Mar Castro Varela and
Nikita Dhawan, *Postkoloniale Theorie: Eine kritische Einführung*
(Bielefeld: Transcript, 2005), pp. 37--46.
[44](#c1-note-0044a){#c1-note-0044} "Migration führt zu 'hybrider'
Gesellschaft" (an interview with Homi K. Bhabha), *ORF Science*
(November 9, 2007), online \[--trans.\].
[45](#c1-note-0045a){#c1-note-0045} Homi K. Bhabha, *The Location of
Culture* (New York: Routledge, 1994), p. 4.
[46](#c1-note-0046a){#c1-note-0046} Elisabeth Bronfen and Benjamin
Marius, "Hybride Kulturen: Einleitung zur anglo-amerikanischen
Multikulturismusdebatte," in Bronfen et al. (eds), *Hybride Kulturen*
(Tübingen: Stauffenburg), pp. 1--30, at 8 \[--trans.\].
[47](#c1-note-0047a){#c1-note-0047} "What Is Postcolonial Thinking? An
Interview with Achille Mbembe," *Eurozine* (December 2006), online.
[48](#c1-note-0048a){#c1-note-0048} Migrants have always created their
own culture, which deals in various ways with the experience of
migration itself, but non-migrant populations have long tended to ignore
this. Things have now begun to change in this regard, for instance
through Imra Ayata and Bülent Kullukcu\'s compilation of songs by the
Turkish diaspora of the 1970s and 1980s: *Songs of Gastarbeiter*
(Munich: Trikont, 2013).
[49](#c1-note-0049a){#c1-note-0049} The conference programs can be
found at: \<\>.
[50](#c1-note-0050a){#c1-note-0050} "Deutschland entwickelt sich zu
einem attraktiven Einwanderungsland für hochqualifizierte Zuwanderer,"
press release by the CDU/CSU Alliance in the German Parliament (June 4,
2014), online \[--trans.\].
[51](#c1-note-0051a){#c1-note-0051} Andreas Reckwitz, *Die Erfindung
der Kreativität: Zum Prozess gesellschaftlicher Ästhetisierung* (Berlin:
Suhrkamp, 2011), p. 180 \[--trans.\]. An English translation of this
book is forthcoming: *The Invention of Creativity: Modern Society and
the Culture of the New*, trans. Steven Black (Cambridge: Polity, 2017).
[52](#c1-note-0052a){#c1-note-0052} Gert Selle, *Geschichte des Design
in Deutschland* (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2007).
[53](#c1-note-0053a){#c1-note-0053} "Less Is More: The Design Ethos of
Dieter Rams," *SFMOMA* (June 29, 2011), online.[]{#Page_181
type="pagebreak" title="181"}
[54](#c1-note-0054a){#c1-note-0054} The cybernetic perspective was
introduced to the field of design primarily by Buckminster Fuller. See
Diedrich Diederichsen and Anselm Franke, *The Whole Earth: California
and the Disappearance of the Outside* (Berlin: Sternberg, 2013).
[55](#c1-note-0055a){#c1-note-0055} Clive Dilnot, "Design as a Socially
Significant Activity: An Introduction," *Design Studies* 3/3 (1982):
139--46.
[56](#c1-note-0056a){#c1-note-0056} Victor J. Papanek, *Design for the
Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change* (New York: Pantheon, 1972),
p. 2.
[57](#c1-note-0057a){#c1-note-0057} Reckwitz, *Die Erfindung der
Kreativität*.
[58](#c1-note-0058a){#c1-note-0058} B. Joseph Pine and James H.
Gilmore, *The Experience Economy: Work Is Theater and Every Business Is
a Stage* (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1999), p. ix (the
emphasis is original).
[59](#c1-note-0059a){#c1-note-0059} Mona El Khafif, *Inszenierter
Urbanismus: Stadtraum für Kunst, Kultur und Konsum im Zeitalter der
Erlebnisgesellschaft* (Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, 2013).
[60](#c1-note-0060a){#c1-note-0060} Konrad Becker and Martin Wassermair
(eds), *Phantom Kulturstadt* (Vienna: Löcker, 2009).
[61](#c1-note-0061a){#c1-note-0061} See, for example, Andres Bosshard,
*Stadt hören: Klangspaziergänge durch Zürich* (Zurich: NZZ Libro,
2009).
[62](#c1-note-0062a){#c1-note-0062} "An alternate realty game (ARG),"
according to Wikipedia, "is an interactive networked narrative that uses
the real world as a platform and employs transmedia storytelling to
deliver a story that may be altered by players\' ideas or actions."
[63](#c1-note-0063a){#c1-note-0063} Eric von Hippel, *Democratizing
Innovation* (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005).
[64](#c1-note-0064a){#c1-note-0064} It is often the case that the
involvement of users simply serves to increase the efficiency of
production processes and customer service. Many activities that were
once undertaken at the expense of businesses now have to be carried out
by the customers themselves. See Günter Voss, *Der arbeitende Kunde:
Wenn Konsumenten zu unbezahlten Mitarbeitern werden* (Frankfurt am Main:
Campus, 2005).
[65](#c1-note-0065a){#c1-note-0065} Beniger, *The Control Revolution*,
pp. 411--16.
[66](#c1-note-0066a){#c1-note-0066} Louis Althusser, "Ideology and
Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation)," in
Althusser, *Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays*, trans. Ben Brewster
(New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971), pp. 127--86.
[67](#c1-note-0067a){#c1-note-0067} Florian Becker et al. (eds),
*Gramsci lesen! Einstiege in die Gefängnishefte* (Hamburg: Argument,
2013), pp. 20--35.
[68](#c1-note-0068a){#c1-note-0068} Guy Debord, *The Society of the
Spectacle*, trans. Fredy Perlman and Jon Supak (Detroit: Black & Red,
1977).
[69](#c1-note-0069a){#c1-note-0069} Derrick de Kerckhove, "McLuhan and
the Toronto School of Communication," *Canadian Journal of
Communication* 14/4 (1989): 73--9.[]{#Page_182 type="pagebreak"
title="182"}
[70](#c1-note-0070a){#c1-note-0070} Marshall McLuhan, *Understanding
Media: The Extensions of Man* (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964).
[71](#c1-note-0071a){#c1-note-0071} Nam Jun Paik, "Exposition of Music
-- Electronic Television" (leaflet accompanying the exhibition). Quoted
from Zhang Ga, "Sounds, Images, Perception and Electrons," *Douban*
(March 3, 2016), online.
[72](#c1-note-0072a){#c1-note-0072} Laura R. Linder, *Public Access
Television: America\'s Electronic Soapbox* (Westport, CT: Praeger,
1999).
[73](#c1-note-0073a){#c1-note-0073} Hans Magnus Enzensberger,
"Constituents of a Theory of the Media," in Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick
Montfort (eds), *The New Media Reader* (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003),
pp. 259--75.
[74](#c1-note-0074a){#c1-note-0074} Paul Groot, "Rabotnik TV,"
*Mediamatic* 2/3 (1988), online.
[75](#c1-note-0075a){#c1-note-0075} Inke Arns, "Social Technologies:
Deconstruction, Subversion and the Utopia of Democratic Communication,"
*Medien Kunst Netz* (2004), online.
[76](#c1-note-0076a){#c1-note-0076} The term was coined at a series of
conferences titled The Next Five Minutes (N5M), which were held in
Amsterdam from 1993 to 2003. See \<\>.
[77](#c1-note-0077a){#c1-note-0077} Mark Dery, *Culture Jamming:
Hacking, Slashing and Sniping in the Empire of Signs* (Westfield: Open
Media, 1993); Luther Blisset et al., *Handbuch der
Kommunikationsguerilla*, 5th edn (Berlin: Assoziationen A, 2012).
[78](#c1-note-0078a){#c1-note-0078} Critical Art Ensemble, *Electronic
Civil Disobedience and Other Unpopular Ideas* (New York: Autonomedia,
1996).
[79](#c1-note-0079a){#c1-note-0079} Today this method is known as a
"distributed denial of service attack" (DDOS).
[80](#c1-note-0080a){#c1-note-0080} Max Weber, *Economy and Society: An
Outline of Interpretive Sociology*, trans. Guenther Roth and Claus
Wittich (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1978), pp. 26--8.
[81](#c1-note-0081a){#c1-note-0081} Ernst Friedrich Schumacher, *Small
Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered*, 8th edn (New York:
Harper Perennial, 2014).
[82](#c1-note-0082a){#c1-note-0082} Fred Turner, *From Counterculture
to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Movement and the Rise of
Digital Utopianism* (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006), p.
21. In this regard, see also the documentary films *Das Netz* by Lutz
Dammbeck (2003) and *All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace* by
Adam Curtis (2011).
[83](#c1-note-0083a){#c1-note-0083} It was possible to understand
cybernetics as a language of free markets or also as one of centralized
planned economies. See Slava Gerovitch, *From Newspeak to Cyberspeak: A
History of Soviet Cybernetics* (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002). The
great interest of Soviet scientists in cybernetics rendered the term
rather suspicious in the West, where it was disassociated from
artificial intelligence.[]{#Page_183 type="pagebreak" title="183"}
[84](#c1-note-0084a){#c1-note-0084} Claus Pias, "The Age of
Cybernetics," in Pias (ed.), *Cybernetics: The Macy Conferences
1946--1953* (Zurich: Diaphanes, 2016), pp. 11--27.
[85](#c1-note-0085a){#c1-note-0085} Norbert Wiener, one of the
cofounders of cybernetics, explained this as follows in 1950: "In giving
the definition of Cybernetics in the original book, I classed
communication and control together. Why did I do this? When I
communicate with another person, I impart a message to him, and when he
communicates back with me he returns a related message which contains
information primarily accessible to him and not to me. When I control
the actions of another person, I communicate a message to him, and
although this message is in the imperative mood, the technique of
communication does not differ from that of a message of fact.
Furthermore, if my control is to be effective I must take cognizance of
any messages from him which may indicate that the order is understood
and has been obeyed." Norbert Wiener, *The Human Use of Human Beings:
Cybernetics and Society*, 2nd edn (London: Free Association Books,
1989), p. 16.
[86](#c1-note-0086a){#c1-note-0086} Though presented here as distinct,
these interests could in fact be held by one and the same person. In
*From Counterculture to Cyberculture*, for instance, Turner discusses
countercultural entrepreneurs.
[87](#c1-note-0087a){#c1-note-0087} Richard Brautigan, "All Watched
Over by Machines of Loving Grace," in *All Watched Over by Machines of
Loving Grace*, by Brautigan (San Francisco: The Communication Company,
1967).
[88](#c1-note-0088a){#c1-note-0088} David D. Clark, "A Cloudy Crystal
Ball: Visions of the Future," *Internet Engineering Taskforce* (July
1992), online.
[89](#c1-note-0089a){#c1-note-0089} Castells, *The Rise of the Network
Society*.
[90](#c1-note-0090a){#c1-note-0090} Bill Gates, "An Open Letter to
Hobbyists," *Homebrew Computer Club Newsletter* 2/1 (1976): 2.
[91](#c1-note-0091a){#c1-note-0091} Richard Stallman, "What Is Free
Software?", *GNU Operating System*, online.
[92](#c1-note-0092a){#c1-note-0092} The fundamentally cooperative
nature of programming was recognized early on. See Gerald M. Weinberg,
*The Psychology of Computer Programming*, rev. edn (New York: Dorset
House, 1998 \[originally published in 1971\]).
[93](#c1-note-0093a){#c1-note-0093} On the history of free software,
see Volker Grassmuck, *Freie Software: Zwischen Privat- und
Gemeineigentum* (Berlin: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2002).
[94](#c1-note-0094a){#c1-note-0094} In his first email on the topic, he
wrote: "Hello everybody out there \[...\]. I'm doing a (free) operating
system (just a hobby, won\'t be big and professional like gnu) \[...\].
This has been brewing since April, and is starting to get ready. I\'d
like any feedback on things people like/dislike." Linus Torvalds, "What
[]{#Page_184 type="pagebreak" title="184"}Would You Like to See Most in
Minix," *Usenet Group* (August 1991), online.
[96](#c1-note-0096a){#c1-note-0096} From 1997 to 2003, the average use
of online media in Germany climbed from 76 to 138 minutes per day, and
by 2013 it reached 169 minutes. Over the same span of time, the average
frequency of use increased from 3.3 to 4.4 days per week, and by 2013 it
was 5.8. From 2007 to 2013, the percentage of people who were members of
private social networks like Facebook grew from 15 percent to 46
percent. Of these, nearly 60 percent -- around 19 million people -- used
such services on a daily basis. The source of this information is the
article cited in the previous note.
[97](#c1-note-0097a){#c1-note-0097} "Internet Access Is 'a Fundamental
Right'," *BBC News* (8 March 2010), online.
[98](#c1-note-0098a){#c1-note-0098} Manuel Castells, *The Power of
Identity* (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), pp. 7--22.
:::
:::
[II]{.chapterNumber} [Forms]{.chapterTitle} {#c2}
::: {.section}
With the emergence of the internet around the turn of the millennium as
an omnipresent infrastructure for communication and coordination,
previously independent cultural developments began to spread beyond
their specific original contexts, mutually influencing and enhancing one
another, and becoming increasingly intertwined. Out of a disconnected
conglomeration of more or less marginalized practices, a new and
specific cultural environment thus took shape, usurping or marginalizing
an ever greater variety of cultural constellations. The following
discussion will focus on three *forms* of the digital condition; that
is, on those formal qualities that (notwithstanding all of its internal
conflicts and contradictions) lend a particular shape to this cultural
environment as a whole: *referentiality*, *communality*, and
*algorithmicity*. It is only because most of the cultural processes
operating under the digital condition are characterized by common formal
features such as these that it is reasonable to speak of the digital
condition in the singular.
"Referentiality" is a method with which individuals can inscribe
themselves into cultural processes and constitute themselves as
producers. Understood as shared social meaning, the arena of culture
entails that such an undertaking cannot be limited to the individual.
Rather, it takes place within a larger framework whose existence and
development depend on []{#Page_58 type="pagebreak" title="58"}communal
formations. "Algorithmicity" denotes those aspects of cultural processes
that are (pre-)arranged by the activities of machines. Algorithms
transform the vast quantities of data and information that characterize
so many facets of present-day life into dimensions and formats that can
be registered by human perception. It is impossible to read the content
of billions of websites. Therefore we turn to services such as Google\'s
search algorithm, which reduces the data flood ("big data") to a
manageable amount and translates it into a format that humans can
understand ("small data"). Without them, human beings could not
comprehend or do anything within a culture built around digital
technologies, but they influence our understanding and activity in an
ambivalent way. They create new dependencies by pre-sorting and making
the (informational) world available to us, yet simultaneously ensure our
autonomy by providing the preconditions that enable us to act.
:::
In the digital condition, one of the methods (if not *the* most
fundamental method) enabling humans to participate -- alone or in groups
-- in the collective negotiation of meaning is the system of creating
references. In a number of arenas, referential processes play an
important role in the assignment of both meaning and form. According to
the art historian André Rottmann, for instance, "one might claim that
working with references has in recent years become the dominant
production-aesthetic model in contemporary
art."[^1^](#c2-note-0001){#c2-note-0001a} This burgeoning engagement
with references, however, is hardly restricted to the world of
contemporary art. Referentiality is a feature of many processes that
encompass the operations of various genres of professional and everyday
culture. In its essence, it is the use of materials that are already
equipped with meaning -- as opposed to so-called raw material -- to
create new meanings. The referential techniques used to achieve this are
extremely diverse, a fact reflected in the numerous terms that exist to
describe them: re-mix, re-make, re-enactment, appropriation, sampling,
meme, imitation, homage, tropicália, parody, quotation, post-production,
re-performance, []{#Page_59 type="pagebreak" title="59"}camouflage,
(non-academic) research, re-creativity, mashup, transformative use, and
so on.
These processes have two important aspects in common: the
recognizability of the sources and the freedom to deal with them however
one likes. The first creates an internal system of references from which
meaning and aesthetics are derived in an essential
manner.[^2^](#c2-note-0002){#c2-note-0002a} The second is the
precondition enabling the creation of something that is both new and on
the same level as the re-used material. This represents a clear
departure from the historical--critical method, which endeavors to embed
a source in its original context in order to re-determine its meaning,
but also a departure from classical forms of rendition such as
translations, adaptations (for instance, adapting a book for a film), or
cover versions, which, though they translate a work into another
language or medium, still attempt to preserve its original meaning.
Re-mixes produced by DJs are one example of the referential treatment of
source material. In his book on the history of DJ culture, the
journalist Ulf Poschardt notes: "The remixer isn\'t concerned with
salvaging authenticity, but with creating a new
authenticity."[^3^](#c2-note-0003){#c2-note-0003a} For instead of
distancing themselves from the past, which would follow the (Western)
logic of progress or the spirit of the avant-garde, these processes
refer explicitly to precursors and to existing material. In one and the
same gesture, both one\'s own new position and the context and cultural
tradition that is being carried on in one\'s own work are constituted
performatively; that is, through one\'s own activity in the moment. I
will discuss this phenomenon in greater depth below.
To work with existing cultural material is, in itself, nothing new. In
modern montages, artists likewise drew upon available texts, images, and
treated materials. Yet there is an important difference: montages were
concerned with bringing together seemingly incongruous but stable
"finished pieces" in a more or less unmediated and fragmentary manner.
This is especially clear in the collages by the Dadaists or in
Expressionist literature such as Alfred Döblin\'s *Berlin
Alexanderplatz*. In these works, the experience of Modernity\'s many
fractures -- its fragmentation and turmoil -- was given a new aesthetic
form. In his reference to montages, Adorno thus observed that the
"negation of synthesis becomes a principle []{#Page_60 type="pagebreak"
title="60"}of form."[^4^](#c2-note-0004){#c2-note-0004a} At least for a
brief moment, he considered them an adequate expression for the
impossibility of reconciling the contradictions of capitalist culture.
Influenced by Adorno, the literary theorist Peter Bürger went so far as
to call the montage the true "paradigm of
modernity."[^5^](#c2-note-0005){#c2-note-0005a} In today\'s referential
processes, on the contrary, pieces are not brought together as much as
they are integrated into one another by being altered, adapted, and
transformed. Unlike the older arrangement, it is not the fissures
between elements that are foregrounded but rather their synthesis in the
present. Conchita Wurst, the bearded diva, is not torn between two
conflicting poles. Rather, she represents a successful synthesis --
something new and harmonious that distinguishes itself by showcasing
elements of the old order (man/woman) and simultaneously transcending
them.
This synthesis, however, is usually just temporary, for at any time it
can itself serve as material for yet another rendering. Of course, this
is far easier to pull off with digital objects than with analog objects,
though these categories have become increasingly porous and thus
increasingly problematic as opposites. More and more objects exist both
in an analog and in a digital form. Think of photographs and slides,
which have become so easy to digitalize. Even three-dimensional objects
can now be scanned and printed. In the future, programmable materials
with controllable and reversible features will cause the difference
between the two domains to vanish: analog is becoming more and more
digital.
Montages and referential processes can only become widespread methods
if, in a given society, cultural objects are available in three
different respects. The first is economic and organizational: they must
be affordable and easily accessible. Whoever is unable to afford books
or get hold of them by some other means will not be able to reconfigure
any texts. The second is cultural: working with cultural objects --
which can always create deviations from the source in unpredictable ways
-- must not be treated as taboo or illegal, but rather as an everyday
activity without any special preconditions. It is much easier to
manipulate a text from a secular newspaper than one from a religious
canon. The third is material: it must be possible to use the material
and to change it.[^6[]{#Page_61 type="pagebreak"
title="61"}^](#c2-note-0006){#c2-note-0006a}
In terms of this third form of availability, montages differ from
referential processes, for cultural objects can be integrated into one
another -- instead of simply being placed side by side -- far more
readily when they are digitally coded. Information is digitally coded
when it is stored by means of a limited system of discrete (that is,
separated by finite intervals or distances) signs that are meaningless
in themselves. This allows information to be copied from one carrier to
another without any loss and it allows the respective signs, whether
individually or in groups, to be arranged freely. Seen in this way,
digital coding is not necessarily bound to computers but can rather be
realized with all materials: a mosaic is a digital process in which
information is coded by means of variously colored tiles, just as a
digital image consists of pixels. In the case of the mosaic, of course,
the resolution is far lower. Alphabetic writing is a form of coding
linguistic information by means of discrete signs that are, in
themselves, meaningless. Consequently, Florian Cramer has argued that
"every form of literature that is recorded alphabetically and not based
on analog parameters such as ideograms or orality is already digital in
that it is stored in discrete
signs."[^7^](#c2-note-0007){#c2-note-0007a} However, the specific
features of the alphabet, as Marshall McLuhan repeatedly underscored,
did not fully develop until the advent of the printing
press.[^8^](#c2-note-0008){#c2-note-0008a} It was the printing press, in
other words, that first abstracted written signs from analog handwriting
and transformed them into standardized symbols that could be repeated
without any loss of information. In this practical sense, the printing
press made writing digital, with the result that dealing with texts soon
became radically different.
::: {.section}
### Information overload 1.0 {#c2-sec-0003}
The printing press made texts available in the three respects mentioned
above. For one thing, their number increased rapidly, while their price
significantly sank. During the first two generations after Gutenberg\'s
invention -- that is, between 1450 and 1500 -- more books were produced
than during the thousand years
before.[^9^](#c2-note-0009){#c2-note-0009a} And that was just the
beginning. Dealing with books and their content changed from the ground
up. In manuscript culture, every new copy represented a potential
degradation of the original, and therefore []{#Page_62 type="pagebreak"
title="62"}the oldest sources (those that had undergone as little
corruption as possible) were valued above all. With the advent of print
culture, the idea took hold that texts could be improved by the process
of editing, not least because the availability of old sources, through
reprints and facsimiles, had also improved dramatically. Pure
reproduction was mechanized and overcome as a cultural challenge.
According to the historian Elizabeth Eisenstein, one of the first
consequences of the greatly increased availability of the printed book
was that it overcame the "tyranny of major authorities, which was common
in small libraries."[^10^](#c2-note-0010){#c2-note-0010a} Scientists
were now able to compare texts with one another and critique them to an
unprecedented extent. Their general orientation turned around: instead
of looking back in order to preserve what they knew, they were now
looking ahead toward what they might not (yet) know.
In order to organize this information flood of rapidly amassing texts,
it was necessary to create new conventions: books were now specified by
their author, publisher, and date of publication, not to mention
furnished with page numbers. This enabled large numbers of texts to be
catalogued and every individual text -- indeed, every single passage --
to be referenced.[^11^](#c2-note-0011){#c2-note-0011a} Scientists could
legitimize the pursuit of new knowledge by drawing attention to specific
mistakes or gaps in existing texts. In the scientific culture that was
developing at the time, the close connection between old and new
material was not simply regarded as something positive; it was also
urgently prescribed as a method of argumentation. Every text had to
contain an internal system of references, and this was the basis for the
development of schools, disciplines, and specific discourses.
The digital character of printed writing also made texts available in
the third respect mentioned above. Because discrete signs could be
reproduced without any loss of information, it was possible not only to
make perfect copies but also to remove content from one carrier and
transfer it to another. Materials were no longer simply arranged
sequentially, as in medieval compilations and almanacs, but manipulated
to give rise to a new and independent fluid text. A set of conventions
was developed -- one that remains in use today -- for modifying embedded
or quoted material in order for it []{#Page_63 type="pagebreak"
title="63"}to fit into its new environment. In this manner, quotations
could be altered in such a way that they could be integrated seamlessly
into a new text while remaining recognizable as direct citations.
Several of these conventions, for instance the use of square brackets to
indicate additions ("\[ \]") or ellipses to indicate omissions ("..."),
are also used in this very book. At the same time, the conventions for
making explicit references led to the creation of an internal reference
system that made the singular position of the new text legible within a
collective field of work. "Printing," to quote Elizabeth Eisenstein once
again, "encouraged forms of combinatory activity which were social as
well as intellectual. It changed relationships between men of learning
as well as between systems of
ideas."[^12^](#c2-note-0012){#c2-note-0012a} Exchange between scholars,
in the form of letters and visits, intensified. The seventeenth century
saw the formation of the *respublica literaria* or the "Republic of
Letters," a loose network of scholars devoted to promoting the ideas of
the Enlightenment. Beginning in the eighteenth century, the rapidly
growing number of scientific fields was arranged and institutionalized
into clearly distinct disciplines. In the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, diverse media-technical innovations made images, sounds, and
moving images available, though at first only in analog formats. These
created the preconditions that enabled the montage in all of its forms
-- film cuts, collages, readymades, *musique concrète*, found-footage
films, literary cut-ups, and artistic assemblages (to name only the
best-known genres) -- to become the paradigm of Modernity.
:::
::: {.section}
### Information overload 2.0 {#c2-sec-0004}
It was not until new technical possibilities for recording, storing,
processing, and reproduction appeared over the course of the 1990s that
it also became increasingly possible to code and edit images, audio, and
video digitally. Through the networking that was taking place not far
behind, society was flooded with an unprecedented amount of digitally
coded information *of every sort*, and the circulation of this
information accelerated. This was not, however, simply a quantitative
change but also and above all a qualitative one. Cultural materials
became available in a comprehensive []{#Page_64 type="pagebreak"
title="64"}sense -- economically and organizationally, culturally
(despite legal problems), and materially (because digitalized). Today it
would not be bold to predict that nearly every text, image, or sound
will soon exist in a digital form. Most of the new reproducible works
are already "born digital" and digitally distributed, or they are
physically produced according to digital instructions. Many initiatives
are working to digitalize older, analog works. We are now anchored in
the digital.
Among the numerous digitalization projects currently under way, the most
ambitious is that of Google Books, which, since its launch in 2004, has
digitalized around 20 million books from the collections of large
libraries and prepared them for full-text searches. Right from the
start, a fierce debate arose about the legal and cultural acceptability
of this project. One concern was whether Google\'s process infringed
upon the rights of the authors and publishers of the scanned books or
whether, according to American law, it qualified as "fair use," in which
case there would be no obligation for the company to seek authorization
or offer compensation. The second main concern was whether it would be
culturally or politically appropriate for a private corporation to hold
a de facto monopoly over the digital heritage of book culture. The first
issue incited a complex legal battle that, in 2013, was decided in
Google\'s favor by a judge on the United States District Court in New
York.[^13^](#c2-note-0013){#c2-note-0013a} At the heart of the second
issue was the question of how a public library should look in the
twenty-first century.[^14^](#c2-note-0014){#c2-note-0014a} In November
of 2008, the European Commission and the cultural minister of the
European Union launched the virtual Europeana library, which occurred
after a number of European countries had already invested hundreds of
millions of euros in various digitalization
initiatives.[^15^](#c2-note-0015){#c2-note-0015a} Today, Europeana
serves as a common access point to the online archives of around 2,500
European cultural institutions. By the end of 2015, its digital holdings
had grown to include more than 40 million objects. This is still,
however, a relatively small number, for it has been estimated that
European archives and museums contain more than 220 million
natural-historical and more than 260 million cultural-historical
objects. In the United States, discussions about the future of libraries
[]{#Page_65 type="pagebreak" title="65"}led to the 2013 launch of the
Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), which, like Europeana,
provides common access to the digitalized holdings of archives, museums,
and libraries. By now, more than 14 million items can be viewed there.
In one way or another, however, both the private and the public projects
of this sort have been limited by binding copyright laws. The librarian
and book historian Robert Darnton, one of the most prominent advocates
of the Digital Public Library of America, has accordingly stated: "The
main impediment to the DPLA\'s growth is legal, not financial. Copyright
laws could exclude everything published after 1964, most works published
after 1923, and some that go back as far as
1873."[^16^](#c2-note-0016){#c2-note-0016a} The legal situation in
Europe is similar to that in the United States. It, too, massively
obstructs the work of public
institutions.[^17^](#c2-note-0017){#c2-note-0017a} In many cases, this
has had the absurd consequence that certain materials, though they have
been fully digitalized, may only be accessed in part or exclusively
inside the facilities of a particular institution. Whereas companies
such as Google can afford to wage long legal battles, and in the
meantime create precedents, public institutions must proceed with great
caution, not least to avoid the accusation of using public funds to
violate copyright laws. Thus, they tend to fade into the background and
leave users, who are unfamiliar with the complex legal situation, with
the impression that they are even more out-of-date than they often are.
Informal actors, who explicitly operate beyond the realm of copyright
law, are not faced with such restrictions. UbuWeb, for instance, which
is the largest online archive devoted to the history of
twentieth-century avant-garde art, was not created by an art museum but
rather by the initiative of an individual artist, Kenneth Goldsmith.
Since 1996, he has been collecting historically relevant materials that
were no longer in distribution and placing them online for free and
without any stipulations. He forgoes the process of obtaining the rights
to certain works of art because, as he remarks on the website, "Let\'s
face it, if we had to get permission from everyone on UbuWeb, there
would be no UbuWeb."[^18^](#c2-note-0018){#c2-note-0018a} It would
simply be too demanding to do so. Because he pursues the project without
any financial interest and has saved so much []{#Page_66
type="pagebreak" title="66"}from oblivion, his efforts have provoked
hardly any legal difficulties. On the contrary, UbuWeb has become so
important that Goldsmith has begun to receive more and more material
directly from artists and their heirs, who would like certain works not
to be forgotten. Nevertheless, or perhaps for this very reason,
Goldsmith repeatedly stresses the instability of his archive, which
could disappear at any moment if he loses interest in maintaining it or
if something else happens. Users are therefore able to download works
from UbuWeb and archive, on their own, whatever items they find most
important. Of course, this fragility contradicts the idea of an archive
as a place for long-term preservation. Yet such a task could only be
undertaken by an institution that is oriented toward the long term.
Because of the existing legal conditions, however, it is hardly likely
that such an institution will come about.
Whereas Goldsmith is highly adept at operating within a niche that not
only tolerates but also accepts the violation of formal copyright
claims, large websites responsible for the uncontrolled dissemination of
digital content do not bother with such niceties. Their purpose is
rather to ensure that all popular content is made available digitally
and for free, whether legally or not. These sites, too, have experienced
uninterrupted growth. By the end of 2015, dozens of millions of people
were simultaneously using the BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay -- the
largest nodal point for file-sharing networks during the last decade --
to exchange several million digital files with one
another.[^19^](#c2-note-0019){#c2-note-0019a} And this was happening
despite protracted attempts to block or close down the file-sharing site
by legal means and despite a variety of competing services. Even when
the founders of the website were sentenced in Sweden to pay large fines
(around €3 million) and to serve time in prison, the site still did not
disappear from the internet.[^20^](#c2-note-0020){#c2-note-0020a} At the
same time, new providers have entered the market of free access; their
method is not to facilitate distributed downloads but rather to offer,
on account of the drastically reduced cost of data transfers, direct
streaming. Although some of these services are relatively easy to locate
and some have been legally banned -- the best-known case in Germany
being that of the popular site kino.to -- more of them continue to
appear.[^21^](#c2-note-0021){#c2-note-0021a} Moreover, this phenomenon
[]{#Page_67 type="pagebreak" title="67"}is not limited to music and
films, but encompasses all media formats. For instance, it is
foreseeable that the number of freely available plans for 3D objects
will increase along with the popularity of 3D printing. It has almost
escaped notice, however, that so-called "shadow libraries" have been
popping up everywhere; the latter are not accessible to the public but
rather to members, for instance, of closed exchange platforms or of
university intranets. Few seminars take place any more without a corpus
of scanned texts, regardless of whether this practice is legal or
not.[^22^](#c2-note-0022){#c2-note-0022a}
The lines between these different mechanisms of access are highly
permeable. Content acquired legally can make its way to file-sharing
networks as an illegal copy; content available for free can be sold in
special editions; content from shadow libraries can make its way to
publicly accessible sites; and, conversely, content that was once freely
available can disappear into shadow libraries. As regards free access,
the details of this rapidly changing landscape are almost
inconsequential, for the general trend that has emerged from these
various dynamics -- legal and illegal, public and private -- is
unambiguous: in a comprehensive and practical sense, cultural works of
all sorts will become freely available despite whatever legal and
technical restrictions might be in place. Whether absolutely all
material will be made available in this way is not the decisive factor,
at least not for the individual, for, as the German Library Association
has stated, "it is foreseeable that non-digitalized material will
increasingly escape the awareness of users, who have understandably come
to appreciate the ubiquitous availability and more convenient
processability of the digital versions of analog
objects."[^23^](#c2-note-0023){#c2-note-0023a} In this context of excess
information, it is difficult to determine whether a particular work or a
crucial reference is missing, given that a multitude of other works and
references can be found in their place.
At the same time, prodigious amounts of new material are being produced
that, before the era of digitalization and networks, never could have
existed at all or never would have left the private sphere. An example
of this is amateur photography. This is nothing new in itself; as early
as 1899, Kodak was marketing its films and apparatus with the slogan
"You press the button, we do the rest," and ever since, []{#Page_68
type="pagebreak" title="68"}drawers and albums have been overflowing
with photographs. With the advent of digitalization, however, certain
economic and material limitations ceased to exist that, until then, had
caused most private photographers to think twice about how many shots
they wanted to take. After all, they had to pay for the film to be
developed and then store the pictures somewhere. Cameras also became
increasingly "intelligent," which improved the technical quality of
photographs. Even complex procedures such as increasing the level of
detail or the contrast ratio -- the difference between an image\'s
brightest and darkest points -- no longer require any specialized
knowledge of photochemical processes in the darkroom. Today, such
features are often pre-installed in many cameras as an option (high
dynamic range). Ever since the introduction of built-in digital cameras
for smartphones, anyone with such a device can take pictures everywhere
and at any time and then store them digitally. Images can then be posted
on online platforms and shared with others. By the middle of 2015,
Flickr -- the largest but certainly not the only specialized platform of
this sort -- had more than 112 million registered users participating in
more than 2 million groups. Every user has access to free storage space
for about half a million of his or her own pictures. At that point, in
other words, the platform was equipped to manage more than 55 billion
photographs. Around 3.5 million images were being uploaded every day,
many of which could be accessed by anyone. This may seem like a lot, but
in reality it is just a small portion of the pictures that are posted
online on a daily basis. Around that same time -- again, the middle of
2015 -- approximately 350 million pictures were being posted on Facebook
*every day*. The total number of photographs saved there has been
estimated to be 250 billion. In addition, there are also large platforms
for professional "stock photos" (supplies of pre-produced images that
are supposed to depict generic situations) and the databanks of
professional agencies such Getty Images or Corbis. All of these images
can be found easily and acquired quickly (though not always for free).
Yet photography is not unique in this regard. In all fields, the number
of cultural artifacts available to the public on specialized platforms
has been increasing rapidly in recent years.[]{#Page_69 type="pagebreak"
title="69"}
:::
::: {.section}
### The great disorder {#c2-sec-0005}
The old orders that had been responsible for filtering, organizing, and
publishing cultural material -- culture industries, mass media,
libraries, museums, archives, etc. -- are incapable of managing almost
any aspect of this deluge. They can barely function as gatekeepers any
more between those realms that, with their help, were once defined as
"private" and "public." Their decisions about what is or is not
important matter less and less. Moreover, having already been subjected
to a decades-long critique, their rules, which had been relatively
binding and formative over long periods of time, are rapidly losing
practical significance.
Even Europeana, a relatively small project based on traditional museums
and archives and with a mandate to make the European cultural heritage
available online, has contributed to the disintegration of established
orders: it indiscriminately brings together 2,500 previously separated
institutions. The specific semantic contexts that formerly shaped the
history and orientation of institutions have been dissolved or reduced
to dry meta-data, and millions upon millions of cultural artifacts are
now equidistant from one another. Instead of certain artifacts being
firmly anchored in a location, for instance in an ethnographic
collection devoted to the colonial history of France, it is now possible
for everything to exist side by side. Europeana is not an archive in the
traditional sense, or even a museum with a fixed and meaningful order;
rather, it is just a standard database. Everything in it is just one
search request away, and every search generates a unique order in the
form of a sequence of visible artifacts. As a result, individual objects
are freed from those meta-narratives, created by the museums and
archives that preserve them, which situate them within broader contexts
and assign more or less clear meanings to them. They consequently become
more open to interpretation. A search result does not articulate an
interpretive field of reference but merely a connection, created by
constantly changing search algorithms, between a request and the corpus
of material, which is likewise constantly changing.
Precisely because it offers so many different approaches to more or less
freely combinable elements of information, []{#Page_70 type="pagebreak"
title="70"}the order of the database no longer really provides a
framework for interpreting search results in a meaningful way.
Altogether, the meaning of many objects and signs is becoming even more
uncertain. On the one hand, this is because the connection to their
original context is becoming fragile; on the other hand, it is because
they can appear in every possible combination and in the greatest
variety of reception contexts. In less official archives and in less
specialized search engines, the dissolution of context is far more
pronounced than it is in the case of the Europeana project. For the sake
of orienting its users, for instance, YouTube provides the date when a
video has been posted, but there is no indication of when a video was
actually produced. Further information provided about a video, for
example in the comments section, is essentially unreliable. It might be
true -- or it might not. The internet researcher David Weinberger has
called this the "new digital disorder," which, at least for many users,
is an entirely apt description.[^24^](#c2-note-0024){#c2-note-0024a} For
individuals, this disorder has created both the freedom to establish
their own orders and the obligation of doing so, regardless of whether
or not they are ready for the task.
This tension between freedom and obligation is at its strongest online,
where the excess of culture and its more or less free availability are
immediate and omnipresent. In fact, everything that can be retrieved
online is culture in the sense that everything -- from the deepest layer
of hardware to the most superficial tweet -- has been made by someone
with a particular intention, and everything has been made to fit a
particular order. And it is precisely this excess of often contradictory
meanings and limited, regional, and incompatible orders that leads to
disorder and meaninglessness. This is not limited to the online world,
however, because the latter is not self-contained. In an essential way,
digital media also serve to organize the material world. On the basis of
extremely complex and opaque yet highly efficient logistical and
production processes, people are also confronted with constantly
changing material things about whose origins and meanings they have
little idea. Even something as simple to produce as yoghurt usually has
a thousand kilometers behind it before it ends up on a shelf in the
supermarket. The logistics that enable this are oriented toward
flexibility; []{#Page_71 type="pagebreak" title="71"}they bring elements
together as efficiently as possible. It is nearly impossible for final
customers to find out anything about the ingredients. Customers are
merely supposed to be oriented by signs and notices such as "new" or "as
before," "natural," and "healthy," which are written by specialists and
meant to manipulate shoppers as much as the law allows. Even here, in
corporeal everyday life, every individual has to deal with a surge of
excess and disorder that threatens to erode the original meaning
conferred on every object -- even where such meaning was once entirely
unproblematic, as in the case of
yoghurt.[^25^](#c2-note-0025){#c2-note-0025a}
:::
::: {.section}
### Selecting and organizing {#c2-sec-0006}
In this situation, the creation of one\'s own system of references has
become a ubiquitous and generally accessible method for organizing all
of the ambivalent things that one encounters on a given day. Such things
are thus arranged within a specific context of meaning that also
(co)determines one\'s own relation to the world and subjective position
in it. Referentiality takes place through three types of activity, the
first being simply to attract attention to certain things, which affirms
(at least implicitly) that they are important. With every single picture
posted on Flickr, every tweet, every blog post, every forum post, and
every status update, the user is doing exactly that; he or she is
communicating to others: "Look over here! I think this is important!" Of
course, there is nothing new to filtering and allocating meaning. What
is new, however, is that these processes are no longer being carried out
primarily by specialists at editorial offices, museums, or archives, but
have become daily requirements for a large portion of the population,
regardless of whether they possess the material and cultural resources
that are necessary for the task.
:::
::: {.section}
### The loop through the body {#c2-sec-0007}
Given the flood of information that perpetually surrounds everyone, the
act of focusing attention and reducing vast numbers of possibilities
into something concrete has become a productive achievement, however
banal each of these micro-activities might seem on its own, and even if,
at first, []{#Page_72 type="pagebreak" title="72"}the only concern might
be to focus the attention of the person doing it. The value of this
(often very brief) activity is that it singles out elements from the
uniform sludge of unmanageable complexity. Something plucked out in this
way gains value because it has required the use of a resource that
cannot be reproduced, that exists outside of the world of information
and that is invariably limited for every individual: our own lifetime.
Every status update that is not machine-generated means that someone has
invested time, be it only a second, in order to point to this and not to
something else. Thus, a process of validating what exists in the excess
takes place in connection with the ultimate scarcity -- our own
lifetimes, our own bodies. Even if the value generated by this act is
minimal or diffuse, it is still -- to borrow from Gregory Bateson\'s
famous definition of information -- a difference that makes a difference
in this stream of equivalencies and
meaninglessness.[^26^](#c2-note-0026){#c2-note-0026a} This singling out
-- this use of one\'s own body to generate meaning -- does not, however,
take place by means of mere micro-activities throughout the day; it is
also a defining aspect of complex cultural strategies. In recent years,
re-enactment (that is, the re-staging of historical situations and
events) has established itself as a common practice in contemporary art.
Unlike traditional re-enactments, such as those of historically
significant battles, which attempt to represent the past as faithfully
as possible, "artistic re-enactments," according to the curator Inke
Arns, "are not an affirmative confirmation of the past; rather, they are
*questionings* of the present through reaching back to historical
events," especially as they are represented in images and other forms of
documentation. Thanks to search engines and databases, such
representations are more or less always present, though in the form of
indeterminate images, ambivalent documents, and contentious
interpretations. Artists in this situation, as Arns explains,
::: {.extract}
do not ask the naïve question about what really happened outside of the
history represented in the media -- the "authenticity" beyond the images
-- instead, they ask what the images we see might mean concretely to us,
if we were to experience these situations personally. In this way the
artistic reenactment confronts the general feeling of insecurity about
the meaning []{#Page_73 type="pagebreak" title="73"}of images by using a
paradoxical approach: through erasing distance to the images and at the
same time distancing itself from the
images.[^27^](#c2-note-0027){#c2-note-0027a}
:::
This paradox manifests itself in that the images are appropriated and
sublated through the use of one\'s own body in the re-enactments. They
simultaneously refer to the past and create a new reality in the
present. In perhaps the best-known re-enactment of this type, the artist
Jeremy Deller revived, in 2001, the Battle of Orgreave, one of the
central episodes of the British miners\' strike of 1984 and 1985. This
historical event is regarded as a turning point in the protracted
conflict between Margaret Thatcher\'s government and the labor unions --
a key moment in the implementation of Great Britain\'s neoliberal
regime, which is still in effect today. In Deller\'s re-enactment, the
heart of the matter is not historical accuracy, which is always
controversial in such epoch-changing events. Rather, he focuses on the
former participants -- the miners and police officers alike, who, along
with non-professional actors, lived through the situation again -- in
order to explore both the distance from the events and their
representation in the media, as well as their ongoing biographical and
societal presence.[^28^](#c2-note-0028){#c2-note-0028a}
Elaborate practices of embodying medial images through processes of
appropriation and distancing have also found their way into popular
culture, for instance in so-called "cosplay." The term, which is a
contraction of the words "costume" and "play," was coined by a Japanese
man named Nobuyuki Takahashi. In 1984, while attending the World Science
Fiction Convention in Los Angeles, he used the word to describe the
practice of certain attendees to dress up as their favorite characters.
Participants in cosplay embody fictitious figures -- mostly from the
worlds of science fiction, comics/manga, or computer games -- by donning
home-made costumes and striking characteristic
poses.[^29^](#c2-note-0029){#c2-note-0029a} The often considerable
effort that goes into this is mostly reflected in the costumes, not in
the choreography or dramaturgy of the performance. What is significant
is that these costumes are usually not exact replicas but are rather
freely adapted by each player to represent the character as he or she
interprets it to be. Accordingly, "Cosplay is a form of appropriation
[]{#Page_74 type="pagebreak" title="74"}that transforms, actualizes and
performs an existing story in close connection to the fan\'s own
identity."[^30^](#c2-note-0030){#c2-note-0030a} This practice,
admittedly, goes back quite far in the history of fan culture, but it
has experienced a striking surge through the opportunity for fans to
network with one another around the world, to produce costumes and
images of professional quality, and to place themselves on the same
level as their (fictitious) idols. By now it has become a global
subculture whose members are active not only online but also at hundreds
of conventions throughout the world. In Germany, an annual cosplay
competition has been held since 2007 (it is organized by the Frankfurt
Book Fair and Animexx, the country\'s largest manga and anime
community). The scene, which has grown and branched out considerably
over the past few years, has slowly begun to professionalize, with
shops, books, and players who make paid appearances. Even in fan
culture, stars are born. As soon as the subculture has exceeded a
certain size, this gradual onset of commercialization will undoubtedly
lead to tensions within the community. For now, however, two of its
noteworthy features remain: the power of the desire to appropriate, in a
bodily manner, characters from vast cultural universes, and the
widespread combination of free interpretation and meticulous attention
to detail.
:::
::: {.section}
### Lineages and transformations {#c2-sec-0008}
Because of the great effort tha they require, re-enactment and cosplay
are somewhat extreme examples of singling out, appropriating, and
referencing. As everyday activities that almost take place incidentally,
however, these three practices usually do not make any significant or
lasting differences. Yet they do not happen just once, but over and over
again. They accumulate and thus constitute referentiality\'s second type
of activity: the creation of connections between the many things that
have attracted attention. In such a way, paths are forged through the
vast complexity. These paths, which can be formed, for instance, by
referring to different things one after another, likewise serve to
produce and filter meaning. Things that can potentially belong in
multiple contexts are brought into a single, specific context. For the
individual []{#Page_75 type="pagebreak" title="75"}producer, this is how
fields of attention, reference systems, and contexts of meaning are
first established. In the third step, the things that have been selected
and brought together are changed. Perhaps something is removed to modify
the meaning, or perhaps something is added that was previously absent or
unavailable. Either way, referential culture is always producing
something new.
These processes are applied both within individual works (referentiality
in a strict sense) and within currents of communication that consist of
numerous molecular acts (referentiality in a broader sense). This latter
sort of compilation is far more widespread than the creation of new
re-mix works. Consider, for example, the billionfold sequences of status
updates, which sometimes involve a link to an interesting video,
sometimes a post of a photograph, then a short list of favorite songs, a
top 10 chart from one\'s own feed, or anything else. Such methods of
inscribing oneself into the world by means of references, combinations,
or alterations are used to create meaning through one\'s own activity in
the world and to constitute oneself in it, both for one\'s self and for
others. In a culture that manifests itself to a great extent through
mediatized communication, people have to constitute themselves through
such acts, if only by posting
"selfies."[^31^](#c2-note-0031){#c2-note-0031a} Not to do so would be to
risk invisibility and being forgotten.
On this basis, a genuine digital folk culture of re-mixing and mashups
has formed in recent years on online platforms, in game worlds, but also
through cultural-economic productions of individual pieces or short
series. It is generated and maintained by innumerable people with
varying degrees of intensity and ambition. Its common feature with
traditional folk culture, in choirs or elsewhere, is that production
and reception (but also reproduction and creation) largely coincide.
Active participation admittedly requires a certain degree of
proficiency, interest, and engagement, but usually not any extraordinary
talent. Many classical institutions such as museums and archives have
been attempting to take part in this folk culture by setting up their
own re-mix services. They know that the "public" is no longer able or
willing to limit its engagement with works of art and cultural history
to one of quiet contemplation. At the end of 2013, even []{#Page_76
type="pagebreak" title="76"}the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin
initiated a re-mix competition. A year earlier, the Rijksmuseum in
Amsterdam launched so-called "Rijksstudios." Since then, the museum has
made available on its website more than 200,000 high-resolution images
from its collection. Users are free to use these to create their own
re-mixes online and share them with others. Interestingly, the
Rijksmuseum does not distinguish between the work involved in
transforming existing pieces and that involved in curating its own
online gallery.
Referential processes have no beginning and no end. Any material that is
used to make something new has a pre-history of its own, even if its
traces are lost in clouds of uncertainty. Upon closer inspection, this
cloud might clear a little bit, but it is extremely uncommon for a
genuine beginning -- a *creatio ex nihilo* -- to be revealed. This
raises the question of whether there can really be something like
originality in the emphatic sense.[^32^](#c2-note-0032){#c2-note-0032a}
Regardless of the answer to this question, the fact that by now many
people select, combine, and alter objects on a daily basis has led to a
slow shift in our perception and sensibilities. In light of the
experiences that so many people are creating, the formerly exotic
theories of deconstruction suddenly seem anything but outlandish. Nearly
half a century ago, Roland Barthes defined the text as a fabric of
quotations, and this incited vehement
opposition.[^33^](#c2-note-0033){#c2-note-0033a} "But of course," one
would be inclined to say today, "that can be statistically proven
through software analysis!" Amazon identifies books by means of their
"statistically improbable phrases"; that is, by means of textual
elements that are highly unlikely to occur elsewhere. This implies, of
course, that books contain many textual elements that are highly likely
to be found in other texts, without suggesting that such elements would
have to be regarded as plagiarism.
In the Gutenberg Galaxy, with its fixation on writing, the earliest
textual document is usually understood to represent a beginning. If no
references to anything before can be identified, the text is then
interpreted as a closed entity, as a new text. Thus, fairy tales and
sagas, which are typical elements of oral culture, are still more
strongly associated with the names of those who recorded them than with
the names of those who narrated them. This does not seem very convincing
today. In recent years, literary historians have made strong []{#Page_77
type="pagebreak" title="77"}efforts to shift the focus of attention to
the people (mostly women) who actually told certain fairy tales. In
doing so, they have been able to work out to what extent the respective
narrators gave shape to specific stories, which were written down as
common versions, and to what extent these stories reflect their
narrators\' personal histories.[^34^](#c2-note-0034){#c2-note-0034a}
Today, after more than 40 years of deconstructionist theory and a change
in our everyday practices, it is no longer controversial to read works
-- even by canonical figures like Wagner or Mozart -- in such a way as
to highlight the other works, either by the artists in question or by
other artists, that are contained within
them.[^35^](#c2-note-0035){#c2-note-0035a} This is not an expression of
decreased appreciation but rather an indication that, as Zygmunt Bauman
has stressed, "The way human beings understand the world tends to be at
all times *praxeomorphic*: it is always shaped by the know-how of the
day, by what people can do and how they usually go about doing
it."[^36^](#c2-note-0036){#c2-note-0036a} And the everyday practice of
today is one of singling out, bringing together, altering, and adding.
Accordingly, not only has our view of current cultural production
shifted; our view of cultural history has shifted as well. As always,
the past is made to suit the sensibilities of the present.
As a rule, however, things that have no beginning also have no end. This
is not only because they can in turn serve as elements for other new
contexts of meaning, but also because the attention paid to the context
in which they take on specific meaning is sensitive to the work that has
to be done to maintain the context itself. Even timelessness is an
elaborate everyday business. The attempt to rescue works of art from the
ravages of time -- to preserve them forever -- means that they regularly
need to be restored. Every restoration inevitably stirs a debate about
whether the planned interventions are appropriate and about how to deal
with the traces of previous interventions, which, from the current
perspective, often seem to be highly problematic. Whereas, just a
generation ago, preservationists ensured that such interventions
remained visible (as articulations of the historical fissures that are
typical of Modernity), today greater emphasis is placed on reducing
their visibility and re-creating the illusion of an "original condition"
(without, however, impeding any new functionality that a piece might
have in the present). []{#Page_78 type="pagebreak" title="78"}The
historically faithful restoration of the Berlin City Palace, and yet its
repurposed function as a museum and meeting place, are typical of this
new attitude in dealing with our historical heritage.
In everyday activity, too, the never-ending necessity of this work can
be felt at all times. Here the issue is not timelessness, but rather
that the established contexts of meaning quickly become obsolete and
therefore have to be continuously affirmed, expanded, and changed in
order to maintain the relevance of the field that they define. This
lends referentiality a performative character that combines productive
and reproductive dimensions. That which is not constantly used and
renewed simply disappears. Often, however, this only means that it will
sink into an endless archive and become unrealized potential until
someone reactivates it, breathes new life into it, rouses it from its
slumber, and incorporates it into a newly relevant context of meaning.
"To be relevant," according to the artist Eran Schaerf, "things must be
recyclable."[^37^](#c2-note-0037){#c2-note-0037a}
Alone, everyone is overwhelmed by the task of having to generate meaning
against this backdrop of all-encompassing meaninglessness. First, the
challenge is too great for any individual to overcome; second, meaning
itself is only created intersubjectively. While it can admittedly be
asserted by a single person, others have to confirm it before it can
become a part of culture. For this reason, the actual subject of
cultural production under the digital condition is not the individual
but rather the next-largest unit.
:::
:::
As an individual, it is impossible to orient oneself within a complex
environment. Meaning -- as well as the ability to act -- can only be
created, reinforced, and altered in exchange with others. This is
nothing noteworthy; biologically and culturally, people are social
beings. What has changed historically is how people are integrated into
larger contexts, how processes of exchange are organized, and what every
individual is expected to do in order to become a fully fledged
participant in these processes. For nearly 50 years, traditional
[]{#Page_79 type="pagebreak" title="79"}institutions -- that is,
hierarchically and bureaucratically organized civic institutions such
as established churches, labor unions, and political parties -- have
continuously been losing members.[^38^](#c2-note-0038){#c2-note-0038a}
In tandem with this, the overall commitment to the identities, family
values, and lifestyles promoted by these institutions has likewise been
in decline. The great mechanisms of socialization from the late stages
of the Gutenberg Galaxy have been losing more and more of their
influence, though at different speeds and to different extents. All
told, however, explicitly and collectively normative impulses are
decreasing, while others (implicitly economic, above all) are on the
rise. According to mainstream sociology, a cause or consequence of this
is the individualization and atomization of society. As early as the
middle of the 1980s, Ulrich Beck claimed: "In the individualized society
the individual must therefore learn, on pain of permanent disadvantage,
to conceive of himself or herself as the center of action, as the
planning office with respect to his/her own biography, abilities,
orientations, relationships and so
on."[^39^](#c2-note-0039){#c2-note-0039a} Over the past three decades,
the dominant neoliberal political orientation, with its strong stress on
the freedom of the individual -- to realize oneself as an individual
actor in the allegedly open market and in opposition to allegedly
domineering collective mechanisms -- has radicalized these tendencies
even further. The ability to act, however, is not only a question of
one\'s personal attitude but also of material resources. And it is this
same neoliberal politics that deprives so many people of the resources
needed to take advantage of these new freedoms in their own lives. As a
result they suffer, in Ulrich Beck\'s terms, "permanent disadvantage."
Under the digital condition, this process has permeated the finest
structures of social life. Individualization, commercialization, and the
production of differences (through design, for instance) are ubiquitous.
Established civic institutions are not alone in being hollowed out;
relatively new collectives are also becoming more differentiated, a
development that I outlined above with reference to the transformation
of the gay movement into the LGBT community. Yet nevertheless, or
perhaps for this very reason, new forms of communality are being formed
in these offshoots -- in the small activities of everyday life. And
these new communal formations -- rather []{#Page_80 type="pagebreak"
title="80"}than individual people -- are the actual subjects who create
the shared meaning that we call culture.
::: {.section}
### The problem of the "community" {#c2-sec-0010}
I have chosen the rather cumbersome expression "communal formation" in
order to avoid the term "community" (*Gemeinschaft*), although the
latter is used increasingly often in discussions of digital cultures and
has played an important role, from the beginning, in conceptions of
networking. Viewed analytically, however, "community" is a problematic
term because it is almost hopelessly overloaded. Particularly in the
German-speaking tradition, Ferdinand Tönnies\'s polar distinction
between "community" (*Gemeinschaft*) and "society" (*Gesellschaft*),
which he introduced in 1887, remains
influential.[^40^](#c2-note-0040){#c2-note-0040a} Tönnies contrasted two
fundamentally different and exclusive types of social relations. Whereas
community is characterized by the overlapping multidimensional nature of
social relationships, society is defined by the functional separation of
its sectors and spheres. Community embeds every individual into complex
social relationships, all of which tend to be simultaneously present. In
the traditional village community ("communities of place," in Tönnies\'s
terms), neighbors are involved with one another, for better or for
worse, both on a familiar basis and economically or religiously. Every
activity takes place on several different levels at the same time.
Communities are comprehensive social institutions that penetrate all
areas of life, endowing them with meaning. Through mutual dependency,
they create stability and security, but they also obstruct change and
hinder social mobility. Because everyone is connected with each other,
no can leave his or her place without calling into question the
arrangement as a whole. Communities are thus structurally conservative.
Because every human activity is embedded in multifaceted social
relationships, every change requires adjustments across the entire
interrelational web -- a task that is not easy to accomplish.
Accordingly, the traditional communities of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries fiercely opposed the establishment of capitalist
society. In order to impose the latter, the old community structures
were broken apart with considerable violence. This is what Marx
[]{#Page_81 type="pagebreak" title="81"}and Engels were referring to in
that famous passage from *The Communist Manifesto*: "All the settled,
age-old relations with their train of time-honoured preconceptions and
viewpoints are dissolved. \[...\] Everything feudal and fixed goes up in
smoke, everything sacred is
profaned."[^41^](#c2-note-0041){#c2-note-0041a}
The defining feature of society, on the contrary, is that it frees the
individual from such multifarious relationships. Society, according to
Tönnies, separates its members from one another. Although they
coordinate their activity with others, they do so in order to pursue
partial, short-term, and personal goals. Not only are people separated,
but so too are different areas of life. In a market-oriented society,
for instance, the economy is conceptualized as an independent sphere. It
can therefore break away from social connections to be organized simply
by limited formal or legal obligations between actors who, beyond these
obligations, have nothing else to do with one another. Costs or benefits
that inadvertently affect people who are uninvolved in a given market
transaction are referred to by economists as "externalities," and market
participants do not need to care about these because they are strictly
pursuing their own private interests. One of the consequences of this
form of social relationship is a heightened social dynamic, for now it
is possible to introduce changes into one area of life without
considering its effects on other areas. In the end, the dissolution of
mutual obligations, increased uncertainty, and the reduction of many
social connections go hand in hand with what Marx and Engels referred to
in *The Communist Manifesto* as "unfeeling hard cash."
From this perspective, the historical development looks like an
ambivalent process of modernization in which society (dynamic, but cold)
is erected over the ruins of community (static, but warm). This is an
unusual combination of romanticism and progress-oriented thinking, and
the problems with this influential perspective are numerous. There is,
first, the matter of its dichotomy; that is, its assumption that there
can only be these two types of arrangement, community and society. Or
there is the notion that the one form can be completely ousted by the
other, even though aspects of community and aspects of society exist at
the same time in specific historical situations, be it in harmony or in
conflict.[^42^](#c2-note-0042){#c2-note-0042a} []{#Page_82
type="pagebreak" title="82"}These impressions, however, which are so
firmly associated with the German concept of *Gemeinschaft*, make it
rather difficult to comprehend the new forms of communality that have
developed in the offshoots of networked life. This is because, at least
for now, these latter forms do not represent a genuine alternative to
societal types of social
connectedness.[^43^](#c2-note-0043){#c2-note-0043a} The English word
"community" is somewhat more open. The opposition between community and
society resonates with it as well, although the dichotomy is not as
clear-cut. American communitarianism, for instance, considers the
difference between community and society to be gradual and not
categorical. Its primary aim is to strengthen civic institutions and
mechanisms, and it regards community as an intermediary level between
the individual and society.[^44^](#c2-note-0044){#c2-note-0044a} But
there is a related English term, which seems even more productive for my
purposes, namely "community of practice," a concept that is more firmly
grounded in the empirical observation of concrete social relationships.
The term was introduced at the beginning of the 1990s by the social
researchers Jean Lave and Étienne Wenger. They observed that, in most
cases, professional learning (for instance, in their case study of
midwives) does not take place as a one-sided transfer of knowledge or
proficiency, but rather as an open exchange, often outside of the formal
learning environment, between people with different levels of knowledge
and experience. In this sense, learning is an activity that, though
distinguishable, cannot easily be separated from other "normal"
activities of everyday life. As Lave and Wenger stress, however, the
community of practice is not only a social space of exchange; it is
rather, and much more fundamentally, "an intrinsic condition for the
existence of knowledge, not least because it provides the interpretive
support necessary for making sense of its
heritage."[^45^](#c2-note-0045){#c2-note-0045a} Communities of practice
are thus always epistemic communities that form around certain ways of
looking at the world and one\'s own activity in it. What constitutes a
community of practice is thus the joint acquisition, development, and
preservation of a specific field of practice that contains abstract
knowledge, concrete proficiencies, the necessary material and social
resources, guidelines, expectations, and room to interpret one\'s own
activity. All members are active participants in the constitution of
this field, and this reinforces the stress on []{#Page_83
type="pagebreak" title="83"}practice. Each of them, however, brings
along different presuppositions and experiences, for their situations
are embedded within numerous and specific situations of life or work.
The processes within the community are mostly informal, and yet they are
thoroughly structured, for authority is distributed unequally and is
based on the extent to which the members value each other\'s (and their
own) levels of knowledge and experience. At first glance, then, the term
"community of practice" seems apt to describe the meaning-generating
communal formations that are at issue here. It is also somewhat
problematic, however, because, having since been subordinated to
management strategies, its use is now narrowly applied to professional
learning and managing knowledge.[^46^](#c2-note-0046){#c2-note-0046a}
From these various notions of community, it is possible to develop the
following way of looking at new types of communality: they are formed in
a field of practice, characterized by informal yet structured exchange,
focused on the generation of new ways of knowing and acting, and
maintained through the reflexive interpretation of their own activity.
This last point in particular -- the communal creation, preservation,
and alteration of the interpretive framework in which actions,
processes, and objects acquire a firm meaning and connection -- can be
seen as the central role of communal formations.
Communication is especially significant to them. Individuals must
continuously communicate in order to constitute themselves within the
fields and practices, or else they will remain invisible. The mass of
tweets, updates, emails, blogs, shared pictures, texts, posts on
collaborative platforms, and databases (etc.) that are necessary for
this can only be produced and processed by means of digital
technologies. In this act of incessant communication, which is a
constitutive element of social existence, the personal desire for
self-constitution and orientation becomes enmeshed with the outward
pressure of having to be present and available to form a new and binding
set of requirements. This relation between inward motivation and outward
pressure can vary highly, depending on the character of the communal
formation and the position of the individual within it (although it is
not the individual who determines what successful communication is, what
represents a contribution to the communal formation, or in which form
one has to be present). []{#Page_84 type="pagebreak" title="84"}Such
decisions are made by other members of the formation in the form of
positive or negative feedback (or none at all), and they are made with
recourse to the interpretive framework that has been developed in
common. These communal and continuous acts of learning, practicing, and
orientation -- the exchange, that is, between "novices" and "experts" on
the same field, be it concerned with internet politics, illegal street
racing, extreme right-wing music, body modification, or a free
encyclopedia -- serve to maintain the framework of shared meaning,
expand the constituted field, recruit new members, and adapt the
framework of interpretation and activity to changing conditions. Such
communal formations constitute themselves; they preserve and modify
themselves by constantly working out the foundations of their
constitution. This may sound circular, for the process of reflexive
self-constitution -- "autopoiesis" in the language of systems theory --
is circular in the sense that control is maintained through continuous,
self-generating feedback. Self-referentiality is a structural feature of
these formations.
:::
::: {.section}
### Singularity and communality {#c2-sec-0011}
The new communal formations are informal forms of organization that are
based on voluntary action. No one is born into them, and no one
possesses the authority to force anyone else to join or remain against
his or her will, or to assign anyone with tasks that he or she might be
unwilling to do. Such a formation is not an enclosed disciplinary
institution in Foucault\'s sense,[^47^](#c2-note-0047){#c2-note-0047a}
and, within it, power is not exercised through commands, as in the
classical sense formulated by Max
Weber.[^48^](#c2-note-0048){#c2-note-0048a} The condition of not being
locked up and not being subordinated can, at least at first, represent
for the individual a gain in freedom. Under a given set of conditions,
everyone can (and must) choose which formations to participate in, and
he or she, in doing so, will have a better or worse chance to influence
the communal field of reference.
On the everyday level of communicative self-constitution and creating a
personal cognitive horizon -- in innumerable streams, updates, and
timelines on social mass media -- the most important resource is the
attention of others; that is, their feedback and the mutual recognition
that results from it. []{#Page_85 type="pagebreak" title="85"}And this
recognition may simply be in the form of a quickly clicked "like," which
is the smallest unit that can assure the sender that, somewhere out
there, there is a receiver. Without the latter, communication has no
meaning. The situation is somewhat menacing if no one clicks the "like"
button beneath a post or a photo. It is a sign that communication has
broken, and the result is the dissolution of one\'s own communicatively
constituted social existence. In this context, the boundaries are
blurred between the categories of information, communication, and
activity. Making information available always involves the active --
that is, communicating -- person, and not only in the case of ubiquitous
selfies, for in an overwhelming and chaotic environment, as discussed
above, selection itself is of such central importance that the
differences between the selected and the selecting become fluid,
particularly when the goal of the latter is to experience confirmation
from others. In this back-and-forth between one\'s own presence and the
validation of others, one\'s own motives and those of the community are
not in opposition but rather mutually depend on one another. Condensed
to simple norms and to a basic set of guidelines within the context of
an image-oriented social mass media service, the rule (or better:
friendly tip) that one need not but probably ought to follow is this:
::: {.extract}
Be an active member of the Instagram community to receive likes and
comments. Take time to comment on a friend\'s photo, or to like photos.
If you do this, others will reciprocate. If you never acknowledge your
followers\' photos, then they won\'t acknowledge
you.[^49^](#c2-note-0049){#c2-note-0049a}
:::
The context of this widespread and highly conventional piece of advice
is not, for instance, a professional marketing campaign; it is simply
about personally positioning oneself within a social network. The goal
is to establish one\'s own, singular, identity. The process required to
do so is not primarily inward-oriented; it is not based on questions
such as: "Who am I really, apart from external influences?" It is rather
outward-oriented. It takes place through making connections with others
and is concerned with questions such as: "Who is in my network, and what
is my position within it?" It is []{#Page_86 type="pagebreak"
title="86"}revealing that none of the tips in the collection cited above
offers advice about achieving success within a community of
photographers; there are not suggestions, for instance, about how to
take high-quality photographs. With smart cameras and built-in filters
for post-production, this is not especially challenging any more,
especially because individual pictures, to be examined closely and on
their own terms, have become less important gauges of value than streams
of images that are meant to be quickly scrolled through. Moreover, the
function of the critic, who once monopolized the right to interpret and
evaluate an image for everyone, is no longer of much significance.
Instead, the quality of a picture is primarily judged according to
whether "others like it"; that is, according to its performance in the
ongoing popularity contest within a specific niche. But users do not
rely on communal formations and the feedback they provide just for the
sharing and evaluation of pictures. Rather, this dynamic has come to
determine more and more facets of life. Users experience the
constitution of singularity and communality, in which a person can be
perceived as such, as simultaneous and reciprocal processes. A million
times over and nearly subconsciously (because it is so commonplace),
they engage in a relationship between the individual and others that no
longer really corresponds to the liberal opposition between
individuality and society, between personal and group identity. Instead
of viewing themselves as exclusive entities (either in terms of the
emphatic affirmation of individuality or its dissolution within a
homogeneous group), the new formations require that the production of
difference and commonality takes place
simultaneously.[^50^](#c2-note-0050){#c2-note-0050a}
:::
::: {.section}
### Authenticity and subjectivity {#c2-sec-0012}
Because members have decided to participate voluntarily in the
community, their expressions and actions are regarded as authentic, for
it is implicitly assumed that, in making these gestures, they are not
following anyone else\'s instructions but rather their own motivations.
The individual does not act as a representative or functionary of an
organization but rather as a private and singular (that is, unique)
person. While at a gathering of the Occupy movement, a sure way to be
kicked out to is to stick stubbornly to a party line, even if this way
[]{#Page_87 type="pagebreak" title="87"}of thinking happens to agree
with that of the movement. Not only at Occupy gatherings, however, but
in all new communal formations it is expected that everyone there is
representing his or her own interests. As most people are aware, this
assumption is theoretically naïve and often proves to be false in
practice. Even spontaneity can be calculated, and in many cases it is.
Nevertheless, the expectation of authenticity is relevant because it
creates a minimum of trust. As the basis of social trust, such
contra-factual expectations exist elsewhere as well. Critical readers of
newspapers, for instance, must assume that what they are reading has
been well researched and is presented as objectively as possible, even
though they know that objectivity is theoretically a highly problematic
concept -- to this extent, postmodern theory has become common knowledge
-- and that newspapers often pursue (hidden) interests or lead
campaigns. Yet without such contra-factual assumptions, the respective
orders of knowledge and communication would not function, for they
provide the normative framework within which deviations can be
perceived, criticized, and sanctioned.
In a seemingly traditional manner, the "authentic self" is formulated
with reference to one\'s inner world, for instance to personal
knowledge, interests, or desires. As the core of personality, however,
this inner world no longer represents an immutable and essential
characteristic but rather a temporary position. Today, even someone\'s
radical reinvention can be regarded as authentic. This is the central
difference from the classical, bourgeois conception of the subject. The
self is no longer understood in essentialist terms but rather
performatively. Accordingly, the main demand on the individual who
voluntarily opts to participate in a communal formation is no longer to
be self-aware but rather to be
self-motivated.[^51^](#c2-note-0051){#c2-note-0051a} Nor is it necessary
any more for one\'s core self to be coherent. It is not a contradiction
to appear in various communal formations, each different from the next,
as a different "I myself," for every formation is comprehensive, in that
it appeals to the whole person, and simultaneously partial, in that it
is oriented toward a particular goal and not toward all areas of life.
As in the case of re-mixes and other referential processes, the concern
here is not to preserve authenticity but rather to create it in the
moment. The success or failure []{#Page_88 type="pagebreak"
title="88"}of these efforts is determined by the continuous feedback of
others -- one like after another.
These practices have led to a modified form of subject constitution for
which some sociologists, engaged in empirical research, have introduced
the term "networked individualism."[^52^](#c2-note-0052){#c2-note-0052a}
The idea is based on the observation that people in Western societies
(the case studies were mostly in North America) are defining their
identity less and less by their family, profession, or other stable
collective, but rather increasingly in terms of their personal social
networks; that is, according to the communal formations in which they
are active as individuals and in which they are perceived as singular
people. In this regard, individualization and atomization no longer
necessarily go hand in hand. On the contrary, the intertwined nature of
personal identity and communality can be experienced on an everyday
level, given that both are continuously created, adapted, and affirmed
by means of personal communication. This makes the networks in question
simultaneously fragile and stable. Fragile because they require the
ongoing presence of every individual and because communication can break
down quickly. Stable because the networks of relationships that can
support a single person -- as regards the number of those included,
their geographical distribution, and the duration of their cohesion --
have expanded enormously by means of digital communication technologies.
Here the issue is not that of close friendships, whose number remains
relatively constant for most people and over long periods of
time,[^53^](#c2-note-0053){#c2-note-0053a} but rather so-called "weak
ties"; that is, more or less loose acquaintances that can be tapped for
new information and resources that do not exist within one\'s close
circle of friends.[^54^](#c2-note-0054){#c2-note-0054a} The more they
are expanded, the more sustainable and valuable these networks become,
for they bring together a large number of people and thus multiply the
material and organizational resources that are (potentially) accessible
to the individual. It is impossible to make a sweeping statement as to
whether these formations actually represent communities in a
comprehensive sense and how stable they really are, especially in times
of crisis, for this is something that can only be found out on a
case-by-case basis. It is relevant that the development of personal
networks []{#Page_89 type="pagebreak" title="89"}has not taken place in
a vacuum. The disintegration of institutions that were formerly
influential in the formation of identity and meaning began long before
the large-scale spread of networks. For most people, there is no other
choice but to attempt to orient and organize oneself, regardless of how
provisional or uncertain this may be. Or, as Manuel Castells somewhat
melodramatically put it, "At the turn of the millennium, the king and
the queen, the state and civil society, are both naked, and their
children-citizens are wandering around a variety of foster
homes."[^55^](#c2-note-0055){#c2-note-0055a}
:::
::: {.section}
### Space and time as a communal practice {#c2-sec-0013}
Although participation in a communal formation is voluntary, it is not
unselfish. Quite the contrary: an important motivation is to gain access
to a formation\'s constitutive field of practice and to the resources
associated with it. A communal formation ultimately does more than
simply steer the attention of its members toward one another. Through
the common production of culture, it also structures how the members
perceive the world and how they are able to design themselves and their
potential actions in it. It is thus a cooperative mechanism of
filtering, interpretation, and constitution. Through the everyday
referential work of its members, the community selects a manageable
amount of information from the excess of potentially available
information and brings it into a meaningful context, whereby it
validates the selection itself and orients the activity of each of its
members.
The new communal formations consist of self-referential worlds whose
constructive common practice affects the foundations of social activity
itself -- the constitution of space and time. How? The spatio-temporal
horizon of digital communication is a global (that is, placeless) and
ongoing present. The technical vision of digital communication is always
the here and now. With the instant transmission of information,
everything that is not "here" is inaccessible and everything that is not
"now" has disappeared. Powerful infrastructure has been built to achieve
these effects: data centers, intercontinental networks of cables,
satellites, high-performance nodes, and much more. Through globalized
high-frequency trading, actors in the financial markets have realized
this []{#Page_90 type="pagebreak" title="90"}technical vision to its
broadest extent by creating a never-ending global present whose expanse
is confined to milliseconds. This process is far from coming to an end,
for massive amounts of investment are allocated to accomplish even the
smallest steps toward this goal. On November 3, 2015, a 4,600-kilometer,
300-million-dollar transatlantic telecommunications cable (Hibernia
Express) was put into operation between London and New York -- the first
in more than 10 years -- with the single goal of accelerating automated
trading between the two places by 5.2 milliseconds.
For social and biological processes, this technical horizon of space and
time is neither achievable nor desirable. Such processes, on the
contrary, are existentially dependent on other spatial and temporal
orders. Yet because of the existence of this non-geographical and
atemporal horizon, the need -- as well as the possibility -- has arisen
to redefine the parameters of space and time themselves in order to
counteract the mire of technically defined spacelessness and
timelessness. If space and time are not simply to vanish in this
spaceless, ongoing present, how then should they be defined? Communal
formations create spaces for action not least by determining their own
geographies and temporal rhythms. They negotiate what is near and far
and also which places are disregarded (that is, not even perceived). If
every place is communicatively (and physically) reachable, every person
must decide which place he or she would like to reach in practice. This,
however, is not an individual decision but rather a task that can only
be approached collectively. Those places which are important and thus
near are determined by communal formations. This takes place in the form
of a rough consensus through the blogs that "one" has to read, the
exhibits that "one" has to see, the events and conferences that "one"
has to attend, the places that "one" has to visit before they are
overrun by tourists, the crises in which "the West" has to intervene,
the targets that "lend themselves" to a terrorist attack, and so on. On
its own, however, selection is not enough. Communal formations are
especially powerful when they generate the material and organizational
resources that are necessary for their members to implement their shared
worldview through actions -- to visit, for instance, the places that
have been chosen as important. This can happen if they enable access
[]{#Page_91 type="pagebreak" title="91"}to stipends, donations, price
reductions, ride shares, places to stay, tips, links, insider knowledge,
public funds, airlifts, explosives, and so on. It is in this way that
each formation creates its respective spatial constructs, which define
distances in a great variety of ways. At the same time that war-torn
Syria is unreachably distant even for seasoned reporters and their
staff, veritable travel agencies are being set up in order to bring
Western jihadists there in large numbers.
Things are similar for the temporal dimensions of social and biological
processes. Permanent presence is a temporality that is inimical to life
but, under its influence, temporal rhythms have to be redefined as well.
What counts as fast? What counts as slow? In what order should things
proceed? On the everyday level, for instance, the matter can be as
simple as how quickly to respond to an email. Because the transmission
of information hardly takes any time, every delay is a purely social
creation. But how much is acceptable? There can be no uniform answer to
this. The members of each communal formation have to negotiate their own
rules with one another, even in areas of life that are otherwise highly
formalized. In an interview with the magazine *Zeit*, for instance, a
lawyer with expertise in labor law was asked whether a boss may require
employees to be reachable at all times. Instead of answering by
referring to any binding legal standards, the lawyer casually advised
that this was a matter of flexible negotiation: "Express your misgivings
openly and honestly about having to be reachable after hours and,
together with your boss, come up with an agreeable rule to
follow."[^56^](#c2-note-0056){#c2-note-0056a} If only it were that easy.
Temporalities that, in many areas, were once simply taken for granted by
everyone on account of the factuality of things now have to be
culturally determined -- that is, explicitly negotiated -- in a greater
number of contexts. Under the conditions of capitalism, which is always
creating new competitions and incentives, one consequence is the
often-lamented "acceleration of time." We are asked to produce, consume,
or accomplish more and more in less and less
time.[^57^](#c2-note-0057){#c2-note-0057a} This change in the
structuring of time is not limited to linear acceleration. It reaches
deep into the foundations of life and has even reconfigured biological
processes themselves. Today there is an entire industry that specializes
in freezing the stem []{#Page_92 type="pagebreak" title="92"}cells of
newborns in liquid nitrogen -- that is, in suspending cellular
biological time -- in case they might be needed later on in life for a
transplant or for the creation of artificial organs. Children can be
born even if their physical mothers are already dead. Or they can be
"produced" from ova that have been stored for many years at minus 196
degrees.[^58^](#c2-note-0058){#c2-note-0058a} At the same time,
questions now have to be addressed every day whose grand temporal
dimensions were once the matter of myth. In the case of atomic energy,
for instance, there is the issue of permanent disposal. Where can we
deposit nuclear waste for the next hundred thousand years without it
causing catastrophic damage? How can the radioactive material even be
transported there, wherever that is, within the framework of everday
traffic laws?[^59^](#c2-note-0059){#c2-note-0059a}
The construction of temporal dimensions and sequences has thus become an
everyday cultural question. Whereas throughout Europe, for example,
committees of experts and ethicists still meet to discuss reproductive
medicine and offer their various recommendations, many couples are
concerned with the specific question of whether or how they can fulfill
their wish to have children. Without a coherent set of rules, questions
such as these have to be answered by each individual with recourse to
his or her personally relevant communal formation. If there is no
cultural framework that at least claims to be binding for everyone, then
the individual must negotiate independently within each communal
formation with the goal of acquiring the resources necessary to act
according to communal values and objectives.
:::
These three functions -- selection, interpretation, and the constitutive
ability to act -- make communal formations the true subject of the
digital condition. In principle, these functions are nothing new;
rather, they are typical of fields that are organized without reference
to external or irrefutable authorities. The state of scholarship, for
instance, is determined by what is circulated in refereed publications.
In this case, "refereed" means that scientists at the same professional
rank mutually evaluate each other\'s work. The scientific community (or
better: the sub-community of a specialized discourse) []{#Page_93
type="pagebreak" title="93"}evaluates the contributions of individual
scholars. They decide what should be considered valuable, and this
consensus can theoretically be revised at any time. It is based on a
particular catalog of criteria, on an interpretive framework that
provides lines of inquiry, methods, appraisals, and conventions of
presentation. With every article, this framework is confirmed and
reconstituted. If the framework changes, this can lead in the most
extreme case to a paradigm shift, which overturns fundamental
orientations, assumptions, and
certainties.[^60^](#c2-note-0060){#c2-note-0060a} The result of this is
not only a change in how scientific contributions are evaluated but also
a change in how the external world is perceived and what activities are
possible in it. Precisely because the sciences claim to define
themselves, they have the ability to revise their own foundations.
The sciences were the first large sphere of society to achieve
comprehensive cultural autonomy; that is, the ability to determine its
own binding meaning. Art was the second that began to organize itself on
the basis of internal feedback. It was during the era of Romanticism
that artists first laid claim to autonomy. They demanded "to absolve art
from all conditions, to represent it as a realm -- indeed as the only
realm -- in which truth and beauty are expressed in their pure form, a
realm in which everything truly human is
transcended."[^61^](#c2-note-0061){#c2-note-0061a} With the spread of
photography in the second half of the nineteenth century, art also
liberated itself from its final task, which was hoisted upon it from the
outside, namely the need to represent external reality. Instead of
having to represent the external world, artists could now focus on their
own subjectivity. This gave rise to a radical individualism, which found
its clearest summation in Marcel Duchamp\'s assertion that only the
artist could determine what is art. This he claimed in 1917 by way of
explaining how an industrially produced urinal, exhibited as a signed
piece with the title "Fountain," could be considered a work of art.
With the rise of the knowledge economy and the expansion of cultural
fields, including the field of art and the artists active within it,
this individualism quickly swelled to unmanageable levels. As a
consequence, the task of defining what should be regarded as art shifted
from the individual artist to the curator. It now fell upon the latter
to select a few works from the surplus of competing scenes and thus
bring temporary []{#Page_94 type="pagebreak" title="94"}order to the
constantly diversifying and changing world of contemporary art. This
order was then given expression in the form of exhibits, which were
intended to be more than the sum of their parts. The beginning of this
practice can be traced to the 1969 exhibition When Attitudes Become
Form, which was curated by Harald Szeemann for the Kunsthalle Bern (it
was also sponsored by Philip Morris). The works were not neatly
separated from one another and presented without reference to their
environment, but were connected with each other both spatially and in
terms of their content. The effect of the exhibition could be felt at
least as much through the collection of works as a whole as it could
through the individual pieces, many of which had been specially
commissioned for the exhibition itself. It not only cemented Szeemann\'s
reputation as one of the most significant curators of the twentieth
century; it also completely redefined the function of the curator as a
central figure within the art system.
This was more than 40 years ago and in a system that functioned
differently from that of today. The distance from this exhibition, but
also its ongoing relevance, was negotiated, significantly, in a
re-enactment at the 2013 Biennale in Venice. For this, the old rooms at
the Kunsthalle Bern were reconstructed in the space of the Fondazione
Prada in such a way that both could be seen simultaneously. As is
typical with such re-enactments, the curators of the project described
its goals in terms of appropriation and distancing: "This was the
challenge: how could we find and communicate a limit to a non-limit,
creating a place that would reflect exactly the architectural structures
of the Kunsthalle, but also an asymmetrical space with respect to our
time and imbued with an energy and tension equivalent to that felt at
Bern?"[^62^](#c2-note-0062){#c2-note-0062a}
Curation -- that is, selecting works and associating them with one
another -- has become an omnipresent practice in the art system. No
exhibition takes place any more without a curator. Nevertheless,
curators have lost their extraordinary
position,[^63^](#c2-note-0063){#c2-note-0063a} with artists taking on
more of this work themselves, not only because the boundaries between
artistic and curatorial activities have become fluid but also because
many artists explicitly co-produce the context of their work by
incorporating a multitude of references into their pieces. It is with
precisely this in mind that André Rottmann, in the []{#Page_95
type="pagebreak" title="95"}quotation cited at the beginning of this
chapter, can assert that referentiality has become the dominant
production-aesthetic model in contemporary art. This practice enables
artists to objectify themselves by explicitly placing themselves into a
historical and social context. At the same time, it also enables them to
subjectify the historical and social context by taking the liberty to
select and arrange the references
themselves.[^64^](#c2-note-0064){#c2-note-0064a}
Such strategies are no longer specific to art. Self-generated spaces of
reference and agency are now deeply embedded in everyday life. The
reason for this is that a growing number of questions can no longer be
answered in a generally binding way (such as those about what
constitutes fine art), while the enormous expansion of the cultural
requires explicit decisions to be made in more aspects of life. The
reaction to this dilemma has been radical subjectivation. This has not,
however, been taking place at the level of the individual but rather at
that of communal formations. There is now a patchwork of answers to
large questions and a multitude of reactions to large challenges, all of
which are limited in terms of their reliability and scope.
:::
Even though participation in new formations is voluntary and serves the
interests of their members, it is not without preconditions. The most
important of these is acceptance, the willing adoption of the
interpretive framework that is generated by the communal formation. The
latter is formed from the social, cultural, legal, and technical
protocols that lend to each of these formations its concrete
constitution and specific character. Protocols are common sets of rules;
they establish, according to the network theorist Alexander Galloway,
"the essential points necessary to enact an agreed-upon standard of
action." They provide, he goes on, "etiquette for autonomous
agents."[^65^](#c2-note-0065){#c2-note-0065a} Protocols are
simultaneously voluntary and binding; they allow actors to meet
eye-to-eye instead of entering into hierarchical relations with one
another. If everyone voluntarily complies with the protocols, then it is
not necessary for one actor to give instructions to another. Whoever
accepts the relevant protocols can interact with others who do the same;
whoever opts not to []{#Page_96 type="pagebreak" title="96"}accept them
will remain on the outside. Protocols establish, for example, common
languages, technical standards, or social conventions. The fundamental
protocol for the internet is the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet
Protocol (TCP/IP). This suite of protocols defines the common language
for exchanging data. Every device that exchanges information over the
internet -- be it a smartphone, a supercomputer in a data center, or a
networked thermostat -- has to use these protocols. In growing areas of
social contexts, the common language is English. Whoever wishes to
belong has to speak it increasingly often. In the natural sciences,
communication now takes place almost exclusively in English. Non-native
speakers who accept this norm may pay a high price: they have to learn a
new language and continually improve their command of it or else resign
themselves to being unable to articulate things as they would like --
not to mention losing the possibility of expressing something for which
another language would perhaps be more suitable, or forfeiting
traditions that cannot be expressed in English. But those who refuse to
go along with these norms pay an even higher price, risking
self-marginalization. Those who "voluntarily" accept conventions gain
access to a field of practice, even though within this field they may be
structurally disadvantaged. But unwillingness to accept such
conventions, with subsequent denial of access to this field, might have
even greater disadvantages.[^66^](#c2-note-0066){#c2-note-0066a}
In everyday life, the factors involved with this trade-off are often
presented in the form of subtle cultural codes. For instance, in order
to participate in a project devoted to the development of free software,
it is not enough for someone to possess the necessary technical
knowledge; he or she must also be able to fit into a wide-ranging
informal culture with a characteristic style of expression, humor, and
preferences. Ultimately, software developers do not form a professional
corps in the traditional sense -- in which functionaries meet one
another in the narrow and regulated domain of their profession -- but
rather a communal formation in which the engagement of the whole person,
both one\'s professional and social self, is scrutinized. The
abolishment of the separation between different spheres of life,
requiring interaction of a more holistic nature, is in fact a key
attraction of []{#Page_97 type="pagebreak" title="97"}these communal
formations and is experienced by some as a genuine gain in freedom. In
this situation, one is no longer subjected to rules imposed from above
but rather one is allowed to -- and indeed ought to -- be authentically
pursuing his or her own interests.
But for others the experience can be quite the opposite because the
informality of the communal formation also allows forms of exclusion and
discrimination that are no longer acceptable in formally organized
realms of society. Discrimination is more difficult to identify when it
takes place within the framework of voluntary togetherness, for no one
is forced to participate. If you feel uncomfortable or unwelcome, you
are free to leave at any time. But this is a specious argument. The
areas of free software or Wikipedia are difficult places for women. In
these clubby atmospheres of informality, they are often faced with
blatant sexism, and this is one of the reasons why many women choose to
stay away from such projects.[^67^](#c2-note-0067){#c2-note-0067a} In
2007, according to estimates by the American National Center for Women &
Information Technology, whereas approximately 27 percent of all jobs
related to computer science were held by women, their representation at
the same time was far lower in the field of free software -- on average
less than 2 percent. And for years, the proportion of women who edit
texts on Wikipedia has hovered at around 10
percent.[^68^](#c2-note-0068){#c2-note-0068a}
The consequences of such widespread, informal, and elusive
discrimination are not limited to the fact that certain values and
prejudices of the shared culture are included in these products, while
different viewpoints and areas of knowledge are
excluded.[^69^](#c2-note-0069){#c2-note-0069a} What is more, those who
are excluded or do not wish to expose themselves to discrimination (and
thus do not even bother to participate in any communal formations) do
not receive access to the resources that circulate there (attention and
support, valuable and timely knowledge, or job offers). Many people are
thus faced with the choice of either enduring the discrimination within
a community or remaining on the outside and thus invisible. That this
decision is made on a voluntary basis and on one\'s own responsibility
hardly mitigates the coercive nature of the situation. There may be a
choice, but it would be misleading to call it a free one.[]{#Page_98
type="pagebreak" title="98"}
:::
::: {.section}
### The power of sociability {#c2-sec-0016}
In order to explain the peculiar coercive nature of the (nominally)
voluntary acceptance of protocols, rules, and norms, the political
scientist David Singh Grewal, drawing on the work of Max Weber and
Michel Foucault, has distinguished between the "power of sovereignty"
and the "power of sociability."[^70^](#c2-note-0070){#c2-note-0070a}
The former develops on the basis of dominance and subordination, as
imposed by authorities, police officers, judges, or other figures within
formal hierarchies. Their power is anchored in disciplinary
institutions, and the dictum of this sort of power is: "You must!" The
power of sociability, on the contrary, functions by prescribing the
conditions or protocols under which people are able to enter into an
exchange with one another. The dictum of this sort of power is: "You
can!" The more people accept certain protocols and standards, the more
powerful these become. Accordingly, the sociability that they structure
also becomes more comprehensive, and those not yet involved have to ask
themselves all the more urgently whether they can afford not to accept
these protocols and standards. Whereas the first type of power is
ultimately based on the monopoly of violence and on repression, the
second is founded on voluntary submission. When the entire internet
speaks TCP/IP, then an individual\'s decision to use it may be voluntary
in nominal terms, but at the same time it is an indispensable
precondition for existing within the network at all. Protocols exert
power without there having to be anyone present to possess the power in
question. Whereas the sovereign can be located, the effects of
sociability\'s power are diffuse and omnipresent. They are not
repressive but rather constitutive. No one forces a scientist to publish
in English or a woman editor to tolerate disparaging remarks on
Wikipedia. People accept these often implicit behavioral norms (sexist
comments are permitted, for instance) out of their own interests in
order to acquire access to the resources circulating within the networks
and to constitute themselves within it. In this regard, Singh
distinguishes between the "intrinsic" and "extrinsic" reasons for
abiding by certain protocols.[^71^](#c2-note-0071){#c2-note-0071a} In
the first case, the motivation is based on a new protocol being better
suited than existing protocols for carrying out []{#Page_99
type="pagebreak" title="99"}a specific objective. People thus submit
themselves to certain rules because they are especially efficient,
transparent, or easy to use. In the second case, a protocol is accepted
not because but in spite of its features. It is simply a precondition
for gaining access to a space of agency in which resources and
opportunities are available that cannot be found anywhere else. In the
first case, it is possible to speak subjectively of voluntariness,
whereas the second involves some experience of impersonal compunction.
One is forced to do something that might potentially entail grave
disadvantages in order to have access, at least, to another level of
opportunities or to create other advantages for oneself.
:::
::: {.section}
### Homogeneity, difference and authority {#c2-sec-0017}
Protocols are present on more than a technical level; as interpretive
frameworks, they structure viewpoints, rules, and patterns of behavior
on all levels. Thus, they provide a degree of cultural homogeneity, a
set of commonalities that lend these new formations their communal
nature. Viewed from the outside, these formations therefore seem
inclined toward consensus and uniformity, for their members have already
accepted and internalized certain aspects in common -- the protocols
that enable exchange itself -- whereas everyone on the outside has not
done so. When everyone is speaking in English, the conversation sounds
quite monotonous to someone who does not speak the language.
Viewed from the inside, the experience is something different: in order
to constitute oneself within a communal formation, not only does one
have to accept its rules voluntarily and in a self-motivated manner; one
also has to make contributions to the reproduction and development of
the field. Everyone is urged to contribute something; that is, to
produce, on the basis of commonalities, differences that simultaneously
affirm, modify, and enhance these commonalities. This leads to a
pronounced and occasionally highly competitive internal differentiation
that can only be understood, however, by someone who has accepted the
commonalities. To an outsider, this differentiation will seem
irrelevant. Whoever is not well versed in the universe of *Star Wars*
will not understand why the various character interpretations at
[]{#Page_100 type="pagebreak" title="100"}cosplay conventions, which I
discussed above, might be brilliant or even controversial. To such a
person, they will all seem equally boring and superficial.
These formations structure themselves internally through the production
of differences; that is, by constantly changing their common ground.
Those who are able to add many novel aspects to the common resources
gain a degree of authority. They assume central positions and they
influence, through their behavior, the development of the field more
than others do. However, their authority, influence, and de facto power
are not based on any means of coercion. As Niklas Luhmann noted, "In the
end, one participant\'s achievements in making selections \[...\] are
accepted by another participant \[...\] as a limitation of the latter\'s
potential experiences and activities without him having to make the
selection on his own."[^72^](#c2-note-0072){#c2-note-0072a} Even this is
a voluntary and self-interested act: the members of the formation
recognize that this person has contributed more to the common field and
to the resources within it. This, in turn, is to everyone\'s advantage,
for each member would ultimately like to make use of the field\'s
resources to achieve his or her own goals. This arrangement, which can
certainly take on hierarchical qualities, is experienced as something
meritocratically legitimized and voluntarily
accepted.[^73^](#c2-note-0073){#c2-note-0073a} In the context of free
software, there has therefore been some discussion of "benevolent
dictators."[^74^](#c2-note-0074){#c2-note-0074a} The matter of
"dictators" is raised because projects are often led by charismatic
figures without a formal mandate. They are "benevolent" because their
position of authority is based on the fact that a critical mass of
participating producers has voluntarily subordinated itself for its own
self-interest. If the consensus breaks over whose contributions have
been carrying the most weight, then the formation will be at risk of
losing its internal structure and splitting apart ("forking," in the
jargon of free software).
:::
:::
Through personal communication, referential processes in communal
formations create cultural zones of various sizes and scopes. They
expand into the empty spaces that have been created by the erosion of
established institutions and []{#Page_101 type="pagebreak"
title="101"}processes, and once these new processes have been
established the process of erosion intensifies. Multiple processes of
exchange take place alongside one another, creating a patchwork of
interconnected, competing, or entirely unrelated spheres of meaning,
each with specific goals and resources and its own preconditions and
potentials. The structures of knowledge, order, and activity that are
generated by this are holistic as well as partial and limited. The
participants in such structures are simultaneously addressed on many
levels that were once functionally separated; previously independent
spheres, such as work and leisure, are now mixed together, but usually
only with respect to the subdivisions of one\'s own life. And, at first,
the structures established in this way are binding only for active
participants.
::: {.section}
### Exiting the "Library of Babel" {#c2-sec-0019}
For one person alone, however, these new processes would not be able to
generate more than a local island of meaning from the enormous clamor of
chaotic spheres of information. In his 1941 story "The Library of
Babel," Jorge Luis Borges fashioned a fitting image for such a
situation. He depicts the world as a library of unfathomable and
possibly infinite magnitude. The characters in the story do not know
whether there is a world outside of the library. There are reasons to
believe that there is, and reasons that suggest otherwise. The library
houses the complete collection of all possible books that can be written
on exactly 410 pages. Contained in these volumes is the promise that
there is "no personal or universal problem whose eloquent solution
\[does\] not exist," for every possible combination of letters, and thus
also every possible pronouncement, is recorded in one book or another.
No catalog has yet been found for the library (though it must exist
somewhere), and it is impossible to identify any order in its
arrangement of books. The "men of the library," according to Borges,
wander round in search of the one book that explains everything, but
their actual discoveries are far more modest. Only once in a while are
books found that contain more than haphazard combinations of signs. Even
small regularities within excerpts of texts are heralded as sensational
discoveries, and it is around these discoveries that competing
[]{#Page_102 type="pagebreak" title="102"}schools of interpretation
develop. Despite much labor and effort, however, the knowledge gained is
minimal and fragmentary, so the prevailing attitude in the library is
bleak. By the time of the narrator\'s generation, "nobody expects to
discover anything."[^75^](#c2-note-0075){#c2-note-0075a}
Although this vision has now been achieved from a quantitative
perspective -- no one can survey the "library" of digital information,
which in practical terms is infinitely large, and all of the growth
curves continue to climb steeply -- today\'s cultural reality is
nevertheless entirely different from that described by Borges. Our
ability to deal with massive amounts of data has radically improved, and
thus our faith in the utility of information is not only unbroken but
rather gaining strength. What is new is precisely such large quantities
of data ("big data"), which, as we are promised or forewarned, will lead
to new knowledge, to a comprehensive understanding of the world, indeed
even to "omniscience."[^76^](#c2-note-0076){#c2-note-0076a} This faith
in data is based above all on the fact that the two processes described
above -- referentiality and communality -- are not the only new
mechanisms for filtering, sorting, aggregating, and evaluating things.
Beneath or ahead of the social mechanisms of decentralized and networked
cultural production, there are algorithmic processes that pre-sort the
immeasurably large volumes of data and convert them into a format that
can be apprehended by individuals, evaluated by communities, and
invested with meaning.
Strictly speaking, it is impossible to maintain a categorical
distinction between social processes that take place in and by means of
technological infrastructures and technical processes that are socially
constructed. In both cases, social actors attempt to realize their own
interests with the resources at their disposal. The methods of
(attempted) realization, the available resources, and the formulation of
interests mutually influence one another. The technological resources
are inscribed in the formulation of goals. These open up fields of
imagination and desire, which in turn inspire technical
development.[^77^](#c2-note-0077){#c2-note-0077a} Although it is
impossible to draw clear theoretical lines, the attempt to make such a
distinction can nevertheless be productive in practice, for in this way
it is possible to gain different perspectives about the same object of
investigation.[]{#Page_103 type="pagebreak" title="103"}
:::
::: {.section}
### The rise of algorithms {#c2-sec-0020}
An algorithm is a set of instructions for converting a given input into
a desired output by means of a finite number of steps: algorithms are
used to solve predefined problems. For a set of instructions to become
an algorithm, it has to be determined in three different respects.
First, the necessary steps -- individually and as a whole -- have to be
described unambiguously and completely. To do this, it is usually
necessary to use a formal language, such as mathematics, or a
programming language, in order to avoid the characteristic imprecision
and ambiguity of natural language and to ensure instructions can be
followed without interpretation. Second, it must be possible in practice
to execute the individual steps together. For this reason, every
algorithm is tied to the context of its realization. If the context
changes, so do the operating processes that can be formalized as
algorithms and thus also the ways in which algorithms can partake in the
constitution of the world. Third, it must be possible to execute an
operating instruction mechanically so that, under fixed conditions, it
always produces the same result.
Defined in such general terms, it would also be possible to understand
the instruction manual for a typical piece of Ikea furniture as an
algorithm. It is a set of instructions for creating, with a finite
number of steps, a specific and predefined piece of furniture (output)
from a box full of individual components (input). The instructions are
composed in a formal language, pictograms, which define each step as
unambiguously as possible, and they can be executed by a single person
with simple tools. The process can be repeated, for the final result is
always the same: a Billy box will always yield a Billy shelf. In this
case, a person takes over the role of a machine, which (unambiguous
pictograms aside) can lead to problems, be it that scratches and other
traces on the finished piece of furniture testify to the unique nature
of the (unsuccessful) execution, or that, inspired by the micro-trend of
"Ikea hacking," the official instructions are intentionally ignored.
Because such imprecision is supposed to be avoided, the most important
domain of algorithms in practice is mathematics and its implementation
on the computer. The term []{#Page_104 type="pagebreak"
title="104"}"algorithm" derives from the Persian mathematician,
astronomer, and geographer Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī. His book *On
the Calculation with Hindu Numerals*, which was written in Baghdad in
825, was known widely in the Western Middle Ages through a Latin
translation and made the essential contribution of introducing
Indo-Arabic numerals and the number zero to Europe. The work begins
with the formula *dixit algorizmi* ... ("Algorismi said ..."). During
the Middle Ages, *algorizmi* or *algorithmi* soon became a general term
for advanced methods of
calculation.[^78^](#c2-note-0078){#c2-note-0078a}
The modern effort to build machines that could mechanically carry out
instructions achieved its first breakthrough with Gottfried Wilhelm
Leibniz. He has often been credited with making the following remark:
"It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labour
of calculation which could be done by any peasant with the aid of a
machine."[^79^](#c2-note-0079){#c2-note-0079a} This vision already
contains a distinction between higher cognitive and interpretive
activities, which are regarded as being truly human, and lower processes
that involve pure execution and can therefore be mechanized. To this
end, Leibniz himself developed the first calculating machine, which
could carry out all four of the basic types of arithmetic. He was not
motivated to do this by the practical necessities of production and
business (although conceptually groundbreaking, Leibniz\'s calculating
machine remained, on account of its mechanical complexity, a unique item
and was never used).[^80^](#c2-note-0080){#c2-note-0080a} In the
estimation of the philosopher Sybille Krämer, calculating machines "were
rather speculative masterpieces of a century that, like none before it,
was infatuated by the idea of mechanizing 'intellectual'
processes."[^81^](#c2-note-0081){#c2-note-0081a} Long before machines
were implemented on a large scale to increase the efficiency of material
production, Leibniz had already speculated about using them to enhance
intellectual labor. And this vision has never since disappeared. Around
a century and a half later, the English polymath Charles Babbage
formulated it anew, now in direct connection with industrial
mechanization and its imperative of time-saving
efficiency.[^82^](#c2-note-0082){#c2-note-0082a} Yet he, too, failed to
overcome the problem of practically realizing such a machine.
The decisive step that turned the vision of calculating machines into
reality was made by Alan Turing in 1937. With []{#Page_105
type="pagebreak" title="105"}a theoretical model, he demonstrated that
every algorithm could be executed by a machine as long as it could read
an incremental set of signs, manipulate them according to established
rules, and then write them out again. The validity of his model did not
depend on whether the machine would be analog or digital, mechanical or
electronic, for the rules of manipulation were not at first conceived as
being a fixed component of the machine itself (that is, as being
implemented in its hardware). The electronic and digital approach came
to be preferred because it was hoped that even the instructions could be
read by the machine itself, so that the machine would be able to execute
not only one but (theoretically) every written algorithm. The
Hungarian-born mathematician John von Neumann made it his goal to
implement this idea. In 1945, he published a model in which the program
(the algorithm) and the data (the input and output) were housed in a
common storage device. Thus, both could be manipulated simultaneously
without having to change the hardware. In this way, he converted the
"Turing machine" into the "universal Turing machine"; that is, the
modern computer.[^83^](#c2-note-0083){#c2-note-0083a}
Gordon Moore, the co-founder of the chip manufacturer Intel,
prognosticated 20 years later that the complexity of integrated circuits
and thus the processing power of computer chips would double every 18 to
24 months. Since the 1970s, his prediction has been known as Moore\'s
Law and has essentially been correct. This technical development has
indeed taken place exponentially, not least because the semi-conductor
industry has been oriented around
it.[^84^](#c2-note-0084){#c2-note-0084a} An IBM 360/40 mainframe
computer, which was one of the first of its kind to be produced on a
large scale, could make approximately 40,000 calculations per second and
its cost, when it was introduced to the market in 1965, was \$1.5
million per unit. Just 40 years later, a standard server (with a
quad-core Intel processor) could make more than 40 billion calculations
per second, and this at a price of little more than \$1,500. This
amounts to an increase in performance by a factor of a million and a
corresponding price reduction by a factor of a thousand; that is, an
improvement in the price-to-performance ratio by a factor of a billion.
With inflation taken into consideration, this factor would be even
higher. No less dramatic were the increases in performance -- or rather
[]{#Page_106 type="pagebreak" title="106"}the price reductions -- in the
area of data storage. In 1980, it cost more than \$400,000 to store a
gigabyte of data, whereas 30 years later it would cost just 10 cents to
do the same -- a price reduction by a factor of 4 million. And in both
areas, this development has continued without pause.
These increases in performance have formed the material basis for the
rapidly growing number of activities carried out by means of algorithms.
We have now reached a point where Leibniz\'s distinction between
creative mental functions and "simple calculations" is becoming
increasingly fuzzy. Recent discussions about the allegedly threatening
"domination of the computer" have been kindled less by the increased use
of algorithms as such than by the gradual blurring of this distinction
with new possibilities to formalize and mechanize increasing areas of
creative thinking.[^85^](#c2-note-0085){#c2-note-0085a} Activities that
not long ago were reserved for human intelligence, such as composing
texts or analyzing the content of images, are now frequently done by
machines. As early as 2010, a program called Stats Monkey was introduced
to produce short reports about baseball games. All that the program
needs for this is comprehensive data about the games, which can be
accumulated mechanically and which have since become more detailed due
to improved image recognition and sensors. From these data, the program
extracts the decisive moments and players of a game, recognizes
characteristic patterns throughout the course of play (such as
"extending an early lead," "a dramatic comeback," etc.), and on this
basis generates its own report. Regarding the reports themselves, a
number of variables can be determined in advance, for instance whether
the story should be written from the perspective of a neutral observer
or from the standpoint of one of the two teams. If writing about little
league games, the program can be instructed to ignore the errors made by
children -- because no parent wants to read about those -- and simply
focus on their heroics. The algorithm was soon patented, and a start-up
business was created from the original interdisciplinary research
project: Narrative Science. In addition to sport reports it now offers
texts of all sorts, but above all financial reports -- another field for
which there is a great deal of available data. These texts have been
published by reputable media outlets such as the business magazine
*Forbes*, in which their authorship []{#Page_107 type="pagebreak"
title="107"}is credited to "Narrative Science." Although these
contributions are still limited to relatively simple topics, this will
not remain the case for long. When asked about the percentage of news
that would be written by computers 15 years from now, Narrative
Science\'s chief technology officer and co-founder Kristian Hammond
confidently predicted "\[m\]ore than 90 percent." He added that, within
the next five years, an algorithm could even win a Pulitzer
Prize.[^86^](#c2-note-0086){#c2-note-0086a} This may be blatant hype and
self-promotion but, as a general estimation, Hammond\'s assertion is not
entirely beyond belief. It remains to be seen whether algorithms will
replace or simply supplement traditional journalism. Yet because media
companies are now under strong financial pressure, it is certainly
reasonable to predict that many journalistic texts will be automated in
the future. Entirely different applications, however, have also been
conceived. Alexander Pschera, for instance, foresees a new age in the
relationship between humans and nature, for, as soon as animals are
equipped with transmitters and sensors and are thus able to tell their
own stories through the appropriate software, they will be regarded as
individuals and not merely as generic members of a
species.[^87^](#c2-note-0087){#c2-note-0087a}
We have not yet reached this point. However, given that the CIA has also
expressed interest in Narrative Science and has invested in it through
its venture-capital firm In-Q-Tel, there are indications that
applications are being developed beyond the field of journalism. For the
purpose of spreading propaganda, for instance, algorithms can easily be
used to create a flood of entries on online forums and social mass
media.[^88^](#c2-note-0088){#c2-note-0088a} Narrative Science is only
one of many companies offering automated text analysis and production.
As implemented by IBM and other firms, so-called E-discovery software
promises to reduce dramatically the amount of time and effort required
to analyze the constantly growing numbers of files that are relevant to
complex legal cases. Without such software, it would be impossible in
practice for lawyers to deal with so many documents. Numerous bots
(automated editing programs) are active in the production of Wikipedia
as well. Whereas, in the German edition, bots are forbidden from writing
their own articles, this is not the case in the Swedish version.
Measured by the number of entries, the latter is now the second-largest
edition of the online encyclopedia in the []{#Page_108 type="pagebreak"
title="108"}world, for, in the summer of 2013, a single bot contributed
more than 200,000 articles to it.[^89^](#c2-note-0089){#c2-note-0089a}
Since 2013, moreover, the company Epagogix has offered software that
uses historical data to evaluate the market potential of film scripts.
At least one major Hollywood studio uses this software behind the backs
of scriptwriters and directors, for, according to the company\'s CEO,
the latter would be "nervous" to learn that their creative work was
being analyzed in such a way.[^90^](#c2-note-0090){#c2-note-0090a}
Think, too, of the typical statement that is made at the beginning of a
call to a telephone hotline -- "This call may be recorded for training
purposes." Increasingly, this training is not intended for the employees
of the call center but rather for algorithms. The latter are expected to
learn how to recognize the personality type of the caller and, on that
basis, to produce an appropriate script to be read by its poorly
educated and part-time human
co-workers.[^91^](#c2-note-0091){#c2-note-0091a} Another example is the
use of algorithms to grade student
essays,[^92^](#c2-note-0092){#c2-note-0092a} or ... But there is no need
to expand this list any further. Even without additional references to
comparable developments in the fields of image, sound, language, and
film analysis, it is clear by now that, on many fronts, the borders
between the creative and the mechanical have
shifted.[^93^](#c2-note-0093){#c2-note-0093a}
:::
The algorithms used for such tasks, however, are no longer simple
sequences of static instructions. They are no longer repeated unchanged,
over and over again, but are dynamic and adaptive to a high degree. The
computing power available today is used to write programs that modify
and improve themselves semi-automatically and in response to feedback.
What this means can be illustrated by the example of evolutionary and
self-learning algorithms. An evolutionary algorithm is developed in an
iterative process that continues to run until the desired result has
been achieved. In most cases, the values of the variables of the first
generation of algorithms are chosen at random in order to diminish the
influence of the programmer\'s presuppositions on the results. These
cannot be avoided entirely, however, because the type of variables
(independent of their value) has to be determined in the first place. I
will return to this problem later on. This is []{#Page_109
type="pagebreak" title="109"}followed by a phase of evaluation: the
output of every tested algorithm is evaluated according to how close it
is to the desired solution. The best are then chosen and combined with
one another. In addition, mutations (that is, random changes) are
introduced. These steps are then repeated as often as necessary until,
according to the specifications in question, the algorithm is
"sufficient" or cannot be improved any further. By means of intensive
computational processes, algorithms are thus "cultivated"; that is,
large numbers of these are tested instead of a single one being designed
analytically and then implemented. At the heart of this pursuit is a
functional solution that proves itself experimentally and in practice,
but about which it might no longer be possible to know why it functions
or whether it actually is the best possible solution. The fundamental
methods behind this process largely derive from the 1970s (the first
stage of artificial intelligence), the difference being that today they
can be carried out far more effectively. One of the best-known examples
of an evolutionary algorithm is that of Google Flu Trends. In order to
predict which regions will be especially struck by the flu in a given
year, it evaluates the geographic distribution of internet searches for
particular terms ("cold remedies," for instance). To develop the
program, Google tested 450 million different models until one emerged
that could reliably identify local flu epidemics one to two weeks ahead
of the national health authorities.[^94^](#c2-note-0094){#c2-note-0094a}
In pursuits of this magnitude, the necessary processes can only be
administered by computer programs. The series of tests are no longer
conducted by programmers but rather by algorithms. In short, algorithms
are implemented in order to write new algorithms or determine their
variables. If this reflexive process, in turn, is built into an
algorithm, then the latter becomes "self-learning": the programmers do
not set the rules for its execution but rather the rules according to
which the algorithm is supposed to know how to accomplish a particular
goal. In many cases, the solution strategies are so complex that they
are incomprehensible in retrospect. They can no longer be tested
logically, only experimentally. Such algorithms are essentially black
boxes -- objects that can only be understood by their outer behavior but
whose internal structure cannot be known.[]{#Page_110 type="pagebreak"
title="110"}
Automatic facial recognition, as used in surveillance technologies and
for authorizing access to certain things, is based on the fact that
computers can evaluate large numbers of facial images, first to produce
a general model for a face, then to identify the variables that make a
face unique and therefore recognizable. With so-called "unsupervised" or
"deep-learning" algorithms, some developers and companies have even
taken this a step further: computers are expected to extract faces from
unstructured images -- that is, from volumes of images that contain
images both with faces and without them -- and to do so without
possessing in advance any model of the face in question. So far, the
extraction and evaluation of unknown patterns from unstructured material
has only been achieved in the case of very simple patterns -- with edges
or surfaces in images, for instance -- for it is extremely complex and
computationally intensive to program such learning processes. In recent
years, however, there have been enormous leaps in available computing
power, and both the data inputs and the complexity of the learning
models have increased exponentially. Today, on the basis of simple
patterns, algorithms are developing improved recognition of the complex
content of images. They are refining themselves on their own. The term
"deep learning" is meant to denote this very complexity. In 2012, Google
was able to demonstrate the performance capacity of its new programs in
an impressive manner: from a collection of randomly chosen YouTube
videos, analyzed in a cluster by 1,000 computers with 16,000 processors,
it was possible to create a model in just three days that increased
facial recognition in unstructured images by 70
percent.[^95^](#c2-note-0095){#c2-note-0095a} Of course, the algorithm
does not "know" what a face is, but it reliably recognizes a class of
forms that humans refer to as a face. One advantage of a model that is
not created on the basis of prescribed parameters is that it can also
identify faces in non-standard situations (for instance if a person is
in the background, if a face is half-concealed, or if it has been
recorded at a sharp angle). Thanks to this technique, it is possible to
search the content of images directly and not, as before, primarily by
searching their descriptions. Such algorithms are also being used to
identify people in images and to connect them in social networks with
the profiles of the people in question, and this []{#Page_111
type="pagebreak" title="111"}without any cooperation from the users
themselves. Such algorithms are also expected to assist in directly
controlling activity in "unstructured" reality, for instance in
self-driving cars or other autonomous mobile applications that are of
great interest to the military in particular.
Algorithms of this sort can react and adjust themselves directly to
changes in the environment. This feedback, however, also shortens the
timeframe within which they are able to generate repetitive and
therefore predictable results. Thus, algorithms and their predictive
powers can themselves become unpredictable. Stock markets have
frequently experienced so-called "sub-second extreme events"; that is,
price fluctuations that happen in less than a
second.[^96^](#c2-note-0096){#c2-note-0096a} Dramatic "flash crashes,"
however, such as that which occurred on May 6, 2010, when the Dow Jones
Index dropped almost a thousand points in a few minutes (and was thus
perceptible to humans), have not been terribly
uncommon.[^97^](#c2-note-0097){#c2-note-0097a} With the introduction of
voice commands on mobile phones (Apple\'s Siri, for example, which came
out in 2011), programs based on self-learning algorithms have now
reached the public at large and have infiltrated increased areas of
everyday life.
:::
Orders generated by algorithms are a constitutive element of the digital
condition. On the one hand, the mechanical pre-sorting of the
(informational) world is a precondition for managing immense and
unstructured amounts of data. On the other hand, these large amounts of
data and the computing centers in which they are stored and processed
provide the material precondition for developing increasingly complex
algorithms. Necessities and possibilities are mutually motivating one
another.[^98^](#c2-note-0098){#c2-note-0098a}
Perhaps the best-known algorithms that sort the digital infosphere and
make it usable in its present form are those of search engines, above
all Google\'s PageRank. Thanks to these, we can find our way around in a
world of unstructured information and transfer increasingly larger parts
of the (informational) world into the order of unstructuredness without
giving rise to the "Library of Babel." Here, "unstructured" means that
there is no prescribed order such as (to stick []{#Page_112
type="pagebreak" title="112"}with the image of the library) a cataloging
system that assigns to each book a specific place on a shelf. Rather,
the books are spread all over the place and are dynamically arranged,
each according to a search, so that the appropriate books for each
visitor are always standing ready at the entrance. Yet the metaphor of
books being strewn all about is problematic, for "unstructuredness" does
not simply mean the absence of any structure but rather the presence of
another type of order -- a meta-structure, a potential for order -- out
of which innumerable specific arrangements can be generated on an ad hoc
basis. This meta-structure is created by algorithms. They subsequently
derive from it an actual order, which the user encounters, for instance,
when he or she scrolls through a list of hits produced by a search
engine. What the user does not see are the complex preconditions for
assembling the search results. By the middle of 2014, according to the
company\'s own information, the Google index alone included more than a
hundred million gigabytes of data.
Originally (that is, in the second half of the 1990s), PageRank
functioned in such a way that the algorithm analyzed the structure of
links on the World Wide Web, first by noting the number of links that
referred to a given document, and second by evaluating the "relevance"
of the site that linked to the document in question. The relevance of a
site, in turn, was determined by the number of links that led to it.
From these two variables, every document registered by the search engine
was assigned a value, the PageRank. The latter served to present the
documents found with a given search term as a hierarchical list (search
results), whereby the document with the highest value was listed
first.[^99^](#c2-note-0099){#c2-note-0099a} This algorithm was extremely
successful because it reduced the unfathomable chaos of the World Wide
Web to a task that could be managed without difficulty by an individual
user: inputting a search term and selecting from one of the presented
"hits." The simplicity of the user\'s final choice, together with the
quality of the algorithmic pre-selection, quickly pushed Google past its
competition.
Underlying this process is the assumption that every link is an
indication of relevance, and that links from frequently linked (that is,
popular) sources are more important than those from less frequently
linked (that is, unpopular) sources. []{#Page_113 type="pagebreak"
title="113"}The advantage of this assumption is that it can be
understood in terms of purely quantitative variables and it is not
necessary to have any direct understanding of a document\'s content or
of the context in which it exists.
In the middle of the 1990s, when the first version of the PageRank
algorithm was developed, the problem of judging the relevance of
documents whose content could only partially be evaluated was not a new
one. Science administrators at universities and funding agencies had
been facing this difficulty since the 1950s. During the rise of the
knowledge economy, the number of scientific publications increased
rapidly. Scientific fields, perspectives, and methods also multiplied
and diversified during this time, so that even experts could not survey
all of the work being done in their own areas of
research.[^100^](#c2-note-0100){#c2-note-0100a} Thus, instead of reading
and evaluating the content of countless new publications, they shifted
their analysis to a higher level of abstraction. They began to count how
often an article or book was cited and applied this information to
assess the value of a given author or
publication.[^101^](#c2-note-0101){#c2-note-0101a} The underlying
assumption was (and remains) that only important things are referenced,
and therefore every citation and every reference can be regarded as an
indirect vote for something\'s relevance.
In both cases -- classifying a chaotic sphere of information and
administering an expanding industry of knowledge -- the challenge is to
develop dynamic orders for rapidly changing fields, enabling the
evaluation of the importance of individual documents without knowledge
of their content. Because the analysis of citations or links operates on
a purely quantitative basis, large amounts of data can be quickly
structured with them, and especially relevant positions can be
determined. The second advantage of this approach is that it does not
require any assumptions about the contours of different fields or their
relationships to one another. This enables the organization of
disordered or dynamic content. In both cases, references made by the
actors themselves are used: citations in a scientific text, links on
websites. Their value for establishing the order of a field as a whole,
however, is only visible in the aggregate, for instance in the frequency
with which a given article is
cited.[^102^](#c2-note-0102){#c2-note-0102a} In both cases, the shift
from analyzing "data" (the content of documents in the traditional
sense) to []{#Page_114 type="pagebreak" title="114"}analyzing
"meta-data" (describing documents in light of their relationships to one
another) is a precondition for being able to make any use at all of
growing amounts of information.[^103^](#c2-note-0103){#c2-note-0103a}
This shift introduced a new level of abstraction. Information is no
longer understood as a representation of external reality; its
significance is not evaluated with regard to the relation between
"information" and "the world," for instance with a qualitative criterion
such as "true"/"false." Rather, the sphere of information is treated as
a self-referential, closed world, and documents are accordingly only
evaluated in terms of their position within this world, though with
quantitative criteria such as "central"/"peripheral."
Even though the PageRank algorithm was highly effective and assisted
Google\'s rapid ascent to a market-leading position, at the beginning it
was still relatively simple and its mode of operation was at least
partially transparent. It followed the classical statistical model of an
algorithm. A document or site referred to by many links was considered
more important than one to which fewer links
referred.[^104^](#c2-note-0104){#c2-note-0104a} The algorithm analyzed
the given structural order of information and determined the position of
every document therein, and this was largely done independently of the
context of the search and without making any assumptions about it. This
approach functioned relatively well as long as the volume of information
did not exceed a certain size, and as long as the users and their
searches were somewhat similar to one another. In both respects, this is
no longer the case. The amount of information to be pre-sorted is
increasing, and users are searching in all possible situations and
places for everything under the sun. At the time Google was founded, no
one would have thought to check the internet, quickly and while on
one\'s way, for today\'s menu at the restaurant round the corner. Now,
thanks to smartphones, this is an obvious thing to do.
:::
In order to react to such changes in user behavior -- and simultaneously
to advance it further -- Google\'s search algorithm is constantly being
modified. It has become increasingly complex and has assimilated a
greater amount of contextual []{#Page_115 type="pagebreak"
title="115"}information, which influences the value of a site within
PageRank and thus the order of search results. The algorithm is no
longer a fixed object or unchanging recipe but is transforming into a
dynamic process, an opaque cloud composed of multiple interacting
algorithms that are continuously refined (between 500 and 600 times a
year, according to some estimates). These ongoing developments are so
extensive that, since 2003, several new versions of the algorithm cloud
have appeared each year with their own names. In 2014 alone, Google
carried out 13 large updates, more than ever
before.[^105^](#c2-note-0105){#c2-note-0105a}
These changes continue to bring about new levels of abstraction, so that
the algorithm takes into account additional variables such as the time
and place of a search, alongside a person\'s previously recorded
behavior -- but also his or her involvement in social environments, and
much more. Personalization and contextualization were made part of
Google\'s search algorithm in 2005. At first it was possible to choose
whether or not to use these. Since 2009, however, they have been a fixed
and binding component for everyone who conducts a search through
Google.[^106^](#c2-note-0106){#c2-note-0106a} By the middle of 2013, the
search algorithm had grown to include at least 200
variables.[^107^](#c2-note-0107){#c2-note-0107a} What is relevant is
that the algorithm no longer determines the position of a document
within a dynamic informational world that exists for everyone
externally. Instead, it now assigns a rank to their content within a
dynamic and singular universe of information that is tailored to every
individual user. For every person, an entirely different order is
created instead of just an excerpt from a previously existing order. The
world is no longer being represented; it is generated uniquely for every
user and then presented. Google is not the only company that has gone
down this path. Orders produced by algorithms have become increasingly
oriented toward creating, for each user, his or her own singular world.
Facebook, dating services, and other social mass media have been
pursuing this approach even more radically than Google.
:::
::: {.section}
### From the data shadow to the synthetic profile {#c2-sec-0024}
This form of generating the world requires not only detailed information
about the external world (that is, the reality []{#Page_116
type="pagebreak" title="116"}shared by everyone) but also information
about every individual\'s own relation to the
latter.[^108^](#c2-note-0108){#c2-note-0108a} To this end, profiles are
established for every user, and the more extensive they are, the better
they are for the algorithms. A profile created by Google, for instance,
identifies the user on three levels: as a "knowledgeable person" who is
informed about the world (this is established, for example, by recording
a person\'s searches, browsing behavior, etc.), as a "physical person"
who is located and mobile in the world (a component established, for
example, by tracking someone\'s location through a smartphone, sensors
in a smart home, or body signals), and as a "social person" who
interacts with other people (a facet that can be determined, for
instance, by following someone\'s activity on social mass
media).[^109^](#c2-note-0109){#c2-note-0109a}
Unlike the situation in the 1990s, however, these profiles are no longer
simply representations of singular people -- they are not "digital
personas" or "data shadows." They no longer represent what is
conventionally referred to as "individuality," in the sense of a
spatially and temporally uniform identity. On the one hand, profiles
rather consist of sub-individual elements -- of fragments of recorded
behavior that can be evaluated on the basis of a particular search
without promising to represent a person as a whole -- and they consist,
on the other hand, of clusters of multiple people, so that the person
being modeled can simultaneously occupy different positions in time.
This temporal differentiation enables predictions of the following sort
to be made: a person who has already done *x* will, with a probability
of *y*, go on to engage in activity *z*. It is in this way that Amazon
assembles its book recommendations, for the company knows that, within
the cluster of people that constitutes part of every person\'s profile,
a certain percentage of them have already gone through this sequence of
activity. Or, as the data-mining company Science Rockstars (!) once
pointedly expressed on its website, "Your next activity is a function of
the behavior of others and your own past."
Google and other providers of algorithmically generated orders have been
devoting increased resources to the prognostic capabilities of their
programs in order to make the confusing and potentially time-consuming
step of the search obsolete. The goal is to minimize a rift that comes
to light []{#Page_117 type="pagebreak" title="117"}in the act of
searching, namely that between the world as everyone experiences it --
plagued by uncertainty, for searching implies "not knowing something" --
and the world of algorithmically generated order, in which certainty
prevails, for everything has been well arranged in advance. Ideally,
questions should be answered before they are asked. The first attempt by
Google to eliminate this rift is called Google Now, and its slogan is
"The right information at just the right time." The program, which was
originally developed as an app but has since been made available on
Chrome, Google\'s own web browser, attempts to anticipate, on the basis
of existing data, a user\'s next step, and to provide the necessary
information before it is searched for in order that such steps take
place efficiently. Thus, for instance, it draws upon information from a
user\'s calendar in order to figure out where he or she will have to go
next. On the basis of real-time traffic data, it will then suggest the
optimal way to get there. For those driving cars, the amount of traffic
on the road will be part of the equation. This is ascertained by
analyzing the motion profiles of other drivers, which will allow the
program to determine whether the traffic is flowing or stuck in a jam.
If enough historical data is taken into account, the hope is that it
will be possible to redirect cars in such a way that traffic jams should
no longer occur.[^110^](#c2-note-0110){#c2-note-0110a} For those who use
public transport, Google Now evaluates real-time data about the
locations of various transport services. With this information, it will
suggest the optimal route and, depending on the calculated travel time,
it will send a reminder (sometimes earlier, sometimes later) when it is
time to go. That which Google is just experimenting with and testing in
a limited and unambiguous context is already part of Facebook\'s
everyday operations. With its EdgeRank algorithm, Facebook already
organizes everyone\'s newsfeed, entirely in the background and without
any explicit user interaction. On the basis of three variables -- user
affinity (previous interactions between two users), content weight (the
rate of interaction between all users and a specific piece of content),
and currency (the age of a post) -- the algorithm selects content from
the status updates made by one\'s friends to be displayed on one\'s own
page.[^111^](#c2-note-0111){#c2-note-0111a} In this way, Facebook
ensures that the stream of updates remains easy to scroll through, while
also -- it is safe []{#Page_118 type="pagebreak" title="118"}to assume
-- leaving enough room for advertising. This potential for manipulation,
which algorithms possess as they work away in the background, will be
the topic of my next section.
:::
::: {.section}
### Variables and correlations {#c2-sec-0025}
Every complex algorithm contains a multitude of variables and usually an
even greater number of ways to make connections between them. Every
variable and every relation, even if they are expressed in technical or
mathematical terms, codifies assumptions that express a specific
position in the world. There can be no purely descriptive variables,
just as there can be no such thing as "raw
data."[^112^](#c2-note-0112){#c2-note-0112a} Both -- data and variables
-- are always already "cooked"; that is, they are engendered through
cultural operations and formed within cultural
categories.[^113^](#c2-note-0113){#c2-note-0113a} With every use of
produced data and with every execution of an algorithm, the assumptions
embedded in them are activated, and the positions contained within them
have effects on the world that the algorithm generates and presents.
As already mentioned, the early version of the PageRank algorithm was
essentially based on the rather simple assumption that frequently linked
content is more relevant than content that is only seldom linked to, and
that links to sites that are themselves frequently linked to should be
given more weight than those found on sites with fewer links to them.
Replacing the qualitative criterion of "relevance" with the quantitative
criterion of "popularity" not only proved to be tremendously practical
but also extremely consequential, for search engines not only describe
the world; they create it as well. That which search engines put at the
top of this list is not just already popular but will remain so. A third
of all users click on the first search result, and around 95 percent do
not look past the first 10.[^114^](#c2-note-0114){#c2-note-0114a} Even
the earliest version of the PageRank algorithm did not represent
existing reality but rather (co-)constituted it.
Popularity, however, is not the only element with which algorithms
actively give shape to the user\'s world. A search engine can only sort,
weigh, and make available that portion of information which has already
been incorporated into its index. Everything else remains invisible. The
relation between []{#Page_119 type="pagebreak" title="119"}the recorded
part of the internet (the "surface web") and the unrecorded part (the
"deep web") is difficult to determine. Estimates have varied between
ratios of 1:5 and 1:500.[^115^](#c2-note-0115){#c2-note-0115a} There are
many reasons why content might be inaccessible to search engines.
Perhaps the information has been saved in formats that search engines
cannot read or can only poorly read, or perhaps it has been hidden
behind proprietary barriers such as paywalls. In order to expand the
realm of things that can be exploited by their algorithms, the operators
of search engines offer extensive guidance about how providers should
design their sites so that search tools can find them in an optimal
manner. It is not necessary to follow this guidance, but given the
central role of search engines in sorting and filtering information, it
is clear that they exercise a great deal of power by setting the
standards.[^116^](#c2-note-0116){#c2-note-0116a}
That the individual must "voluntarily" submit to this authority is
typical of the power of networks, which do not give instructions but
rather constitute preconditions. Yet it is in the interest of (almost)
every producer of information to optimize its position in a search
engine\'s index, and thus there is a strong incentive to accept the
preconditions in question. Considering, moreover, the nearly
monopolistic character of many providers of algorithmically generated
orders and the high price that one would have to pay if one\'s own site
were barely (or not at all) visible to others, the term "voluntary"
begins to take on a rather foul taste. This is a more or less subtle way
of pre-formatting the world so that it can be optimally recorded by
algorithms.[^117^](#c2-note-0117){#c2-note-0117a}
The providers of search engines usually justify such methods in the name
of offering "more efficient" services and "more relevant" results.
Ostensibly technical and neutral terms such as "efficiency" and
"relevance" do little, however, to conceal the political nature of
defining variables. Efficient with respect to what? Relevant for whom?
These are issues that are decided without much discussion by the
developers and institutions that regard the algorithms as their own
property. Every now and again such questions incite public debates,
mostly when the interests of one provider happen to collide with those
of its competition. Thus, for instance, the initiative known as
FairSearch has argued that Google abuses its market power as a search
engine to privilege its []{#Page_120 type="pagebreak" title="120"}own
content and thus to showcase it prominently in search
results.[^118^](#c2-note-0118){#c2-note-0118a} FairSearch\'s
representatives alleged, for example, that Google favors its own map
service in the case of address searches and its own price comparison
service in the case of product searches. The argument had an effect. In
November of 2010, the European Commission initiated an antitrust
investigation against Google. In 2014, a settlement was proposed that
would have required the American internet giant to pay certain
concessions, but the members of the Commission, the EU Parliament, and
consumer protection agencies were not satisfied with the agreement. In
April 2015, the anti-trust proceedings were recommenced by a newly
appointed Commission, its reasoning being that "Google does not apply to
its own comparison shopping service the system of penalties which it
applies to other comparison shopping services on the basis of defined
parameters, and which can lead to the lowering of the rank in which they
appear in Google\'s general search results
pages."[^119^](#c2-note-0119){#c2-note-0119a} In other words, the
Commission accused the company of manipulating search results to its own
advantage and the disadvantage of users.
This is not the only instance in which the political side of search
algorithms has come under public scrutiny. In the summer of 2012, Google
announced that sites with higher numbers of copyright removal notices
would henceforth appear lower in its
rankings.[^120^](#c2-note-0120){#c2-note-0120a} The company thus
introduced explicitly political and economic criteria in order to
influence what, according to the standards of certain powerful players
(such as film studios), users were able to
view.[^121^](#c2-note-0121){#c2-note-0121a} In this case, too, it would
be possible to speak of the personalization of searching, except that
the heart of the situation was not the natural person of the user but
rather the juridical person of the copyright holder. It was according to
the latter\'s interests and preferences that searching was being
reoriented. Amazon has employed similar tactics. In 2014, the online
merchant changed its celebrated recommendation algorithm with the goal
of reducing the presence of books released by irritating publishers that
dared to enter into price negotiations with the
company.[^122^](#c2-note-0122){#c2-note-0122a}
Controversies over the methods of Amazon or Google, however, are the
exception rather than the rule. Necessary (but never neutral) decisions
about recording and evaluating data []{#Page_121 type="pagebreak"
title="121"}with algorithms are being made almost all the time without
any discussion whatsoever. The logic of the original PageRank algorithm
was criticized as early as the year 2000 for essentially representing
the commercial logic of mass media, systematically disadvantaging
less-popular though perhaps otherwise relevant information, and thus
undermining the "substantive vision of the web as an inclusive
democratic space."[^123^](#c2-note-0123){#c2-note-0123a} The changes to
the search algorithm that have been adopted since then may have modified
this tendency, but they have certainly not weakened it. In addition to
concentrating on what is popular, the new variables privilege recently
uploaded and constantly updated content. The selection of search results
is now contingent upon the location of the user, and it takes into
account his or her social networking. It is oriented toward the average
of a dynamically modeled group. In other words, Google\'s new algorithm
favors that which is gaining popularity within a user\'s social network.
The global village is thus becoming more and more
provincial.[^124^](#c2-note-0124){#c2-note-0124a}
:::
::: {.section}
### Data behaviorism {#c2-sec-0026}
Algorithms such as Google\'s thus reiterate and reinforce a tendency
that has already been apparent on both the level of individual users and
that of communal formations: in order to deal with the vast amounts and
complexity of information, they direct their gaze inward, which is not
to say toward the inner being of individual people. As a level of
reference, the individual person -- with an interior world and with
ideas, dreams, and wishes -- is irrelevant. For algorithms, people are
black boxes that can only be understood in terms of their reactions to
stimuli. Consciousness, perception, and intention do not play any role
for them. In this regard, the legal philosopher Antoinette Rouvroy has
written about "data behaviorism."[^125^](#c2-note-0125){#c2-note-0125a}
With this, she is referring to the gradual return of a long-discredited
approach to behavioral psychology that postulated that human behavior
could be explained, predicted, and controlled purely by our outwardly
observable and measurable actions.[^126^](#c2-note-0126){#c2-note-0126a}
Psychological dimensions were ignored (and are ignored in this new
version of behaviorism) because it is difficult to observe them
empirically. Accordingly, this approach also did away with the need
[]{#Page_122 type="pagebreak" title="122"}to question people directly or
take into account their subjective experiences, thoughts, and feelings.
People were regarded (and are so again today) as unreliable, as poor
judges of themselves, and as only partly honest when disclosing
information. Any strictly empirical science, or so the thinking went,
required its practitioners to disregard everything that did not result
in physical and observable action. From this perspective, it was
possible to break down even complex behavior into units of stimulus and
reaction. This led to the conviction that someone observing another\'s
activity always knows more than the latter does about himself or herself
for, unlike the person being observed, whose impressions can be
inaccurate, the observer is in command of objective and complete
information. Even early on, this approach faced a wave of critique. It
was held to be mechanistic, reductionist, and authoritarian because it
privileged the observing scientist over the subject. In practice, it
quickly ran into its own limitations: it was simply too expensive and
complicated to gather data about human behavior.
Yet that has changed radically in recent years. It is now possible to
measure ever more activities, conditions, and contexts empirically.
Algorithms like Google\'s or Amazon\'s form the technical backdrop for
the revival of a mechanistic, reductionist, and authoritarian approach
that has resurrected the long-lost dream of an objective view -- the
view from nowhere.[^127^](#c2-note-0127){#c2-note-0127a} Every critique
of this positivistic perspective -- that every measurement result, for
instance, reflects not only the measured but also the measurer -- is
brushed aside with reference to the sheer amounts of data that are now
at our disposal.[^128^](#c2-note-0128){#c2-note-0128a} This attitude
substantiates the claim of those in possession of these new and
comprehensive powers of observation (which, in addition to Google and
Facebook, also includes the intelligence services of Western nations),
namely that they know more about individuals than individuals know about
themselves, and are thus able to answer our questions before we ask
them. As mentioned above, this is a goal that Google expressly hopes to
achieve.
At issue with this "inward turn" is thus the space of communal
formations, which is constituted by the sum of all of the activities of
their interacting participants. In this case, however, a communal
formation is not consciously created []{#Page_123 type="pagebreak"
title="123"}and maintained in a horizontal process, but rather
synthetically constructed as a computational function. Depending on the
context and the need, individuals can either be assigned to this
function or removed from it. All of this happens behind the user\'s back
and in accordance with the goals and positions that are relevant to the
developers of a given algorithm, be it to optimize profit or
surveillance, create social norms, improve services, or whatever else.
The results generated in this way are sold to users as a personalized
and efficient service that provides a quasi-magical product. Out of the
enormous haystack of searchable information, results are generated that
are made to seem like the very needle that we have been looking for. At
best, it is only partially transparent how these results came about and
which positions in the world are strengthened or weakened by them. Yet,
as long as the needle is somewhat functional, most users are content,
and the algorithm registers this contentedness to validate itself. In
this dynamic world of unmanageable complexity, users are guided by a
sort of radical, short-term pragmatism. They are happy to have the world
pre-sorted for them in order to improve their activity in it. Regarding
the matter of whether the information being provided represents the
world accurately or not, they are unable to formulate an adequate
assessment for themselves, for it is ultimately impossible to answer
this question without certain resources. Outside of rapidly shrinking
domains of specialized or everyday knowledge, it is becoming
increasingly difficult to gain an overview of the world without
mechanisms that pre-sort it. Users are only able to evaluate search
results pragmatically; that is, in light of whether or not they are
helpful in solving a concrete problem. In this regard, it is not
paramount that they find the best solution or the correct answer but
rather one that is available and sufficient. This reality lends an
enormous amount of influence to the institutions and processes that
provide the solutions and answers.[]{#Page_124 type="pagebreak"
title="124"}
:::
:::
::: {.section .notesList}
[1](#c2-note-0001a){#c2-note-0001} André Rottmann, "Reflexive Systems
of Reference: Approximations to 'Referentialism' in Contemporary Art,"
trans. Gerrit Jackson, in Dirk Snauwaert et al. (eds), *Rehabilitation:
The Legacy of the Modern Movement* (Ghent: MER, 2010), pp. 97--106, at
99.
[2](#c2-note-0002a){#c2-note-0002} The recognizability of the sources
distinguishes these processes from plagiarism. The latter operates with
the complete opposite aim, namely that of borrowing sources without
acknowledging them.
[4](#c2-note-0004a){#c2-note-0004} Theodor W. Adorno, *Aesthetic
Theory*, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor (Minneapolis, MN: University of
Minnesota Press, 1997), p. 151.
[5](#c2-note-0005a){#c2-note-0005} Peter Bürger, *Theory of the
Avant-Garde*, trans. Michael Shaw (Minneapolis, MN: University of
Minnesota Press, 1984).
[6](#c2-note-0006a){#c2-note-0006} Felix Stalder, "Neun Thesen zur
Remix-Kultur," *i-rights.info* (May 25, 2009), online.
[7](#c2-note-0007a){#c2-note-0007} Florian Cramer, *Exe.cut(up)able
Statements: Poetische Kalküle und Phantasmen des selbstausführenden
Texts* (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2011), pp. 9--10 \[--trans.\]
[8](#c2-note-0008a){#c2-note-0008} McLuhan stressed that, despite using
the alphabet, every manuscript is unique because it not only depended on
the sequence of letters but also on the individual ability of a given
scribe to []{#Page_185 type="pagebreak" title="185"}lend these letters a
particular shape. With the rise of the printing press, the alphabet shed
these last elements of calligraphy and became typography.
[9](#c2-note-0009a){#c2-note-0009} Elisabeth L. Eisenstein, *The
Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe* (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1983), p. 15.
[10](#c2-note-0010a){#c2-note-0010} Eisenstein, *The Printing
Revolution in Early Modern Europe*, p. 204.
[11](#c2-note-0011a){#c2-note-0011} The fundamental aspects of these
conventions were formulated as early as the beginning of the sixteenth
century; see Michael Giesecke, *Der Buchdruck in der frühen Neuzeit:
Eine historische Fallstudie über die Durchsetzung neuer Informations-
und Kommunikationstechnologien* (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1991), pp.
420--40.
[12](#c2-note-0012a){#c2-note-0012} Eisenstein, *The Printing
Revolution in Early Modern Europe*, p. 49.
[13](#c2-note-0013a){#c2-note-0013} In April 2014, the Authors Guild --
the association of American writers that had sued Google -- filed an
appeal to overturn the decision and made a public statement demanding
that a new organization be established to license the digital rights of
out-of-print books. See "Authors Guild: Amazon was Google's Target,"
*The Authors Guild: Industry & Advocacy News* (April 11, 2014), online.
In October 2015, however, the next-highest authority -- the United
States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit -- likewise decided in
Google\'s favor. The Authors Guild promptly announced its intention to
take the case to the Supreme Court.
[14](#c2-note-0014a){#c2-note-0014} Jean-Noël Jeanneney, *Google and
the Myth of Universal Knowledge: A View from Europe*, trans. Teresa
Lavender Fagan (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2007).
[15](#c2-note-0015a){#c2-note-0015} Within the framework of the Images
for the Future project (2007--14), the Netherlands alone invested more
than €170 million to digitize the collections of the most important
audiovisual archives. Over 10 years, the cost of digitizing the entire
cultural heritage of Europe has been estimated to be around €100
billion. See Nick Poole, *The Cost of Digitising Europe\'s Cultural
Heritage: A Report for the Comité des Sages of the European Commission*
(November 2010), online.
[16](#c2-note-0016a){#c2-note-0016} Richard Darnton, "The National
Digital Public Library Is Launched!", *New York Review of Books* (April
25, 2013), online.
[17](#c2-note-0017a){#c2-note-0017} According to estimates by the
British Library, so-called "orphan works" alone -- that is, works still
legally protected but whose right holders are unknown -- make up around
40 percent of the books in its collection that still fall under
copyright law. In an effort to alleviate this problem, the European
Parliament and the European Commission issued a directive []{#Page_186
type="pagebreak" title="186"}in 2012 concerned with "certain permitted
uses of orphan works." This has allowed libraries and archives to make
works available online without permission if, "after carrying out
diligent searches," the copyright holders cannot be found. What
qualifies as a "diligent search," however, is so strictly formulated
that the German Library Association has called the directive
"impracticable." Deutscher Bibliotheksverband, "Rechtlinie über
bestimmte zulässige Formen der Nutzung verwaister Werke" (February 27,
2012), online.
[19](#c2-note-0019a){#c2-note-0019} The numbers in this area of
activity are notoriously unreliable, and therefore only rough estimates
are possible. It seems credible, however, that the Pirate Bay was
attracting around a billion page views per month by the end of 2013.
That would make it the seventy-fourth most popular internet destination.
See Ernesto, "Top 10 Most Popular Torrent Sites of 2014" (January 4,
2014), online.
[20](#c2-note-0020a){#c2-note-0020} See the documentary film *TPB AFK:
The Pirate Bay Away from Keyboard* (2013), directed by Simon Klose.
[21](#c2-note-0021a){#c2-note-0021} In technical terms, there is hardly
any difference between a "stream" and a "download." In both cases, a
complete file is transferred to the user\'s computer and played.
[22](#c2-note-0022a){#c2-note-0022} The practice is legal in Germany
but illegal in Austria, though digitized texts are routinely made
available there in seminars. See Seyavash Amini Khanimani and Nikolaus
Forgó, "Rechtsgutachten über die Erforderlichkeit einer freien
Werknutzung im österreichischen Urheberrecht zur Privilegierung
elektronisch unterstützter Lehre," *Forum Neue Medien Austria* (January
2011), online.
[23](#c2-note-0023a){#c2-note-0023} Deutscher Bibliotheksverband,
"Digitalisierung" (2015), online \[--trans\].
[24](#c2-note-0024a){#c2-note-0024} David Weinberger, *Everything Is
Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder* (New York: Times
Books, 2007).
[25](#c2-note-0025a){#c2-note-0025} This is not a question of material
wealth. Those who are economically or socially marginalized are
confronted with the same phenomenon. Their primary experience of this
excess is with cheap goods and junk.
[26](#c2-note-0026a){#c2-note-0026} See Gregory Bateson, "Form,
Substance and Difference," in Bateson, *Steps to an Ecology of Mind:
Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution and
Epistemology* (London: Jason Aronson, 1972), pp. 455--71, at 460:
"\[I\]n fact, what we mean by information -- the elementary unit of
information -- is *a difference which makes a difference*" (the emphasis
is original).
[27](#c2-note-0027a){#c2-note-0027} Inke Arns and Gabriele Horn,
*History Will Repeat Itself* (Frankfurt am Main: Revolver, 2007), p.
42.[]{#Page_187 type="pagebreak" title="187"}
[28](#c2-note-0028a){#c2-note-0028} See the film *The Battle of
Orgreave* (2001), directed by Mike Figgis.
[29](#c2-note-0029a){#c2-note-0029} Theresa Winge, "Costuming the
Imagination: Origins of Anime and Manga Cosplay," *Mechademia* 1 (2006),
pp. 65--76.
[30](#c2-note-0030a){#c2-note-0030} Nicolle Lamerichs, "Stranger than
Fiction: Fan Identity in Cosplay," *Transformative Works and Cultures* 7
(2011), online.
[31](#c2-note-0031a){#c2-note-0031} The *Oxford English Dictionary*
defines "selfie" as a "photographic self-portrait; *esp*. one taken with
a smartphone or webcam and shared via social media."
[32](#c2-note-0032a){#c2-note-0032} Odin Kroeger et al. (eds),
*Geistiges Eigentum und Originalität: Zur Politik der Wissens- und
Kulturproduktion* (Vienna: Turia + Kant, 2011).
[33](#c2-note-0033a){#c2-note-0033} Roland Barthes, "The Death of the
Author," in Barthes, *Image -- Music -- Text*, trans. Stephen Heath
(London: Fontana Press, 1977), pp. 142--8.
[34](#c2-note-0034a){#c2-note-0034} Heinz Rölleke and Albert
Schindehütte, *Es war einmal: Die wahren Märchen der Brüder Grimm und
wer sie ihnen erzählte* (Frankfurt am Main: Eichborn, 2011); and Heiner
Boehncke, *Marie Hassenpflug: Eine Märchenerzählerin der Brüder Grimm*
(Darmstadt: Von Zabern, 2013).
[35](#c2-note-0035a){#c2-note-0035} Hansjörg Ewert, "Alles nur
geklaut?", *Zeit Online* (February 26, 2013), online. This is not a new
realization but has long been a special area of research for
musicologists. What is new, however, is that it is no longer
controversial outside of this narrow disciplinary discourse. See Peter
J. Burkholder, "The Uses of Existing Music: Musical Borrowing as a
Field," *Notes* 50 (1994), pp. 851--70.
[36](#c2-note-0036a){#c2-note-0036} Zygmunt Bauman, *Liquid Modernity*
(Cambridge: Polity, 2000), p. 56.
[37](#c2-note-0037a){#c2-note-0037} Quoted from Eran Schaerf\'s audio
installation *FM-Scenario: Reality Race* (2013), online.
[38](#c2-note-0038a){#c2-note-0038} The number of members, for
instance, of the two large political parties in Germany, the Social
Democratic Party and the Christian Democratic Union, reached its peak at
the end of the 1970s or the beginning of the 1980s. Both were able to
increase their absolute numbers for a brief time at the beginning of the
1990s, when the Christian Democratic Party even reached its absolute
high point, but this can be explained by a surge in new members after
reunification. By 2010, both parties already had fewer members than
Greenpeace, whose 580,000 members make it Germany's largest NGO.
Parallel to this, between 1970 and 2010, the proportion of people
without any religious affiliations shrank to approximately 37 percent.
That there are more churches and political parties today is indicative
of how difficult []{#Page_188 type="pagebreak" title="188"}it has become
for any single organization to attract broad strata of society.
[39](#c2-note-0039a){#c2-note-0039} Ulrich Beck, *Risk Society: Towards
a New Modernity*, trans. Mark Ritter (London: SAGE, 1992), p. 135.
[40](#c2-note-0040a){#c2-note-0040} Ferdinand Tönnies, *Community and
Society*, trans. Charles P. Loomis (East Lansing: Michigan State
University Press, 1957).
[41](#c2-note-0041a){#c2-note-0041} Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels,
"The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848)," trans. Terrell Carver, in
*The Cambridge Companion to the Communist Manifesto*, ed. Carver and
James Farr (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 237--60,
at 239. For Marx and Engels, this was -- like everything pertaining to
the dynamics of capitalism -- a thoroughly ambivalent development. For,
in this case, it finally forced people "to take a down-to-earth view of
their circumstances, their multifarious relationships" (ibid.).
[42](#c2-note-0042a){#c2-note-0042} As early as the 1940s, Karl Polanyi
demonstrated in *The Great Transformation* (New York: Farrar & Rinehart,
1944) that the idea of strictly separated spheres, which are supposed to
be so typical of society, is in fact highly ideological. He argued above
all that the attempt to implement this separation fully and consistently
in the form of the free market would destroy the foundations of society
because both the life of workers and the environment of the market
itself would be regarded as externalities. For a recent adaptation of
this argument, see David Graeber, *Debt: The First 5000 Years* (New
York: Melville House, 2011).
[43](#c2-note-0043a){#c2-note-0043} Tönnies's persistent influence can
be felt, for instance, in Zygmunt Bauman's negative assessment of the
compunction to strive for community in his *Community: Seeking Safety in
an Insecure World* (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001).
[44](#c2-note-0044a){#c2-note-0044} See, for example, Amitai Etzioni,
*The Third Way to a Good Society* (London: Demos, 2000).
[45](#c2-note-0045a){#c2-note-0045} Jean Lave and Étienne Wenger,
*Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation* (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 98.
[46](#c2-note-0046a){#c2-note-0046} Étienne Wenger, *Cultivating
Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge* (Boston, MA:
Harvard Business School Press, 2000).
[47](#c2-note-0047a){#c2-note-0047} The institutions of the
disciplinary society -- schools, factories, prisons and hospitals, for
instance -- were closed. Whoever was inside could not get out.
Participation was obligatory, and instructions had to be followed. See
Michel Foucault, *Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison*,
trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977).[]{#Page_189
type="pagebreak" title="189"}
[48](#c2-note-0048a){#c2-note-0048} Weber famously defined power as
follows: "Power is the probability that one actor within a social
relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite
resistance, regardless of the basis on which this probability rests."
Max Weber, *Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology*,
trans. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 1978), p. 53.
[49](#c2-note-0049a){#c2-note-0049} For those in complete despair, the
following tip is provided: "To get more likes, start liking the photos
of random people." Such a strategy, it seems, is more likely to increase
than decrease one's hopelessness. The quotations are from "How to Get
More Likes on Your Instagram Photos," *WikiHow* (2016), online.
[50](#c2-note-0050a){#c2-note-0050} Jeremy Gilbert, *Democracy and
Collectivity in an Age of Individualism* (London: Pluto Books, 2013).
[52](#c2-note-0052a){#c2-note-0052} Harrison Rainie and Barry Wellman,
*Networked: The New Social Operating System* (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
2012). The term is practical because it is easy to understand, but it is
also conceptually contradictory. An individual (an indivisible entity)
cannot be defined in terms of a distributed network. With a nod toward
Gilles Deleuze, the cumbersome but theoretically more precise term
"dividual" (the divisible) has also been used. See Gerald Raunig,
"Dividuen des Facebook: Das neue Begehren nach Selbstzerteilung," in
Oliver Leistert and Theo Röhle (eds), *Generation Facebook: Über das
Leben im Social Net* (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2011), pp. 145--59.
[53](#c2-note-0053a){#c2-note-0053} Jariu Saramäki et al., "Persistence
of Social Signatures in Human Communication," *Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America* 111
(2014): 942--7.
[54](#c2-note-0054a){#c2-note-0054} The term "weak ties" derives from a
study of where people find out information about new jobs. As the study
shows, this information does not usually come from close friends, whose
level of knowledge often does not differ much from that of the person
looking for a job, but rather from loose acquaintances, whose living
environments do not overlap much with one\'s own and who can therefore
make information available from outside of one\'s own network. See Mark
Granovetter, "The Strength of Weak Ties," *American Journal of
Sociology* 78 (1973): 1360--80.
[55](#c2-note-0055a){#c2-note-0055} Castells, *The Power of Identity*,
420.
[56](#c2-note-0056a){#c2-note-0056} Ulf Weigelt, "Darf der Chef
ständige Erreichbarkeit verlangen?" *Zeit Online* (June 13, 2012),
online \[--trans.\].[]{#Page_190 type="pagebreak" title="190"}
[57](#c2-note-0057a){#c2-note-0057} Hartmut Rosa, *Social Acceleration:
A New Theory of Modernity*, trans. Jonathan Trejo-Mathys (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2013).
[58](#c2-note-0058a){#c2-note-0058} This technique -- "social freezing"
-- has already become so standard that it is now regarded as way to help
women achieve a better balance between work and family life. See Kolja
Rudzio "Social Freezing: Ein Kind von Apple," *Zeit Online* (November 6,
2014), online.
[59](#c2-note-0059a){#c2-note-0059} See the film *Into Eternity*
(2009), directed by Michael Madsen.
[60](#c2-note-0060a){#c2-note-0060} Thomas S. Kuhn, *The Structure of
Scientific Revolutions*, 3rd edn (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press, 1996).
[61](#c2-note-0061a){#c2-note-0061} Werner Busch and Peter Schmoock,
*Kunst: Die Geschichte ihrer Funktionen* (Weinheim: Quadriga/Beltz,
1987), p. 179 \[--trans.\].
[62](#c2-note-0062a){#c2-note-0062} "'When Attitude Becomes Form' at
the Fondazione Prada," *Contemporary Art Daily* (September 18, 2013),
online.
[63](#c2-note-0063a){#c2-note-0063} Owing to the hyper-capitalization
of the art market, which has been going on since the 1990s, this role
has shifted somewhat from curators to collectors, who, though validating
their choices more on financial than on argumentative grounds, are
essentially engaged in the same activity. Today, leading curators
usually work closely together with collectors and thus deal with more
money than the first generation of curators ever could have imagined.
[64](#c2-note-0064a){#c2-note-0064} Diedrich Diederichsen, "Showfreaks
und Monster," *Texte zur Kunst* 71 (2008): 69--77.
[65](#c2-note-0065a){#c2-note-0065} Alexander R. Galloway, *Protocol:
How Control Exists after Decentralization* (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
2004), pp. 7, 75.
[66](#c2-note-0066a){#c2-note-0066} Even the *Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung* -- at least in its online edition -- has begun to publish more
and more articles in English. The newspaper has accepted the
disadvantage of higher editorial costs in order to remain relevant in
the increasingly globalized debate.
[67](#c2-note-0067a){#c2-note-0067} Joseph Reagle, "'Free as in
Sexist?' Free Culture and the Gender Gap," *First Monday* 18 (2013),
online.
[68](#c2-note-0068a){#c2-note-0068} Wikipedia\'s own "Editor Survey"
from 2011 reports a women\'s quota of 9 percent. Other studies have come
to a slightly higher number. See Benjamin Mako Hill and Aaron Shaw, "The
Wikipedia Gender Gap Revisited: Characterizing Survey Response Bias with
Propensity Score Estimation," *PLOS ONE* 8 (July 26, 2013), online. The
problem is well known, and the Wikipedia Foundation has been making
efforts to correct matters. In 2011, its goal was to increase the
participation of women to 25 percent by 2015. This has not been
achieved.[]{#Page_191 type="pagebreak" title="191"}
[69](#c2-note-0069a){#c2-note-0069} Shyong (Tony) K. Lam et al. (2011),
"WP: Clubhouse? An Exploration of Wikipedia's Gender Imbalance,"
*WikiSym* 11 (2011), online.
[70](#c2-note-0070a){#c2-note-0070} David Singh Grewal, *Network Power:
The Social Dynamics of Globalization* (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 2008).
[71](#c2-note-0071a){#c2-note-0071} Ibid., p. 29.
[72](#c2-note-0072a){#c2-note-0072} Niklas Luhmann, *Macht im System*
(Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2013), p. 52 \[--trans.\].
[73](#c2-note-0073a){#c2-note-0073} Mathieu O\'Neil, *Cyberchiefs:
Autonomy and Authority in Online Tribes* (London: Pluto Press, 2009).
[74](#c2-note-0074a){#c2-note-0074} Eric Steven Raymond, "The Cathedral
and the Bazaar," *First Monday* 3 (1998), online.
[75](#c2-note-0075a){#c2-note-0075} Jorge Luis Borges, "The Library of
Babel," trans. Anthony Kerrigan, in Borges, *Ficciones* (New York: Grove
Weidenfeld, 1962), pp. 79--88.
[76](#c2-note-0076a){#c2-note-0076} Heinrich Geiselberger and Tobias
Moorstedt (eds), *Big Data: Das neue Versprechen der Allwissenheit*
(Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2013).
[77](#c2-note-0077a){#c2-note-0077} This is one of the central tenets
of science and technology studies. See, for instance, Geoffrey C. Bowker
and Susan Leigh Star, *Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its
Consequences* (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999).
[78](#c2-note-0078a){#c2-note-0078} Sybille Krämer, *Symbolische
Maschinen: Die Idee der Formalisierung in geschichtlichem Abriß*
(Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1988), 50--69.
[79](#c2-note-0079a){#c2-note-0079} Quoted from Doron Swade, "The
'Unerring Certainty of Mechanical Agency': Machines and Table Making in
the Nineteenth Century," in Martin Campbell-Kelly et al. (eds), *The
History of Mathematical Tables: From Sumer to Spreadsheets* (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 145--76, at 150.
[80](#c2-note-0080a){#c2-note-0080} The mechanical construction
suggested by Leibniz was not to be realized as a practically usable (and
therefore patentable) calculating machine until 1820, by which point it
was referred to as an "arithmometer."
[82](#c2-note-0082a){#c2-note-0082} Charles Babbage, *On the Economy of
Machinery and Manufactures* (London: Charles Knight, 1832), p. 153: "We
have already mentioned what may, perhaps, appear paradoxical to some of
our readers -- that the division of labour can be applied with equal
success to mental operations, and that it ensures, by its adoption, the
same economy of time."
[83](#c2-note-0083a){#c2-note-0083} This structure, which is known as
"Von Neumann architecture," continues to form the basis of almost all
computers.
[84](#c2-note-0084a){#c2-note-0084} "Gordon Moore Says Aloha to
Moore\'s Law," *The Inquirer* (April 13, 2005), online.[]{#Page_192
type="pagebreak" title="192"}
[85](#c2-note-0085a){#c2-note-0085} Miriam Meckel, *Next: Erinnerungen
an eine Zukunft ohne uns* (Reinbeck bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2011). One
could also say that this anxiety has been caused by the fact that the
automation of labor has begun to affect middle-class jobs as well.
[86](#c2-note-0086a){#c2-note-0086} Steven Levy, "Can an Algorithm
Write a Better News Story than a Human Reporter?" *Wired* (April 24,
2012), online.
[87](#c2-note-0087a){#c2-note-0087} Alexander Pschera, *Animal
Internet: Nature and the Digital Revolution*, trans. Elisabeth Laufer
(New York: New Vessel Press, 2016).
[88](#c2-note-0088a){#c2-note-0088} The American intelligence services
are not unique in this regard. *Spiegel* has reported that, in Russia,
entire "bot armies" have been mobilized for the "propaganda battle."
Benjamin Bidder, "Nemzow-Mord: Die Propaganda der russischen Hardliner,"
*Spiegel Online* (February 28, 2015), online.
[89](#c2-note-0089a){#c2-note-0089} Lennart Guldbrandsson, "Swedish
Wikipedia Surpasses 1 Million Articles with Aid of Article Creation
Bot," [blog.wikimedia.org](http://blog.wikimedia.org) (June 17, 2013),
online.
[90](#c2-note-0090a){#c2-note-0090} Thomas Bunnell, "The Mathematics of
Film," *Boom Magazine* (November 2007): 48--51.
[91](#c2-note-0091a){#c2-note-0091} Christopher Steiner, "Automatons
Get Creative," *Wall Street Journal* (August 17, 2012), online.
[93](#c2-note-0093a){#c2-note-0093} Ian Ayres, *Super Crunchers: How
Anything Can Be Predicted* (London: Bookpoint, 2007).
[94](#c2-note-0094a){#c2-note-0094} Each of these models was tested on
the basis of the 50 million most common search terms from the years
2003--8 and classified according to the time and place of the search.
The results were compared with data from the health authorities. See
Jeremy Ginsberg et al., "Detecting Influenza Epidemics Using Search
Engine Query Data," *Nature* 457 (2009): 1012--4.
[95](#c2-note-0095a){#c2-note-0095} In absolute terms, the rate of
correct hits, at 15.8 percent, was still relatively low. With the same
dataset, however, random guessing would only have an accuracy of 0.005
percent. See V. Le Quoc et al., "Building High-Level Features Using
Large-Scale Unsupervised Learning,"
[research.google.com](http://research.google.com) (2012), online.
[96](#c2-note-0096a){#c2-note-0096} Neil Johnson et al., "Abrupt Rise
of New Machine Ecology beyond Human Response Time," *Nature: Scientific
Reports* 3 (2013), online. The authors counted 18,520 of these events
between January 2006 and February 2011; that is, about 15 per day on
average.
[97](#c2-note-0097a){#c2-note-0097} Gerald Nestler, "Mayhem in Mahwah:
The Case of the Flash Crash; or, Forensic Re-performance in Deep Time,"
in Anselm []{#Page_193 type="pagebreak" title="193"}Franke et al. (eds),
*Forensis: The Architecture of Public Truth* (Berlin: Sternberg Press,
2014), pp. 125--46.
[98](#c2-note-0098a){#c2-note-0098} Another facial recognition
algorithm by Google provides a good impression of the rate of progress.
As early as 2011, the latter was able to identify dogs in images with 80
percent accuracy. Three years later, this rate had not only increased to
93.5 percent (which corresponds to human capabilities), but the
algorithm could also identify more than 200 different types of dog,
something that hardly any person can do. See Robert McMillan, "This Guy
Beat Google\'s Super-Smart AI -- But It Wasn\'t Easy," *Wired* (January
15, 2015), online.
[99](#c2-note-0099a){#c2-note-0099} Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, "The
Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine," *Computer
Networks and ISDN Systems* 30 (1998): 107--17.
[100](#c2-note-0100a){#c2-note-0100} Eugene Garfield, "Citation Indexes
for Science: A New Dimension in Documentation through Association of
Ideas," *Science* 122 (1955): 108--11.
[101](#c2-note-0101a){#c2-note-0101} Since 1964, the data necessary for
this has been published as the Science Citation Index (SCI).
[102](#c2-note-0102a){#c2-note-0102} The assumption that the subjects
produce these structures indirectly and without any strategic intention
has proven to be problematic in both contexts. In the world of science,
there are so-called citation cartels -- groups of scientists who
frequently refer to one another\'s work in order to improve their
respective position in the SCI. Search engines have likewise given rise
to search engine optimizers, which attempt by various means to optimize
a website\'s evaluation by search engines.
[103](#c2-note-0103a){#c2-note-0103} Regarding the history of the SCI
and its influence on the early version of Google\'s PageRank, see Katja
Mayer, "Zur Soziometrik der Suchmaschinen: Ein historischer Überblick
der Methodik," in Konrad Becker and Felix Stalder (eds), *Deep Search:
Die Politik des Suchens jenseits von Google* (Innsbruck: Studienverlag,
2009), pp. 64--83.
[104](#c2-note-0104a){#c2-note-0104} A site with zero links to it could
not be registered by the algorithm at all, for the search engine indexed
the web by having its "crawler" follow the links itself.
[106](#c2-note-0106a){#c2-note-0106} Martin Feuz et al., "Personal Web
Searching in the Age of Semantic Capitalism: Diagnosing the Mechanisms
of Personalisation," *First Monday* 17 (2011), online.
[108](#c2-note-0108a){#c2-note-0108} Thus, it is not only the world of
advertising that motivates the collection of personal information. Such
information is also needed for the development of personalized
algorithms that []{#Page_194 type="pagebreak" title="194"}give order to
the flood of data. It can therefore be assumed that the rampant
collection of personal information will not cease or slow down even if
commercial demands happen to change, for instance to a business model
that is not based on advertising.
[109](#c2-note-0109a){#c2-note-0109} For a detailed discussion of how
these three levels are recorded, see Felix Stalder and Christine Mayer,
"Der zweite Index: Suchmaschinen, Personalisierung und Überwachung," in
Konrad Becker and Felix Stalder (eds), *Deep Search: Die Politik des
Suchens jenseits von Google* (Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 2009), pp.
112--31.
[110](#c2-note-0110a){#c2-note-0110} This raises the question of which
drivers should be sent on a detour, so that no traffic jam comes about,
and which should be shown the most direct route, which would now be
traffic-free.
[112](#c2-note-0112a){#c2-note-0112} Lisa Gitelman (ed.), *"Raw Data"
Is an Oxymoron* (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013).
[113](#c2-note-0113a){#c2-note-0113} The terms "raw," in the sense of
unprocessed, and "cooked," in the sense of processed, derive from the
anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, who introduced them to clarify the
difference between nature and culture. See Claude Lévi-Strauss, *The Raw
and the Cooked*, trans. John Weightman and Doreen Weightman (Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press, 1983).
[114](#c2-note-0114a){#c2-note-0114} Jessica Lee, "No. 1 Position in
Google Gets 33% of Search Traffic," *Search Engine Watch* (June 20,
2013), online.
[115](#c2-note-0115a){#c2-note-0115} One estimate that continues to be
cited quite often is already obsolete: Michael K. Bergman, "White Paper
-- The Deep Web: Surfacing Hidden Value," *Journal of Electronic
Publishing* 7 (2001), online. The more content is dynamically generated
by databases, the more questionable such estimates become. It is
uncontested, however, that only a small portion of online information is
registered by search engines.
[116](#c2-note-0116a){#c2-note-0116} Theo Röhle, "Die Demontage der
Gatekeeper: Relationale Perspektiven zur Macht der Suchmaschinen," in
Konrad Becker and Felix Stalder (eds), *Deep Search: Die Politik des
Suchens jenseits von Google* (Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 2009), pp.
133--48.
[117](#c2-note-0117a){#c2-note-0117} The phenomenon of preparing the
world to be recorded by algorithms is not restricted to digital
networks. As early as 1994 in Germany, for instance, a new sort of
typeface was introduced (the *Fälschungserschwerende Schrift*,
"forgery-impeding typeface") on license plates for the sake of machine
readability and facilitating automatic traffic control. To the human
eye, however, it appears somewhat misshapen and
disproportionate.[]{#Page_195 type="pagebreak" title="195"}
[118](#c2-note-0118a){#c2-note-0118} [Fairsearch.org](http://Fairsearch.org)
was officially supported by several of Google\'s competitors, including
Microsoft, TripAdvisor, and Oracle.
[119](#c2-note-0119a){#c2-note-0119} "Antitrust: Commission Sends
Statement of Objections to Google on Comparison Shopping Service,"
*European Commission: Press Release Database* (April 15, 2015), online.
[120](#c2-note-0120a){#c2-note-0120} Amit Singhal, "An Update to Our
Search Algorithms," *Google Inside Search* (August 10, 2012), online. By
the middle of 2014, according to some sources, Google had received
around 20 million requests to remove links from its index on account of
copyright violations.
[121](#c2-note-0121a){#c2-note-0121} Alexander Wragge, "Google-Ranking:
Herabstufung ist 'Zensur light'," *iRights.info* (August 23, 2012),
online.
[122](#c2-note-0122a){#c2-note-0122} Farhad Manjoo,"Amazon\'s Tactics
Confirm Its Critics\' Worst Suspicions," *New York Times: Bits Blog*
(May 23, 2014), online.
[123](#c2-note-0123a){#c2-note-0123} Lucas D. Introna and Helen
Nissenbaum, "Shaping the Web: Why the Politics of Search Engines
Matters," *Information Society* 16 (2000): 169--85, at 181.
[124](#c2-note-0124a){#c2-note-0124} Eli Pariser, *The Filter Bubble:
How the New Personalized Web Is Changing What We Read and How We Think*
(New York: Penguin, 2012).
[125](#c2-note-0125a){#c2-note-0125} Antoinette Rouvroy, "The End(s) of
Critique: Data-Behaviourism vs. Due-Process," in Katja de Vries and
Mireille Hildebrandt (eds), *Privacy, Due Process and the Computational
Turn: The Philosophy of Law Meets the Philosophy of Technology* (New
York: Routledge, 2013), pp. 143--65.
[126](#c2-note-0126a){#c2-note-0126} See B. F. Skinner, *Science and
Human Behavior* (New York: The Free Press, 1953), p. 35: "We undertake
to predict and control the behavior of the individual organism. This is
our 'dependent variable' -- the effect for which we are to find the
cause. Our 'independent variables' -- the causes of behavior -- are the
external conditions of which behavior is a function."
[127](#c2-note-0127a){#c2-note-0127} Nathan Jurgenson, "View from
Nowhere: On the Cultural Ideology of Big Data," *New Inquiry* (October
9, 2014), online.
[128](#c2-note-0128a){#c2-note-0128} danah boyd and Kate Crawford,
"Critical Questions for Big Data: Provocations for a Cultural,
Technological and Scholarly Phenomenon," *Information, Communication &
Society* 15 (2012): 662--79.
:::
:::
::: {.section}
Referentiality, communality, and algorithmicity have become the
characteristic forms of the digital condition because more and more
people -- in more and more segments of life and by means of increasingly
complex technologies -- are actively (or compulsorily) participating in
the negotiation of social meaning. They are thus reacting to the demands
of a chaotic, overwhelming sphere of information and thereby
contributing to its greater expansion. It is the ubiquity of these forms
that makes it possible to speak of the digital condition in the
singular. The goals pursued in these cultural forms, however, are as
diverse, contradictory, and conflicted as society itself. It would
therefore be equally false to assume uniformity or an absence of
alternatives in the unfolding of social and political developments. On
the contrary, the idea of a lack of alternatives is an ideological
assertion that is itself part of a specific political agenda.
In order to resolve this ostensible contradiction between developments
that take place in a manner that is uniform and beyond influence and
those that are characterized by the variable and open-ended
implementation of diverse interests, it is necessary to differentiate
between two levels. One possibility for doing so is presented by Marxist
political economy. It distinguishes between *productive forces*, which
are defined as the technical infrastructure, the state of knowledge, and
the []{#Page_125 type="pagebreak" title="125"}organization of labor, and
the *relations of production*, which are defined as the institutions,
laws, and practices in which people are able to realize the
techno-cultural possibilities of their time. Both are related to one
another, though each develops with a certain degree of autonomy. The
relation between them is essential for the development of society. The
closer they correspond to one another, the more smoothly this
development will run its course; the more contradictions happen to exist
between them, the more this course will suffer from unrest and
conflicts. One of many examples of a current contradiction between these
two levels is the development that has occurred in the area of cultural
works. Whereas radical changes have taken place in their production,
processing, and reproduction (that is, on the level of productive
forces), copyright law (that is, the level of the relations of
production) has remained almost unchanged. In Marxist theory, such
contradictions are interpreted as a starting point for political
upheavals, indeed as a precondition for revolution. As Marx wrote:
::: {.extract}
At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of
society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or
-- this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms -- with the
property relations within the framework of which they have operated
hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these
relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social
revolution.[^1^](#c3-note-0001){#c3-note-0001a}
:::
Many theories aiming to overcome capitalism proceed on the basis of this
dynamic.[^2^](#c3-note-0002){#c3-note-0002a} The distinction between
productive forces and the relations of production, however, is not
unproblematic. On the one hand, no one has managed to formulate an
entirely convincing theory concerning the reciprocal relation between
the two. What does it mean, exactly, that they are related to one
another and yet are simultaneously autonomous? When does the moment
arrive in which they come into conflict with one another? And what,
exactly, happens then? For the most part, these are unsolved questions.
On the other hand, because of the blending of work and leisure already
mentioned, as well as the general economization of social activity (as
is happening on social []{#Page_126 type="pagebreak" title="126"}mass
media and in the creative economy, for instance), it is hardly possible
now to draw a line between production and reproduction. Thus, this set
of concepts, which is strictly oriented toward economic production
alone, is more problematic than ever. My decision to use these concepts
is therefore limited to clarifying the conceptual transition from the
previous chapter to the chapter at hand. The concern of the last chapter
was to explain the forms that cultural processes have adopted under the
present conditions -- ubiquitous telecommunication, general expressivity
(referentiality), flexible cooperation (communality), and informational
automation (algorithmicity). In what follows, on the contrary, my focus
will turn to the political dynamics that have emerged from the
realization of "productive forces" as concrete "relations of production"
or, in more general terms, as social relations. Without claiming to be
comprehensive, I have assigned the confusing and conflicting
multiplicity of actors, projects, and institutions to two large
political developments: post-democracy and commons. The former is moving
toward an essentially authoritarian society, while the latter is moving
toward a radical renewal of democracy by broadening the scope of
collective decision-making. Both cases involve more than just a few
minor changes to the existing order. Rather, both are ultimately leading
to a new political constellation beyond liberal representative
democracy.
:::
The current dominant political development is the spread and
entrenchment of post-democracy. The term was coined in the middle of the
1990s by Jacques Rancière. "Post-democracy," as he defined it, "is the
government practice and conceptual legitimization of a democracy *after*
the demos, a democracy that has eliminated the appearance, miscount and
dispute of the people."[^3^](#c3-note-0003){#c3-note-0003a} Rancière
argued that the immediate presence of the people (the demos) has been
abolished and replaced by processes of simulation and modeling such as
opinion polls, focus groups, and plans for various scenarios -- all
guided by technocrats. Thus, he believed that the character of political
processes has changed, namely from disputes about how we []{#Page_127
type="pagebreak" title="127"}ought to face a principally open future to
the administration of predefined necessities and fixed constellations.
As early as the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher justified her radical reforms
with the expression "There is no alternative!" Today, this form of
argumentation remains part of the core vocabulary of post-democratic
politics. Even Angela Merkel is happy to call her political program
*alternativlos* ("without alternatives"). According to Rancière, this
attitude is representative of a government practice that operates
without the unpredictable presence of the people and their dissent
concerning fundamental questions. All that remains is "police logic," in
which everything is already determined, counted, and managed.
Ten years after Rancière\'s ruminations, Colin Crouch revisited the
concept and defined it anew. His notion of post-democracy is as follows:
::: {.extract}
Under this model, while elections certainly exist and can change
governments, public electoral debate is a tightly controlled spectacle,
managed by rival teams of professionals expert in the technique of
persuasion, and considering a small range of issues selected by those
teams. The mass of citizens plays a passive, quiescent, even apathetic
part, responding only to the signals given them. Behind this spectacle
of the electoral game, politics is really shaped in private by
interaction between elected governments and elites that overwhelmingly
represent business interests.[^4^](#c3-note-0004){#c3-note-0004a}
:::
He goes on:
::: {.extract}
My central contentions are that, while the forms of democracy remain
fully in place and today in some respects are actually strengthened --
politics and government are increasingly slipping back into the control
of privileged elites in the manner characteristic of predemocratic
times; and that one major consequence of this process is the growing
impotence of egalitarian causes.[^5^](#c3-note-0005){#c3-note-0005a}
:::
In his analysis, Crouch focused on the Western political system in the
strict sense -- parties, parliaments, governments, eligible voters --
and in particular on the British system under Tony Blair. He described
the development of representative democracy as a rising and declining
curve, and he diagnosed []{#Page_128 type="pagebreak" title="128"}not
only an erosion of democratic institutions but also a shift in the
legitimation of public activity. In this regard, according to Crouch,
the participation of citizens in political decision-making (input
legitimation) has become far less important than the quality of the
achievements that are produced for the citizens (output legitimation).
Out of democracy -- the "dispute of the people," in Rancière\'s sense --
emerges governance. As Crouch maintains, however, this shift was
accompanied by a sustained weakening of public institutions, because it
was simultaneously postulated that private actors are fundamentally more
efficient than the state. This argument was used (and continues to be
used) to justify taking an increasing number of services away from
public actors and entrusting them instead to the private sphere, which
has accordingly become more influential and powerful. One consequence of
this has been, according to Crouch, "the collapse of self-confidence on
the part of the state and the meaning of public authority and public
service."[^6^](#c3-note-0006){#c3-note-0006a} Ultimately, the threat at
hand is the abolishment of democratic institutions in the name of
efficiency. These institutions are then replaced by technocratic
governments without a democratic mandate, as has already happened in
Greece, Portugal, or Ireland, where external overseers have been
directly or indirectly determining the political situation.
::: {.section}
### Social mass media as an everyday aspect of post-democratic life {#c3-sec-0003}
For my purposes, it is of little interest whether the concept of "public
authority" really ought to be revived or whether and in what
circumstances the parable of rising and declining will help us to
understand the development of liberal
democracy.[^7^](#c3-note-0007){#c3-note-0007a} Rather, it is necessary
to supplement Crouch\'s approach in order to make it fruitful for our
understanding of the digital condition, which extends greatly beyond
democratic processes in the classical sense -- that is, with
far-reaching decisions about issues concerning society in a formalized
and binding manner that is legitimized by citizen participation. I will
therefore designate as "post-democratic" all of those developments --
wherever they are taking place -- that, although admittedly preserving
or even providing new []{#Page_129 type="pagebreak"
title="129"}possibilities for participation, simultaneously also
strengthen the capacity for decision-making on levels that preclude
co-determination. This has brought about a lasting separation between
social participation and the institutional exertion of power. These
developments, the everyday instances of which may often be harmless and
banal, create as a whole the cultural preconditions and experiences that
make post-democracy -- both in Crouch\'s strict sense and the broader
sense of Rancière -- seem normal and acceptable.
In an almost ideal-typical form, the developments in question can be
traced alongside the rise of commercially driven social mass media.
Their shape, however, is not a matter of destiny (it is not the result
of any technological imperative) but rather the consequence of a
specific political, economic, and technical constellation that realized
the possibilities of the present (productive forces) in particular
institutional forms (relations of production) and was driven to do so in
the interest of maximizing profit and control. A brief look at the
history of digital communication will be enough to clarify this. In the
middle of the 1990s, the architecture of the internet was largely
decentralized and based on open protocols. The attempts of America
Online (AOL) and CompuServe to run a closed network (an intranet, as we
would call it today) to compete with the open internet were
unsuccessful. The large providers never really managed to address the
need or desire of users to become active producers of meaning. Even the
most popular elements of these closed worlds -- the forums in which
users could interact relatively directly with one another -- lacked the
diversity and multiplicity of participatory options that made the open
internet so attractive.
One of the most popular and radical services on the open internet was
email. The special thing about it was that electronic messages could be
used both for private (one-to-one) and for communal (many-to-many)
communication of all sorts, and thus it helped to merge the previously
distinct domains of the private and the communal. By the middle of the
1980s, and with the help of specialized software, it was possible to
create email lists with which one could send messages efficiently and
reliably to small and large groups. Users could join these groups
without much effort. From the beginning, email has played a significant
role in the creation []{#Page_130 type="pagebreak" title="130"}of
communal formations. Email was one of the first technologies that
enabled the horizontal coordination of large and dispersed groups, and
it was often used to that end. Linus Torvalds\'s famous call for people
to collaborate with him on his operating system -- which was then "just
a hobby" but today, as Linux, makes up part of the infrastructure of the
internet -- was issued on August 25, 1991, via email (and news groups).
One of the most important features of email was due to the service being
integrated into an infrastructure that was decentralized by means of
open protocols. And so it has remained. The fundamental Simple Mail
Transfer Protocol (SMTP), which is still being used, is based on a
so-called Request for Comments (RFC) from 1982. In this document, which
sketched out the new protocol and made it open to discussion, it was
established from the outset that communication should be enabled between
independent networks.[^8^](#c3-note-0008){#c3-note-0008a} On the basis
of this standard, it is thus possible today for different providers to
create an integrated space for communication. Even though they are in
competition with one another, they nevertheless cooperate on the level
of the technical protocol and allow users to send information back and
forth regardless of which providers are used. A choice to switch
providers would not cause the forfeiting of individuals\' address books
or any data. Those who put convenience first can use one of the large
commercial providers, or they can choose one of the many small
commercial or non-commercial services that specialize in certain niches.
It is even possible to set up one\'s own server in order to control this
piece of infrastructure independently. In short, thanks to the
competition between providers or because they themselves command the
necessary technical know-how, users continue to have the opportunity to
influence the infrastructure directly and thus to co-determine the
essential (technical) parameters that allow for specific courses of
action. Admittedly, modern email services are set up in such a way that
most of their users remain on the surface, while the essential decisions
about how they are able to act are made on the "back side"; that is, in
the program code, in databases, and in configuration files. Yet these
two levels are not structurally (that is, organizationally and
technically) separated from one another. Whoever is willing and ready to
[]{#Page_131 type="pagebreak" title="131"}appropriate the corresponding
and freely available technical knowledge can shift back and forth
between them. Before the internet was made suitable for the masses, it
had been necessary to possess such knowledge in order to use the often
complicated and error-prone infrastructure at all.
Over the last 10 to 15 years, these structures have been radically
changed by commercially driven social mass media, which have been
dominated by investors. They began to offer a variety of services in a
user-friendly form and thus enabled the great majority of the population
to make use of complex applications on an everyday basis. This, however,
has gone hand in hand with the centralization of applications and user
information. In the case of email, this happened through the
introduction of Webmail, which always stores every individual message on
the provider\'s computer, where they can be read and composed via web
browsers.[^9^](#c3-note-0009){#c3-note-0009a} From that point on,
providers have been able to follow everything that users write in their
emails. Thanks to nearly comprehensive internet connectivity, Webmail is
very widespread today, and the large providers -- above all Google,
whose Gmail service had more than 500 million users in 2014 -- dominate
the market. The gap has thus widened between user interfaces and the
processes that take place behind them on servers and in data centers,
and this has expanded what Crouch referred to as "the influence of the
privileged elite." In this case, the elite are the engineers and
managers employed by the large providers, and everyone else with access
to the underbelly of the infrastructure, including the British
Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and the US National
Security Agency (NSA), both of which employ programs such as a MUSCULAR
to record data transfers between the computer centers operated by large
American providers.[^10^](#c3-note-0010){#c3-note-0010a}
Nevertheless, email essentially remains an open application, for the
SMTP protocol forces even the largest providers to cooperate. Small
providers are able to collaborate with the latter and establish new
services with them. And this creates options. Since Edward Snowden\'s
revelations, most people are aware that all of their online activities
are being monitored, and this has spurred new interest in secure email
services. In the meantime, there has been a whole series of projects
aimed at combining simple usability with complex []{#Page_132
type="pagebreak" title="132"}encryption in order to strengthen the
privacy of normal users. This same goal has led to a number of
successful crowd-funding campaigns, which indicates that both the
interest and the resources are available to accomplish
it.[^11^](#c3-note-0011){#c3-note-0011a} For users, however, these
offers are only attractive if they are able to switch providers without
great effort. Moreover, such new competition has motivated established
providers to modify their own
infrastructure.[^12^](#c3-note-0012){#c3-note-0012a} In the case of
email, the level on which new user options are created is still
relatively closely linked to that on which generally binding decisions
are made and implemented. In this sense, email is not a post-democratic
technology.
:::
::: {.section}
### Centralization and the power of networks {#c3-sec-0004}
Things are entirely different in the case of new social mass media such
as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, or most of the other
commercial services that were developed after the year 2000. Almost all
of them are based on standards that are closed and controlled by the
network operators, and these standards prevent users from communicating
beyond the boundaries defined by the providers. Through Facebook, it is
only possible to be in touch with other users of the platform, and
whoever leaves the platform will have to give up all of his or her
Facebook friends.
As with email, these services also rely on people producing their own
content. By now, Facebook has more than a billion users, and each of
them has produced at least a rudimentary personal profile and a few
likes. Thanks to networking opportunities, which make up the most
important service offered by all of these providers, communal formations
can be created with ease. Every day, groups are formed that organize
information, knowledge, and resources in order to establish self-defined
practices (both online and offline). The immense amounts of data,
information, and cultural references generated by this are pre-sorted by
algorithms that operate in the background to ensure that users never
lose their orientation.[^13^](#c3-note-0013){#c3-note-0013a} Viewed from
the perspective of output legitimation -- that is, in terms of what
opportunities these services provide and at what cost -- such offers are
extremely attractive. Examined from the perspective of input
legitimation -- that is, in terms []{#Page_133 type="pagebreak"
title="133"}of how essential decisions are made -- things look rather
different. By means of technical, organizational, and legal standards,
Facebook and other operators of commercially driven social mass media
have created structures in which the level of user interaction is
completely separated from the level on which essential decisions are
made that concern the community of users. Users have no way to influence
the design or development of the conditions under which they (have to)
act. At best, it remains possible to choose one aspect or another from a
predetermined offer; that is, to use certain options or not. Take it or
leave it. As to which options and features are available, users can
neither determine this nor have any direct influence over the matter. In
short, commercial social networks have institutionalized a power
imbalance between those engaged with the user interface and those who
operate the services behind the scenes. The possibility of users to
organize themselves and exert influence -- over the way their data are
treated, for instance -- is severely limited.
One (nominal) exception to this happened to be Facebook itself. From
2009 to 2012, the company allowed users to vote about any proposed
changes to its terms and conditions, which attracted more than 7,000
comments. If 30 percent of all registered members participated, then the
result would be binding. In practice, however, this rule did not have
any consequences, for the quorum was never achieved. This is no
surprise, because Facebook did not make any effort to increase
participation. In fact, the opposite was true. As the privacy activist
Max Schrems has noted, without mincing words, "After grand promises of
user participation, the ballot box was then hidden away for
safekeeping."[^14^](#c3-note-0014){#c3-note-0014a} With reference to the
apparent lack of interest on the part of its users, Facebook did away
with the possibility to vote and replaced it with the option of
directing questions to management.[^15^](#c3-note-0015){#c3-note-0015a}
Since then, and even in the case of fundamental decisions that concern
everyone involved, there has been no way for users to participate in the
discussion. This new procedure, which was used to implement a
comprehensive change in Facebook\'s privacy policy, was described by the
company\'s founder Mark Zuckerberg as follows: "We decided that these
would be the social norms now, and we just went for
it."[^16^](#c3-note-0016){#c3-note-0016a} It is not exactly clear whom
he meant by "we." What is clear, []{#Page_134 type="pagebreak"
title="134"}however, is that the number of people involved with
decision-making is minute in comparison with the number of people
affected by the decisions to be made.
It should come as no surprise that, with the introduction of every new
feature, providers such as Facebook have further tilted the balance of
power between users and operators. With every new version and with every
new update, the possibilities of interaction are changed in such a way
that, within closed networks, more data can be produced in a more
uniform format. Thus, it becomes easier to make connections between
them, which is their only real source of value. Facebook\'s compulsory
"real-name" policy, for instance, which no longer permits users to
register under a pseudonym, makes it easier for the company to create
comprehensive user profiles. Another standard allows the companies to
assemble, in the background, a uniform profile out of the activities of
users on sites or applications that seem at first to have nothing to do
with one another.[^17^](#c3-note-0017){#c3-note-0017a} Google, for
instance, connects user data from its search function with information
from YouTube and other online services, but also with data from Nest, a
networked thermostat. Facebook connects data from its social network
with those from WhatsApp, Instagram, and the virtual-reality service
Oculus.[^18^](#c3-note-0018){#c3-note-0018a} This trend is far from
over. Many services are offering more and more new functions for
generating data, and entire new areas of recording data are being
developed (think, for instance, of Google\'s self-driving car). Yet
users have access to just a minuscule portion of the data that they
themselves have generated and with which they are being described. This
information is fully available to the programmers and analysts alone.
All of this is done -- as the sanctimonious argument goes -- in the name
of data protection.
:::
Unequal access to information has resulted in an imbalance of power, for
the evaluation of data opens up new possibilities for action. Such data
can be used, first, to earn revenue from personalized advertisements;
second, to predict user behavior with greater accuracy; and third, to
adjust the parameters of interaction in such a way that preferred
patterns of []{#Page_135 type="pagebreak" title="135"}behavior become
more likely. Almost all commercially driven social mass media are
financed by advertising. In 2014, Facebook, Google, and Twitter earned
90 percent of their revenue through such means. It is thus important for
these companies to learn as much as possible about their users in order
to optimize access to them and sell this access to
advertisers.[^19^](#c3-note-0019){#c3-note-0019a} Google and Facebook
justify the price for advertising on their sites by claiming that they
are able to direct the messages of advertisers precisely to those people
who would be most susceptible to them.
Detailed knowledge about users, moreover, also provides new
possibilities for predicting human
behavior.[^20^](#c3-note-0020){#c3-note-0020a} In 2014, Facebook made
headlines by claiming that it could predict a future romantic
relationship between two of its members, and even that it could do so
about a hundred days before the new couple changed their profile status
to "in a relationship." The basis of this sort of prognosis is the
changing frequency with which two people exchange messages over the
social network. In this regard, it does not matter whether these
messages are private (that is, only for the two of them), semi-public
(only for friends), or public (visible to
everyone).[^21^](#c3-note-0021){#c3-note-0021a} Facebook and other
social mass media are set up in such a way that those who control the
servers are always able to see everything. All of this information,
moreover, is formatted in such a way as to optimize its statistical
analysis. As the amounts of data increase, even the smallest changes in
frequencies and correlations begin to gain significance. In its study of
romantic relationships, for instance, Facebook discovered that the
number of online interactions reaches its peak 12 days before a
relationship begins and hits its low point 85 days after the status
update (probably because of an increasing number of offline
interactions).[^22^](#c3-note-0022){#c3-note-0022a} The difference in
the frequency of online interactions between the high point and the low
point was just 0.14 updates per day. In other words, Facebook\'s
statisticians could recognize and evaluate when users would post, over
the course of seven days, one more message than they might usually
exchange. With traditional methods of surveillance, which focus on
individual people, such a small deviation would not have been detected.
To do so, it is necessary to have immense numbers of users generating
immense volumes of data. Accordingly, these new []{#Page_136
type="pagebreak" title="136"}analytic possibilities do not mean that
Facebook can accurately predict the behavior of a single user. The
unique person remains difficult to calculate, for all that could be
ascertained from this information would be a minimally different
probability of future behavior. As regards a single person, this gain in
knowledge would not be especially useful, for a slight change in
probability has no predictive power on a case-by-case basis. If, in the
case of a unique person, the probability of a particular future action
climbs from, say, 30 to 31 percent, then not much is gained with respect
to predicting this one person\'s behavior. If vast numbers of similar
people are taken into account, however, then the power of prediction
increases enormously. If, in the case of 1 million people, the
probability of a future action increases by 1 percent, this means that,
in the future, around 10,000 more people will act in a certain way.
Although it may be impossible to say for sure which member of a "group"
this might be, this is not relevant to the value of the prediction (to
an advertising agency, for instance).
It is also possible to influence large groups by changing the parameters
of their informational environment. Many online news portals, for
instance, simultaneously test multiple headlines during the first
minutes after the publication of an article (that is, different groups
are shown different titles for the same article). These so-called A/B
tests are used to measure which headlines attract the most clicks. The
most successful headline is then adopted and shown to larger
groups.[^23^](#c3-note-0023){#c3-note-0023a} This, however, is just the
beginning. All services are constantly changing their features for
select focus groups without any notification, and this is happening both
on the level of the user interface and on that of their hidden
infrastructure. In this way, reactions can be tested in order to
determine whether a given change should be implemented more broadly or
rejected. If these experiments and interventions are undertaken with
commercial intentions -- to improve the placement of advertisements, for
instance -- then they hardly trigger any special reactions. Users will
grumble when their customary procedures are changed, but this is
usually a matter of short-term irritation, for users know that they can
hardly do anything about it beyond expressing their discontent. A
greater stir was caused by an experiment conducted in the middle of
2014, []{#Page_137 type="pagebreak" title="137"}for which Facebook
manipulated the timelines of 689,003 of its users, approximately 0.04
percent of all members. The selected members were divided into two
groups, one of which received more "positive" messages from their circle
of friends while the other received more "negative" messages. For a
control group, the filter settings were left unchanged. The goal was to
investigate whether, without any direct interaction and non-verbal cues
(mimicry, for example), the mood of a user could be influenced by the
mood that he or she perceives in others -- that is, whether so-called
"emotional contagion," which had hitherto only been demonstrated in the
case of small and physically present groups, also took place online. The
answer, according to the results of the study, was a resounding
"yes."[^24^](#c3-note-0024){#c3-note-0024a} Another conclusion, though
one that the researchers left unexpressed, is that Facebook can
influence this process in a controlled manner. Here, it is of little
interest whether it is genuinely possible to manipulate the emotional
condition of someone posting on Facebook by increasing the presence of
certain key words, or whether the presence of these words simply
increases the social pressure for someone to appear in a better or worse
mood.[^25^](#c3-note-0025){#c3-note-0025a} What is striking is rather
the complete disregard of one of the basic ethical principles of
scientific research, namely that human subjects must be informed about
and agree to any experiments performed on or with them ("informed
consent"). This disregard was not a mere oversight; the authors of the
study were alerted to the issue before publication, and the methods were
subjected to an internal review. The result: Facebook\'s terms of use
allow such methods, no legal claims could be made, and the modulation of
the newsfeed by changing filter settings is so common that no one at
Facebook could see anything especially wrong with the
experiment.[^26^](#c3-note-0026){#c3-note-0026a}
Why would they? All commercially driven social mass media conduct
manipulative experiments. From the perspective of "data behaviorism,"
this is the best way to acquire feedback from users -- far better than
direct surveys.[^27^](#c3-note-0027){#c3-note-0027a} Facebook had also
already conducted experiments in order to intervene directly in
political processes. On November 2, 2010, the social mass medium tested,
by manipulating timelines, whether it might be possible to increase
voter turnout for the American midterm elections that were taking place
[]{#Page_138 type="pagebreak" title="138"}on that day. An application
was surreptitiously loaded into the timelines of more than 10 million
people that contained polling information and a list of friends who had
already voted. It was possible to collect this data because the
application had a built-in function that enabled people to indicate
whether they had already cast a vote. A control group received a message
that encouraged them to vote but lacked any personalization or the
possibility of social interaction. This experiment, too, relied on the
principle of "contagion." By the end of the day, those who saw that
their friends had already voted were 0.39 percent more likely to go to
the polls than those in the control group. In relation to a single
person, the extent of this influence was thus extremely weak and barely
relevant. Indeed, it would be laughable even to speak of influence at
all if only 250 people had altered their behavior. Personal experience
suggests that one cannot be manipulated by such things. It would be
false to conclude, however, that such interventions are irrelevant, for
matters are entirely different where large groups are concerned. On
account of Facebook\'s small experiment, approximately 60,000 people
voted who otherwise would have stayed at home, and around 340,000 extra
votes were cast (because most people do not go to vote alone but rather
bring along friends and family members, who vote at the same
time).[^28^](#c3-note-0028){#c3-note-0028a} These are relevant numbers
if the margins are narrow between the competing parties or candidates,
especially if the people who receive the extra information and incentive
are not -- as they were for this study -- chosen at
random.[^29^](#c3-note-0029){#c3-note-0029a} Facebook already possesses,
in excess, the knowledge necessary to focus on a particular target
group, for instance on people whose sympathies lie with one party or
another.[^30^](#c3-note-0030){#c3-note-0030a}
:::
::: {.section}
### The dark shadow of cybernetics {#c3-sec-0006}
Far from being unusual, the manipulation of information behind the backs
of users is rather something that is done every day by commercially
driven social mass media, which are not primarily channels for
transmitting content but rather -- and above all -- environments in
which we live. Both of the examples discussed above illustrate what is
possible when these environments, which do not represent the world but
[]{#Page_139 type="pagebreak" title="139"}rather generate it, are
centrally controlled, as is presently the case. Power is being exercised
not by directly stipulating what each individual ought to do, but rather
by altering the environment in which everyone is responsible for finding
his or her way. The baseline of facts can be slightly skewed in order to
increase the probability that this modified facticity will, as a sort
of social gravity, guide things in a certain direction. At work here is
the fundamental insight of cybernetics, namely that the "target" to be
met -- be it an enemy bomber,[^31^](#c3-note-0031){#c3-note-0031a} a
citizen, or a customer -- orients its behavior to its environment, to
which it is linked via feedback. From this observation, cybernetically
oriented social planners soon drew the conclusion that the best (because
indirect and hardly perceptible) method for influencing the "target"
would be to alter its environment. As early as the beginning of the
1940s, the anthropologist and cyberneticist Gregory Bateson posed the
following question: "How would we rig the maze or problem-box so that
the anthropomorphic rat shall obtain a repeated and reinforced
impression of his own free will?"[^32^](#c3-note-0032){#c3-note-0032a}
Though Bateson\'s formulation is somewhat flippant, there was a serious
backdrop to this problem. The electoral success of the Nazis during the
1930s seemed to have indicated that the free expression of will can have
catastrophic political consequences. In response to this, the American
planners of the post-war order made it their objective to steer the
population toward (or keep it on) the path of liberal, market-oriented
democracy without obviously undermining the legitimacy of liberal
democracy itself, namely its basis in the individual\'s free will and
freedom of choice. According to the French author collective Tiqqun,
this paradox was resolved by the introduction of "a new fable that,
after the Second World War, definitively \[...\] supplanted the liberal
hypothesis. Contrary to the latter, it proposes to conceive biological,
physical and social behaviors as something integrally programmed and
re-programmable."[^33^](#c3-note-0033){#c3-note-0033a} By the term
"liberal hypothesis," Tiqqun meant the assumption, stemming from the
time of the Enlightenment, that people could improve themselves by
applying their own reason and exercising their own moral faculties, and
could free themselves from ignorance through education and reflection.
Thus, they could become autonomous individuals and operate as free
actors (both as market []{#Page_140 type="pagebreak"
title="140"}participants and as citizens). The liberal hypothesis is
based on human understanding. The cybernetic hypothesis is not. Its
conception of humans is analogous to its conception of animals, plants,
and machines; like the latter, people are organisms that react to
stimuli from their environment. The hypothesis is thus associated with
the theories of "instrumental conditioning," which had been formulated
by behaviorists during the 1940s. In the case of both humans and other
animals, as it was argued, learning is not a process of understanding
but rather one of executing a pattern of stimulus and response. To learn
is thus to adopt a pattern of behavior with which one\'s own activity
elicits the desired reaction. In this model, understanding does not play
any role; all that matters is
behavior.[^34^](#c3-note-0034){#c3-note-0034a}
And this behavior, according the cybernetic hypothesis, can be
programmed not by directly accessing people (who are conceived as
impenetrable black boxes) but rather by indirectly altering the
environment, with which organisms and machines are linked via feedback.
These interventions are usually so subtle as to not be perceived by the
individual, and this is because there is no baseline against which it is
possible to measure the extent to which the "baseline of facts" has been
tilted. Search results and timelines are always being filtered and,
owing to personalization, a search will hardly ever generate the same
results twice. On a case-by-case basis, the effects of this are often
minimal for the individual. In aggregate and over long periods of time,
however, the effects can be substantial without the individual even
being able to detect them. Yet the practice of controlling behavior by
manipulating the environment is not limited to the environment of
information. In their enormously influential book from 2008, *Nudge*,
Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein even recommended this as a general
method for "nudging" people, almost without their notice, in the
direction desired by central planners. To accomplish this, it is
necessary for the environment to be redesigned by the "choice architect"
-- by someone, for instance, who can organize the groceries in a store
in such a way as to increase the probability that shoppers will reach
for healthier options. They refer to this system of control as
"libertarian paternalism" because it combines freedom of choice
(libertarianism) with obedience []{#Page_141 type="pagebreak"
title="141"}to an -- albeit invisible -- authority figure
(paternalism).[^35^](#c3-note-0035){#c3-note-0035a} The ideal sought by
the authors is a sort of unintrusive caretaking. In the spirit of
cybernetics and in line with the structures of post-democracy, the
expectation is for people to be moved in the experts\' chosen direction
by means of a change to their environment, while simultaneously
maintaining the impression that they are behaving in a free and
autonomous manner. The compatibility of this approach with agendas on
both sides of the political spectrum is evident in the fact that the
Democratic president Barack Obama regularly sought Cass Sunstein\'s
advice and, in 2009, made him the director of the Office of Information
and Regulatory Affairs, while Richard Thaler, in 2010, was appointed to
the advisory board of the so-called Behavioural Insights Team, which,
known as the "nudge unit," had been founded by the Conservative prime
minister David Cameron.
In the case of social mass media, the ability to manipulate the
environment is highly one-sided. It is reserved exclusively for those on
the inside, and the latter are concerned with maximizing the profit of a
small group and expanding their power. It is possible to regard this
group as the inner core of the post-democratic system, consisting of
leading figures from business, politics, and the intelligence agencies.
Users typically experience this power, which determines the sphere of
possibility within which their everyday activity can take place, in its
soft form, for instance when new features are introduced that change the
information environment. The hard form of this power only becomes
apparent in extreme cases, for instance when a profile is suddenly
deleted or a group is removed. This can happen on account of a rule
whose existence does not necessarily have to be public or
transparent,[^36^](#c3-note-0036){#c3-note-0036a} or because of an
external intervention that will only be communicated if it is in the
providers\' interest to do so. Such cases make it clear that, at any
time, service providers can take away the possibilities for action that
they offer. This results in a paradoxical experience on the part of
users: the very environments that open up new opportunities for them in
their personal lives prove to be entirely beyond influence when it comes
to fundamental decisions that affect everyone. And, as the majority of
people gradually lose the ability to co-determine how the "big
questions" are answered, a very []{#Page_142 type="pagebreak"
title="142"}small number of actors is becoming stronger than ever. This
paradox of new opportunities for action and simultaneous powerlessness
has been reflected in public debate, where there has also been much
(one-sided) talk about empowerment and the loss of
control.[^37^](#c3-note-0037){#c3-note-0037a} It would be better to
discuss a shift in power that has benefited the elite at the expense of
the vast majority of people.
:::
::: {.section}
### Networks as monopolies {#c3-sec-0007}
Whereas the dominance of output legitimation is new in the realm of
politics, it is normal and seldom regarded as problematic in the world
of business.[^38^](#c3-note-0038){#c3-note-0038a} For, at least in
theory (that is, under the conditions of a functioning market),
customers are able to deny the legitimacy of providers and ultimately
choose between competing products. In the case of social mass media,
however, there is hardly any competition, despite all of the innovation
that is allegedly taking place. Facebook, Twitter, and many other
platforms use closed protocols that greatly hinder the ability of their
members to communicate with the users of competing providers. This has
led to a situation in which the so-called *network effect* -- the fact
that the more a network connects people with one another, the more
useful and attractive it becomes -- has given rise to a *monopoly
effect*: the entire network can only consist of a single provider. This
connection between the network effect and the monopoly effect, however,
is not inevitable, but rather fabricated. It is the closed standards
that make it impossible to switch providers without losing access to the
entire network and thus also to the communal formations that were
created on its foundation. From the perspective of the user, this
represents an extremely high barrier against leaving the network -- for,
as discussed above, these formations now play an essential role in the
creation of both identity and opportunities for action. From the user\'s
standpoint, this is an all-or-nothing decision with severe consequences.
Formally, this is still a matter of individual and free choice, for no
one is being forced, in the classical sense, to use a particular
provider.[^39^](#c3-note-0039){#c3-note-0039a} Yet the options for
action are already pre-structured in such a way that free choice is no
longer free. The majority of American teens, for example, despite
[]{#Page_143 type="pagebreak" title="143"}no longer being very
enthusiastic about Facebook, continue using the network for fear of
missing out on something.[^40^](#c3-note-0040){#c3-note-0040a} This
contradiction -- voluntarily doing something that one does not really
want to do -- and the resulting experience of failing to shape one\'s
own activity in a coherent manner are ideal-typical manifestations of
the power of networks.
The problem experienced by the unwilling-willing users of Facebook has
not been caused by the transformation of communication into data as
such. This is necessary to provide input for algorithms, which turn the
flood of information into something usable. To this extent, the general
complaint about the domination of algorithms is off the mark. The
problem is not the algorithms themselves but rather the specific
capitalist and post-democratic setting in which they are implemented.
They only become an instrument of domination when open and
decentralized activities are transferred into closed and centralized
structures in which far-reaching, fundamental decision-making powers and
possibilities for action are embedded that legitimize themselves purely
on the basis of their output. Or, to adapt the title of Rosa von
Praunheim\'s film, which I discussed in my first chapter: it is not the
algorithm that is perverse, but the situation in which it lives.
:::
::: {.section}
### Political surveillance {#c3-sec-0008}
In June 2013, Edward Snowden exposed an additional and especially
problematic aspect of the expansion of post-democratic structures: the
comprehensive surveillance of the internet by government intelligence
agencies. The latter do not use collected data primarily for commercial
ends (although they do engage in commercial espionage) but rather for
political repression and the protection of central power interests --
or, to put it in more neutral terms, in the service of general security.
Yet the NSA and other intelligence agencies also record decentralized
communication and transform it into (meta-)data, which are centrally
stored and analyzed.[^41^](#c3-note-0041){#c3-note-0041a} This process
is used to generate possible courses of action, from intensifying the
surveillance of individuals and manipulating their informational
environment[^42^](#c3-note-0042){#c3-note-0042a} to launching military
drones for the purpose of
assassination.[^43^](#c3-note-0043){#c3-note-0043a} The []{#Page_144
type="pagebreak" title="144"}great advantage of meta-data is that they
can be standardized and thus easily evaluated by machines. This is
especially important for intelligence agencies because, unlike social
mass media, they do not analyze uniformly formatted and easily
processable streams of communication. That said, the boundaries between
post-democratic social mass media and government intelligence services
are fluid. As is well known by now, the two realms share a number of
continuities in personnel and commonalities with respect to their
content.[^44^](#c3-note-0044){#c3-note-0044a} In 2010, for instance,
Facebook\'s chief security officer left his job for a new position at
the NSA. Personnel swapping of this sort takes place at all levels and
is facilitated by the fact that the two sectors are engaged in nearly
the same activity: analyzing social interactions in real time by means
of their exclusive access to immense volumes of data. The lines of
inquiry and the applied methods are so similar that universities,
companies, and security organizations are able to cooperate closely with
one another. In many cases, certain programs or analytic methods are
just as suitable for commercial purposes as they are for intelligence
agencies and branches of the military. This is especially apparent in
the research that is being conducted. Scientists, businesses, and
militaries share a common interest in discovering collective social
dynamics as early as possible, isolating the relevant nodes (machines,
individual people, or groups) through which these dynamics can be
influenced, and developing strategies for specific interventions to
achieve one goal or another. Aspects of this cooperation are publicly
documented. Since 2011, for instance, the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency (DARPA) -- the American agency that, in the 1960s,
initiated and financed the development of the internet -- has been
running its own research program on social mass media with the name
Social Media in Strategic Communication. Within the framework of this
program, more than 160 scientific studies have already been published,
with titles such as "Automated Leadership Analysis" or "Interplay
between Social and Topical
Structure."[^45^](#c3-note-0045){#c3-note-0045a} Since 2009, the US
military has been coordinating research in this field through a program
called the Minerva Initiative, which oversees more than 70 individual
projects.[^46^](#c3-note-0046){#c3-note-0046a} Since 2009, too, the
European Union has been working together []{#Page_145 type="pagebreak"
title="145"}with universities and security agencies within the framework
of the so-called INDECT program, the goal of which is "to involve
European scientists and researchers in the development of solutions to
and tools for automatic threat
detection."[^47^](#c3-note-0047){#c3-note-0047a} Research, however, is
just one area of activity. As regards the collection of data and the
surveillance of communication, there is also a high degree of
cooperation between private and government actors, though it is not
always without tension. Snowden\'s revelations have done little to
change this. The public outcry of large internet companies over the fact
that the NSA has been monitoring their services might be an act of
showmanship more than anything else. Such bickering, according to the
security expert Bruce Schneier, is "mostly role-playing designed to keep
us blasé about what\'s really going
on."[^48^](#c3-note-0048){#c3-note-0048a}
Like the operators of social mass media, intelligence agencies also
argue that their methods should be judged according to their output;
that is, the extent to which they ensure state security. Outsiders,
however, are hardly able to make such a judgment. Input legitimation --
that is, the question of whether government security agencies are
operating within the bounds of the democratically legitimized order of
law -- seems to be playing a less significant role in the public
discussion. In somewhat exaggerated terms, one could say that the
disregard for fundamental rights is justified by the quality of the
"security" that these agencies have created. Perhaps the similarity of
the general methods and self-justifications with which service providers
of social production, consumption, and security are constantly
"optimized" is one reason why there has yet to be widespread public
protest against comprehensive surveillance programs. We have been warned
of the establishment of a "police state in reserve," which can be
deployed at any time, but these warnings seem to have fallen on deaf
ears.[^49^](#c3-note-0049){#c3-note-0049a}
:::
::: {.section}
### The normalization of post-democracy {#c3-sec-0009}
At best, it seems as though the reflex of many people is to respond to
even fundamental political issues by considering only what might be
useful or pleasant for themselves in the short term. Apparently, many
people consider it normal to []{#Page_146 type="pagebreak"
title="146"}be excluded from decisions that affect broad and significant
areas of their life. The post-democracy of social mass media, which has
deeply permeated the constitution of everyday life and the constitution
of subjects, is underpinned by the ever advancing post-democracy of
politics. It changes the expectations that citizens have for democratic
institutions, and it makes their increasing erosion seem expected and
normal to broad strata of society. The violation of fundamental and
constitutional civil rights, such as those concerning the protection of
data, is increasingly regarded as unavoidable and -- from the pragmatic
perspective of the individual -- not so bad. This has of course
benefited political decision-makers, who have shown little desire to
change the situation, safeguard basic rights, and establish democratic
control over all areas of executive
authority.[^50^](#c3-note-0050){#c3-note-0050a}
The spread of "smart" technologies is enabling such post-democratic
processes and structures to permeate all areas of life. Within one\'s
private living space, this happens through smart homes, which are still
limited to the high end of the market, and smart meters, which have been
implemented across all social
strata.[^51^](#c3-note-0051){#c3-note-0051a} The latter provide
electricity companies with detailed real-time data about a household\'s
usage behavior and are supposed to enhance energy efficiency, but it
remains unclear exactly how this new efficiency will be
achieved.[^52^](#c3-note-0052){#c3-note-0052a} The concept of the "smart
city" extends this process to entire municipalities. Over the course of
the next few decades, for instance, Siemens predicts that "cities will
have countless autonomous, intelligently functioning IT systems that
will have perfect knowledge of users\' habits and energy consumption,
and provide optimum service. \[...\] The goal of such a city is to
optimally regulate and control resources by means of autonomous IT
systems."[^53^](#c3-note-0053){#c3-note-0053a} According to this vision,
the city will become a cybernetic machine, but if everything is
"optimally" regulated and controlled, who will be left to ask in whose
interests these autonomous systems are operating?
Such dynamics, however, not only reorganize physical space on a small
and a large scale; they also infiltrate human beings. Adherents of the
Quantified Self movement work diligently to record digital information
about their own bodies. The number of platforms that incite users to
stay fit (and []{#Page_147 type="pagebreak" title="147"}share their data
with companies) with competitions, point systems, and similar incentives
has been growing steadily. It is just a small step from this hobby
movement to a disciplinary regime that is targeted at the
body.[^54^](#c3-note-0054){#c3-note-0054a} Imagine the possibilities of
surveillance and sanctioning that will come about when data from
self-optimizing applications are combined with the data available to
insurance companies, hospitals, authorities, or employers. It does not
take too much imagination to do so, because this is already happening in
part today. At the end of 2014, for instance, the Generali Insurance
Company announced a new set of services that is marketed under the name
Vitality. People insured in Germany, France, and Austria are supposed to
send their health information to the company and, as a reward for
leading a "proper" lifestyle, receive a rebate on their premium. The
long-term goal of the program is to develop "behavior-dependent tariff
models," which would undermine the solidarity model of health
insurance.[^55^](#c3-note-0055){#c3-note-0055a}
According to the legal scholar Frank Pasquale, the sum of all these
developments has led to a black-box society: More social processes are
being controlled by algorithms whose operations are not transparent
because they are shielded from the outside world and thus from
democratic control.[^56^](#c3-note-0056){#c3-note-0056a} This
ever-expanding "post-democracy" is not simply liberal democracy with a
few problems that can be eliminated through well-intentioned reforms.
Rather, a new social system has emerged in which allegedly relaxed
control over social activity is compensated for by a heightened level of
control over the data and structural conditions pertaining to the
activity itself. In this system, both the virtual and the physical world
are altered to achieve particular goals -- goals determined by just a
few powerful actors -- without the inclusion of those affected by these
changes and often without them being able to notice the changes at all.
Whoever refuses to share his or her data freely comes to look suspicious
and, regardless of the motivations behind this anonymity, might even be
regarded as a potential enemy. In July 2014, for instance, the following
remarks were included in Facebook\'s terms of use: "On Facebook people
connect using their real names and identities. \[...\] Claiming to be
another person \[...\] or creating multiple accounts undermines
community []{#Page_148 type="pagebreak" title="148"}and violates
Facebook\'s terms."[^57^](#c3-note-0057){#c3-note-0057a} For the police
and the intelligence agencies in particular, all activities that attempt
to evade comprehensive surveillance are generally suspicious. Even in
Germany, people are labeled "extremists" by the NSA for the sole reason
that they have supported the Tor Project\'s anonymity
software.[^58^](#c3-note-0058){#c3-note-0058a} In a 2014 trial in
Vienna, the use of a foreign pre-paid telephone was introduced as
evidence that the defendant had attempted to conceal a crime, even
though this is a harmless and common method for avoiding roaming charges
while abroad.[^59^](#c3-note-0059){#c3-note-0059a} This is a sort of
anti-mask law 2.0, and every additional terrorist attack is used to
justify extending its reach.
It is clear that Zygmunt Bauman\'s bleak assessment of freedom in what
he calls "liquid modernity" -- "freedom comes when it no longer
matters"[^60^](#c3-note-0060){#c3-note-0060a} -- can easily be modified
to suit the digital condition: everyone can participate in cultural
processes, because culture itself has become irrelevant. Disputes about
shared meaning, in which negotiations are made about what is important
to people and what ought to be achieved, have less and less influence
over the way power is exercised. Politics has been abandoned for an
administrative management that oscillates between paternalism and
authoritarianism. Issues that concern the common good have been
delegated to "autonomous IT systems" and removed from public debate. By
now, the exercise of power, which shapes society, is based less on basic
consensus and cultural hegemony than it is on the technocratic argument
that "there is no alternative" and that the (informational) environment
in which people have to orient themselves should be optimized through
comprehensive control and manipulation -- whether they agree with this
or not.
:::
::: {.section}
### Forms of resistance {#c3-sec-0010}
As far as the circumstances outlined above are concerned, Bauman\'s
conclusion may seem justified. But as an overarching assessment of
things, it falls somewhat short, for every form of power provokes its
own forms of resistance.[^61^](#c3-note-0061){#c3-note-0061a} In the
context of post-democracy under the digital condition, these forms have
likewise shifted to the level of data, and an especially innovative and
effective means of resistance []{#Page_149 type="pagebreak"
title="149"}has been the "leak"; that is, the unauthorized publication
of classified documents, usually in the form of large datasets. The most
famous platform for this is WikiLeaks, which since 2006 has attracted
international attention to this method with dozens of spectacular
publications -- on corruption scandals, abuses of authority, corporate
malfeasance, environmental damage, and war crimes. As a form of
resistance, however, leaking entire databases is not limited to just one
platform. In recent years and through a variety of channels, large
amounts of data (from banks and accounting firms, for instance) have
been made public or have been handed over to tax investigators by
insiders. Thus, in 2014, for instance, the *Süddeutsche Zeitung*
(operating as part of the International Consortium of Investigative
Journalists based in Washington, DC), was not only able to analyze the
so-called "Offshore Leaks" -- a database concerning approximately
122,000 shell companies registered in tax
havens[^62^](#c3-note-0062){#c3-note-0062a} -- but also the "Luxembourg
Leaks," which consisted of 28,000 pages of documents demonstrating the
existence of secret and extensive tax deals between national authorities
and multinational corporations and which caused a great deal of
difficulty for Jean-Claude Juncker, the newly elected president of the
European Commission and former prime minister of
Luxembourg.[^63^](#c3-note-0063){#c3-note-0063a}
The reasons why employees or government workers have become increasingly
willing to hand over large amounts of information to journalists or
whistle-blowing platforms are to be sought in the contradictions of the
current post-democratic regime. Over the past few years, the discrepancy
in Western countries between the self-representation of democratic
institutions and their frequently post-democratic practices has become
even more obvious. For some people, including the former CIA employee
Edward Snowden, this discrepancy created a moral conflict. He claimed
that his work consisted in the large-scale investigation and monitoring
of respectable citizens, thus systematically violating the Constitution,
which he was supposed to be protecting. He resolved this inner conflict
by gathering material about his own activity, then releasing it, with
the help of journalists, to the public, so that the latter could
understand and judge what was taking
place.[^64^](#c3-note-0064){#c3-note-0064a} His leaks benefited from
technical []{#Page_150 type="pagebreak" title="150"}advances, including
the new forms of cooperation which have resulted from such advances.
Even institutions that depend on keeping secrets, such as banks and
intelligence agencies, have to "share" their information internally and
rely on a large pool of technical personnel to record and process the
massive amounts of data. To accomplish these tasks, employees need the
fullest possible access to this information, for even the most secret
databases have to be maintained by someone, and this also involves
copying data. Thus, it is far easier today than it was just a few
decades ago to smuggle large volumes of data out of an
institution.[^65^](#c3-note-0065){#c3-note-0065a}
This new form of leaking, however, did not become an important method of
resistance on account of technical developments alone. In the era of big
data, databases are the central resource not only for analyzing how the
world is described by digital communication, but also for generating
that communication. The power of networks in particular is organized
through the construction of environmental conditions that operate
simultaneously in many places. On their own, the individual commands and
instructions are often banal and harmless, but as a whole they
contribute to a dynamic field that is meant to produce the results
desired by the planners who issue them. In order to reconstruct this
process, it is necessary to have access to these large amounts of data.
With such information at hand, it is possible to relocate the
surreptitious operations of post-democracy into the sphere of political
debate -- the public sphere in its emphatic, liberal sense -- and this
needs to be done in order to strengthen democratic forces against their
post-democratic counterparts. Ten years after WikiLeaks and three years
after Edward Snowden\'s revelations, it remains highly questionable
whether democratic actors are strong enough or able to muster the
political will to use this information to tip the balance in their favor
for the long term. Despite the forms of resistance that have arisen in
response to these new challenges, one could be tempted to concur with
Bauman\'s pessimistic conclusion about the irrelevance of freedom,
especially if post-democracy were the only concrete political tendency
of the digital condition. But it is not. There is a second political
trend taking place, though it is not quite as well
developed.[]{#Page_151 type="pagebreak" title="151"}
:::
:::
::: {.section}
Commons {#c3-sec-0011}
-------
The digital condition includes not only post-democratic structures in
more areas of life; it is also characterized by the development of a new
manner of production. As early as 2002, the legal scholar Yochai Benkler
coined the term "commons-based peer production" to describe the
development in question.[^66^](#c3-note-0066){#c3-note-0066a} Together,
Benkler\'s peers form what I have referred to as "communal formations":
people joining forces voluntarily and on a fundamentally even playing
field in order to pursue common goals. Benkler enhances this idea with
reference to the constitutive role of the commons for many of these
communal formations.
As such, commons are neither new nor specifically Western. They exist in
many cultural traditions, and thus the term is used in a wide variety of
ways.[^67^](#c3-note-0067){#c3-note-0067a} In what follows, I will
distinguish between three different dimensions. The first of these
involves "common pool resources"; that is, *goods* that can be used
communally. The second dimension is that these goods are administered by
the "commoners"; that is, by members of *communities* who produce, use,
and cultivate the resources. Third, this activity gives rise to forms of
"commoning"; that is, to *practices*, *norms*, and *institutions* that
are developed by the communities
themselves.[^68^](#c3-note-0068){#c3-note-0068a}
In the commons, efforts are focused on the long-term utility of goods.
This does not mean that commons cannot also be used for the production
of commercial products -- cheese from the milk of cows that graze on a
common pasture, for instance, or books based on the content of Wikipedia
articles. The relationships between the people who use a certain
resource communally, however, are not structured through money but
rather through direct social cooperation. Commons are thus
fundamentally different from classical market-oriented institutions,
which orient their activity primarily in response to price signals.
Commons are also fundamentally distinct from bureaucracies -- whether in
the form of public administration or private industry -- which are
organized according to hierarchical chains of command. And they differ,
too, from public institutions. Whereas the latter are concerned with
society as a whole -- or at least that is []{#Page_152 type="pagebreak"
title="152"}their democratic mandate -- commons are inwardly oriented
forms that primarily exist by means and for the sake of their members.
::: {.section}
### The organization of the commons {#c3-sec-0012}
Commoners create institutions when they join together for the sake of
using a resource in a long-term and communal manner. In this, the
separation of producers and consumers, which is otherwise ubiquitous,
does not play a significant role: to different and variable extents, all
commoners are producers and consumers of the common resources. It is an
everyday occurrence for someone to take something from the common pool
of resources for his or her own use, but it is understood that something
will be created from this that, in one form or another, will flow back
into the common pool. This process -- the reciprocal relationship
between singular appropriation and communal provisions -- is one of the
central dynamics within commons.
Because commoners orient their activity neither according to price
signals (markets) nor according to instructions or commands
(hierarchies), social communication among the members is the most
important means of self-organization. This communication is intended to
achieve consensus and the voluntary acceptance of negotiated rules, for
only in such a way is it possible to maintain the voluntary nature of
the arrangement and to keep internal controls at a minimum. Voting,
which is meant to legitimize the preferences of a majority, is thus
somewhat rare, and when it does happen, it is only of subordinate
significance. The main issue is to build consensus, and this is usually
a complex process requiring intensive communication. One of the reasons
why the very old practice of the commons is now being readopted and
widely discussed is because communication-intensive and horizontal
processes can be organized far more effectively with digital
technologies. Thus, the idea of collective participation and
organization beyond small groups is no longer just a utopian vision.
The absence of price signals and chains of command causes the social
institutions of the commons to develop complex structures for
comprehensively integrating their members. []{#Page_153 type="pagebreak"
title="153"}This typically involves weaving together a variety of
economic, social, cultural, and technical dimensions. Commons realize an
alternative to the classical separation of spheres that is so typical of
our modern economy and society. The economy is not understood here as an
independent realm that functions according to a different set of rules
and with externalities, but rather as one facet of a complex and
comprehensive phenomenon with intertwining commercial, social, ethical,
ecological, and cultural dimensions.
It is impossible to determine how the interplay between these three
dimensions generally solidifies into concrete institutions.
Historically, many different commons-based institutions were developed,
and their number and variety have only increased under the digital
condition. Elinor Ostrom, who was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in
Economics for her work on the commons, has thus refrained from
formulating a general model for
them.[^69^](#c3-note-0069){#c3-note-0069a} Instead, she has identified a
series of fundamental challenges for which all commoners have to devise
their own solutions.[^70^](#c3-note-0070){#c3-note-0070a} For example,
the membership of a group that communally uses a particular resource
must be defined and, if necessary, limited. Especially in the case of
material resources, such as pastures on which several people keep their
animals, it is important to limit the number of members for the simple
reason that the resource in question might otherwise be over-utilized
(this is allegedly the "tragedy of the
commons").[^71^](#c3-note-0071){#c3-note-0071a} Things are different
with so-called non-rival goods, which can be consumed by one person
without excluding its use by another. When I download and use a freely
available word-processing program, for instance, I do not take away
another person\'s chance to do the same. But even in the case of digital
common goods, access is often tied to certain conditions. Whoever uses
free software has to accept its licensing agreement.
Internally, commons are often meritocratically oriented. Those who
contribute more are also able to make greater use of the common good (in
the case of material goods) or more strongly influence its development
(in the case of informational goods). In the latter case, the
meritocratic element takes into account the fact that the challenge does
not lie in avoiding the over-utilization of a good, but rather in
generating new contributions to its further development. Those who
[]{#Page_154 type="pagebreak" title="154"}contribute most to the
provision of resources should also be able to determine their further
course of development, and this represents an important incentive for
these members to remain in the group. This is in the interest of all
participants, and thus the authority of the most active members is
seldom called into question. This does not mean, however, that there are
no differences of opinion within commons. Here, too, reaching consensus
can be a time-consuming process. Among the most important
characteristics of all commons are thus mechanisms for decision-making
that involve members in a variety of ways. The rules that govern the
commons are established by the members themselves. This goes far beyond
choosing between two options presented by a third party. Commons are not
simply markets without money. All relevant decisions are made
collectively within the commons, and they do not simply aggregate as the
sum of individual decisions. Here, unlike the case of post-democratic
structures, the levels of participation and decision-making are not
separated from one another. On the contrary, they are directly and
explicitly connected.
The implementation of rules and norms, even if they are the result of
consensus, is never an entirely smooth process. It is therefore
necessary, as Ostrom has stressed, to monitor rule compliance within
commons and to develop a system of graded sanctions. Minor infractions
are punished with social disapproval or small penalties, while graver
infractions warrant stiffer penalties that can lead to a person\'s
exclusion from the group. In order for conflicts or rule violations not
to escalate in the commons to the extent that expulsion is the only
option, mechanisms for conflict resolution have to be put in place. In
the case of Wikipedia, for instance, conflicts are usually resolved
through discussions. This is not always productive, however, for
occasionally the "solution" turns out to be that one side or the other
has simply given up out of exhaustion.
A final important point is that commons do not exist in isolation from
society. They are always part of larger social systems, which are
normally governed by the principles of the market or subject to state
control, and are thus in many cases oppositional to the practice of
commoning. Political resistance is often incited by the very claim that
a particular []{#Page_155 type="pagebreak" title="155"}good can be
communally administered and does not belong to a single owner, but
rather to a group that governs its own affairs. Yet without the
recognition of the right to self-organization and without the
corresponding legal conditions allowing this right to be perceived as
such, commons are barely able to form at all, and existing commons are
always at risk of being expropriated and privatized by a third party.
This is the true "tragedy of the commons," and it happens all the
time.[^72^](#c3-note-0072){#c3-note-0072a}
:::
::: {.section}
### Informational common goods: free software and free culture {#c3-sec-0013}
The term "commons" was first applied to informational goods during the
second half of the 1990s.[^73^](#c3-note-0073){#c3-note-0073a} The
practice of creating digital common goods, however, goes back to the
origins of free software around the middle of the 1980s. Since then, a
complex landscape has developed, with software codes being cooperatively
and sustainably managed as common resources available to everyone (who
accepts their licensing agreements). This can best be explained with an
example. One of the oldest projects in the area of free software -- and
one that continues to be of relevance today -- is Debian, a so-called
"distribution" (that is, a compilation of software components) that has
existed since 1993. According to its own website:
::: {.extract}
The Debian Project is an association of individuals who have made common
cause to create a free operating system. \[...\] An operating system is
the set of basic programs and utilities that make your computer run.
\[...\] Debian comes with over 43000 packages (precompiled software that
is bundled up in a nice format for easy installation on your machine).
\[...\] All of it free.[^74^](#c3-note-0074){#c3-note-0074a}
:::
The special thing about Unix-like operating systems is that they are
composed of a very large number of independent yet interacting programs.
The task of a distribution -- and this task is hardly trivial -- is to
combine this modular variety into a whole that provides, in an
integrated manner, all of the functions of a contemporary computer.
Debian is particularly []{#Page_156 type="pagebreak"
title="156"}important because the community sets extremely high
standards for itself, and it is for this reason that the distribution is
not only used by many server administrators but is also the foundation
of numerous end-user-oriented services, including Ubuntu and Linux Mint.
The Debian Project has developed a complex form of organization that is
based on a set of fundamental principles defined by the members
themselves. These are delineated in the Debian Social Contract, which
was first formulated in 1997 and subsequently revised in
2004.[^75^](#c3-note-0075){#c3-note-0075a} It stipulates that the
software has to remain "100% free" at all times, in the sense that the
software license guarantees the freedom of unlimited use, modification,
and distribution. The developers understand this primarily as an ethical
obligation. They explicitly regard the project as a contribution "to the
free software community." The social contract demands transparency on
the level of the program code: "We will keep our entire bug report
database open for public view at all times. Reports that people file
online will promptly become visible to others." There are both technical
and ethical considerations behind this. The contract makes no mention at
all of a classical production goal; there is no mention, for instance,
of competitive products or a schedule for future developments. To put it
in Colin Crouch\'s terms, input legitimation comes before output
legitimation. The initiators silently assume that the project\'s basic
ethical, technical, and social orientations will result in high quality,
but they do not place this goal above any other.
The Debian Social Contract is the basis for cooperation and the central
reference point for dealing with conflicts. It forms the normative core
of a community that is distinguished by its equal treatment of ethical,
political, technical, and economic issues. The longer the members have
been cooperating together on this basis, the more binding this attitude
has become for each of them, and the more sustainable the community has
become as a whole. In other words, it has taken on a concrete form that
is relevant to the activities of everyday
life.[^76^](#c3-note-0076){#c3-note-0076a} Today, Debian is a global
project with a stable core of about a thousand developers, most of whom
live in Europe, the United States, and Latin
America.[^77^](#c3-note-0077){#c3-note-0077a} The Debian commons is a
high-grade collaborative organization, []{#Page_157 type="pagebreak"
title="157"}the necessary cooperation for which is enabled by a complex
infrastructure that automates many routine tasks. This is the only
efficient way to manage the program code, which has grown to more than a
hundred million lines. Yet not everything takes place online.
International and local meetings and conferences have long played an
important role. These have not only been venues for exchanging
information and planning the coordination of the project; they have also
helped to create a sense of mutual trust, without which this form of
voluntary collaboration would not be possible.
Despite the considerable size of the Debian Project, it is just one part
of a much larger institutional ecology that includes other communities,
universities, and businesses. Most of the 43,000 software packets of the
Debian distribution are programmed by groups of developers that do not
belong to the Debian Project. Debian is "just" a compilation of these
many individual programs. One of these programs written by outsiders is
the Linux kernel, which in many respects is the central and most complex
program within a GNU/Linux operating system. Governing the organization
of processes and data, it thus forms the interface between hardware and
software. An entire institutional subsystem has been built up around
this complex program, upon which everything else depends. The community
of developers was initiated by Linus Torvalds, who wrote the first
rudimentary kernel in 1991. Even though most of the kernel developers
since then have been paid for their work, their cooperation then and now
has been voluntary and, for the vast majority of contributors, has
functioned without monetary exchange. In order to improve collaboration,
a specialized technological infrastructure has been used -- above all
Torvalds\'s self-developed system Git, which automates many steps for
managing the distributed revisions of code. In all of this, an important
role is played by the Linux Foundation, a non-profit organization that
takes over administrative, legal, and financial tasks for the community.
The foundation is financed by its members, which include large software
companies that contribute as much as \$500,000 a year. This money is
used, for instance, to pay the most important programmers and to
organize working groups, thus ensuring that the development and
distribution of Linux will continue on a long-term basis. The
[]{#Page_158 type="pagebreak" title="158"}businesses that finance the
Linux Foundation may be profit-oriented institutions, but the main work
of the developers -- the program code -- flows back into the common pool
of resources, which the explicitly non-profit Debian Project can then
use to compile its distribution. The freedoms guaranteed by the free
license render this transfer from commercial to non-commercial use not
only legally unproblematic but even desirable to the for-profit service
providers, as they themselves also need entire operating systems and not
just the kernel.
The Debian Project draws from this pool of resources and is at the same
time a part of it. Therefore others can use Debian\'s software code,
which happens to a large extent, for instance through other Linux
distributions. This is not understood as competition for market share
but rather as an expression of the community\'s vitality, which for
Debian represents a central and normative point of pride. As the Debian
Social Contract explicitly states, "We will allow others to create
distributions containing both the Debian system and other works, without
any fee."
Thus, over the years, a multifaceted institutional landscape has been
created in which collaboration can take place between for-profit and
non-profit entities -- between formal organizations and informal
communal formations. Together, they form the software commons.
Communally, they strive to ensure that high-quality free software will
continue to exist for the long term. The coordination necessary for this
is not tension-free. Within individual communities, on the contrary,
there are many conflicts and competitive disputes about people, methods,
and strategic goals. Tensions can also run high between the communities,
foundations, and companies that cooperate and compete with one another
(sometimes more directly, sometimes less directly). To cite one example,
the relationship between the Debian Project and Canonical, the company
that produces the Ubuntu operating system, was strained for several
years. At the heart of the conflict was the issue of whether Ubuntu\'s
developers were giving enough back to the Debian Project or whether they
were simply exploiting it. Although the Debian Social Contract expressly
allows the commercial use of its operating system, Canonical was and
remains dependent on the software commons functioning as []{#Page_159
type="pagebreak" title="159"}a whole, because, after all, the company
needs to be able to make use of the latest developments in the Debian
system. It took years to defuse the conflict, and this was only achieved
when forums were set up to guarantee that information and codes could
flow in both directions. The Debian community, for example, introduced
something called a "derivatives front desk" to improve its communication
with programmers of distributions that, like Ubuntu, derive from Debian.
For its part, Canonical improved its internal processes so that code
could flow back into the Debian Project, and their systems for
bug-tracking were partially integrated to avoid duplicates. After
several years of strife, Raphaël Hertzog, a prominent member of the
Debian community, was able to summarize matters as follows:
::: {.extract}
The Debian--Ubuntu relationship used to be a hot topic, but that\'s no
longer the case thanks to regular efforts made on both sides. Conflicts
between individuals still happen, but there are multiple places where
they can be reported and discussed \[...\]. Documentation and
infrastructure are in place to make it easier for volunteers to do the
right thing. Despite all those process improvements, the best results
still come out when people build personal relationships by discussing
what they are doing. It often leads to tight cooperation, up to commit
rights to the source repositories. Regular contacts help build a real
sense of cooperation that no automated process can ever hope to
achieve.[^78^](#c3-note-0078){#c3-note-0078a}
:::
In all successful commons, diverse social relations, mutual trust, and a
common culture play an important role as preconditions for the
consensual resolution of conflicts. This is not a matter of achieving an
ideal -- as Hertzog stressed, not every conflict can be set aside -- but
rather of reaching pragmatic solutions that allow actors to pursue, on
equal terms, their own divergent goals within the common project.
The immense commons of the Debian Project encompasses a nearly
unfathomable number of variations. The distribution is available in over
70 languages (in comparison, Apple\'s operating system is sold in 22
languages), and diverse versions exist to suit different application
contexts, aesthetic preferences, hardware needs, and stability
requirements. Within each of these versions, in turn, there are
innumerable []{#Page_160 type="pagebreak" title="160"}variations that
have been created by individual users with different sets of technical
or creative skills. The final result is a continuously changing service
that can be adapted for countless special requirements, desires, and
other features. To outsiders, this internal differentiation is often
difficult to comprehend, and it can soon leave the impression that there
is little more to it than a tedious variety of essentially the same
thing. What user would ever need 60 different text
editors?[^79^](#c3-note-0079){#c3-note-0079a} For those who would like
to use free software without having to join a group, a greater number of
simple and standardized products have been made available. For
commoners, however, this diversity is enormously important, for it is an
expression of their fundamental freedom to work precisely on those
problems that are closest to their hearts -- even if that means creating
another text editor.
With the success of free software toward the end of the 1990s, producers
in other areas of culture, who were just starting to use the internet,
also began to take an interest in this new manner of production. It
seemed to be a good fit with the vibrant do-it-yourself culture that was
blooming online, and all the more so because there were hardly any
attractive commercial alternatives at the time. This movement was
sustained by the growing tier of professional and non-professional
makers of culture that had emerged over the course of the aforementioned
transformations of the labor market. At first, many online sources were
treated as "quasi-common goods." It was considered normal and desirable
to appropriate them and pass them on to others without first having to
develop a proper commons for such activity. This necessarily led to
conflicts. Unlike free software, which on account of its licensing was
on secure legal ground from the beginning, copyright violations were
rampant in the new do-it-yourself culture. For the sake of engaging in
the referential processes discussed in the previous chapter,
copyright-protected content was (and continues to be) used, reproduced,
and modified without permission. Around the turn of the millennium, the
previously latent conflict between "quasi-commoners" and the holders of
traditional copyrights became an open dispute, which in many cases was
resolved in court. Founded in June 1999, the file-sharing service
Napster gained, over the course of just 18 months, 25 million users
[]{#Page_161 type="pagebreak" title="161"}worldwide who simply took the
distribution of music into their own hands without the authorization of
copyright owners. This incited a flood of litigation that managed to
shut the service down in July 2001. This did not, however, put an end to
the large-scale practice of unauthorized data sharing. New services and
technologies, many of which used (the file-sharing protocol) BitTorrent,
quickly filled in the gap. The number of court cases skyrocketed, not
least because new legal standards expanded the jurisdiction of copyright
law and enabled it to be applied more
aggressively.[^80^](#c3-note-0080){#c3-note-0080a} These conflicts
forced a critical mass of cultural producers to deal with copyright law
and to reconsider how the practices of sharing and modifying could be
perpetuated in the long term. One of the first results of these
considerations was to develop, following the model of free software,
numerous licenses that were tailored to cultural
production.[^81^](#c3-note-0081){#c3-note-0081a} In the cultural
context, free licenses achieved widespread distribution after 2001 with
the arrival of Creative Commons (CC), a California-based foundation that
began to provide easily understandable and adaptable licensing kits and
to promote its services internationally through a network of partner
organizations. This set of licenses made it possible to transfer user
rights to the community (defined by the acceptance of the license\'s
terms and conditions) and thus to create a freely accessible pool of
cultural resources. Works published under a CC license can always be
consumed and distributed free of charge (though not necessarily freely).
Some versions of the license allow works to be altered; others permit
their commercial use; while some, in turn, only allow non-commercial use
and distribution. In comparison with free software licenses, this
greater emphasis on the rights of individual producers over those of the
community, whose freedoms of use can be twice as restricted (in terms of
the right to alter works or use them for commercial ends), gave rise to
the long-standing critique that, with respect to freedom and
communality, CC licenses in fact represent a
regression.[^82^](#c3-note-0082){#c3-note-0082a} A combination of good
timing, user-friendly implementations, and powerful support from leading
American universities, however, resulted in CC licenses becoming the de
facto legal standard of free culture.
Based on a solid legal foundation and thus protected from rampant
copyright conflicts, large and well-structured []{#Page_162
type="pagebreak" title="162"}cultural commons were established, for
instance around the online reference work Wikipedia (which was then,
however, using a different license). As much as the latter is now taken
for granted as an everyday component of informational
life,[^83^](#c3-note-0083){#c3-note-0083a} the prospect of a
commons-generated encyclopedia hardly seemed realistic at the beginning.
Even the founders themselves had little faith in it, and thus Wikipedia
began as a side project. Their primary goal was to develop an
encyclopedia called Nupedia, for which only experts would be allowed to
write entries, which would then have to undergo a seven-stage
peer-review process before being published for free use. From its
beginning, on the contrary, Wikipedia was open for anyone to edit, and
any changes made to it were published without review or delay. By the
time that Nupedia was abandoned in September 2003 (with only 25
published articles), the English-language version of Wikipedia already
consisted of more than 160,000 entries, and the German version, which
came online in May 2001, already had 30,000. The former version reached
1 million entries by January 2003, the latter by December 2009, and by
the beginning of 2015 they had 4.7 million and 1.8 million entries,
respectively. In the meantime (by August 2015), versions have been made
available in 289 other languages, 48 of which have at least 100,000
entries. Both its successes -- its enormous breadth of up-to-date
content, along with its high level of acceptance and quality -- and its
failures, with its low percentage of women editors (around 10 percent),
exhausting discussions, complex rules, lack of young personnel, and
systematic attempts at manipulation, have been well documented because
Wikipedia also guarantees free access to the data generated by the
activities of users, and thus makes the development of the commons
fairly transparent for outsiders.[^84^](#c3-note-0084){#c3-note-0084a}
One of the most fundamental and complex decisions in the history of
Wikipedia was to change its license. The process behind this is
indicative of how thoroughly the community of a commons can be involved
in its decision-making. When Wikipedia was founded in 2001, there was no
established license for free cultural works. The best option available
was the GNU license for free documentation (GLFD), which had been
developed, however, for software documentation. In the following years,
the CC license became the standard, and this []{#Page_163
type="pagebreak" title="163"}gave rise to the legal problem that content
from Wikipedia could not be combined with CC-licensed works, even though
this would have aligned with the intentions of those who had published
content under either of these licenses. To alleviate this problem and
thus facilitate exchange between Wikipedia and other cultural commons,
the Wikimedia Foundation (which holds the rights to Wikipedia) proposed
to place older content retroactively under both licenses, the GLFD and
the equivalent CC license. In strictly legal terms, the foundation would
have been able to make this decision without consulting the community.
However, it would have lacked legitimacy and might have even caused
upheavals within it. In order to avoid this, an elaborate discussion
process was initiated that led to a membership-wide vote. This process
lasted from December 2007 (when the Wikipedia Foundation resolved to
change the license) to the end of May 2009, when the voting period
concluded. All told, 17,462 votes were cast, of which only 10.5 percent
rejected the proposed changes. More important than the result, however,
was the way it had come about: through a long, consensus-building
process of discussion, for which the final vote served above all to make
the achieved consensus unambiguously
clear.[^85^](#c3-note-0085){#c3-note-0085a} All other decisions that
concern the project as a whole were and continue to be reached in a
similar way. Here, too, input legitimation is at least on an equal
footing with output legitimation.
With Wikipedia, a great deal happens voluntarily and without cost, but
that does not mean that no financial resources are needed to organize
and maintain such a commons on a long-term basis. In particular, it is
necessary to raise funds for infrastructure (hardware, administration,
bandwidth), the employees of the Wikipedia Foundation, conferences, and
its own project initiatives -- networking with schools, universities,
and cultural institutions, for example, or increasing the diversity of
the Wikipedia community. In light of the number of people who use the
encyclopedia, it would be possible to finance the project, which accrued
costs of around 45 million dollars during the 2013--14 fiscal year,
through advertising (in the same manner, that is, as commercial mass
media). Yet there has always been a consensus against this. Instead,
Wikipedia is financed through donations. In 2013--14, the website was
able to raise \$51 million, 37 million of []{#Page_164 type="pagebreak"
title="164"}which came from approximately 2.5 million contributors, each
of whom donated just a small sum.[^86^](#c3-note-0086){#c3-note-0086a}
These small contributions are especially interesting because, to a large
extent, they come from people who consider themselves part of the
community but do not do much editing. This suggests that donating is
understood as an opportunity to make a contribution without having to
invest much time in the project. In this case, donating money is thus
not an expression of charity but rather of communal spirit; it is just
one of a diverse number of ways to remain active in a commons. Precisely
because its economy is not understood as an independent sphere with its
own logic (maximizing individual resources), but rather as an integrated
aspect of cultivating a common resource, non-financial and financial
contributions can be treated equally. Both types of contribution
ultimately derive from the same motivation: they are expressions of
appreciation for the meaning that the common resource possesses for
one\'s own activity.
:::
::: {.section}
### At the interface with physical space: open data {#c3-sec-0014}
Wikipedia, however, is an exception. None of the other new commons have
managed to attract such large financial contributions. The project known
as OpenStreetMap (OSM), which was founded in 2004 by Steve Coast,
happens to be the most important commons for
geodata.[^87^](#c3-note-0087){#c3-note-0087a} By the beginning of 2016,
it had collected and identified around 5 billion GPS coordinates and
linked them to more than 273 million routes. This work was accomplished
by about half a million people, who surveyed their neighborhoods with
hand-held GPS devices or, where that was not a possibility, extracted
data from satellite images or from public land registries. The project,
which is organized through specialized infrastructure and by local and
international communities, also utilizes a number of automated
processes. These are so important that not only was a "mechanical edit
policy" developed to govern the use of algorithms for editing; the
latter policy was also supplemented by an "automated edits code of
conduct," which defines further rules of behavior. Regarding the
implementation of a new algorithm, for instance, the code states: "We do
not require or recommend a formal vote, but if there []{#Page_165
type="pagebreak" title="165"}is significant objection to your plan --
and even minorities may be significant! -- then change it or drop it
altogether."[^88^](#c3-note-0088){#c3-note-0088a} Here, again, there is
the typical objection to voting and a focus on building a consensus that
does not have to be perfect but simply good enough for the overwhelming
majority of the community to acknowledge it (a "rough consensus").
Today, the coverage and quality of the maps that can be generated from
these data are so good for so many areas that they now represent serious
competition to commercial digital alternatives. OSM data are used not
only by Wikipedia and other non-commercial projects but also
increasingly by large commercial services that need geographical
information and suitable maps but do not want to rely on a commercial
provider whose terms and conditions can change at any time. To the
extent that these commercial applications provide their users with the
opportunity to improve the maps, their input flows back through the
commercial level and into the common pool.
Despite its immense community and its regular requests for donations,
the financial resources of the OSM Foundation, which functions as the
legal entity and supporting organization behind the project, cannot be
compared to those of the Wikipedia Foundation. The OSM Foundation has no
employees, and in 2014 it generated just £88,000 in revenue, half of
which was obtained from donations and half from holding
conferences.[^89^](#c3-note-0089){#c3-note-0089a} That said, OSM is
nevertheless a socially, technologically, and financially robust
commons, though one with a model entirely different from Wikipedia\'s.
Because data are at the heart of the project, its needs for hardware and
bandwidth are negligible compared to Wikipedia\'s, and its servers can
be housed at universities or independently operated by individual
groups. Around this common resource, a global network of companies has
formed that offer services on the basis of complex geodata. In doing so,
they allow improvements to go back into the pool or, if financed by
external sources, they can work directly on the common
infrastructure.[^90^](#c3-note-0090){#c3-note-0090a} Here, too, we find
the characteristic juxtaposition of paid and unpaid work, of commercial
and non-commercial orientations that depend on the same common resource
to pursue their divergent goals. If this goes on for a long time, then
there will be an especially strong (self-)interest among everyone
involved for their own work, []{#Page_166 type="pagebreak"
title="166"}or at least part of it, to benefit the long-term development
of the resource in question. Functioning commons, especially the new
informational ones, are distinguished by the heterogeneity of their
motivations and actors. Just as the Wikipedia project successfully and
transformatively extended the experience of working with free software
to the generation of large bases of knowledge, the community responsible
for OpenStreetMaps succeeded in making the experiences of the Wikipedia
project useful for the creation of a commons based on large datasets,
and managed to adapt these experiences according to the specific needs
of such a project.[^91^](#c3-note-0091){#c3-note-0091a}
It is of great political significance that informational commons have
expanded into the areas of data recording and data use. Control over
data, which specify and describe the world in real time, is an essential
element of the contemporary constitution of power. From large volumes
of data, new types of insight can be gained and new strategies for
action can be derived. The more one-sided access to data becomes, the
more it yields imbalances of power.
In this regard, the commons model offers an alternative, for it allows
various groups equal and unobstructed access to this potential resource
of power. This, at least, is how the Open Data movement sees things.
Data are considered "open" if they are available to everyone without
restriction to be used, distributed, and developed freely. For this to
occur, it is necessary to provide data in a standard-compatible format
that is machine-readable. Only in such a way can they be browsed by
algorithms and further processed. Open data are an important
precondition for implementing the power of algorithms in a democratic
manner. They ensure that there can be an effective diversity of
algorithms, for anyone can write his or her own algorithm or commission
others to process data in various ways and in light of various
interests. Because algorithms cannot be neutral, their diversity -- and
the resulting ability to compare the results of different methods -- is
an important precondition for them not becoming an uncontrollable
instrument of power. This can be achieved most dependably through free
access to data, which are maintained and cultivated as a commons.
Motivated by the conviction that free access to data represents a
necessary condition for autonomous activity in the []{#Page_167
type="pagebreak" title="167"}digital condition, many new initiatives
have formed that are devoted to the decentralized collection,
networking, and communal organization of data. For several years, for
instance, there has been a global community of people who observe
airplanes in their field of vision, share this information with one
another, and make it generally accessible. Outside of the tight
community, these data are typically of little interest. Yet it was
through his targeted analysis of this information that the geographer
and artist Trevor Paglen succeeded in mapping out the secret arrests
made by American intelligence services. Ultimately, even the CIA\'s
clandestine airplanes have to take off and land like any others, and
thus they can be observed.[^92^](#c3-note-0092){#c3-note-0092a} Around
the collection of environmental data, a movement has formed whose
adherents enter measurements themselves. To cite just one example:
thanks to a successful crowdfunding campaign that raised more than
\$144,000 (just 39,000 were needed), it was possible to finance the
development of a simple set of sensors called the Air Quality Egg. This
device can measure the concentration of carbon dioxide or nitrogen
dioxide in the air and send its findings to a public database. It
involves the use of relatively simple technologies that are likewise
freely licensed (open hardware). How to build and use it is documented
in such a detailed and user-friendly manner -- in instructional videos
on YouTube, for instance -- that anyone so inclined can put one together
on his or her own, and it would also be easy to have them made on a
large scale as a commercial product. Over time, this has brought about a
network of stations that is able to measure the quality of the air
exactly, locally, and in places that are relevant to users. All of this
information is stored in a global and freely accessible database, from
which it is possible to look up and analyze hyper-local data in real
time and without restrictions.[^93^](#c3-note-0093){#c3-note-0093a}
A list of examples of data commons, both the successful and the
unsuccessful, could go on and on. It will suffice, however, to point out
that many new commons have come about that are redefining the interface
between physical and informational space and creating new strategies for
actions in both directions. The Air Quality Egg, which is typical in
this regard, also demonstrates that commons can develop cumulatively.
Free software and free hardware are preconditions for []{#Page_168
type="pagebreak" title="168"}producing and networking such an object. No
less important are commercial and non-commercial infrastructures for
communal learning, compiling documentation, making information
available, and thus facilitating access for those interested and
building up the community. All of this depends on free knowledge, from
Wikipedia to scientific databases. This enables a great variety of
actors -- in this case environmental scientists, programmers,
engineers, and interested citizens -- to come together and create a
common frame of reference in which everyone can pursue his or her own
goals and yet do so on the basis of communal resources. This, in turn,
has given rise to a new commons, namely that of environmental data.
Not all data can or must be collected by individuals, for a great deal
of data already exists. That said, many scientific and state
institutions face the problem of having data that, though nominally
public (or at least publicly funded), are in fact extremely difficult
for third parties to use. Such information may exist, but it is kept in
institutions to which there is no or little public access, or it exists
only in analog or non-machine-readable formats (as PDFs of scanned
documents, for instance), or its use is tied to high license fees. One
of the central demands of the Open Data and Open Access movements is
thus to have free access to these collections. Yet there has been a
considerable amount of resistance. Whether for political or economic
reasons, many public and scientific institutions do not want their data
to be freely accessible. In many cases, moreover, they also lack the
competence, guidelines, budgets, and internal processes that would be
necessary to make their data available to begin with. But public
pressure has been mounting, not least through initiatives such as the
global Open Data Index, which compares countries according to the
accessibility of their information.[^94^](#c3-note-0094){#c3-note-0094a}
In Germany, the Digital Openness Index evaluates states and communities
in terms of open data, the use of open-source software, the availability
of open infrastructures (such as free internet access in public places),
open policies (the licensing of public information,
freedom-of-information laws, the transparency of budget planning, etc.),
and open education (freely accessible educational resources, for
instance).[^95^](#c3-note-0095){#c3-note-0095a} The results are rather
sobering. The Open Data Index has identified 10 []{#Page_169
type="pagebreak" title="169"}different datasets that ought to be open,
including election results, company registries, maps, and national
statistics. A study of 97 countries revealed that, by the middle of
2015, only 11 percent of these datasets were entirely freely accessible
and usable.
Although public institutions are generally slow and resistant in making
their data freely available, important progress has nevertheless been
made. Such progress indicates not only that the new commons have
developed their own structures in parallel with traditional
institutions, but also that the commoners have begun to make new demands
on established institutions. These are intended to change their internal
processes and their interaction with citizens in such a way that they
support the creation and growth of commons. This is not something that
can be achieved overnight, for the institutions in question need to
change at a fundamental level with respect to their procedures,
self-perception, and relation to citizens. This is easier said than
done.
:::
::: {.section}
### Municipal infrastructures as commons: citizen networks {#c3-sec-0015}
The demands for open access to data, however, are not exhausted by
attempts to redefine public institutions and civic participation. In
fact, they go far beyond that. In Germany, for instance, there has been
a recent movement toward (re-)communalizing the basic provision of water
and energy. Its goal is not merely to shift the ownership structure from
private to public. Rather, its intention is to reorient the present
institutions so that, instead of operating entirely on the basis of
economic criteria, they also take into account democratic, ecological,
and social factors. These efforts reached a high point in November 2013,
when the population of Berlin was called upon to vote over the
communalization of the power supply. Formed in 2011, a non-partisan
coalition of NGOs and citizens known as the Berlin Energy Roundtable had
mobilized to take over the local energy grid, whose license was due to
become available in 2014. The proposal was for the network to be
administered neither entirely privately nor entirely by the public.
Instead, the license was to be held by a newly formed municipal utility
that would not only []{#Page_170 type="pagebreak" title="170"}organize
the efficient operation of the grid but also pursue social causes, such
as the struggles against energy poverty and power cuts, and support
ecological causes, including renewable energy sources and energy
conservation. It was intended, moreover, for the utility to be
democratically organized; that is, for it to offer expanded
opportunities for civic participation on the basis of the complete
transparency of its internal processes in order to increase -- and
ensure for the long term -- the acceptance and identification of
citizens.
Yet it did not get that far. Even though it was conceivably close, the
referendum failed to go through. While 83 percent voted in favor of the
new utility, the necessary quorum of 25 percent of all eligible voters
was not quite achieved (the voter turnout was 24.71 percent).
Nevertheless, the vote represented a milestone. For the first time ever
in a large European metropolis, a specific model "beyond the market and
the state" had been proposed for an essential aspect of everyday life
and put before the people. A central component of infrastructure, the
reliability of which is absolutely indispensable for life in any modern
city, was close to being treated as a common good, supported by a new
institution, and governed according to a statute that explicitly
formulated economic, social, ecological, and democratic goals on equal
terms. This would not have resulted in a commons in the strict sense,
but rather in a new public institution that would have adopted and
embodied the values and orientations that, because of the activity of
commons, have increasingly become everyday phenomena in the digital
condition.
In its effort to develop institutional forms beyond the market and the
state, the Berlin Energy Roundtable is hardly unique. It is rather part
of a movement that is striving for fundamental change and is in many
respects already quite advanced. In Denmark, for example, not only does
a comparatively large amount of energy come from renewable sources (27.2
percent of total use, as of 2014), but 80 percent of the country\'s
wind-generated electricity is produced by self-administered cooperatives
or by individual people and
households.[^96^](#c3-note-0096){#c3-note-0096a} The latter, as is
typical of commons, function simultaneously as producers and consumers.
It is not a coincidence that commons have begun to infiltrate the energy
sector. As Jeremy Rifkin has remarked:[]{#Page_171 type="pagebreak"
title="171"}
::: {.extract}
The generation that grew up on the Communication Internet and that takes
for granted its right to create value in distributed, collaborative,
peer-to-peer virtual commons has little hesitation about generating
their own green electricity and sharing it on an Energy Internet. They
find themselves living through a deepening global economic crisis and an
even more terrifying shift in the earth\'s climate, caused by an
economic system reliant on fossil fuel energy and managed by
centralized, top-down command and control systems. If they fault the
giant telecommunications, media and entertainment companies for blocking
their right to collaborate freely with their peers in an open
Information Commons, they are no less critical of the world\'s giant
energy, power, and utility companies, which they blame, in part, for the
high price of energy, a declining economy and looming environmental
crisis.[^97^](#c3-note-0097){#c3-note-0097a}
:::
It is not necessary to see in this, as Rifkin and a few others have
done, the ineluctable demise of
capitalism.[^98^](#c3-note-0098){#c3-note-0098a} Yet, like the influence
of post-democratic institutions over social mass media and beyond, the
commons are also shaping new expectations about possible courses of
action and about the institutions that might embody these possibilities.
:::
::: {.section}
### Eroding the commons: cloud software and the sharing economy {#c3-sec-0016}
Even if the commons have recently enjoyed a renaissance, their continued
success is far from guaranteed. This is not only because legal
frameworks, then and now, are not oriented toward them. Two movements
currently stand out that threaten to undermine the commons from within
before they can properly establish themselves. These movements have been
exploiting certain aspects of the commons while pursuing goals that are
harmful to them. Thus, there are ways of using communal resources in
order to offer, on their basis, closed and centralized services. An
example of this is so-called cloud software; that is, applications that
no longer have to be installed on the computer of the user but rather
are centrally run on the providers\' servers. Such programs are no
longer operated in the traditional sense, and thus they are exempt from
the obligations mandated by free licenses. They do not, []{#Page_172
type="pagebreak" title="172"}in other words, have to make their readable
source code available along with their executable program code. Cloud
providers are thus able to make wide use of free software, but they
contribute very little to its further development. The changes that they
make are implemented exclusively on their own computers and therefore do
not have to be made public. They therefore follow the letter of the
license, but not its spirit. Through the control of services, it is also
possible for nominally free and open-source software to be centrally
controlled. Google\'s Android operating system for smartphones consists
largely of free software, but by integrating it so deeply with its
closed applications (such as Google Maps and Google Play Store), the
company ensures that even modified versions of the system will supply
data in which Google has an
interest.[^99^](#c3-note-0099){#c3-note-0099a}
The idea of the communal use and provision of resources is eroded most
clearly by the so-called sharing economy, especially by companies such
as the short-term lodging service Airbnb or Uber, which began as a taxi
service but has since expanded into other areas of business. In such
cases, terms like "open" or "sharing" do little more than give a trendy
and positive veneer to hyper-capitalistic structures. Instead of
supporting new forms of horizontal cooperation, the sharing economy is
forcing more and more people into working conditions in which they have
to assert themselves on their own, without insurance and with complete
flexibility, all the while being coordinated by centralized,
internet-based platforms.[^100^](#c3-note-0100){#c3-note-0100a} Although
the companies in question take a significant portion of overall revenue
for their "intermediary" services, they act as though they merely
facilitate such work and thus take no responsibility for their "newly
self-employed" freelance
workforce.[^101^](#c3-note-0101){#c3-note-0101a} The risk is passed on
to individual providers, who are in constant competition with one
another, and this only heightens the precariousness of labor relations.
As is typical of post-democratic institutions, the sharing economy has
allowed certain disparities to expand into broader sectors of society,
namely the power and income gap that exists between those who
"voluntarily" use these services and the providers that determine the
conditions imposed by the platforms in question.[]{#Page_173
type="pagebreak" title="173"}
:::
:::
::: {.section}
Against a Lack of Alternatives {#c3-sec-0017}
------------------------------
For now, the digital condition has given rise to two highly divergent
political tendencies. The tendency toward "post-democracy" is
essentially leading to an authoritarian society. Although this society
may admittedly contain a high degree of cultural diversity, and although
its citizens are able to (or have to) lead their lives in a
self-responsible manner, they are no longer able to exert any influence
over the political and economic structures in which their lives are
unfolding. On the basis of data-intensive and comprehensive
surveillance, these structures are instead shaped disproportionally by
an influential few. The resulting imbalance of power has been growing
steadily, as has income inequality. In contrast to this, the tendency
toward commons is leading to a renewal of democracy, based on
institutions that exist outside of the market and the state. At its core
this movement involves a new combination of economic, social, and
(ever-more pressing) ecological dimensions of everyday life on the basis
of data-intensive participatory processes.
What these two developments share in common is their comprehensive
realization of the infrastructural possibilities of the present. Both of
them develop new relations of production on the basis of new productive
forces (to revisit the terminology introduced at the beginning of this
chapter) or, in more general terms, they create suitable social
institutions for these new opportunities. In this sense, both
developments represent coherent and comprehensive answers to the
Gutenberg Galaxy\'s long-lasting crisis of cultural forms and social
institutions.
It remains to be seen whether one of these developments will prevail
entirely or whether and how they will coexist. Despite all of the new
and specialized methods for making predictions, the future is still
largely unpredictable. Too many moving variables are at play, and they
are constantly influencing one another. This is not least the case
because everyone\'s activity -- at times singularly aggregated, at times
collectively organized -- is contributing directly and indirectly to
these contradictory developments. And even though an individual or
communal contribution may seem small, it is still exactly []{#Page_174
type="pagebreak" title="174"}that: a contribution to a collective
movement in one direction or the other. This assessment should not be
taken as some naïve appeal along the lines of "Be the change you want to
see!" The issue here is not one of personal attitudes but rather of
social structures. Effective change requires forms of organization that
are able to implement it for the long term and in the face of
resistance. In this regard, the side of the commons has a great deal
more work to do.
Yet if, despite all of the simplifications that I have made, this
juxtaposition of post-democracy and the commons has revealed anything,
it is that even rapid changes, whose historical and structural
dimensions cannot be controlled on account of their overwhelming
complexity, are anything but fixed in their concrete social
formulations. Even if it is impossible to preserve the old institutions
and cultural forms in their traditional roles -- regardless of all the
historical achievements that may be associated with them -- the dispute
over what world we want to live in and the goals that should be achieved
by the available potential of the present is as open as ever. And such
is the case even though post-democracy wishes to abolish the political
itself and subordinate everything to a technocratic lack of
alternatives. The development of the commons, after all, has shown that
genuine, fundamental, and cutting-edge alternatives do indeed exist. The
contradictory nature of the present is keeping the future
open.[]{#Page_175 type="pagebreak" title="175"}
:::
::: {.section .notesList}
[1](#c3-note-0001a){#c3-note-0001} Karl Marx, *A Contribution to the
Critique of Political Economy*, trans. S. W. Ryazanskaya (London:
Lawrence and Wishart, 1971), p. 21.[]{#Page_196 type="pagebreak"
title="196"}
[2](#c3-note-0002a){#c3-note-0002} See, for instance, Tomasz Konicz and
Florian Rötzer (eds), *Aufbruch ins Ungewisse: Auf der Suche nach
Alternativen zur kapitalistischen Dauerkrise* (Hanover: Heise
Zeitschriften Verlag, 2014).
[3](#c3-note-0003a){#c3-note-0003} Jacques Rancière, *Disagreement:
Politics and Philosophy*, trans. Julie Rose (Minneapolis, MN: University
of Minnesota Press, 1999), p. 102 (the emphasis is original).
[4](#c3-note-0004a){#c3-note-0004} Colin Crouch, *Post-Democracy*
(Cambridge: Polity, 2004), p. 4.
[5](#c3-note-0005a){#c3-note-0005} Ibid., p. 6.
[6](#c3-note-0006a){#c3-note-0006} Ibid., p. 96.
[7](#c3-note-0007a){#c3-note-0007} These questions have already been
discussed at length, for instance in a special issue of the journal
*Neue Soziale Bewegungen* (vol. 4, 2006) and in the first two issues of
the journal *Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte* (2011).
[8](#c3-note-0008a){#c3-note-0008} See Jonathan B. Postel, "RFC 821,
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol," *Information Sciences Institute:
University of Southern California* (August 1982), online: "An important
feature of SMTP is its capability to relay mail across transport service
environments."
[9](#c3-note-0009a){#c3-note-0009} One of the first providers of
Webmail was Hotmail, which became available in 1996. Just one year
later, the company was purchased by Microsoft.
[10](#c3-note-0010a){#c3-note-0010} Barton Gellmann and Ashkan Soltani,
"NSA Infiltrates Links to Yahoo, Google Data Centers Worldwide, Snowden
Documents Say," *Washington Post* (October 30, 2013), online.
[11](#c3-note-0011a){#c3-note-0011} Initiated by hackers and activists,
the Mailpile project raised more than \$160,000 in September 2013 (the
fundraising goal had been just \$100,000). In July 2014, the rather
business-oriented project ProtonMail raised \$400,000 (its target, too,
had been just \$100,000).
[12](#c3-note-0012a){#c3-note-0012} In July 2014, for instance, Google
announced that it would support "end-to-end" encryption for emails. See
"Making End-to-End Encryption Easier to Use," *Google Security Blog*
(June 3, 2014), online.
[13](#c3-note-0013a){#c3-note-0013} Not all services use algorithms to
sort through data. Twitter does not filter the news stream of individual
users but rather allows users to create their own lists or to rely on
external service providers to select and configure them. This is one of
the reasons why Twitter is regarded as "difficult." The service is so
centralized, however, that this can change at any time, which indeed
happened at the beginning of 2016.
[14](#c3-note-0014a){#c3-note-0014} Quoted from "Schrems:
'Facebook-Abstimmung ist eine Farce'," *Futurezone.at* (July 4, 2012),
online \[--trans.\].
[16](#c3-note-0016a){#c3-note-0016} Quoted from the documentary film
*Terms and Conditions May Apply* (2013), directed by Cullen Hoback.
[17](#c3-note-0017a){#c3-note-0017} Felix Stalder and Christine Mayer,
"Der zweite Index: Suchmaschinen, Personalisierung und Überwachung," in
Konrad Becker and Felix Stalder (eds), *Deep Search: Die Politik des
Suchens jenseits von Google* (Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 2009), pp.
112--31.
[18](#c3-note-0018a){#c3-note-0018} Thus, in 2012, Google announced
under a rather generic and difficult-to-Google headline that, from now
on, "we may combine information you\'ve provided from one service with
information from other services." See "Updating Our Privacy Policies and
Terms of Service," *Google Official Blog* (January 24, 2012), online.
[19](#c3-note-0019a){#c3-note-0019} Wolfie Christl, "Kommerzielle
digitale Überwachung im Alltag," *Studie im Auftrag der
Bundesarbeitskammer* (November 2014), online.
[20](#c3-note-0020a){#c3-note-0020} Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and
Kenneth Cukier, *Big Data: A Revolution That Will Change How We Live,
Work and Think* (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013).
[21](#c3-note-0021a){#c3-note-0021} Carlos Diuk, "The Formation of
Love," *Facebook Data Science Blog* (February 14, 2014), online.
[22](#c3-note-0022a){#c3-note-0022} Facebook could have determined this
simply by examining the location data that were transmitted by its own
smartphone app. The study in question, however, did not take such
information into account.
[23](#c3-note-0023a){#c3-note-0023} Dan Lyons, "A Lot of Top
Journalists Don\'t Look at Traffic Numbers: Here\'s Why," *Huffington
Post* (March 27, 2014), online.
[24](#c3-note-0024a){#c3-note-0024} Adam Kramer et al., "Experimental
Evidence of Massive-Scale Emotional Contagion through Social Networks,"
*Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences* 111 (2014): 8788--90.
[25](#c3-note-0025a){#c3-note-0025} In all of these studies, it was
presupposed that users present themselves naïvely and entirely
truthfully. If someone writes something positive ("I\'m doing great!"),
it is assumed that this person really is doing well. This, of course, is
a highly problematic assumption. See John M. Grohl, "Emotional Contagion
on Facebook? More Like Bad Research Methods," *PsychCentral* (June 23,
2014), online.
[26](#c3-note-0026a){#c3-note-0026} See Adrienne LaFrance, "Even the
Editor of Facebook\'s Mood Study Thought It Was Creepy," *The Atlantic*
(June 29, 2014), online: "\[T\]he authors \[...\] said their local
institutional review board had approved it -- and apparently on the
grounds that Facebook apparently manipulates people\'s News Feeds all
the time."
[27](#c3-note-0027a){#c3-note-0027} In a rare moment of openness, the
founder of a large dating service made the following remark: "But guess
what, everybody: []{#Page_198 type="pagebreak" title="198"}if you use
the Internet, you\'re the subject of hundreds of experiments at any
given time, on every site. That\'s how websites work." See Christian
Rudder, "We Experiment on Human Beings!" *OKtrends* (July 28, 2014),
online.
[28](#c3-note-0028a){#c3-note-0028} Zoe Corbyn, "Facebook Experiment
Boosts US Voter Turnout," *Nature* (September 12, 2012), online. Because
of the relative homogeneity of social groups, it can be assumed that a
large majority of those who were indirectly influenced to vote have the
same political preferences as those who were directly influenced.
[29](#c3-note-0029a){#c3-note-0029} In the year 2000, according to the
official count, George W. Bush won the decisive state of Florida by a
mere 537 votes.
[30](#c3-note-0030a){#c3-note-0030} Jonathan Zittrain, "Facebook Could
Decide an Election without Anyone Ever Finding Out," *New Republic*
(June 1, 2014), online.
[31](#c3-note-0031a){#c3-note-0031} This was the central insight that
Norbert Wiener drew from his experiments on air defense during World War
II. Although it could never be applied during the war itself, it would
nevertheless prove of great importance to the development of
cybernetics.
[32](#c3-note-0032a){#c3-note-0032} Gregory Bateson, "Social Planning
and the Concept of Deutero-learning," in Bateson, *Steps to an Ecology
of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution and
Epistemology* (London: Jason Aronson, 1972), pp. 166--82, at 177.
[33](#c3-note-0033a){#c3-note-0033} Tiqqun, "The Cybernetic
Hypothesis," p. 4 (online).
[34](#c3-note-0034a){#c3-note-0034} B. F. Skinner, *The Behavior of
Organisms: An Experimental Analysis* (New York: Appleton Century, 1938).
[35](#c3-note-0035a){#c3-note-0035} Richard H. Thaler and Cass
Sunstein, *Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and
Happiness* (New York: Penguin, 2008).
[36](#c3-note-0036a){#c3-note-0036} It happened repeatedly, for
instance, that pictures of breastfeeding mothers would be removed
because they apparently violated Facebook\'s rule against sharing
pornography. After a long protest, Facebook changed its "community
standards" in 2014. Under the term "Nudity," it now reads as follows:
"We also restrict some images of female breasts if they include the
nipple, but we always allow photos of women actively engaged in
breastfeeding or showing breasts with post-mastectomy scarring. We also
allow photographs of paintings, sculptures and other art that depicts
nude figures." See "Community Standards,"
[Facebook.com](http://Facebook.com) (2017), online.
[37](#c3-note-0037a){#c3-note-0037} Michael Seemann, *Digital Tailspin:
Ten Rules for the Internet after Snowden* (Amsterdam: Institute for
Network Cultures, 2015).
[38](#c3-note-0038a){#c3-note-0038} The exception to this is fairtrade
products, in which case it is attempted to legitimate their higher
prices with reference to []{#Page_199 type="pagebreak" title="199"}the
input -- that is, to the social and ecological conditions of their
production.
[39](#c3-note-0039a){#c3-note-0039} This is only partially true,
however, as more institutions (universities, for instance) have begun to
outsource their technical infrastructure (to Google Mail, for example).
In such cases, people are indeed being coerced, in the classical sense,
to use these services.
[40](#c3-note-0040a){#c3-note-0040} Mary Madden et al., "Teens, Social
Media and Privacy," *Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech* (May
21, 2013), online.
[41](#c3-note-0041a){#c3-note-0041} Meta-data are data that provide
information about other data. In the case of an email, the header lines
(the sender, recipient, date, subject, etc.) form the meta-data, while
the data are made up of the actual content of communication. In
practice, however, the two categories cannot always be sharply
distinguished from one another.
[42](#c3-note-0042a){#c3-note-0042} By manipulating online polls, for
instance, or flooding social mass media with algorithmically generated
propaganda. See Glen Greenwald, "Hacking Online Polls and Other Ways
British Spies Seek to Control the Internet," *The Intercept* (July 14,
2014), online.
[43](#c3-note-0043a){#c3-note-0043} Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald,
"The NSA\'s Secret Role in the US Assassination Program," *The
Intercept* (February 10, 2014), online.
[44](#c3-note-0044a){#c3-note-0044} Regarding the interconnections
between Google and the US State Department, see Julian Assange, *When
Google Met WikiLeaks* (New York: O/R Books, 2014).
[45](#c3-note-0045a){#c3-note-0045} For a catalog of these
publications, see the DARPA website:
\<[opencatalog.darpa.mil/SMISC.html](http://opencatalog.darpa.mil/SMISC.html)\>.
[46](#c3-note-0046a){#c3-note-0046} See the military\'s own description
of the project at:
\<[minerva.dtic.mil/funded.html](http://minerva.dtic.mil/funded.html)\>.
[47](#c3-note-0047a){#c3-note-0047} Such is the goal stated on the
project\'s homepage: \<\>.
[48](#c3-note-0048a){#c3-note-0048} Bruce Schneier, "Don\'t Listen to
Google and Facebook: The Public--Private Surveillance Partnership Is
Still Going Strong," *The Atlantic* (March 25, 2014), online.
[49](#c3-note-0049a){#c3-note-0049} See the documentary film *Low
Definition Control* (2011), directed by Michael Palm.
[50](#c3-note-0050a){#c3-note-0050} Felix Stalder, "In der zweiten
digitalen Phase: Daten versus Kommunikation," *Le Monde Diplomatique*
(February 14, 2014), online.
[51](#c3-note-0051a){#c3-note-0051} In 2009, the European Parliament
and the European Council ratified Directive 2009/72/EC, which stipulates
that, by the year 2020, 80 percent of all households in the EU will have
to be equipped with an intelligent metering system.[]{#Page_200
type="pagebreak" title="200"}
[52](#c3-note-0052a){#c3-note-0052} There is no consensus about how or
whether smart meters will contribute to the more efficient use of
energy. On the contrary, one study commissioned by the German Federal
Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy concluded that the
comprehensive implementation of smart metering would have negative
economic effects for consumers. See Helmut Edelmann and Thomas Kästner,
"Cost--Benefit Analysis for the Comprehensive Use of Smart Metering,"
*Ernst & Young* (June 2013), online.
[53](#c3-note-0053a){#c3-note-0053} Quoted from "United Nations Working
towards Urbanization," *United Nations Urbanization Agenda* (July 7,
2015), online. For a comprehensive critique of such visions, see Adam
Greenfield, *Against the Smart City* (New York City: Do Projects, 2013).
[54](#c3-note-0054a){#c3-note-0054} Stefan Selke, *Lifelogging: Warum
wir unser Leben nicht digitalen Technologien überlassen sollten*
(Berlin: Econ, 2014).
[55](#c3-note-0055a){#c3-note-0055} Rainer Schneider, "Rabatte für
Gesundheitsdaten: Was die deutschen Krankenversicherer planen," *ZDNet*
(December 18, 2014), online \[--trans.\].
[56](#c3-note-0056a){#c3-note-0056} Frank Pasquale, *The Black Box
Society: The Secret Algorithms that Control Money and Information*
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015).
[57](#c3-note-0057a){#c3-note-0057} "Facebook Gives People around the
World the Power to Publish Their Own Stories," *Facebook Help Center*
(2017), online.
[58](#c3-note-0058a){#c3-note-0058} Lena Kampf et al., "Deutsche im
NSA-Visier: Als Extremist gebrandmarkt," *Tagesschau.de* (July 3, 2014),
online.
[59](#c3-note-0059a){#c3-note-0059} Florian Klenk, "Der Prozess gegen
Josef S.," *Falter* (July 8, 2014), online.
[60](#c3-note-0060a){#c3-note-0060} Zygmunt Bauman, *Liquid Modernity*
(Cambridge: Polity, 2000), p. 35.
[61](#c3-note-0061a){#c3-note-0061} This is so regardless of whether
the dominant regime, eager to seem impervious to opposition, represents
itself as the one and only alternative. See Byung-Chul Han, "Why
Revolution Is No Longer Possible," *Transformation* (October 23, 2015),
online.
[62](#c3-note-0062a){#c3-note-0062} See the *Süddeutsche Zeitung*\'s
special website devoted to the "Offshore Leaks":
\.
[63](#c3-note-0063a){#c3-note-0063} The *Süddeutsche Zeitung*\'s
website devoted to the "Luxembourg Leaks" can be found at:
\.
[64](#c3-note-0064a){#c3-note-0064} See the documentary film
*Citizenfour* (2014), directed by Lara Poitras.
[65](#c3-note-0065a){#c3-note-0065} Felix Stalder, "WikiLeaks und die
neue Ökologie der Nachrichtenmedien," in Heinrich Geiselberger (ed.),
*WikiLeaks und die Folgen* (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2011), pp.
96--110.[]{#Page_201 type="pagebreak" title="201"}
[66](#c3-note-0066a){#c3-note-0066} Yochai Benkler, "Coase\'s Penguin,
or, Linux and the Nature of the Firm," *Yale Law Journal* 112 (2002):
369--446.
[67](#c3-note-0067a){#c3-note-0067} For an overview of the many commons
traditions, see David Bollier and Silke Helfrich, *The Wealth of the
Commons: A World beyond Market and State* (Amherst: Levellers Press,
2012).
[68](#c3-note-0068a){#c3-note-0068} Massimo De Angelis and Stavros
Stavrides, "On the Commons: A Public Interview," *e-flux* 17 (June
2010), online.
[69](#c3-note-0069a){#c3-note-0069} Elinor Ostrom, *Governing the
Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action*
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
[70](#c3-note-0070a){#c3-note-0070} Michael McGinnis and Elinor Ostrom,
"Design Principles for Local and Global Commons," *International
Political Economy and International Institutions* 2 (1996): 465--93.
[71](#c3-note-0071a){#c3-note-0071} I say "allegedly" because the
argument about their inevitable tragedy, which has been made without any
empirical evidence, falsely conceives of the commons as a limited but
fully unregulated resource. Because people are only interested in
maximizing their own short-term benefits -- or so the conclusion goes --
the resource will either have to be privatized or administered by the
government in order to protect it from being over-used and to ensure the
well-being of everyone involved. It was never taken into consideration
that users could speak with one another and organize themselves. See
Garrett Hardin, "The Tragedy of the Commons," *Science* 162 (1968):
1243--8.
[72](#c3-note-0072a){#c3-note-0072} Jonathan Rowe, "The Real Tragedy:
Ecological Ruin Stems from What Happens to -- Not What Is Caused by --
the Commons," *On the Commons* (April 30, 2013), online.
[73](#c3-note-0073a){#c3-note-0073} James Boyle, "A Politics of
Intellectual Property: Environmentalism for the Net?" *Duke Law Journal*
47 (1997): 87--116.
[75](#c3-note-0075a){#c3-note-0075} The Debian Social Contract can be
read at: \<\>.
[76](#c3-note-0076a){#c3-note-0076} Gabriella E. Coleman and Benjamin
Hill, "The Social Production of Ethics in Debian and Free Software
Communities: Anthropological Lessons for Vocational Ethics," in Stefan
Koch (ed.), *Free/Open Source Software Development* (Hershey, PA: Idea
Group, 2005), pp. 273--95.
[77](#c3-note-0077a){#c3-note-0077} While it is relatively easy to
identify the inner circle of such a project, it is impossible to
determine the number of those who have contributed to it. This is
because, among other reasons, the distinction between producers and
consumers is so fluid that any firm line drawn between them for
quantitative purposes would be entirely arbitrary. Should someone who
writes the documentation be considered a producer of a software
[]{#Page_202 type="pagebreak" title="202"}project? To be counted as
such, is it sufficient to report a single bug? Or to confirm the
validity of a bug report that has already been sent? Should everyone be
counted who has helped another person solve a problem in a forum?
[78](#c3-note-0078a){#c3-note-0078} Raphaël Hertzog, "The State of the
Debian--Ubuntu Relationship" (December 6, 2010), online.
[79](#c3-note-0079a){#c3-note-0079} This, in any case, is the number of
free software programs that appears in Wikipedia\'s entry titled "List
of Text Editors." This list, however, is probably incomplete.
[80](#c3-note-0080a){#c3-note-0080} In this regard, the most
significant legal changes were enacted through the Copyright Treaty of
the World Intellectual Property Organization (1996), the US Digital
Millennium Copyright Act (1998), and the EU guidelines for the
harmonization of certain aspects of copyright (2001). Since 2006, a
popular tactic in Germany and elsewhere has been to issue floods of
cease-and-desist letters. This involves sending tens of thousands of
semi-automatically generated threats of legal action with demands for
payment in response to the presumably unauthorized use of
copyright-protected material.
[81](#c3-note-0081a){#c3-note-0081} Examples include the Open Content
License (1998) and the Free Art License (2000).
[82](#c3-note-0082a){#c3-note-0082} Benjamin Mako Hill, "Towards a
Standard of Freedom: Creative Commons and the Free Software Movement,"
*mako.cc* (June 29, 2005), online.
[83](#c3-note-0083a){#c3-note-0083} Since 2007, Wikipedia has
continuously been one of the 10 most-used websites.
[84](#c3-note-0084a){#c3-note-0084} One of the best studies of
Wikipedia remains Christian Stegbauer, *Wikipedia: Das Rätsel der
Kooperation* (Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2009).
[85](#c3-note-0085a){#c3-note-0085} Dan Wielsch, "Governance of Massive
Multiauthor Collaboration -- Linux, Wikipedia and Other Networks:
Governed by Bilateral Contracts, Partnerships or Something in Between?"
*JIPITEC* 1 (2010): 96--108.
[86](#c3-note-0086a){#c3-note-0086} See Wikipedia\'s 2013--14
fundraising report at:
\<[meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/2013-14\_Report](http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/2013-14_Report)\>.
[87](#c3-note-0087a){#c3-note-0087} Roland Ramthun, "Offene Geodaten
durch OpenStreetMap," in Ulrich Herb (ed.), *Open Initiatives: Offenheit
in der digitalen Welt und Wissenschaft* (Saarbrücken: Universaar, 2012),
pp. 159--84.
[89](#c3-note-0089a){#c3-note-0089} See the information provided at:
\<[wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Finances](http://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Finances)\>.
[90](#c3-note-0090a){#c3-note-0090} As part of its "Knight News
Challenge," for instance, the American Knight Foundation gave \$570,000
in 2012 to the []{#Page_203 type="pagebreak" title="203"}company Mapbox
in order for the latter to make improvements to OSM\'s infrastructure.
[91](#c3-note-0091a){#c3-note-0091} This was accomplished, for
instance, by introducing methods for data indexing and quality control.
See Ramthum, "Offene Geodaten durch OpenStreetMap" (cited above).
[92](#c3-note-0092a){#c3-note-0092} Trevor Paglen and Adam C. Thompson,
*Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA\'s Rendition Flights* (Hoboken,
NJ: Melville House, 2006).
[93](#c3-note-0093a){#c3-note-0093} See the project\'s website:
\<[airqualityegg.com](http://airqualityegg.com)\>.
[94](#c3-note-0094a){#c3-note-0094} See the project\'s homepage:
\<[index.okfn.org](http://index.okfn.org)\>.
[95](#c3-note-0095a){#c3-note-0095} The homepage of the Digital
Openness Index can be found at: \<[do-index.org](http://do-index.org)\>.
[97](#c3-note-0097a){#c3-note-0097} Jeremy Rifkin, *The Zero Marginal
Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons and the
Eclipse of Capitalism* (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), p. 217.
[98](#c3-note-0098a){#c3-note-0098} See, for instance, Ludger
Eversmann, *Post-Kapitalismus: Blueprint für die nächste Gesellschaft*
(Hanover: Heise Zeitschriften Verlag, 2014).
[99](#c3-note-0099a){#c3-note-0099} Ron Amadeo, "Google\'s Iron Grip on
Android: Controlling Open Source by Any Means Necessary," *Ars Technica*
(October 21, 2013), online.
[100](#c3-note-0100a){#c3-note-0100} Seb Olma, "To Share or Not to
Share," [nettime.org](http://nettime.org) (October 20, 2014), online.
[101](#c3-note-0101a){#c3-note-0101} Susie Cagle, "The Case against
Sharing," *The Nib* (May 27, 2014), online.[]{#Page_204 type="pagebreak"
title="204"}
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