Abstract: The desires and the sources of emancipatory potential of the commons for the cooperative and egalitarian global togetherness, for a new communism born through the new generation of tools and organizational practices, have temporarily been appropriated and hi-jacked by capitalism under the Open Source and to an extent Creative Commons movements. Through and with the Open Process methods of the founding Internet communities, we can make a significant step towards claiming it back. Commu(o)nism, we could call it, is a new emerging form of communism hacked with open process and new commons. The small (o) in the middle stands for open.
|
|||||
Engineering the privatization of the commonTim O’Reilly was, along with Raymond, perhaps the key figure in the business part of the group of Open Source (let’s not forget that almost all of the Open Source founders were part of the FS communities to an extent) counter-revolution. Behlendorf, one of the Apache project founders, was inspired how the Internet developed through the IETF principles: rough consensus and running code, specialist working groups open to all, and Requests For Comments (RFC) documents (Moody 2001, 128). In 1999, Tim O’Reilly invited Behlendorf to develop his new ideas on open source business models. The results was a joined company which in June 2000 closed $35 million round of funding, including Dell, HP, Intel, Novell, Oracle and Sun amongst the investors (Moody 2001, 249). Early signs of a capitalist counter-revolution were encouraging. AbstractPublishing and knowledge production in academia can be significantly improved if aspects of cooperative models developed in software and networking communities are adopted. Open Access movement does that partially, by focusing on the openness of the final result. The most important attributes of the development of the Internet, the Web and their communication-cooperation tools is openness of the entire process of production. The novelty that can take many forms is in the organizational structures, decision making and cooperation. This article argues that journals adopting a form of open-process approach could benefit by increased quality of submissions and publications, faster and more responsive pace of research and by attracting more risk taking and innovative authors. Through clearer structure and visibility of tasks, equally important could be possible internal benefits for journals: recognition of the most important workers and decision making in their hands, easier and improved project management, attracting new volunteers and reducing the impact of counter-productive participants. If these changes were implemented well, such open-process journals would gain readership and reputation. Open-process academic publishing can take procedurally and technologically complex forms. A simple transition model is suggested: how to start with an email list and right cultural safeguards. The Internet Model = why Open Access is not enoughThis is an early version of the text. Latest version of this text is here. Publishing and peer review processes in academia are currently closed models. In my view, at least in the areas i operate in (social sciences and humanities), these processes should be far more, if not entirely, open, with a provision for privacy in special cases. I call this model Open-process academic publishing. The name deliberately distinguishes it from Open Access, which refers to only the final outcome of academic knowledge production being open. The suggestion is not to open the processes in random ways, but in ways in which this openness — fundamentally based on volunteer participation — brings/enables more structure, more internalized working discipline, more commitment, and more ability to improve cooperation/collaboration with deliberate precision – all with the goal of improving the outcomes. “[...] culture of open processes was essential in enabling the Internet to grow and evolve as spectacularly as it has”, hence, we could call it The Internet Model (software/FS + networking/IETF). Its potential screams for being reused, hacked, for other areas of production. Academia, especially its publishing side, seems to me capable of embracing such volunteer-core open-process cooperation. This page is wiki editable click here to edit this page.Free-market capitalist ideology died in the financial crisis of 2008. But its zombie flesh eaters – destruction of the planet and human spirit, its wars, thieves and speculators – might linger for centuries. Unless we make it obsolete. Dismissing the parliamentary capitalist framework as dysfunctional is easy. 1) what do we replace it with?; 2) and HOW do we replace it? We need a new egalitarian project. A new attempt at implementing the ideas of communism. I conceptualize it as communism hacked with Open Process [1]. Hacked with ethics and organization, both in the political domain and through the eventual replacement of the capitalist economic model, of its trade secrets and commodities. Namely, hacking ‘to reinvent the organizational principles of mediation between productivity and circulation that wouldn’t go via alienation through commodification and general equivalent of money’ [2], nor via alienation and corruption of the representative political models. The open-process model can be derived from communities of hackers, engineers, academics and hobbyists that gave us the Internet, the Web, their protocols and tools. Open Source is a capitalist appropriation, selectively composed rewritten history of partially excluded original communities for the purpose of fitting the capitalist economy. Free Software stands for ethics, Internet Engineering Task Force for open process, Open Source for capitalism. Here’s an idea that that is part of the proposal for one of the journals i’m working with on implementing aspects of open-process in academic publishing: a different way to deal with topics important to a journal is to replace the concept of special issues, with the concept of research threads. In short: research threads are more suitable (more open, inclusive and more likely to result in higher quality submissions) to the dynamics of work of academic researchers than special issues. I find that calls for special issues annoy me often, since i frequently find the ones i like, but cannot interrupt what i am at that moment working on and write for the special issue, although the topic intrigues me, and i’d love to write on it in near future (happened to me twice only in the past few months). I know i’m not alone in this ambiguous feeling toward special issues, few other colleagues i spoke to have the same problems. Here’s the reasoning: a call for special issues often goes out 9-12 months in advance, sometimes longer. By the time an author hears about it, the author can be faced with few months until the deadline – this frequently seems to be the case – unless authors is already part of circles through which she/he will get informed directly (this also seems to be the pattern). Researching and writing a good academic article requires several months, often much longer. By the current dynamics of special issues, many authors that do think they have something to contribute and are willing to write on the topic, end up missing the opportunity to write and submit. From the reader perspective, Special Issues are more of collection of articles of existing clusters/mini-networks of academics, rather then collections of best work that is being done on the given topic at given moment in time. I don’t believe that special issues, as a form, are suitable any more for the best possible production of knowledge. Instead, i propose a model of RESEARCH THREADS, with two distinct features: 1) deadlines are minimum of two, perhaps even three years ahead; 2) submitted articles are published within a research thread as soon as they are accepted and peer reviewed, in order to present new research as soon as possible, to make the research thread alive and to not make authors wait for a long time before their accepted article gets published. I speculate that research threads primary benefit would be higher quality of submissions from wider range of academics. Additional possible benefits: a) no need any more to have special issues waiting in a queue; b) several parallel research threads running simultaneously would give the journal a distinct identity and a sense of constant development through the current research threads; c) clusters of researchers with common interests might be formed through this more open and wider participatory model Slobodna Dalmacija je objavila intervju sa mnom napisan sredinom listopada 2009. Ovdje stavljam zadnju autoriziranu verziju. Crvenim slovima sam označio djelove koji su izbačeni (od strane urednika, a ne novinara). Poprilično je izbačena kritika neo-liberalizma, mada ne u potpunosti. Evo dijela za koji mi je najviše žao što nije objavljen, i za kojeg mislim da je najbitniji, jer nije samo kritika neo-liberalizma, već i afirmacija ideja i praksi jednakosti i zajedništva povezana sa trenutnom borbom studenata protiv neo-liberalno-parlamentarne mašinerije:
Cijeli originalni tekst autorizirane verzije intervjua slijedi u ostatku teksta. |
Powered By  |
||||
|
Copyleft © 2010 Hack The State - No rights claimed. 5 guests, 0 members Max visitors today: 5 at 04:27 am GMT This month: 13 at 03-06-2010 05:19 am GMT This year: 30 at 01-21-2010 04:22 pm GMT All time: 30 at 01-21-2010 04:22 pm GMT |
|||||
