[microsound] The challenge of working at the time of network

[Charles Turner]

On Tue, 20 Jan 2009 03:10:47 +0100, Damian Stewart wrote:
> greg g wrote:
> 
>> i agree with charles turner about the local approach, lately i've just 
>> been getting back to cassette culture (although i was never in it in the 
>> first place, being too young...) and, as he wrote, condemning myself 
>> into obscurity at the same time.  if i were ever to establish a 
> 
> interesting that this point is coming up. i'm soon to face an interesting 
> situation: in a few months my Dutch visa runs out, and i'm going to have to 
> leave Europe and go back to New Zealand, unless i can rig up some new 
> situation. the appeal of NZ is huge, plus all my friends are there. but in 
> returning i'd be more or less giving up the nebulous 'career' thingy i've 
> been building for myself as an artist here in EU-land. perhaps this makes 
> more sense though, from a holistic point of view. i never quite brought 
> myself to believe in the lifestyle of festivals via cheap jet flights; even 
> high speed trains seem pretty fantastical.

I think I was using the word "local" to mean a set of material (as 
opposed to virtual) conditions that we ourselves have the ability to 
control, and not some corporation that doesn't operate in our benefit.

Folks might be interested in this interview with Ned Rossiter, which 
deals with networked labour organization, but I think many could read 
as applicable to their personal situations.

I assume the vast majority of us are laborers. Anyone out there able to 
live comfortably off their royalties from compositions or recordings? 
;-)

<http://www.orgnets.net/node/490>

The challenge of working at the time of network: Interview by Il 
Manifesto with Ned Rossiter

Alessandro Delfanti: What's the best way to rebuild labour 
organizations in the network society? The anti-globalisation movement 
(a network-based movement) is dead and unions are incapable to 
intercept the needs of precarious and cognitive workers ...

Ned Rossiter: At the risk of rehashing all too familiar territory, let 
me elaborate some of the current conditions challenging political 
organization within network societies. First, we need to problematise 
labour as some kind of coherent, distinct entity. We know well that 
labour in fact is internally contradictory and holds multiple, 
differential registers that refuse easy connection (gender, class, 
ethnicity, age, mode of work, etc.). This is the problem of 
organization. How to organize the unorganizables?, to borrow from the 
title of one of Florian Schneider's great documentary films. Second, we 
need to question the border between labour and life - contemporary 
biopolitics has rendered this border indistinct. Techniques of 
governance now interpenetrate all aspects of life as it is put to work 
and made productive. The result? No longer can we separate public from 
private, and this has massive implications for how we consider 
political organization today. What, in other words, is the space of 
political organization? Paolo Virno, for instance, speaks of a 
'non-state public sphere'. But where, precisely is this sphere? All too 
often it seems networked, and nowhere. This is the trap of 
'virtuality', understood in its general sense. Of course there can be 
fantastic instances of political organization that remain exclusively 
at the level of the virtual, which is the territory of today's 
'info-wars'. Here, we find the continued fight over the society of the 
spectacle. Yet the problem of materiality nonetheless persists, and 
indeed becomes more urgent, as the ecological crisis makes all too 
clear (although this too is a contest of political agendas played out 
within the symbolic sphere).
Personally I prefer a combinatory approach that brings the virtual 
dimension of organization together with a material situation. This may 
take the form of an event or meeting, workshops, publishing activities, 
field research, urban experiments, migrant support centres, media 
laboratories ... there are many possibilities. In Italy, uninomade and 
the media-activist network and social centre ESC are good examples of 
what I'm talking about here. In the instance of bringing many 
capacities together around a common problem or field of interest we 
begin to see the development of a new institutional form. These 
institutions are networked, certainly, and far from the static culture 
and normative regimes of the bricks and mortar institutions of the 
modern era – unions, firms, universities, state. Their mobile, 
ephemeral nature is both a strength and a weakness. The invention of 
new institutional forms that emerge within the process of organizing 
networks is absolutely central to the rebuilding of labour 
organizations within contemporary settings. Such developments should 
not be seen as a burden or something that closes down the spontaneity, 
freedom and culture of sharing and participation that we enjoy so much 
within social networks. As translation devices, these new institutions 
facilitate trans-institutional connections. In this connection we find 
multiple antagonisms, indeed such connections make visible new 
territories of 'the political'.

AD: What's the role of communication (and info tech) in new political 
organizations?

NR: In many respects communication conditions the possibility of new 
political organizations. We could say that 'the political' of network 
societies is comprised of the tension between horizontal modes of 
communication and vertical regimes of control. Just think, for 
instance, of the ongoing battles between Internet and intellectual 
property regulators such as WIPO (World Intellectual Property 
Organization) and pirate networks of software, music or film 
distribution. Collaborative constitution emerges precisely in the 
instance of confrontation. In this sense, the horizontal and vertical 
axes of communication are not separate or opposed but mutually 
constitutive. Moreover, how to manage or deal with these two axes of 
communication is often a source of tension within networks. Here, we 
are talking about the problem of governance, and there are no universal 
models to draw on. More often than not, networks adopt a 
trial-and-error approach to governance. But it is better to recognize 
that governance is not a dirty word, but one that is internal to the 
logic and protocols of self-organization.

AD: Production and appropriation by firms are reaching every moment of 
our lifes (i.e. in web 2.0). Cooperation and coproduction are an asset 
of the firms' or workers' wealth?

NR: You've identified one of the key tensions operating in the 
'participation economy' of Web 2.0. Unions, in their industrial form, 
functioned to protect workers against exploitation and represent their 
right to fair and decent working conditions. But what happens when 
leisure activity becomes a form of profit generation for companies? 
Popular social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, 
del.icio.us and the data trails we leave with Google function as 
informational gold mines for the owners of these sites. Advertising 
space and, more importantly, the sale of aggregated data are the 
staples of the participation economy. No longer can the union appeal to 
the subjugated, oppressed experience of workers when users voluntarily 
submit information and make no demands for a share of profits. Though 
we are starting to see some changes on this front, as users become 
increasingly aware of their productive capacities and can quickly 
abandon a social networking site in the same manner in which they 
initially swarmed toward it. Companies, then, are vulnerable to the 
roaming tastes of the networked masses whose cooperative labour 
determines their wealth. This cooperative labour constitutes a form of 
power that has the potential to be mobilized in political ways, yet so 
rarely is. Perhaps that will change before too long. Certainly, the 
production of this type of political subjectivity is preferable to the 
pretty revolting culture of 'shareholder democracy' that has come to 
define political expression for the neoliberal citizen."