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| Patterns for Change from the Grassroots: Presenting the Liberating Voices book (and project)
| | You answered (11jan09): |
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| Douglas Schuler
| | "As free software moves from the margins to center stage, more and more |
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| | corporations adapt to the model, and pay programmers to do such parts of the |
| | free software as needed for themselves, but they use the open licenses. |
| | So these corporations compete, but also collaborate through the common |
| | platform of free software. |
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| | For Linux, 75% of programmers are now paid by such corporations, which means |
| | they have an increasing influence over the direction of development, have a |
| | seat in the Foundations etc; (...) |
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| After eight years of work, the <a href=" http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11601">Liberating Voices: A Pattern Language for Communication Revolution</a> book is now available. It's a call for social change based on a peaceful revolution in grassroots information and communication. Inspired by the vision and framework outlined in A Pattern Language, Christopher Alexander's classic 1977 book about architecture and urban planning, Liberating Voices presents a pattern language containing 136 patterns devoted to changing the communication and information paradigm to better meet the challenges of the 21st century. A "pattern" is a focused presentation of a recommendation. Through their use of a common structure (title, optional introductory graphic, problem statement, context statement, discussion, solution statement and links to other patterns) each pattern presents an agenda for research as well as social critique and action. And each pattern is linked to other patterns to form a single coherent whole or what Alexander calls a "pattern language." The patterns (which are also available online) can be used individually or in groups, sequentially or simultaneously.
| | The reality of the various projects is then strongly influenced by the governance model, |
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| | which can be controlled primarily by a community-oriented foundation, or by |
| Each of the patterns in the book presents a conceptual detour. Each suggests a multitude of possible routes that don't follow the ruts that today's dominant forces (including inertia) are pushing on us. The entire set is a pattern language, a provisional, bottom-up critical theory of social change. We are proposing a new model of social change that integrates theory and practice by showing how diverse information and communication based approaches can be used to address local as well as global problems.
| | a corporate-oriented format." |
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| Liberating Voices integrates ideas and suggestions from a variety of perspectives including activism and social change, education, community informatics, governance, media, development, information science, economics, journalism, arts and culture into one integrated volume that is intended to be theoretical, critical, and practical at the same time. Liberating Voices can be used by researchers, by practitioners in a variety of fields including teachers in the classroom, by activists, and by citizens and community members throughout the world.
| | Some remarks about the existence of "hybrid forms" and about the dynamics of these forms. |
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| The pattern language was developed collaboratively with nearly 100 co-authors using an online pattern language management system. For that reason, the patterns from the book are also online. Additionally, there are approximately 300 other patterns online that are in various stages of development.
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| We are treating the publishing of the book as an important milestone rather than the culmination of the project. While we are very enthusiastic about what we've produced so far we realize that people and organizations who use the patterns will often need to adapt the pattern language to their specific needs which may even include developing new patterns. For this reason and others we are transforming our web site into a full-fledged social networking site that will encourage collaborative pattern language construction and allow people to readily share ideas and experiences with others.
| | The reality you describe is a hybrid social form of production, borrowing aspects from both systems, capitalism and P2P, or peer production. Using your definition of peer production (free and open input; free volunteering production; universally available output), one can say that there are hybrid aspects at the three moments of the process: 1. input, raw material is partly capitalistic as the computers, the offices, etc. are privately owned by the corporations (as IBM), but, for software production, free/open software is also a "raw material"; 2. production is not based on free volunteering, but some aspects of the production are new, non capitalistic, as the cooperation between programmers of antagonistic corporations; 3. the output can be oriented by corporations more towards their own needs (commercial management software, for example) but the output remains universally available. |
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| The goal was the creation of a catalog of intellectual, social, and technological innovations, a practical manual for citizen activism, and a compelling manifesto for creating a more intelligent, sustainable, and equitable world. Now is the time to unleash the collective creativity — social as well as technological — of people around the world and develop the communication systems that humankind needs now. The following excerpt from the first page of the book acknowleges this revolutionary goal and orientation:
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| "This book is devoted to the demolition of the official version of information and communication systems at the dawn of the twenty-first century and to the construction of alternative visions. Without denying the positive impacts that elite people can and do make, this book is dedicated to a radical orientation in which ordinary people assert their rights, and their responsibilities, as citizens of the world." | | The "social networking" also generates hybrid forms. If you take MySpace or YouTube: 1. the input is partly capitalistic (the infrastructures and the financing by advertising), but for the rest most of the input (videos, blogs, etc.) are free and open; 2. the production process is based partially on capitalist wage relations for the infrastructure management, but the rest is based on free volunteering; 3. the output is supposed to be universally available but corporations impose limits and try to extend these limits, provoking open conflicts with users/producers. (See for example: http://bang.calit2.net/tts/2008/12/31/why-i-am-deleting-my-myspace-account-and-you-should-too/) |
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| Excerpts from two patterns that reflect the P2P perspective of this site follow this discussion. While those two patterns are more obviously related to the themes of this forum, many others (including those listed below) are also relevant.
| | Hybrid forms also developed in the past transitions between modes of production. Between the 6th and the 10h century, many landlords, including the Church, had simultaneously slaves and serfs (or "coloni" which were the first form of serfs). Between the 12th century and the 19th century many hybrid forms developed especially in the cities where capitalism developed within feudal relationships. |
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| �<ul>
| | The evolution of these forms has been often slow, with periods of acceleration but also periods of recession. The example of the Arsenal of Venice, which in the early 16th century employed some 16,000 people and could produce almost a ship per day using production-lines, something not seen again after until the industrial revolution, illustrates how non-linear this evolution can be. |
| <li><a target="_blank"
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| href="http://www.publicsphereproject.org/patterns/print-pattern.php?begin=1">Civic Intelligence (Pattern number 1)</a></li>
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| <li><a target="_blank"
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| href="http://www.publicsphereproject.org/patterns/print-pattern.php?begin=19">Transforming Institutions (19)</a></li>
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| <li><a target="_blank"
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| href="http://www.publicsphereproject.org/patterns/print-pattern.php?begin=37">Citizen Science (37)</a></li>
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| <li><a target="_blank"
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| href="http://www.publicsphereproject.org/patterns/print-pattern.php?begin=48">Citizen Access to Simulations (48)</a></li>
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| <li><a target="_blank"
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| href="http://www.publicsphereproject.org/patterns/print-pattern.php?begin=60">Digital Emancipation (60)</a></li>
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| <li><a target="_blank"
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| href="http://www.publicsphereproject.org/patterns/print-pattern.php?begin=64">Transparency (64)</a></li>
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| <li><a target="_blank"
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| href="http://www.publicsphereproject.org/patterns/print-pattern.php?begin=65">Privacy (65)</a></li>
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| <li><a target="_blank"
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| href="http://www.publicsphereproject.org/patterns/print-pattern.php?begin=71">Participatory Budgeting (71)</a></li>
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| <li><a target="_blank"
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| href="http://www.publicsphereproject.org/patterns/print-pattern.php?begin=76">Open Access Scholarly Publishing (76)</a></li>
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| <li><a target="_blank"
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| href="http://www.publicsphereproject.org/patterns/print-pattern.php?begin=78">Grassroots Public Policy Development (78)</a></li>
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| <li><a target="_blank"
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| href="http://www.publicsphereproject.org/patterns/print-pattern.php?begin=83">Voices of the Unheard (83)</a></li>
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| <li><a target="_blank"
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| href="http://www.publicsphereproject.org/patterns/print-pattern.php?begin=84">Design for Unintended Use (84)</a></li>
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| <li><a target="_blank"
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| href="http://www.publicsphereproject.org/patterns/print-pattern.php?begin=85">Civic Capabilities (85)</a></li>
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| <li><a target="_blank"
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| href="http://www.publicsphereproject.org/patterns/print-pattern.php?begin=86">Strategic Frame (86)</a></li>
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| <li><a target="_blank"
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| href="http://www.publicsphereproject.org/patterns/print-pattern.php?begin=92">Document Centered Discussion (92)</a></li>
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| <li><a target="_blank"
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| href="http://www.publicsphereproject.org/patterns/print-pattern.php?begin=93">Citizen Diplomacy (93)</a></li>
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| <li><a target="_blank"
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| href="http://www.publicsphereproject.org/patterns/print-pattern.php?begin=94">Mirror Institutions (94)</a></li>
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| <li><a target="_blank"
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| href="http://www.publicsphereproject.org/patterns/print-pattern.php?begin=98">Informal Learning Groups (98)</a></li>
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| <li><a target="_blank"
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| href="http://www.publicsphereproject.org/patterns/print-pattern.php?begin=108">Appropriating Technology (108)</a></li>
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| <li><a target="_blank"
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| href="http://www.publicsphereproject.org/patterns/print-pattern.php?begin=109">Control of Self Representation (109)</a></li>
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| <li><a target="_blank"
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| href="http://www.publicsphereproject.org/patterns/print-pattern.php?begin=125">Open Source Search Technology (125)</a></li>
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| <li><a target="_blank"
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| href="http://www.publicsphereproject.org/patterns/print-pattern.php?begin=127">Open Source Everything (127)</a></li>
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| </ul>�
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| The first pattern excerpted here is The Commons (David Bollier). This pattern, along with Civic Intelligence (Douglas Schuler) and The Good Life (Gary Chapman) are the only patterns in the Theory section, the first and most general of the pattern sections. We feel that these three patterns do a good job of showing the context, the challenges, and the responsibilities of being human in the 21st Century. In The Commons, David Bollier reminds us of the absolute importance of the commons, the "space" that we learn is much more than physical alone. This pattern, like the others, begins with the pattern number, the title, and the problem statement. | | The dynamic of that evolution depends on many factors. The evolution of technologies is one of them, but it is far from explaining everything, as the Venetian Arsenal example shows. Here the social consciousness, the social and political conflicts play a crucial role. The European wars of religion after the 16th century and the bourgeois revolutions where indirect or direct expressions of the conflict between the old feudal logic and the raising capitalistic one. |
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| | In the conflict you refer to about the management of Free/open software foundations, between "community-oriented" and "corporate-oriented" formats, we are witnessing the same kind of conflict between the old logic and the new. Its dynamic depends and will depend not only on material-technological realities but also on social and "political" struggles, at micro and macro scales. And things should become harsher when peer production will pretend to extend to the realm of material production. |
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| 2 The Commons
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| Problem. One of the biggest problems in contemporary life is the unchecked growth of market values as a way to govern resources and ourselves. This is resulting in the privatization and commodification, or "enclosure," of the commons. Resources that morally or legally belong to everyone are increasingly coming under the control of markets. Not only does enclosure result in higher prices and the need to ask for permission to use something previously available to all, it shifts ownership and control to private companies. The market efficiencies that businesses seek can be illusory, however, because they often depend on unacknowledged subsidies from the commons (e.g., discount access to public resources) and the displacement of costs onto the commons (pollution, social disruption, harm to future generations). Enclosure does not add value in the aggregate; it merely privatizes value at the expense of the common wealth.
| | You also wrote: |
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| The problem statement is followed by the context statement (not printed here) which discusses who might use the pattern and under what circumstances. The context statement is followed by the discussion which covers a broad range of issues including history of the pattern, how to use it, and what problems might come up when an organization uses the pattern.
| | "This is inevitable, as no free software project can survive in the long run |
| | without a core of developers being paid." |
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| Discussion. The commons insists that certain things should not be alienated — that is, sold and converted into money. Thus, it is inappropriate to express the value of a worker's life or an endangered species as a dollar sum in a cost-benefit analysis. It may be morally repugnant to sell off the naming rights of public institutions much as it is considered unacceptable to allow people to sell their bodies, babies, ova, or genes. … The commons allows us to talk about the need for open spaces that haven’t been turned into “property” available to all; if too much of that space — for example, scientific knowledge, musical works, or cultural symbols — is locked up through copyrights, patents, or contracts, it can greatly impede future creativity and progress. We are already seeing the effects of such enclosure in medical research as a result of overly broad patents on basic research.
| | Yes. As long as the material means of production (and thus the material means of consumption) remain under the capitalist logic governance, the peer production realities will be in a way or another limited. |
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| | (At a certain level, the problems to finance the 4th Oekonux Conference, or your personal difficulties to keep working the P2P Foundation while being obliged to work in order too feed your family are also materializations of that reality). |
| Increasingly the Internet is the host for countless self-organized commons such as free and open source software, social networking communities, Wikipedia, Craigslist, and Web sites for sharing photos, videos, and other creative work. One useful tool in creating these commons are creative commons licenses, which enable ordinary people to freely share their creative works while retaining copyrights for commercial purposes.
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| The public library and the land trust are familiar, highly effective types of commons. More people are starting to realize that public spaces like parks, community gardens, farmers’ markets, and festivals are also important to the economic and social health of a community. There is a dawning awareness that commons-based infrastructure like wireless Internet access is an important way to use a public resource, the airwaves, to help people connect with each other. | | The development of the present economic crisis should make more visible at a social scale the need to overcome the dominant logic. The "invisible hand" is paralyzing an increasing share of the material means of production while workers are made redundant and unsatisfied material needs explode. Let's hope that this evidence will help to develop the consciousness of the urgency to extend peer production principles to the material sphere. |
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| The pattern ends with a solution statement and a list of other patterns within the pattern language that it's related to. The patterns' solution statement solidifies the main points of the pattern. The statement here restates that using "the commons" as a new discourse is a useful way to reframe the public dialogue. Bollier believes that the "emerging commons sector … will provide benefits that corporations cannot supply: healthy ecosystems, economic security, stronger communities, and a participatory culture. And it will curb the corporate invasion of realms that we hold dear: nature, our minds, our food, and our democracy."
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| *****
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| Public Domain Characters (John Thomas and Douglas Schuler) is discussed in terms of a shared project. It builds on some of the insights of David Bollier's pattern, by asserting that certain core factors of humankind's legacy should not be killed off by unchecked "market forces." Insofar as our stories represent aspects of our real and imagined selves, from all epochs and regions, when our characters go extinct — or are commandeered by corporations, parts of our collective soul becomes extinct as well. Again, as with the other patterns, this pattern begins with its number, title, introductory graphic (not required), and problem statement.
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| 115 Public Domain Characters
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| Problem. Stories are an ancient and still powerful technique for people to create and share knowledge across temporal and geographical boundaries. Stories may be conceptualized as having three major dimensions: character, plot, and environment. Traditionally societies have used and shared all of these dimensions. Today, in an effort to make the rich and powerful yet richer and more powerful, the natural processes of creating, sharing, and building on stories have been subverted into a process of claiming the world of stories as private property. This limits artistic creativity and stunts the growth of collective wisdom.
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| The problem statement and context statement are followed by a discussion which offers suggestions and examples:
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| Civil society should establish a repository of characters who are available to all without charge. This could contain characters from our precorporate past as well as those of more recent vintage, such as Cat-Man (shown in the introductory graphic above), who was raised in Burma by a tigress but abandoned by the corporation that spawned him. Ultimately it could even include those now embargoed behind commercial contracts. Novelists could legally allow the inhabitants of the universes they created to be enlisted in others. Cartoonists such as Matt Groening could donate Homer Simpson or a new type of American everyman complete with voices and descriptions of where he lived and what he liked to do. Frustrated novelists could supply names and descriptions that their colleagues could borrow for their own work. However, it is not only artists and writers who benefit from having access to stories and the characters who inhabit them. Characters can serve as sources of inspiration for all; they can give us hope in dire times and serve as models for ethical, effective, or clever behavior. One use of characters is to serve as a kind of "board of directors" that we can use imaginatively to help look at our problems and proposed solutions from various perspectives. (See “IBM Research: Knowledge Socialization” undated.)
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| The Disney corporation may be the most prolific borrower of stories (including Aladdin, Atlantis, Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, Davy Crockett, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” Hercules, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Jungle Book, Oliver Twist, Pinocchio, Pocahontas, Robin Hood, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Three Musketeers, Treasure Island, and the Wind in the Willows) from the public domain. The number of stories Disney has added to the humankind's commonwealth is still at zero (thanks in part to U.S. legislation that granted Mickey Mouse another seventy-five years of service to the corporation).
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| The solution statement (not presented here) restates the importance of the issue and how the pattern can help solve the problems discussed.
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| *****
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| Over the next few months we hope to learn how the patterns are being used by people and organizations. This should help us see how to improve the process of using the patterns, via online and offline, facilitated and non-facilitated approaches. We are also transforming the web site to allow people and groups to develop their own pattern languages using existing as well as new patterns and to be able to supplement the patterns with examples and experiences.
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| We welcome your participation. We'd especially like to see the addition of new patterns that reflect your insights with respect to distributed creativity.
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| This book concentrates on communication as a crucial arena in the battle for equality and justice. Communication is key to any collective enterprise, and it is for that reason that we invite you to the communication revolution that is already yours to win. Our only request is that you acknowledge and take seriously your role as an active participant. This is a diffuse and distributed movement. It needs leaders and followers, and people in this work frequently shift in and out of both roles. Everybody is needed in this struggle as we work to liberate the voices, and the thoughts and actions, of people around the world as humankind lurches warily and ill prepared into the uncertainties of the century that has just begun."
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| References and Links
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| Alexander, Christoper Ishikawa, Sara and Silverstein, Murray (1977). A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
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| Knowledge Socialization (Undated). Prototypes. http://www.research.ibm.com/knowsoc/prototypes_index.html
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| Schuler, Douglas (2008). Liberating Voices: A Pattern Language for Communication Revolution. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
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| *Public Sphere Project, http://www.publicsphereproject.org/
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| * Liberating Voices! A Pattern Language for Communication Revolution (project), http://www.publicsphereproject.org/patterns/
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| Liberating Voices! A Pattern Language for Communication Revolution (book), http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11601
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In the sandbox you can play with wiki syntax and more.
You answered (11jan09):
"As free software moves from the margins to center stage, more and more
corporations adapt to the model, and pay programmers to do such parts of the
free software as needed for themselves, but they use the open licenses.
So these corporations compete, but also collaborate through the common
platform of free software.
For Linux, 75% of programmers are now paid by such corporations, which means
they have an increasing influence over the direction of development, have a
seat in the Foundations etc; (...)
The reality of the various projects is then strongly influenced by the governance model,
which can be controlled primarily by a community-oriented foundation, or by
a corporate-oriented format."
Some remarks about the existence of "hybrid forms" and about the dynamics of these forms.
The reality you describe is a hybrid social form of production, borrowing aspects from both systems, capitalism and P2P, or peer production. Using your definition of peer production (free and open input; free volunteering production; universally available output), one can say that there are hybrid aspects at the three moments of the process: 1. input, raw material is partly capitalistic as the computers, the offices, etc. are privately owned by the corporations (as IBM), but, for software production, free/open software is also a "raw material"; 2. production is not based on free volunteering, but some aspects of the production are new, non capitalistic, as the cooperation between programmers of antagonistic corporations; 3. the output can be oriented by corporations more towards their own needs (commercial management software, for example) but the output remains universally available.
The "social networking" also generates hybrid forms. If you take MySpace or YouTube: 1. the input is partly capitalistic (the infrastructures and the financing by advertising), but for the rest most of the input (videos, blogs, etc.) are free and open; 2. the production process is based partially on capitalist wage relations for the infrastructure management, but the rest is based on free volunteering; 3. the output is supposed to be universally available but corporations impose limits and try to extend these limits, provoking open conflicts with users/producers. (See for example: http://bang.calit2.net/tts/2008/12/31/why-i-am-deleting-my-myspace-account-and-you-should-too/)
Hybrid forms also developed in the past transitions between modes of production. Between the 6th and the 10h century, many landlords, including the Church, had simultaneously slaves and serfs (or "coloni" which were the first form of serfs). Between the 12th century and the 19th century many hybrid forms developed especially in the cities where capitalism developed within feudal relationships.
The evolution of these forms has been often slow, with periods of acceleration but also periods of recession. The example of the Arsenal of Venice, which in the early 16th century employed some 16,000 people and could produce almost a ship per day using production-lines, something not seen again after until the industrial revolution, illustrates how non-linear this evolution can be.
The dynamic of that evolution depends on many factors. The evolution of technologies is one of them, but it is far from explaining everything, as the Venetian Arsenal example shows. Here the social consciousness, the social and political conflicts play a crucial role. The European wars of religion after the 16th century and the bourgeois revolutions where indirect or direct expressions of the conflict between the old feudal logic and the raising capitalistic one.
In the conflict you refer to about the management of Free/open software foundations, between "community-oriented" and "corporate-oriented" formats, we are witnessing the same kind of conflict between the old logic and the new. Its dynamic depends and will depend not only on material-technological realities but also on social and "political" struggles, at micro and macro scales. And things should become harsher when peer production will pretend to extend to the realm of material production.
You also wrote:
"This is inevitable, as no free software project can survive in the long run
without a core of developers being paid."
Yes. As long as the material means of production (and thus the material means of consumption) remain under the capitalist logic governance, the peer production realities will be in a way or another limited.
(At a certain level, the problems to finance the 4th Oekonux Conference, or your personal difficulties to keep working the P2P Foundation while being obliged to work in order too feed your family are also materializations of that reality).
The development of the present economic crisis should make more visible at a social scale the need to overcome the dominant logic. The "invisible hand" is paralyzing an increasing share of the material means of production while workers are made redundant and unsatisfied material needs explode. Let's hope that this evidence will help to develop the consciousness of the urgency to extend peer production principles to the material sphere.