ed phillips on Sat, 7 Jun 1997 04:20:55 +0200 (MET DST) |
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<nettime> print, skim, devour? |
This is too long for prime time but not long enough to get into the complexities and specifics that tbyfield so wisely reccomends. Friday End of week June but gift economies don't sleep--Published this week on Rewired. anti-copyright 1997 all rights freely granted x-post. save your eyes and print it, just scan or devour it all. It's free, it's out here, but you're going to have to dig for it. You are going to have to give something away in order to receive something back. You have to participate for it to be real. A gift economy. The internet is still a "gift economy," where the philanthropic gestures of large institutions compete for attention with a blizzard of more idiosyncratic, and independent movements. Those more idiosyncratic and independent movements, fueled by obsession, frustration, or love, are where life on the nets resides. You wouldn't know anything was happening unless you were hooked in, unless you were participating, offering something yourself. It would be overwhelming or meaningless if you weren't oriented by informal networks, links, and emails. As far as most are concerned, there is a blizzard, a white-out, of information on the nets. All but the most intrepid are numbed by this blizzard of information. You won't go out into the blizzard unless you fancy yourself some kind of Admiral Perry or unless you have cohorts or maps, unless you are a native. Professionalism hasn't come to the nets just yet, much to the chagrin of the institutions and the entrepreneurs. The New Philanthropists, the would-be commercial presences, are the missionaries of the nets. The incorrigible natives are now accepting well-crafted hand-outs from the missionaries. The missionaries are hoping that the natives will learn the value of their brands and they are hoping that the natives will begin to participate in a money economy of sorts. Professionalism will follow charity. The natives of the nets are particularly incorrigible because they "tribalized" the nets as a way to escape the emptiness of their own advanced money economies. We know the story only too well, never mind the catchwords we use to describe "the context of no context." Instead of replaying the over familiar story of plebeianized, rationalized, and now completely tautologous, advanced money economies and their media, I just want to touch on the possibility that thoughtful writing on the nets is a gift economy. A difference. Tracing out that difference requires a reversal of all the instincts of market conscious critics, artists, and readers. "What do you mean? Where is the Business Model? How could you write for free? What have you invested in the writing or the reading of free words?" It's not real if it doesn't have a price tag or a price of entry. The price validates the material. Unless you are one of the incorrigible. Anatomy of the incorrigible net native: You scan the first few lines or just the header, or like some data monster, take big gulps of almost all the messages or posts on a board or newsgroup or your email. You are willing to scan or surf through a lot noise to get some music. You might keep some quotes from or check the references of mentioned in an interesting piece of writing. You might be active in a number of places on the nets in conversation or trade. You might x-post an interesting piece of writing or art. All of it a gift economy. There are loosely connected networks of people out here, "communities" on the nets. "Communities" on the nets seem more particular instances of dialogue or at least dialogical thinking than communities. I would not even use the word, but it often comes up when the gift economies of the nets are mentioned. I want to register that I'm aware of the use of the word but skeptical of it's application to describe information trading on the nets. Community is one of the words that we use to describe a state that we are no longer in, one we'd like to return to, like the phrase "gift economy," a way of describing social interaction before the profit motive ruled. A look in the rear view mirror. The very term "gift economy" was a self-conscious look in the rear view mirror, created by anthropologists who wanted to critique the calculated efficiency and accumulations of Industrial era society. Marcel Mauss coined the term in 1923 to describe the Potlatch ceremonies of the Northwest Coast tribes. One tribe called their ceremonies "killing wealth." A wholly alien logic suffused these ceremonies. There was no "innate" need to acquire but a need to lose, to give away. The ruinous outlays and exhuberant giving of these ceremonies baffled and embarrassed thrifty European settlers and traders. Canada imposed laws on the natives, in an attempt to get them to adapt to industry and profit, to civilization and christianity. The incorrigible natives resisted. Until they were "assimilated" in the 30's. Some pockets of resistance survived until revivals emerged in the 70's. They now have their own websites. Why does the proliferation of free content on the nets baffle so many of us so much? For me, its worth repeating Theodor Adorno's remark about the incomprehensibility if not the impossibility of giving, or a gift economy, in our prevailing cultural climate. Adorno: "Violation of the exchange principle has something nonsensical and implausible about it; here and there even children eye the giver suspiciously, as if the gift were merely a trick to sell them brushes or soap." He goes on:" Instead we have charity, administered beneficence." The fragility and vulnerability of these new information economies seems part of the price of giving. Writing in this way becomes very personal. Adorno again: "Real giving has its joy in imagining the joy of the receiver. It means choosing, expending time, going out of one's way, thinking of the other as a subject: the opposite of distraction." Where this gift economy resides, in the torn edges where we negotiate our own personal economies, we get an inflow of vitality, a chance for dialogue and the dialogical. An ethics of citation keeps these epiphenomenal economies up and circulating. Citation is a currency that allows free, x-posted messages to keep a value and find readers. If the surfeit of information on the nets is deterring you from giving your storehouse away, here's more of Adorno: "Even if amidst superfluity, the gift were superfluous--and this is a lie, privately as much as socially, for there is no one for whom imagination could not discover what would delight him utterly--people who no longer gave would be in need of giving." Towards further conversation and dialogue, freely given. --ed phillips The real meat. for you true potlatchers. take a bite out a this: freely given scholarship on Adorno. --- # distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@icf.de and "info nettime" in the msg body # URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/ contact: nettime-owner@icf.de