<nettime> The Hi-Tech Gift Economy (1/2)

[richard@hrc.wmin.ac.uk (Richard Barbrook)]

THE HI-TECH GIFT ECONOMY

Richard Barbrook

'...when...[Ben Slivka] suggested that Microsoft consider giving away its
browser, a la Netscape, Gates exploded and called him a "communist"...' (1)

THE LEGACY OF THE NEW LEFT

The Net is haunted by the disappointed hopes of the Sixties. Because this
new technology symbolises another period of rapid change, many contemporary
commentators look back to the stalled revolution of thirty years ago to
explain what is happening now. Most famously, the editors of Wired
continually pay homage to the New Left values of individual freedom and
cultural dissent in their coverage of the Net. However, in their
Californian ideology, these ideals of their youth are now going to be
realised through technological determinism and free markets. The politics
of ecstasy have been replaced by the economics of greed.  (2)

Ironically, the New Left emerged in response to the 'sell-out' of an
earlier generation. By the end of the Fifties, the heroes of the
anti-fascist struggle had become the guardians of Cold War orthodoxies.
Even within the arts, avant-garde experimentation had been transformed into
fashionable styles of consumer society. The adoption of innovative styles
and new techniques was no longer subversive. Frustrated with the
recuperation of their parents' generation, young people started looking for
new methods of cultural and social activism. Above all, the Situationists
proclaimed that the epoch of the political vanguard and the artistic
avant-garde had passed. Instead of following the intellectual elite,
everyone should instead determine their own destinies.

'The situation is...made to be lived by its constructors. The role played
by a passive..."public" must constantly diminish, while that played by
those who cannot be called actors but rather..."livers" must steadily
increase.' (3)

These New Left activists wanted to create opportunities for everyone to
express their own hopes, dreams and desires. The Hegelian 'grand narrative'
would culminate in the supersession of all mediations separating people
from each other. Yet, despite their Hegelian modernism, the Situationists
believed that the utopian future had been prefigured in the tribal past.
For example, tribes in Polynesia organised themselves around the potlatch:
the circulation of gifts. Within these societies, this gift economy bound
people together into tribes and encouraged cooperation between different
tribes. In contrast with the atomisation and alienation of bourgeois
society, potlatches required intimate contacts and emotional authenticity.
(4) According to the Situationists, the tribal gift economy demonstrated
that individuals could successfully live together without needing either
the state or the market. After the New Left revolution, people would
recreate this idyllic condition: anarcho-communism.  (5)

However, the Situationists could not escape from the elitist tradition of
the avant-garde. Despite their invocation of Hegel and Marx, the
Situationists remained haunted by Nietzsche and Lenin. As in earlier
generations, the rhetoric of mass participation simultaneously justified
the leadership of the intellectual elite. Anarcho-communism was therefore
transformed into the 'mark of distinction' for the New Left vanguard. As a
consequence, the giving of gifts was seen as the absolute antithesis of
market competition. There could be no compromise between tribal
authenticity and bourgeois alienation. After the social revolution, the
potlatch would completely supplant the commodity. (6)

In the two decades following the May '68 revolution, this purist vision of
anarcho-communism inspired community media activists. For instance, the
radical 'free radio' stations created by New Left militants in France and
Italy refused all funding from state and commercial sources. Instead, these
projects tried to survive through donations of time and money from their
supporters. Emancipatory media supposedly could only be produced within the
gift economy. (7)  During the late-Seventies, pro-situ attitudes were
further popularised by the punk movement. Although rapidly commercialised,
this sub-culture did encourage its members to form their own bands, make
their own fashions and publish their own fanzines. This participatory ethic
still shapes innovatory music and radical politics today. From raves to
environmental protests, the spirit of May '68 lives on within the DIY
culture of the Nineties. The gift is supposedly about to replace the
commodity.  (8)

THE NET AS REALLY EXISTING ANARCHO-COMMUNISM

Despite originally being invented for the U.S. military, the Net was
constructed around the gift economy. The Pentagon initially did try to
restrict the unofficial uses of its computer network. However, it soon
became obvious that the Net could only be successfully developed by letting
its users build the system for themselves. Within the scientific community,
the gift economy has long been the primary method of socialising labour.
Funded by the state or by donations, scientists don't have to turn their
intellectual work directly into marketable commodities. Instead, research
results are publicised by 'giving a paper' at specialist conferences and by
'contributing an article' to professional journals. The collaboration of
many different academics is made possible through the free distribution of
information.  (9)

Within small tribal societies, the circulation of gifts established close
personal bonds between people. In contrast, the academic gift economy is
used by intellectuals who are spread across the world. Despite the
anonymity of the modern version of the gift economy, academics acquire
intellectual respect from each other through citations in articles and
other forms of public acknowledgement. Scientists therefore can only obtain
personal recognition for their individual efforts by openly collaborating
with each other through the academic gift economy. Although research is
being increasingly commercialised, the giving away of findings remains the
most efficient method of solving common problems within a particular
scientific discipline.  (10)

>From its earliest days, the free exchange of information has therefore been
firmly embedded within the technologies and social mores of cyberspace.
(11) When New Left militants proclaimed that 'information wants to be free'
back in the Sixties, they were preaching to computer scientists who were
already living within the academic gift economy. Above all, the founders of
the Net never bothered to protect intellectual property within
computer-mediated communications. On the contrary, they were developing
these new technologies to advance their careers inside the academic gift
economy. Far from wanting to enforce copyright, the pioneers of the Net
tried to eliminate all barriers to the distribution of scientific research.
Technically, every act within cyberspace involves copying material from one
computer to another. Once the first copy of a piece of information is
placed on the Net, the cost of making each extra copy is almost zero. The
architecture of the system presupposes that multiple copies of documents
can easily be cached around the network. As Tim Berners-Lee - the inventor
of the Web - points out:

'Concepts of intellectual property, central to our culture, are not
expressed in a way which maps onto the abstract information space. In an
information space, we can consider the authorship of materials, and their
perception; but...there is a need for the underlying infrastructure to be
able to make copies simply for reasons of [technical] efficiency and
reliability. The concept of "copyright" as expressed in terms of copies
made makes little sense.'  (12)

Within the commercial creative industries, advances in digital reproduction
are feared for making the 'piracy' of copyright material ever easier. For
the owners of intellectual property, the Net can only make the situation
worse. In contrast, the academic gift economy welcomes technologies which
improve the availability of data. Users should always be able to obtain and
manipulate information with the minimum of impediments. The design of the
Net therefore assumes that intellectual property is technically and
socially obsolete. (13)

In France, the nationalised telephone monopoly has accustomed people to
paying for the on-line services provided by Minitel. In contrast, the Net
remains predominantly a gift economy even though the system has expanded
far beyond the university. From scientists through hobbyists to the general
public, the charmed circle of users was slowly built up through the
adhesion of many localised networks to an agreed set of protocols.
Crucially, the common standards of the Net include social conventions as
well as technical rules. The giving and receiving of information without
payment is almost never questioned. Although the circulation of gifts
doesn't necessarily create emotional obligations between individuals,
people are still willing to donate their information to everyone else on
the Net. Even selfish reasons encourage people to become anarcho-communists
within cyberspace. By adding their own presence, every user contributes to
the collective knowledge accessible to those already on-line. In return,
each individual has potential access to all the information made available
by others within the Net. Everyone takes far more out of the Net than they
can ever give away as an individual.

'...the Net is far from altruistic, or it wouldn't work... Because it takes
as much effort to distribute one copy of an original creation as a
million...you never lose from letting your product free...as long as you
are compensated in return... What a miracle, then, that you receive not one
thing in value in exchange - indeed there is no explicit act of exchange at
all - but millions of unique goods made by others!' (14)

Despite the commercialisation of cyberspace, the self-interest of Net users
ensures that the hi-tech gift economy continues to flourish. For instance,
musicians are using the Net for the digital distribution of their
recordings to each other. By giving away their own work to this network
community, individuals get free access to a far larger amount of music in
return. Not surprisingly, the music business is worried about the increased
opportunities for the 'piracy' of copyrighted recordings over the Net.
Sampling, DJ-ing and mixing are already blurring property rights within
dance music. However, the greatest threat to the commercial music
corporations comes from the flexibility and spontaneity of the hi-tech gift
economy. After it is completed, a new track can quickly be made freely
available to a global audience. If someone likes the tune, they can
download it for personal listening, use it as a sample or make their own
remix. Out of the free circulation of information, musicians can form
friendships, work together and inspire each other.

'It's all about doing it for yourself. Better than punk.' (15)

Within the developed world, most politicians and corporate leaders believe
that the future of capitalism lies in the commodification of information.
Over the last few decades, intellectual property rights have been steadily
tightened through new national laws and international agreements. Even
human genetic material can now be patented. (16) Yet, at the 'cutting edge'
of the emerging information society, money-commodity relations play a
secondary role to those created by a really existing form of
anarcho-communism. For most of its users, the Net is somewhere to work,
play, love, learn and discuss with other people. Unrestricted by physical
distance, they collaborate with each other without the direct mediation of
money or politics. Unconcerned about copyright, they give and receive
information without thought of payment. In the absence of states or markets
to mediate social bonds, network communities are instead formed through the
mutual obligations created by gifts of time and ideas.

'This informal, unwritten social contract is supported by a blend of
strong-tie and weak-tie relationships among people who have a mixture of
motives and ephemeral affiliations. It requires one to give something, and
enables one to receive something. ...I find that the help I receive far
outweighs the energy I expend helping others; a marriage of altruism and
self-interest.'  (17)

On the Net, enforcing copyright payments represents the imposition of
scarcity on a technical system designed to maximise the dissemination of
information. The protection of intellectual property stops all users having
access to every source of knowledge. Commercial secrecy prevents people
from helping each other to solve common problems. The inflexibility of
information commodities inhibits the efficient manipulation of digital
data. In contrast, the technical and social structure of the Net has been
developed to encourage open cooperation among its participants. As an
everyday activity, users are building the system together. Engaged in
'interactive creativity', they send emails, take part in listservers,
contribute to newsgroups, participate within on-line conferences and
produce websites. (18) Lacking copyright protection, information can be
freely adapted to suit the users' needs. Within the hi-tech gift economy,
people successfully work together through '...an open social process
involving evaluation, comparison and collaboration.' (19)

The hi-tech gift economy is even at the forefront of software development.
For instance, Bill Gates admits that Microsoft's biggest competitor in the
provision of web servers comes from the Apache program. (20) Instead of
being marketed by a commercial company, this program is shareware. (21)
Like similar projects, this virtual machine is being continually developed
by its techie users. Because its source code is not protected by copyright,
the program can be modified, amended and improved by anyone with the
appropriate programming skills. When someone does make a contribution to a
shareware project, the gift of their labour is rewarded by recognition
within the community of user-developers.

The inflexibility of commodified software programs is compounded by their
greater unreliability. Even Microsoft can't mobilise the amount of labour
given to some successful shareware programs by their devotees. Without
enough techies looking at a program, all its bugs can never be found. (22)
The greater social and technical efficiency of anarcho-communism is
therefore inhibiting the commercial take-over of the Net. Shareware
programs are now beginning to threaten the core product of the Microsoft
empire: the Windows operating system. Starting from the original software
program by Linus Torvalds, a community of user-developers are together
building their own non-proprietary operating system: Linux. For the first
time, Windows has a serious competitor. Anarcho-communism is now the only
alternative to the dominance of monopoly capitalism.

'Linux is subversive. Who could have thought even five years ago that a
world-class operating system could coalesce as if by magic out of part-time
hacking by several thousand developers scattered all over the planet,
connected only by the tenuous strands of the Internet?' (23)

THE 'NEW ECONOMY' IS A MIXED ECONOMY

Following the implosion of the Soviet Union, almost nobody still believes
in the inevitable victory of communism. On the contrary, large numbers of
people accept that the Hegelian 'end of history' has culminated in American
neo-liberal capitalism. (24) Yet, at exactly this moment in time, a really
existing form of anarcho-communism is being constructed within the Net,
especially by people living in the USA. When they go on-line, almost
everyone spends most of their time participating within the gift economy
rather than engaging in market competition. Because users receive much more
information than they can ever give away, there is no popular clamour for
imposing the equal exchange of the marketplace on the Net. Once again, the
'end of history' for capitalism appears to be communism.

For the hi-tech gift economy was not an immanent possibility in every age.
On the contrary, the market and the state could only be surpassed in this
specific sector at this particular historical moment. Crucially, people
need sophisticated media, computing and telecommunications technologies to
participate within the hi-tech gift economy. A manually-operated press
produced copies which were relatively expensive, limited in numbers and
impossible to alter without recopying. After generations of technological
improvements, the same quantity of text on the Net costs almost nothing to
circulate, can be copied as needed and can be remixed at will. In addition,
individuals need both time and money to participate within the hi-tech gift
economy. While a large number of the world's population still lives in
poverty, people within the industrialised countries have steadily reduced
their hours of employment and increased their wealth over a long period of
social struggles and economic reorganisations. By working for money during
some of the week, people can now enjoy the delights of giving gifts at
other times. Only at this particular historical moment have the technical
and social conditions of the metropolitan countries developed sufficiently
for the emergence of digital anarcho-communism.   (25)

'Capital thus works towards its own dissolution as the form dominating
production.' (26)

The New Left anticipated the emergence of the hi-tech gift economy. People
could collaborate with each other without needing either markets or states.
However, the New Left had a purist vision of DIY culture: the gift was the
absolute antithesis of the commodity. Yet, anarcho-communism only exists in
a compromised form on the Net. Contrary to the ethical-aesthetic vision of
the New Left, money-commodity and gift relations are not just in conflict
with each other, but also co-exist in symbiosis. On the one hand, each
method of working does threaten to supplant the other. The hi-tech gift
economy heralds the end of private property in 'cutting edge' areas of the
economy. The digital capitalists want to privatise the shareware programs
and enclose the social spaces built through voluntary effort. The potlatch
and the commodity remain irreconcilable.

Yet, on the other hand, the gift economy and the commercial sector can only
expand through mutual collaboration within cyberspace. The free circulation
of information between users relies upon the capitalist production of
computers, software and telecommunications. The profits of commercial Net
companies depend upon increasing numbers of people participating within the
hi-tech gift economy. For instance, Netscape has tried to realise the
opportunities opened up by such interdependence from its foundation. Under
threat from the Microsoft monopoly, the company has to ally itself with the
hacker community to avoid being overwhelmed. It started by distributing its
web browser as a gift. Today the source code of this program is freely
available and the development of products for Linux has become a top
priority. The commercial survival of Netscape depends upon successfully
collaborating with hackers from the hi-tech gift economy. Anarcho-communism
is now sponsored by corporate capital. (27)

'"Hi there Mr CEO [Chief Executive Officer] - tell me, do you have any
strategic problem right now that is bigger than whether Microsoft is going
to either crush you or own your soul in a few years? No? You don't? OK,
well, listen carefully then. You cannot survive against Bill Gates [by]
playing Bill Gates' game. To thrive, or even survive, you're going to have
to change the rules..."' (28)

The purity of the digital DIY culture is also compromised by the political
system. The state isn't just the potential censor and regulator of the Net.
At the same time, the public sector provides essential support for the
hi-tech gift economy. In the past, the founders of the Net never bothered
to incorporate intellectual property within the system because their wages
were funded from taxation. In the future, governments will have to impose
universal service provisions upon commercial telecommunications companies
if all sections of society are to have the opportunity to circulate free
information. Furthermore, when access is available, many people use the Net
for political purposes, including lobbying their political representatives.
Within the digital mixed economy, anarcho-communism is also symbiotic with
the state.

This miscegenation occurs almost everywhere within cyberspace. For
instance, an on-line conference site can be constructed as a labour of
love, but still be partially funded by advertising and public money.
Crucially, this hybridisation of working methods is not confined within
particular projects. When they're on-line, people constantly pass from one
form of social activity to another. For instance, in one session, a Net
user could first purchase some clothes from an e-commerce catalogue, then
look for information about education services from the local council's site
and then contribute some thoughts to an on-going discussion on a listserver
for fiction-writers. Without even consciously having to think about it,
this person would have successively been a consumer in a market, a citizen
of a state and an anarcho-communist within a gift economy. Far from
realising theory in its full purity, working methods on the Net are
inevitably compromised. The 'New Economy' is an advanced form of social
democracy.  (29)

At the end of the twentieth century, anarcho-communism is no longer
confined to avant-garde intellectuals. What was once revolutionary has now
become banal. As Net access grows, more and more ordinary people are
circulating free information across the Net. Crucially, their potlatches
are not attempts to regain a lost emotional authenticity. Far from having
any belief in the revolutionary ideals of May '68, the overwhelming
majority of people participate within the hi-tech gift economy for entirely
pragmatic reasons. Sometimes they buy commodities on-line and access
state-funded services. However, they usually prefer to circulate gifts
amongst each other. Net users will always obtain much more than will ever
be contributed in return. By giving away something which is well-made, they
will gain recognition from those who download their work. For most people,
the gift economy is simply the best method of collaborating together in
cyberspace. Within the mixed economy of the Net, anarcho-communism has
become an everyday reality.

'We must rediscover the pleasure of giving: giving because you have so
much. What beautiful and priceless potlatches the affluent society will see
- whether it likes it or not! - when the exuberance of the younger
generation discovers the pure gift.' (30)

---
This article is a remixed extract from 'The Holy Fools: a critique of the
avant-garde in the age of the Net' which will be published by Verso Books
in early next year.
---
FOOTNOTES

(1) James Wallace, Overdrive, page 266.
 
(2) For a critique of the neo-liberal politics of Wired, see Richard
Barbrook and Andy Cameron, 'The Californian Ideology'.
 
(3) Guy Debord, 'Report on the Construction of Situations and on the
International Situationist Tendency's Conditions of Organisation and
Action', page 25.
  
(4) The Situationists discovered the tribal gift economy in Marcel Mauss,
The Gift.
  
(5) For the historical antecedents of New Left anarcho-communism, see
Richard Gombin, Les Origins du Gauchisme, pages 99-151. For its later
influence on the new social movements, see George Katsiaficas, The
Imagination of the New Left, pages 204-212.
  
(6) For instance, in their famous analysis of the 1965 Watts riots, the
Situationists praised looting as the revolutionary supersession of
money-commodity relations: '...instead of being eternally pursued in the
rat race of alienated labour and increasing but unmet social needs, real
desires begin to be expressed in festival, in playful self-assertion, in
the potlatch of destruction.' Situationist International, 'The Decline and
Fall of the Spectacle-Commodity Economy', page 155.
  
(7) See John Downing, Radical Media.
  
(8) DIY stands for 'do-it-yourself'. This slogan is used to emphasise the
need for people to tackle social problems through collective direct action
rather than to wait for someone else to solve them. See Elaine Brass,
Sophie Poklewski Koziell and Denise Searle, Gathering Force.
  
(9) See Warren O. Hagstrom, 'Gift Giving as an Organisational Principle
in Science', page 29.
  
(10) This is why the increasing role of private funding can hamper as
well as help academic research. See David Noble, 'Digital Diploma Mills'.
  
(11) See Mark Geise, 'From ARPAnet to the Internet', pages 126-132.
  
(12) Tim Berners-Lee, 'The World Wide Web: Past, Present and Future', page 11.
  
(13) See Neil Kleinman, 'Don't Fence Me In: Copyright, Property and
Technology'.
  
(14) Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, 'Cooking Pot Markets', page 10.
  
(15) Steve Elliot of Slug Oven quoted in Karlin Lillington, 'No! It's Not
OK, Computer', page 3. Also see Andrew Leonard, 'Mutiny on the Net'.
  
(16) For instance, one of the major components of the 1993 Uruguay Round
of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was increased
protection for patents and copyrights, especially with agriculture and
medicine, see John Frow, 'Information as Gift and Commodity'.
  
(17) Howard Rheingold, The Virtual Community, pages 57-58.
  
(18) Tim Berners-Lee, 'Realising the Full Potential of the Web', page 5.
  
(19) Bernard Lang, 'Free Software For All', page 3.
  
(20) Keith W. Porterfield, 'Information Wants to be Valuable', page 2.
  
(21) Shareware is also often known as freeware or open source software. All
these names emphasise that the program is a gift to anyone on the Net,
especially those who have the skills to improve its code. See the use of
these terms in Douglas Rushkoff, 'Free Lessons in Innovation'; The Free
Software Foundation, 'What is Free Software?'; and Eric C. Raymond,
'Homesteading the Noosphere'.
  
(22) See Andrew Leonard, 'Let My Software Go!'.
  
(23) Eric C. Raymond, 'The Cathedral and the Bazaar', page 1.
  
(24) See Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man.
  
(25) 'Gift cultures are adaptations not to scarcity but to abundance.
They arise in populations that do not have significant material-scarcity
problems with survival goods.' Eric C. Raymond, 'Homesteading the
Noosphere', page 9.
  
(26) Karl Marx, Grundrisse, page 700.
  
(27) See Netscape Communications Corporation, 'Netscape Announces Plans
to Make Next-Generation Communicator Source Code Available Free on the
Net'.
  
(28) Eric Raymond describing his pitch on behalf of shareware to
commercial software companies in Andrew Leonard, 'Let My Software Go!',
page 8. Bill Gates doesn't just believe that free software is 'communism',
but even allowing other companies to have access to Microsoft products
before their release date! See James Wallace, Overdrive, page 57.
  
(29) Wired uses 'The New Economy' as a synonym for its neo-liberal
fantasies about the Net. See Kevin Kelly, 'New Rules for the New Economy'.
  
(30) Raoul Vaneigem, The Revolution of Everyday Life, page 70.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, 'The Californian Ideology', Science as
Culture, No. 26, Vol. 6 Part 1, 1996, pp. 44-72,
<ma.hrc.wmin.ac.uk/ma.theory.4.2.db>

Tim Berners-Lee, 'The World Wide Web: Past, Present and Future',
<www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/1996/ppf.html>

Tim Berners-Lee, 'Realising the Full Potential of the Web',
<www.w3.org//1998/02/Potential.html>

Elaine Brass and Sophie Poklewski Koziell with Denise Searle (ed.),
Gathering Force: DIY culture - radical action for those tired of waiting,
Big Issue, London 1997

Guy Debord, 'Report on the Construction of Situations and on the
International Situationist Tendency's Conditions of Organisation and
Action' in Ken Knabb (ed.), Situationist International Anthology, Bureau of
Public Secrets, Berkeley CA 1981

John Downing, Radical Media: the political experience of alternative
communication, South End Press, Boston Massachusetts 1984

Free Software Foundation, 'What is Free Software?',
<www.fsf.org/philosophy/free-sw.html>

John Frow, 'Information as Gift and Commodity', New Left Review, 219,
September/October 1996

Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, Penguin, London 1992

Mark Geise, 'From ARPAnet to the Internet: a cultural clash and its
implications in framing the debate on the information superhighway' in
Lance Strate, Ron Jacobson and Stephanie B. Gibson (eds.), Communications
and Cyberspace: social interaction in an electronic environment, Hampton
Press, New Jersey 1996

Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, 'Cooking Pot Markets: an economic model for the trade
in free goods and services on the Internet', <dxm.org/tcok/cookingpot/>

Richard Gombin, Les Origins du Gauchisme, Editions du Seuil, Paris 1971

Warren O. Hagstrom, 'Gift Giving as an Organisational Principle in Science'
in Barry Barnes and David Edge, Science in Context: readings in the
sociology of science, The Open University, Milton Keynes 1982

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1968, South End Press, Boston Massachusetts 1987
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for thriving in a turbulent world', Wired, September 1997

Neil Kleinman, 'Don't Fence Me In: Copyright, Property and Technology' in
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intellectual property', Le Monde Diplomatique, January 1998,
<www.monde-diplomatique.fr/md/en/1998/01/12freesoft.html>

Andrew Leonard, 'Mutiny on the Net',
<www.salonmagazine.com/21st/feature/1998/03/cov_20feature.html>

Andrew Leonard, 'Let My Software Go!',
<www.salonmagazine.com/21st/feature/1998/04/cov_14feature.html>

Karlin Lillington, 'No! It's Not OK, Computer', The Guardian, On-Line
Section, 6th April 1998

Karl Marx, Grundrisse, Penguin, London 1973

Marcel Mauss, The Gift: the form and reason for exchange in archaic
societies, Routledge, London 1990

Netscape Communications Corporation, 'Netscape Announces Plans to Make
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Release, 22nd January 1998,
<www.netscape.com/newsref/pr/newsrelease558.html>

David Noble, 'Digital Diploma Mills: the automation of higher education',
<www.factory.org/nettime/archive/1689.html>

Keith W. Porterfield, 'Information Wants to be Valuable: a report from the
first O'Reilly Perl conference', <www.netaction.org/articles/freesoft.html>

Eric C. Raymond, 'The Cathedral and the Bazaar',
<sagan.earthspace.net/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar>

Eric C. Raymond, 'Homesteading the Noosphere',
<sagan.earthspace.net/~esr/writings/homesteading/homesteading.txt>Howard
Rheingold, The Virtual Community: finding connection in a computerised
world, Secker & Warburg, London 1994

Douglas Rushkoff, 'Free Lessons in Innovation', The Guardian, On-Line
Section, 9th April 1998

Situationist International, 'The Decline and Fall of the
Spectacle-Commodity Economy' in Ken Knabb (ed.), Situationist International
Anthology, Bureau of Public Secrets, Berkeley CA 1981

Raoul Vaneigem, The Revolution of Everyday Life, Practical Paradise, London 1972

James Wallace, Overdrive: Bill Gates and the Race to Control Cyberspace,
John Wiley, New York 1997

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Richard Barbrook
Hypermedia Research Centre
School of Communications, Design & Media
University of Westminster
Watford Road
Northwick Park
HARROW HA1 3TP

http://www.hrc.wmin.ac.uk/

+44 (0)171-911-5000 x 4590

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