Richard Barbrook on Tue, 20 Oct 1998 10:27:13 +0200 (MET DST)


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


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

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<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

George Katsiaficas, The Imagination of the New Left: a global analysis of
1968, South End Press, Boston Massachusetts 1987
Kevin Kelly, 'New Rules for the New Economy: twelve dependable principles
for thriving in a turbulent world', Wired, September 1997

Neil Kleinman, 'Don't Fence Me In: Copyright, Property and Technology' in
Lance Strate, Ron Jacobson and Stephanie Gibson  (eds.), Communications and
Cyberspace: social interaction in an electronic environment, Hampton Press,
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Bernard Lang, 'Free Software For All: freeware and the issue of
intellectual property', Le Monde Diplomatique, January 1998,
<www.monde-diplomatique.fr/md/en/1998/01/12freesoft.html>

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<www.salonmagazine.com/21st/feature/1998/03/cov_20feature.html>

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<www.salonmagazine.com/21st/feature/1998/04/cov_14feature.html>

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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
Next-Generation Communicator Source Code Available Free on the Net', Press
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

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