Greetings Economists, On Mar 12, 2006, at 9:39 AM, Sandwichman wrote:
It seems to me that with the network properties of human knowledge being essentially feral, it becomes necessary for the hierarchy to intervene and substitute for that network structure a gated surrogate. Again, no top-down command is necessary to effect such a substitution. As long a preponderance of the people occupying privileged nodes in the hierarchy simply behave to preserve their own positional advantage, the tame network can be imposed.
Doyle, In a very abstract sense I think you describing class. Rather answer this directly here I'll go to another quote to include that with my answer. On Mar 12, 2006, at 9:39 AM, Sandwichman wrote: The key to overturning this structure is NOT discursive, although discourse remains indispensable for transmitting the key. The key, if I may introduce an as yet undefined metaphor into this discussion, could best be characterized as rhythmic or harmonic (or perhaps as an interaction of the two -- as "musical"). Doyle, What's odd about this is in a way you echo my own direction in this. However, your point seems abstract compared to how I would say this. What I am trying to do is ground my view so it makes sense in a practical way. This is why I got excited the other day with Sabri's self description as not a rationalist. Discourse is shaped more or less in history by the linear nature of text production. The way we grasp knowledge of class or of social structure is directly related to how knowledge production allows us to distribute and use knowledge. In that sense printing and other sequential forms of knowledge production don't capture network properties 'realistically'. So your metaphorical allusion above is to some obscure common harmony in society to defeat the 'gatekeepers' reflects my sense that network properties lie outside how we think of knowledge production now. They are in a sense as you portray them 'obscured' by how we go about say creating small journals of elite information production. It's perfectly clear the journals are not egalitarian (lacking open network properties) and the chief tool to keep it that way is the gatekeeper process. The gatekeeper concept is really a place holder for the larger concept derived from linear methods of knowledge production that networked knowledge can't compete on the scale of production with network knowledge. The drive in socialist communities is the network production of knowledge to equalize the process of knowledge production. So in effect if we look at 1917 the communist sincerely wanted to build a 'socialist' society, but the production of automated networked information lay over the horizon. Computing allows discovery of those elements of human 'knowledge' production that were not linearized, but network production (which I call face to face knowledge production or small scale language like knowledge production communist relied upon). Hence on a grand scale networked automation would address the scarcity that results from how linear knowledge distorts network or social connection between the community. So long as we rely upon face to face methods to produce network connections between people in society we wrestle with how this bottleneck might be scaled up to match the productivity of linearized knowledge. There are many mystification's to deal with. Which is why I harp on the bottleneck. If the production is so restricted (relies upon face to face network production) in the communal knowledge to directly address in a realistic way the large scale demands of big powerful nations or a global system make upon members of society we 'stumble' upon demands the whole society makes upon the network structure on the large scale. In a general sense the problem is a struggle between different conceptions of what knowledge is. But since automation of such intrinsically networked knowledge as pictures comes eventually with grid computing, there is an increasing reliance upon knowledge which is networked and leaves behind the fuddlement of linear printing processes. thanks, Doyle Saylor
