This is totally on point, Jaromil. The tech industry has always been able
to think cybernetically - it has to, in order to handle interactive
networks with millions of users - but what you're pointing out, in a very
specific situation, is how it's now able to carry out integrated strategies
affecting entire fields or "modes of practice." In your example, it means
reshaping all the factors that condition the software development process,
including institutional ones such as the literature on standards and the
processes for their validation.
On the global level both Google and Microsoft are notorious for
transforming governance through the introduction of particular types of
software and information-processing services that reshape the activity of
corporate officials and bureaucrats, and in that way, affect entire
societies. However I had never considered that Red Hat would be doing the
same within social-democratic spheres where FOSS development is supported
by public money. It's somewhat depressing news, because FOSS development
for public use is really one of the few places where the social-steering
capacities of Silicon Valley are challenged... I don't have the expertise
to fully evaluate what you're saying (although I have read about Devuan and
the systemd controversies!) - but anyway, yes, I think we are talking about
exactly the same thing here.
>From my expertise, I am shocked that someone like Morozov does not think
cybernetically, or at least, not when he puts his Marxist glasses on. In a
way such thinking is completely banal: we've all been talking about "media
ecologies" for decades, and Morozov understands that kind of thing
perfectly. How can the leading mainstream net critic, who's a leftist to
boot, not even see *political ecologies* and the strategies that are used
to steer them? In Marxist terms that means one is reasoning only on the
basis of production, only on the logic that's covered in Book I of Capital.
With all the sophisticated work that's been done more recently, I thought
it had become clear that research and development, distribution, financing,
usership and legal/institutional structures constituted the enlarged field
of capital-as-power. Indeed, this has become obvious for corporate
strategists. But over and over again, I see the leftist critics adopting
simplified schemas worthy of the 1930s. To me this indicates a gaping hole
or blind spot in the critique of political economy.
I am curious if other people see the same problems, and if there are
theorists and practitioners resolving them...
best, BH
On Sun, Jul 3, 2022 at 3:53 AM Jaromil wrote:
>
> dear Brian,
>
> many thanks for this review! I admit would never had the time to read
> through the articles and less than ever spot the tension you highlight,
> your dedication makes it possible for many of us to follow interesting
> debates as this one. I guess we are all familiar with Morozov's ideas by
> now, certainly more than Strom's...
>
> On Thu, 30 Jun 2022, Brian Holmes wrote:
>
> > This is much better than Morozov: it cuts straight to the chase, rather
> than beating around the theoretical bush. Strom is saying that the new
> standard model of contemporary capitalism emerges when technoscience is
> applied to produce and condition the environments in which business
> operations are carried out and consumer choices are made. This is a classic
> cybernetic strategy: to become the master of a feedback loop you do not
> attempt to directly control all the participating nodes. Instead, you
> create and continuously adjust the framework in which those nodes interact.
>
> reading what you write here really strikes a chord in me, to the point
> I'll shamelessly put forward a link to my much dumber and less theoretical
> witnessing here, from the shores of practice:
> https://medium.com/think-do-tank/lead-or-follow-the-dilemma-of-ict-industry-for-the-coming-decade-4f83ee1851bc
>
> what I propose is to look at this "small simulation" of what is happening
> already since some years in the free and open source (F/OSS) world, around
> the landmark acquisition of RedHat by IBM and following the politics of the
> Linux Foundation in imposing (by means of lobbying) new immature software
> components like systemd as a "standard".
>
> > So to wrap it up, the "standard model" of contemporary capitalism is
> definitely not a firm selling advertising widgets. Nor even less is it a
> mere parasite feeding on *your* boundless creativity. Instead, the standard
> model now entails an expansive "mode of practice" that actively builds,
> monitors and adjusts the productive/communicative frameworks in which the
> individual's tastes and productive potentials will be expressed, actualized
> and satisfied, ideally with no leftover energies of dissent.
>
> in F/OSS too, this is not done anymore by competition, like 20 years ago
> at the time Ubuntu desertified the artisanal GNU/Linux distro panorama with
> its "global philantropy" approach. Tod
