december 2004
theory, culture and research
Position Statement: Models of Distributed Authorship
by Adrian Miles
A History of Hackneyed Chestnuts (or a way between tech. determinism and material
practice)
First wave hypertext theory celebrated the perceived isomorphism between the affordances of hypertext and poststructural writing and identity. Remember, this work was written before the Web, and imagined a plural writing and reading practice that was always ever to be more sophisticated than anything the Web imagined.
Second wave hypertext theory realised that links and their ilk expressed constraint and the liberation of the reader was smoke and mirrors. Perhaps this wasn't going to work after all, and with the hegemonic rise of the WWW as the model of and for hypertext visions like Michael Joyce's 'constructive' hypertext dissolved under the avalanche of dot this and dot that delivery.
And now we have the next wave. Constraint is understood not to equal predestination, nor the loss of possibility. Our tools are beginning to mature, and we have moved from an atomistic model of individual homepages, websites, and projects to one of distributed communities of practice and of evolving semantic networks.
These are characterised by their emergent qualities:
1. they happen in the act/s of writing and making content on and for the network (these structures do not exist prior to this, they emerge in the act of performing the network as a networked distributed conversational world).
2. the act or activity of writing (and here 'writing' includes all modes of inscription viable on the network) is not done outside of the network nor independent of it.
3. this activity makes writing an event of the network.
4. this activity constitutes the network as a network.
5. We no longer write elsewhere then publish, then wait for a readership, and then .... We write in email clients and send to the list. We write in our blogs and publish instantly. Readership is
ongoing and continuous.
How are these 'emergent'? Networks of links are established between individual commentaries (blog posts for example), these links express cognitive structures and patterns ('this is a good idea', 'this is a bad idea', 'this is useful because...'). They are distributed amongst multiple authors in multiple web sites and physical locations. Networks of links are established between individual sites (individual blogs for example). This is a community of peers (community of practice, choose your preferred nomenclature). This is a structure. It has strange attractors and complexity emerges in practice, in situ.
(Imagine, for example, being able to map the relations between a set of theoretical blogs. On the basis of link anchors and destinations, so a semantic map could be developed. Attach a thesaurus to this to indicate degree of abstraction of link terms. It would then be possible to map and illustrate the *emerging* relations between multiple parts and their theoretical complexity. (A naive version of this is flickr.com's list of 150 most popular tags where scale indicates poularity.) )
The example of blogs in academic culture indicates that there are developing complex models for how to do this as individuals. However, is it possible to develop new economies of writing/inscription, or academic production/practice that participate in these emergent systems? Can an informal collective encourage this? Should it? Who would own it? Could academics, with issues of intellectual property, publishing, institutional affiliations, egos, and an economy that increasingly validates the individual ownership of knowledge write a wiki?
My answer is probably not.
Position Statement No.2.
Position Statement: Models of Distributed Authorship
Why should FC bother?
An imaginary scenario for an arts academic.
1. Start a web based project.
2. Write it all in HTML, building links as you go, an architecture, perhaps some graphics.
3. Keep at it.
4. Possibly solicit or invite content from others.
5. After two years look at your project/'book'/site and enjoy the contribution you have made to knowledge.
6. Realise all this content would make a great book.
7. Apply for research funds so an assistant can pull all the content out of the HTML, format it, get it designed and then off to the printer.
8. Do all of this again in another two years as the next lot of new content is added.
An imaginary scenario for a computer scientist (or a computing
humanities academic).
1. Start a web based project.
2. Determine the outcomes and specifications.
3. Build it all using XML, XSLT, etc.
4. Build it so that the architecture (both the surface architectures of site navigation and the depth architectures of cognitive structure) are database driven (like a Wiki, for example).
5. When it is time to go to print run a simple script that generates a printer ready PDF (via ConTeXt for example).
What are the differences?
In scenario one old methodologies are used in all parts of the production of knowledge. Knowledge in this model is, in spite of the best intentions, constrained by the linearity of production, authoring, and publication. It is also inefficient (it is slow to print, slow to author, and expensive to get the content out into anything else). This is dead media. Or old media, if you prefer. What is dead is not the book, but the methodologies.
In the second scenario a data structure is developed that is transposable to multiple contexts. It allows ease of publishing and redistribution. It automates authoring and editing and dissemination. It also allows epistemological structures to emerge within the work itself in the activity of writing the work. This is not an economy of labour (a quantity), it is a changed and different practice (a quality). Wiki's are one of the best examples of this latter practice: link structures in Wikis express knowledge. These link structures emerge in the act of Wiki writing, no where else.
Flickr.com is another example of this practice. What is 'squaredcircle' (http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/squaredcircle/)? Imagine a similar project on 'refugees', or 'border'. Imagine a similar project that used text. Or audio. With a system or peer review.
The world is full of books, organisations, conferences and affiliations producing knowledge on the model of dead media. Particularly in that part of the academy interested in new media research. Fibreculture could participate in this on these terms. Or it could take seriously the network qua network. This begs a lot of questions: what constitutes 'knowledge', are there new or different knowledges available (see Lisa Gye's post of November 24), do these systems provide a way between administered versus open networks? (How do wikis organise? Why? Blogs?
)
Should Fibreculture reproduce the known, in its organisation, structure, and practices, or offer an alternative? Why? If there is an answer to that then I'd suggest we might be in a better position to
think about how.
Position Statement No.3
Fibreculture Position Statement: Models of Distributed Authorship
syndication and aggregation
we started with homepages and individual self publishing. Then came publishing systems utilising free Content Management Systems (plone, mambo, drupal, blogs). Now we have syndication and aggregation (including video and podcasting).
These are the qualities of 'work' in or on contemporary networks. Where or how does fibreculture participate in this?
Flickr.com (http://www.flickr.com)
furl (http://www.furl.net)
de.icio.us (http://del.icio.us)
they are all social. They help structure the otherwise unstructured. They work. What in this is relevant to an institution that isn't, and one that wants to contribute meaningfully? (perhaps it does enough already?)
cheers
Adrian Miles
+++++++++++++++++++++
http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/vog/vlog/
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ORGANISED NETWORKS, by Lisa Gye
In his excellent article on organised networks [1], Ned
Rossiter asks what it takes for a network to become
sustainable as an organised form. In order to ask this
question, Ned contrasts the organised network with both
the networked organisation and the 'temporary autonomous
zones' of tactical media. Following Lovink and
Schneider[2], he concludes that while the networked
institution is sustainable, it has a tendency to
'bureaucratic sclerosis'. Tactical media, on the other
hand, are responsive but 'have for the most part been
unable to address the problematic of sustainability'. He
rounds off his argument with a call to invention.
It is this call to invention that interests me most. It
seems to me that many discussions on this list about the
nature of organised networks tend to assume that they
already exist as concrete forms. I would argue that the
contested nature of the discussions over how organised
networks are constituted and governed is testament to the
fact that organised networks are still in a process of
becoming. How then do we contribute to the *invention* of
a sustainable organised network?
One approach to invention, outlined by media scholar Greg
Ulmer [3], is the application of heuretics - a general
name for generating a method out of theory. The
generation of the method (the way something is made) is
achieved through the application of the CATTt, an acronym
that includes each of the operations by which new methods
(including manifestos) are generated. These are C
contrast (opposition), A analogy (figuration,
displacement), T theory (repetition, literalisation), T
target (application) and t tale (secondary elaboration,
representability). What happens if we apply this
procedure to the invention of organised networks? Here's
my formula - but you could make your own.
Contrast - Networked organisations, tactical media These
examples provide us with an 'inventory of qualities'
which are undesirable. They tell us what an organised
network is not.
Analogy - Organised crime networks
Recent research on organised criminal networks [4] shows
that they are slowly replacing more institutionalised and
hierarchical criminal structures such as the Mafia.
Criminal networks show many of the features, such as
sustainability and responsiveness, desired by those who
want to develop organised networks for purposes other
than criminal activity. What can we learn from these
networks about how to make an organised network?
Theory - Method Acting
Lee Stanislavski's theory of method acting, as applied by
Lee Strasberg in the Actor's Studio and made famous by
Marlon Brando, emphasises the centrality of the actor's
desires in the construction of character, focussing on
them as affected and affective agents. It asks each
participant to ask themselves "what do I want from
this" and opens the possiblity of becoming that
which one wants to be through rehearsal. Can Fibreculture
rehearse what an organised network is on the way to
actually performing that identity?
Target - Fibreculture
Fibreculture is the entity to which the new method will
be applied.
tale - the new method must be represented in some form or
genre. Perhaps the method of representation will take the
form of a new open source software platform capable of
supporting organised networks.
I would like to see if we could use this formula to
generate a manifesto for organised networks.
Lisa
Notes
[1] Rossiter, Ned. Organised Networks Institutionalise to
give Mobile
Information a Strategic Potential, Available at
http://www.noemalab.org/sections/ideas/ideas_articles/pdf/rossiter_networks.pdf
[2] Lovink, Geert and Schneider, Florian, 'A Virtual
World is
Possible:
>From Tactical Media to Digital Multitudes', posting
to nettime
mailing list,
1 November, 2002. http://www.nettime.org
[3] Ulmer, Greg, Heuretics: The Logic of Invention, John
Hopkins
University Press: Baltimore, 1994
[4] See, for example, Criminal networks by Vincent
Lemieux, Royal
Canadian Mounted Police report, 2003,
http://www.rcmp.ca/ccaps/reports/criminal_net_e.pdf
and
Results of an analysis of 40 organized criminal groups,
United Nations
Global Programme Against Transnational Organized Crime,
report of pilot
survey results, 2002,
http://www.unodc.org/pdf/crime/publications/Pilot_survey.pdf
Lisa Gye
Lecturer in Media and Communications
Swinburne University of Technology
http://www.fibreculture.org/