Author: fms

Felicia M. Sullivan is a researcher, educator and community advocate. With an MA in Media Studies, a MS in Public Policy and over 20 years of community-based practice, she works with community-based organizations towards individual, organizational and community transformation and change. She is currently a researcher at the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRLCE) housed Tufts University’s Tisch College. She is working towards her PhD in Public Policy at the John W. McCormack Graduate School at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Current Research Interests: youth development and out-of-school-time programming, human development and organizational learning in community-based settings, social impacts of communication and technology policy, social movements and change theory, social networks, civic / democratic / participatory communications
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Michael Bauwens on Immaterial Labor

We live in a political economy that has it exactly backwards.

We believe that our natural world is infinite, and therefore that we can have an economic system based on infinite growth. But since the material world is finite, it is based on pseudo-abundance.

And then we believe that we should introduce artificial scarcities in the world of immaterial production, impeding the free flow of culture and social innovation, which is based on free cooperation, by creating the obstacle of permissions and intellectual property rents protected by the state.

What we need instead is a political economy based on a true notion of scarcity in the material realm, and a realization of abundance in the immaterial realm. Complex innovation needs creative and autonomous workers that are not impeded in their ability to share and learn from each other.

Read more here: https://lists.thing.net/pipermail/idc/2007-August/002714.html

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Paul Hertzog comments on Immaterial Labor

There are lots of good ideas surfacing through this discussion on the iDC list. I post here in full his response:

“After reading Sobol and Waxman, I thought I would chime in.  So far, I find this list incredibly useful to my own work and am really enjoying the discussions.  That said, I continue thus….
First, utility is tautological.  If you decide that human beings do things only for utility, then you will always find the utility in any action.  Even suicide can be described as a utilitarian action.

Second, the authentic, and to my mind non-utilitarian, experience of life, has and always will be, beyond theft or co-optation by “the bad guys.”  When I go to coffee with my friend and discuss Aristotle,money goes to those it perhaps shouldn’t (e.g. evil coffee bean slavers).  Nonetheless, the substance of the experience belongs entirely to me and my friend.

My difficulty with the analysis so far in this thread is that I find it to be preoccupied with current online tools rather than abstract concepts.  An alternate attempt might go something like this:

Suppose that every moment of your life were visible, capturable,collatable, analysable, (etc.) to others.  Suppose that EVERY act in your life, that YOU tried to live authentically, was also being used for other purposes by someone else.  How would you live?  The answer, possibly paradox, is that you would ignore it, and in so doing you would live in such a way that anyone who was watching would be incapable of seeing your true life at all.  They would only see your superficial movements, but all the while your inner movement would channel bliss.

The authentic life is ALWAYS a subversion, a resistance, a revolution, against some attempt by someone else to bind it, to bound it, to define it, to constrain it.  To live authentically means to create in each moment something that cannot be taken and used for other purposes because it is necessarily INVISIBLE to those who would attempt such a theft.

Consequently, in my own academic work (i.e. logically), and also in my personal preference (i.e. aesthetically), I prefer to keep my eyes turned towards new forms of subversion, resistance, and revolution enable by new technologies.  To my mind, the really interesting and revolutionary things going on in the world are invisible to those who would oppose themhttps://lists.thing.net/pipermail/idc/2007-August/002708.html

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Posting on MediaMix

I’m starting a PhD program in public policy at UMass Boston in a couple of weeks. As such I’ve started to track interesting research and ideas related to community media, collaborative production. etc on the MediaMix blog section of this site. —

http://www.feliciasullivan.net/mediamix

The main part of this site will be reserved for interesting tidbits, personal life, pop culture, etc.

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An important point from Ladner

Stan reponds in the thread just referenced with this

“Trebor’s notions around immaterial labour certainly qualify here — collaborative media do obscure the free labour that goes into them. And also Wikis. Their collaborative veneer disguises the elitist participation in them.”

See Wikinomics discussion on iDC.

Also the discussion on the list about immaterial labor is very critcal as well. It starts in august 07 here:

https://lists.thing.net/pipermail/idc/2007-August/002691.html

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LaborTech: bringing technology to serve the labor movement

Labor Tech

The purpose of LaborTech is to bring together labor video, computer and media activists in the US and from around the world to build and develop labor communication technology and media. The first conference was held in 1990 and they have been held throughout the United States as well as Canada and Russia. Labor Media conferences are also held in Seoul. We believe that a critical task for labor is building a labor communication media movement that can tell our stories and break the corporate information blockade in every corner of the world.

LaborTech HomePage

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Technological Initiatives for Social Empowerment

Dissertation by Leo Burd, MIT Media Lab
http://web.media.mit.edu/~leob/thesis/

Despite the recent advances in science and technology, never in history has
the world seen so much discrepancy in wealth, power and living conditions.
Believing that information and communication technologies can help address
this issue, governments and funding organizations have been investing in
bringing computers and internet connectivity to underserved communities.
Unfortunately, many of those initiatives end up privileging the community
residents who were the most visible, literate or active, leaving behind the
ones who would need additional support and reinforcing even more the status
quo.

In order to foster a more democratic and participatory society, it is
important to create initiatives that are more inclusive and empower
individuals to control their own development. In this thesis, I propose a
framework for the design and analysis of technological initiatives for
social empowerment and I apply the framework in the implementation of two
initiatives that focus primarily on youth participation and local civic
engagement.

In the Young Activists Network initiative, I worked with youth technology
centers from different parts of the world organizing young people to become
agents of change in the places where they live. After two years trying
different ideas, it became clear that, in spite of the localized successes,
the Young Activists Network approach required so much effort from our
partner community organizations and volunteers that it would be virtually
impossible to sustain it over time and scale it to other sites.

Based on the lessons learned, I started the What’s Up Lawrence project, an
initiative that aimed at building a self-reinforcing, city-wide network to
help young people in the organization of personally meaningful community
events. In order to support such a network, I built What’s Up, a
neighborhood news system that combines the power of the telephone and of the
web to make it easier for young people to share information, promote
community events, and find out what is happening in their region.

This thesis provides a detailed description of the process that led to What’s
Up. It also highlights the main technical, educational and organizational
elements that have to be considered in the implementation of technological
initiatives for social empowerment and suggests the creation of a special
organization to help in the adoption and further refinement of the proposed
initiatives.

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Yochai Benkler

My colleague Hans Klien at Georgia Tech recommended this book and I find that Benkler’s research interests are closely aligned with my own.

Wealth of Networks

Yochai Benkler -  Yale Law School – yochai.benkler@yale.edu

http://www.benkler.org/

Research interests

  • General theoretical problems
    • Commons-based information production and exchange 
      • sustainability and comparative efficiency  
    • Freedom, justice, and the organization of information
      production
      on nonproprietary principles
      • Normative analysis of the implications of commons-based
        production
        and exchange of information and culture

  • Specific problem areas
    • Peer-production of information and culture in the networked
      environment

    • Large-scale effective sharing of privately owned goods and
      resources

    • Open wireless communications
    • Uses of non-proprietary production models for development and
      global redistribution

    • Free software
    • Free and open science: scientific publication models; open
      science organizational models

 

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Wired and wireless; Open Standards; Anarchy; Smart Mobs

So these are the concepts that have been forming over the last couple of weeks. Part of my to do list is to begin aggregating the core of what will be my dissertation and research bibilography. I’ll need figure out how these ideas intersect. Physical layer, content layer, and guiding political philosophies that will shape how we come to understand the possibilities for civic sector use of communications tools and infrastructure.

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Starting to revive MediaMix

It’s been sometime since I’ve posted content to the MediaMix blog. But since I’ll be beginning my doctoral program in the fall thought this would be a good time to start re-orienting my thinking towards media, community, technology, sustainability, and the ways in which civic, government, and business sectors intersect.

I’m going to use this as the place for my thinking and shaping of my research and eventually dissertation.