Archive 01: Labor, Craft and Open source
05.08.05Idea Writing: An Archived, Non-Refined Draft
Since I haven't had a lot of time in the past week I just thought I would post some obscure "idea" writing that I was developing some time ago. This short is just one of many that I will eventually post as I come across them scattered all over my hard drive. I believe this writing to be highly subjective and was a little leery to post publicly at first. Since I am trying to write a certification paper and eventually a dissertation I soon realized it was not entirely out of my interest to track my progress no matter how "wrong" the thinking may be. What I have realized is that it is not really about whether the writing is "wrong" or "right" in a research or academic manner but whether one is "thinking" or "not-thinking". I myself would rather see "wrong thinking" than "right regurgitation". This is very true in art and when I teach my students this they (and I for that matter) usually become pleasantly surprised by the outcomes. This is to be my first entry in this experimentation of subjective thoughts. I will then be able to link thoughts together as these entries progress.
Labor, Craft and Open Source
For one, the emerging class of open-source code workers was not paid for their labor but instead choose to create for the purpose of enjoyment and peer recognition over the sale of their intellectual labor. ‘In progress’ working ‘models’ are shared and worked on, continuously being revised and improved. Also, not limited by physical transportation, the distance these projects must travel was removed by the internet allowing instantaneous real-time collaboration at a global level to occur.
The labor that legitimized open-source software as a viable threat to closed-source hegemony dominated by the software giant Microsoft constituted a new organizational paradigm, one that used to its benefit a workers ‘spare-time’ as its sole means of production. This creation technique differs greatly from industrializations traditional methods of centralized and industrialized production, production that has for the last few hundred years thrived on company hierarchies and chain managements for centralized control. In the 19th century, this “American system of manufactures” that was so rightfully named by the British, restructured the dominant and localized artisan labor force strictly into divisions of specialized disciplines (Rosenberg 1969). This reorganization revolution dispensed with localized craft in favor of standardize product and a production technique that effectively resulted in improved efficiency, higher volume and lower costs. Coupled with the transportation revolution, by mid nineteenth century, it was apparent that the craft/apprenticeship breakdown was leading production from a local level to a national one (McPherson ?). Labor became the product an individual sold, replacing localized autonomous craft as the main means for creative and economic employment.
In historical contrast, labor in the medieval guild system was one of economic sustainability. The guilds objective was not in high pursuit of profit and growth such as the American system was to become, instead its intention was to maintain its current positioning of operating within market ecology. On the other hand, stabilization of this small group logic was one that was conscious of its direct and indirect ties to the land. In terms of localized food, clothing, shelter and fuel production, dependency mounted for the most part from the immediate surrounding area.
Marx’s criticism of what would come to be the populouses eventual severing of this nurturing tie throughout the 19th and 20th century, specifically addresses the peasants right to fuel in the form of wood. In his “debates and laws on theft of wood” Marx notices that the peasants’ final rights to common land are terminated by law terminating the right to collect dead wood. This was the final phase that forced the peasant (craft/artisan) into industrialized society by eliminating all access to free fuel, access that had always been available. “private property” was firmly established, and the peasant reduced to relying exclusively on the economics of the industrialized and privatized system that they was essentially forced cooperation by the ruling and privileged class. The last of their ecological autonomy was relinquished therefore paving the way for the next hundred years of environmental domination and degrading.
It has not been till the late 20th century that the laborer has had the option to get some of that autonomy back in the form of alternative energy, most notably wind and solar. This technological progression to dispel with large corporate energy providers is one of a grassroots campaign not dissimilar from that of the open-source movement. An alternative to the dominate structure was found and quickly exploited: open-source in the form of licensing and the idea of “copyleft” and “new” energy in the desire for personal sustainability.
Rosenberg, Ned eds. (1969) The American system on Manufactures. Edinbugh
Mcpherson, J.M. (?) Battle Cry of Freedom
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