I've just read an entry on Autonomy & Solidarity by Gary [last name not given], entitled "Holloway on Negri -- Going in the Wrong Direction or Mephistopheles: Not Saint Francis of Assisi". I read largely because of my growing interest in Italian autonomism, but I think a few of his points about the danger of using paradigms to describe cultural shifts have particular resonance in the tech and blogging worlds - or, really, the tech blogging world. So as much as I might like to address his critique of Empire, it won't be here.

One of Gary's central dissatisfactions with Hardt and Negri's Empire is their reliance on the idea of a paradigm shift, e.g. modernity to post-modernity, Fordism to post-Fordism, or discipline to control. He sees this reliance as a method that only serves to divorce cultural phenomena from real, potential revolutionary action. The reliance on paradigms does, indeed, lead one to imply fantastic/phantasmal periods of stasis in contrast with periods of movement; though I'd doubt that anyone employing such devices as seeing them as anything but relative.

As much as Gary witmesses this in this resurgence of positive autonomism, we can also see the over-use of dual paradigms in tech blogs, especially during the heat of "Web 2.0" speculation. This is not only because these writers genuinely believe that we have moved from "vertical to horizontal" orgainization (or "mountainous to flat" or anyother such shift). The rhetorics of the blogosphere have amplified the reliance on paradigm creation. In an environment where blog entry titles count for a majority of the content the declaration that one era/moment/product has died and another as taken its place is far more appealing than a declaration that things are far less simple than we would like to believe. It seemed that as soon as I began to read references to "Web 2.0" I also began to read calls for its systematic evisceration. The rhetoric of the blogosphere relies heavily on the constant creation of hyperbolic paradigm tectonics - largely as a result of its structurally implied politics as opposed to its individual actors.

Yet beyond merely creating a more palatable cognitive landscape, perhaps the proliferation of paradigmatic tectonics also has a beneficial effect. When players are operating within a context driven by paradigms - such as the tech blogosphere or, apparently, contemporary autonomism - they are operating within the neat framework provided to them. When the cultural trajectory is painted in such clean theoretical lines, this may encourage experimentation that might otherwise not be taken by realists. A good example of this in the tech world is perhaps Attention Trust, about whom I've written before. AT - to grossly over-simplify - is operating under the understanding that we will soon be shifting from a world of feral online identity to one of a cultivated and individually controlled identity. In anticipation of this paradigmatic shift what they have come up with is a tool that allows every individual to track their every web-movement - recognizing the value in these ebbs and flows. Without the aid of paradigmatic shifts as a guide for development, they might not be experimenting in this area; we might as easily say that without the paradigm of the shift from a state of nature to a regulated social existence to spur intellectual experimentation, political philosophy would find itself in less of an advanced state.

So, while I do indeed see the danger in reliance on paradigms to describe ongoing cultural tectonics, it is also important to recognize paradigm creation as a necessary vehicle for cultural and intellectual experimentation toward the goal of larger change.