A couple pieces I was reading this week brought up some interesting thoughts surrounding the politics and economics of networked interaction.

First, there's Geert Lovink and Florian Schneider's "New Rules of the New Actonomy", which lays out the authors' thoughts on the direction and purpose of activism in an age of networked interaction. It is a piece that tries a bit too hard to reflect its own philosophy of quick and symbolic action, but there are many pithy phrases and important points buried within it - not to mention that it was written in 2001! One of these poignant moments arises here:

"Laws of semiotic guerilla: hit and run, draw and withdraw, code and delete. ... The goal is obviously not so much to gain institutional political power, rather to change the way how things are moving- -and why. The principle aim is to make power ridiculous, unveil its corrupt nature in the most powerful, beautiful and aggressive symbolic language, then step back in order to make space for changes to set in. Let others do that job, if they wish so."

Essentially what they are espousing is a perpetual disruptive force in opposition to stagnating power. The disruptive force takes a specifically anti-institutional, ephemeral, and multiple form, leaving the victim unsure of who has hit them, but quite sure that they've been hit. What is important, however, is that they state the goal of networked activism should not be to gain institutional power, but to knock it off its feet and let something similar (yet better) take its place, presumably to be knocked down eventually in turn. This type of distributed action without presumption of aspiration allows for more participants (since competence at the target's job is not required), as well as more ideologically grounded participants (since success does not imply taking on the role of the defeated). As a result, Lovink and Schneider are able to assert:

"Read as many business literature as possible and don't be afraid it may effect you. It will. Having enough ethics in your guts you can deal with that bit of ideology. Remember that activism and entrepreneurial spirit have a remarkably lot in common."

I find this quote irresistibly attractive. Their encouragement of activists to become intimate with the subject of their activity meshes well with their belief that successful disruptive action does not imply an assent to power. Ultimately, they paint a picture of not a singular figure acting against a faceless power, but a faceless/many-faced figure acting against overly-familiar institutions.

Along similar lines is the second piece, Michel Bauwens' "The social web and its social contracts: Some notes on social antagonism in netarchical capitalism". In this essay, Michel outlines his vision for the relation between monetization of attention and sharing. Simply (and perhaps reductively) put, he posits that social media users allow the monetization of their attention in exchange for the ability to share freely. In a broad sense, this type of arrangement seems to be becoming standard practice. The part that stuck out to me as being particularly relevant to the first piece was this, however:

"It is more interesting therefore to think in terms of how peer production, which we believe will be the core of social innovation and the creation of value, will intersect with the world of physical production of scarce products. Or in other words, how will the commons, or how should the commons, relate to the market, once the market is divorced from the capitalist logic of infinite growth?"

What Michel is suggesting here is that capitalism isn't going much of anywhere, anytime soon, but that it is facing a crisis based on the idea that infinite growth is not possible. Thus he is framing peer production and the commons in a disruptive but constitutive relation with stagnant capitalism. Needless to say, this is a very similar type of relationship that Lovink and Schneider outline in their essay.

It seems then that we might be arriving at a state where there is acceptance of established power, so long as there are distributed, disruptive forces present to check its unwanted growth or stagnation. This disruption can and will take many forms that networked interaction will enable - be this activism or or a peer production economy.