Community, as in freedom.

This is an answer to Tony Curzon Price's article about the need for scarcity.

After a few opening shots, Tony puts forward the following argument:

“The commons have always been sustained by communities, and the digital commons, embodied in the iCommons movement, will be the same. Communities both pay for and give life to endeavours in the public space. They supply both sense and cents.”

I find it unfortunate that “commons” is misunderstood, and that money has always to be invoked. Let me clarify. Saying that “commons have always been sustained by communities”, is a tautology, and so it should alert anyone of a semantic problem. It should be clear that “commons” is not referring to people (or future AIs, or possible aliens, or put-here-your-favorite-everything-is-one philosophy), but to the possibility space that is entitled to anyone that may be interested. If I entitle everyone to do whatever he likes with a work of mine, that is a commons, even if I am the last man on the face of earth. Humor me with the following far fetched example: Being the last man on earth, and having created the last sculpture on earth, I eventually die. A second here, a few billion years there, and a new intelligent species comes to “conquer” earth, only to find at some point my last sculpture. They marvel at it, they are amazed with the evidence that intelligence was again in the past roaming the face of earth, and finding it rather beautiful, it even sparks new creative styles, sculptures and art forms. That's a commons, even if I am long gone. Now imagine that besides the sculpture, they find a EULA on it, that requires written permission from the creator and owner in order to do anything. Exhibit it, mimic it, study it, even look at it. They would have to bury it again, and never talk of what they have found. (Or else a time machine using IP litigator would have a field day.) Well, in case anyone is missing the obvious, that is NOT a commons. To reiterate, it's not about “agents” and “social” and “society”, but rather what anyone could do.

The second motif of Tony is that

"Communities both pay for and give life to endeavours in the public space. They supply both sense and cents.”

Well, if he means cathedrals, we are for sure not getting any free marbles any time soon. For the biggest part of human history, we were preoccupied with scarce physical things that you either had and the rest didn't, or you didn't have and someone else did. But it is widely noticed that this doesn't stand for anything that can be digitally encoded. To be frank, it is painfully obvious.

It also seems obvious that “sense” is created by a consciousness. And the only consciousnesses that we know of, are atomic. Distinct human beings. (And of course we mimic, and get influenced, and there is marketing, and what not, but at the very end, there is always an “I”.)

“Paying” is also interesting in that it has been shown that it is not the main motivator of people. You can pay a man to do something he despises, but his real valuable contributions come from doing whatever it is he finds interesting. You can't stop the creative mind from creating, the curious mind from searching. And as the free software movement has shown (besides other examples), you can get top of the line results.

“In a world of unconstrained choice, public space faces two challenges: how to create anything that depends on a collective choice; and how to make any choice one that carries meaning.”

On the “non stuff realm”, let us call it “creative realm”, there is no reason whatsoever to depend on a “collective choice”. You can take whatever you like, use it as you see fit, modify it to your mood, create something entirely new, propagate it or not. Democracy, as in “majority's choice”, can remain as is, but apart from that, choice is personal. “how to make any choice one that carries meaning” is a mistaken question because meaning is given from each and every person for himself. It becomes obvious if you ask “meaning for whom?” And besides yourself, leave meaning attribution to each person alone.

“Tim O'Reilly recently wrote on the Radar: "Open source wasn't about licensing or even about software. It was about viral distribution and marketing, network-enabled collaboration, low barriers to cooperation, and the wisdom of crowds.”

One should always look at the motivation. Mr. O'Reilly's motivation is profit. And there is nothing wrong with that, but one could say that “democracy, liberty, human rights, equality for black people, etc. is not about freedom. It is about better production, more consumption, bigger and more efficient corporations.” Mr. O'Reilly is correct in acknowledging the marketing potential of open source, and it is absolutely ok that he is taking advantage of it. But he doesn't acknowledge what made open source a viable reality. And that is free software, and the ideals that free software espouses. To put it simply, the ideal is that “you are free to take what you want, learn and use it as you like, but if you add something to it, don't deny to others the freedoms that you enjoyed”. The motivation is sharing knowledge, improvements, the joy of expression and creation. That's quite a different motivation, and that's a “community”.

Tony then goes on to second life, which for some strange reason he seems to equate with a community that exemplifies what a community should be:

“But there is a strange lack of unity, of buzz. Where is the crowd, the space for serendipity, a public realm? Is there a Poya or a Lyceum anywhere on Second Life - not an ersatz postmodern joke, but a social ritual with all the incentives and meanings that the Poya has?”

It seems that what he missed is that second life is a commercial outfit and that besides the heavy marketing there is no reason whatsoever to think of it as the example of what a community is or could be. If someone needs to find a modern day lyceum of the internet community (which is like society itself not a monolithic entity) he shouldn't look any further from MIT's Open Courseware. One of the top universities of the world, giving for free a lot of its knowledge. Well that's a community. That's a huge possibility space that is entitled to anyone.

Then he leaps to his conclusion that a public realm needs scarcity. But that doesn't follow in any way from the possible problems of second life.

“A public realm needs scarcity: without constraint we devolve into the weak forces of diffusion that so often mark my travels through Second Life. Athens supported a Lyceum because it brought together, willy-nilly, slaves and traders and landowners and soldiers. There are all sorts of things wrong with these societies built out of scarcity - the status relations of property foremost amongst them - but their public spaces are still what we want from the public realm.”

It could be suggested that if someone doesn't find second life fulfilling, maybe he should move on to something else. And if he wants a lyceum, he may be interested in the aforementioned MIT's Open Courseware. Athens supported a lyceum because the slaves solved the problem of the production of basic (physical) needs. What would someone say of democracy if it wasn't free, but copyrighted by the Greeks? Would you pay for a one year lease of the idea? A public realm doesn't need artificially imposed scarcity. It needs freedom.

He goes on to the “central paradox of digital commons” which seems to be that

“Where every choice is immediately available, and every close neighbour of every choice is available, there is no meaning in one election over another: choice reveals nothing”

and as an example he seems perplexed with what it means to be a fan of Bob Dylan.

“Becoming a Dylanophile once required luck, persistence, time ... but now requires a moment's search. So which election to the community of Dylanophiles carries meaning?”

The obvious answer being “if you like Bob Dylan's songs”. Being able to hear a song at any time, and actually hearing it once out of curiosity, doesn't mean that someone likes it and will hear it again. There is a gross misunderstanding of the word “choice” in what Tony wrote. Shuffling through a catalog, isn't choice. It is just that nowadays the catalog is bigger and more accessible. And to reiterate, meaning is personal. Someone may be a “Dylanophile” because under Dylan's tunes he proposed to his future wife. It may be for some other reason.

“The greater the abundance, the less significance in a choice”

One could say exactly the opposite. But the problem is in the misunderstanding of the word “choice”. The time people live is not getting any longer because of greater abundance. You may listen to Dylan, see videos on the internet, or study for an hour. But when that hour is up, it is up for good.

Of course, scarcity can be imposed on the creative realm, but it is not its natural state. So finally the only reasonable question left to decide on, is whether we want that to happen.