Introduction
The
internet
is a child of Ares, the war's god. It was
created in 1969 by the US Department of Defense
as part of its "Advanced Research Program
Agency" (ARPA). But this is just one story about
defense networks. Homer tells a not less
passionate one (Od. 8, 267 ff.). Hephaistos, the
god of fire and technology and Aphrodite's
husband, was informed by Helios about the
liaison of his wife with Ares. He then built an
invisible net, like a spider's web, by which
Ares and Aphrodite, caught in burning love, were
kept together until all male gods could bear
testimony to the situation -- with an incessant
laughter. But, hélŕs, Aphrodite gave birth to
Eros. According to Plato (Symp. 203b), Eros was
in fact the son of Poros, a personification of
purchasing and wealth, and Penia, a
personification of poverty, who conceived him
during a festivity in honour of Aphrodite.
Some
of
Hephaistos'
successors, today's hackers, seem to be no less
passionate in the art of building invisible
networks by which not war or merchant's spirit
but universal free and peaceful life should be
the outcome. In the following I will first refer
to Pekka Himanen analysis of the hacker's
passions that gave rise to the internet. In the
second part I will describe how the internet
became the ambiguous place of a cyber-mythology.
I. Passions of the
Internet
In
"A Brief History of Computer Hackerism" Pekka
Himanen tells another story as the military one
concerning the passions that gave birth to the
internet. He writes:
"The hackers
transformed computers and the Net into a
social medium that was not part of either the
governmental nor corporate plans. Email was
invented in July 1970 by Ray Tomlinson, who is
also the one to thank (or blame) for the
@-symbol in email addresses. Abbate describes
the consequence of this unexpected innovation:
"ARPANET users came to rely on email in their
day-to-day activities, and before long email
had eclipsed all other network applications in
volume of traffic." From then on, e-mail has
been the most popular use of the Net."
(Himanen 2003)
Himanen stresses how the
hacker ideal of openness influenced the creation
of new communication forms such as chat,
invented by Jarkko Oikarinen, a student at the
University of Ouli in Finland, in 1988 or the
alt(ernative) news group domain, cofounded in
1987 by California libertarian John Gilmore, and
the worlwide hypertext vision of Tim
Berners-Lee, working at particle physics
research center CERN in Switzerland. A key
issue in the creation of a free digital space,
which according to Berner-Lee's dream should be
"a space in which anything could be linked to
anything," was the elimination of the 'operator'
"comparable in experience to the elimination of
telephone operators" allowing a free and direct
exchange between individuals. Personal computers
should be used not to control but to free people
(Himanen 2003). At the beginning of the hacker's
tradition during the 1960s at MIT there is a
leading passionate mood namely enthusiasm.
Hackers are people who "program
enthusiastically." (Himanen 2003) In the preface
of his book Himanen remarks that the concept of
'hacker' has been applied by hackers themselves
to "an expert or enthusiast of any kind." In
other words, a hacker is a person who is
enthusiastically or, as we may also say,
passionately dedicated to his/her work (Himanen
2001). The hacker ethic's driving value can be
stated as follows:
"The belief that
information-sharing is a powerful positive
good, and that it is an ethical duty of
hackers to share their expertise by writing
free software and facilitating access to
information and to computing resources
wherever possible." (Himanen 2003)
In the site of his
well-known book "The Hacker Ethic" – the
book was planned as a collaborative work with
Linus Torvalds and Manuel Castells, authors of
prologue and epilogue –
Himanen makes a difference between 'hackers' and
'crackers' or between a constructive and a
destructive use of computers:
"Here, the word
hacker doesn't refer to computer criminals but
what the word originally meant: a person who
wants to do something that one is passionate
about, something in which one can realize
oneself creatively, and something in which one
can build things for the good of all. The
hacker ethic is a new work ethic questioning
the old Protestant ethic." (Himanen 2001)
It seems prima facie
paradoxical to oppose, as Himanen does, hacker's
ethic which is a 'work ethic' to Max Weber's The
Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
instead of considering it in opposition between
to an ethic of leisure. But in fact, this is an
opposition between two ethics of work. Hacker's
values go, according to Himanen, beyond computer
hackerism as they promote "passionate and freely
rhythmed work." Its basis is not just
utilitarian rationality but creative imagination
(Himanen 2001). The same can be said with regard
to hacker's money ethic. While in the Protestant
ethic, money is made by "information-owning,"
hacker's money ethic is based on
"information-sharing." Instead of being based on
the efficient rationality of producing
(material) things as a mean to an endless
process of economic profit, hacker's activity is
guided by "a desire to create something that
one's peer community would find valuable -- a
common attitude." (Himanen 2001) Finally Himanen
mentions a third element of hacker ethic namely
their "network ethic or nethic" a dimension most
closely related to modern Protestant ideals to
freedom of expression seen now as freedom of
access to the internet. This seems today's
driving passion of the world wide and WWW debate
on the so called digital divide.
According
to
Himanen,
hacker ethic is passionate Platonic:
"This passionate
relationship to work is not an attitude found
only among computer hackers. For example, the
academic world can be seen as its much older
predecessor. The researcher's passionate
intellectual inquiry received similar
expression nearly 2,500 years ago when Plato,
founder of the first academy, said of
philosophy, "like light flashing forth when a
fire is kindled, it is born in the soul and
straightway nourishes itself." (Himanen 2001)
The context of the
quotation from the "Seventh Letter" (Ep. VII,
341 c-d) concerns Plato's famous thesis that
true philosophic insight cannot be communicated
through writing but arises "suddenly" ("exaiphnes")
when people live together ("syzen") and
talk often and familiarly to each other ("synousias")
about such matters. But hackers are not said to
be true Platonists no less than followers of the
Protestant ethic are said to belong necessary to
the Western civilisation so that, for instance,
no Japanese could adhere to it. In other words
Plato and Weber are less historic examples than
symbols of a specific view of work and society.
Hacker ethic is a passionate or erotic one and,
in this regard, it is the opposite to the kind
of ascetic work ethics described by Max Weber
(Weber 2000). Its historical precursor was not
the academy but the monastery. Hackers activity
is described by Linus Torvalds in the Prologue
as "entertainment" because it is "interesting,
exciting, and joyous" and goes beyond the realm
of surviving or of economic life. Himanen
prefers Eric Raymond's word "passion" instead of
"entertainment." (Himanen 2001) In his essay
"The Academy and the Monastery" dedicated to
Eric Raymond, Himanen writes:
"The reason why
the hackers' open-source model works so
effectively seems to be - in addition to the
facts that they are realizing their passions
and are motivated by peer recognition, as
scientists are, too -- that to a great degree
it conforms to the ideal open academic model,
which is historically the best adapted for
information creation." (Himanen 2003a)
Raymond considered the
bazaar instead of the cathedral as model for the
spirit of open-source. Himanen prefers another
pair namely the academy and the monastery.
Following the ideal of the academic model
hackers abhor plagiarism and submit themselves
freely to the internal sanctions of their peers.
Hacker's passion is learning in an "informal
way, following their passions" the task of
teaching being "to strengthen the learners'
ability to pose problems, develop lines of
thought, and present criticism." (Himanen 2003a)
Hacker
ethic
is a Socratic one. But hacker's passionate
learning is not directed as Plato's passionate
search for truth towards a world beyond the
appearances. Computer programming is an embedded
activity and near to "flesh life." Sandy Lerner
liked riding naked on horseback. Richard
Stallman was a "bearded and longhaired guru."
Eric Raymond liked role-playing games (Himanen
2001). These examples are as far from Max
Weber's monks, protestants, and bureaucrats as
they are from the Platonic contempt of the
material world with its sensorial and sensual
pleasures. This kind of work ethic is closer to
the Epicurean than to the Platonic tradition.
The
network
society
as such does not simply deny or supersede
industrial society and its Protestant work
ethics. It would be an illusion to believe that
technological advances would "somehow,
automatically, make our lives less
work-centered." (Himanen 2001) In other words,
it is not the technological passion of the
internet that is going to change society but "an
alternative spirit" that may be able to "crack
the lock of the iron cage" which, according to
Max Weber, would be the stage of a lifeless and
materialistic work-centered ethic (Weber 2000,
188). But even if work in the sense of labor
will not end, as Himanen stresses following
Manuel Castells, hacker work-ethic is considered
as the opposite to the view of a society in
which work has become an end in itself. If
Protestant ethic moved the centre of gravity
from Sunday to Friday, then hacker ethic is
itself moved by a "pre-Protestant" ethic. Why
this expression instead of "Catholic ethic"?
Answer: because, although Catholic ethic is more
near to Sunday and to joy, it is hierarchical,
dogmatic, and monastic. Hackers take the
best of both traditions and meet at the Academy
not at the cathedral. To put it in Greek
mythological terms, their leading gods are not
Sisyphus and Ares but Hephaistos and Eros --
working in the Academia. In order to realise
their passions, hackers:
"are ready to
accept that the pursuit even of interesting
tasks may not always be unmitigated bliss. For
hackers, passion describes the general tenor
of their activity, though its fulfilment may
not be sheer joyful play in all aspects. (...)
Passionate and creative, hacking also entails
hard work." (Himanen 2001)
We may conclude that the
hacker's passion is this networking of joy and
work, of Sunday and Friday that goes beyond the
alternative 'either pure work or pure leisure.'
The object of this passion is life itself,
passionate life, creativity. The key issue is
that such a fundamental attitude is not
restricted to computer hackerism. This means
that the passion of life is stronger and broader
than the passion of the internet. In order to
make sense, the passion of the internet, hacker
ethic in a narrow sense, has to become a passion
for life. But there is an ambiguity in hacker
ethic as it seems to blur the difference between
the passion of doing good work with the passion
of being good or of joyful and creative
activity. The tension between technical
knowledge ('techne'') concerning how to
produce ('poiesis') something and ethical
knowledge ('phronesis') dealing with what
kind of action ('praxis') makes ourselves
better and happier is, according to Aristotle, a
crucial one. It seems to me as if this
tension is particularly difficult to perceive
within the perspective of information technology
as far as we intend to program not just
production processes but human action. There is
a tension between ethics and informatics, i.e.,
between the passion of programming life and the
passions of life itself (Capurro 1990, 2003).
This tension shines forth when we explore them
in the internet.
II. Passions in the Internet
Passions
are
overall
present in the internet particularly the
passions of the body but also, of course, the
ones of the soul. This sounds paradoxical since
according to John Perry Barlow:
"Cyberspace
consists of transactions, relationships, and
thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave
in the web of our communications. Ours is a
world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but
it is not where bodies live." (Barlow 1996)
Barlow's "Declaration of
the Independence of Cyberspace" is based on the
dichotomy between body and thinking or, more
precisely, between an ontology of matter and a
digital ontology (Capurro 2002). The exclusion
of the body from cyberspace concerns no less the
political and economic life. Barlow proclaims:
"Governments of
the Industrial World, you weary giants of
flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the
new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I
ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are
not welcome among us. You have no sovereingty
where we gather. (Barlow 1996)
This kind of digital
divide is, of course, not eliminated in case
every human being has access to the internet
and/or a homepage. In contrast to Barlow's
proclamation the internet has become a common
place for all kinds of sexual, economic, and
political transactions with their corresponding
passions and inequities. The "global
conversation of bits" between "virtual selves"
(Barlow 1996) looks like a parody of an angelic
society (Capurro 1995, Esterbauer 1998). The
prophets of the internet promise no less than
"salvation in cyberspace" (Niewiandomski 2002).
This is indeed a kind of "cyber-gnosis"
(Wertheim 1999). The alternative "bits or
bodies" (Frohmann 2000) means no less than the
exclusion of the social and material basis of
human existence. The Canadian information
scientist Bernd Frohmann writes:
"Since
information always refers us to materiality
and social practices, a leading issue of
information ethics, such as access, cannot be
construed simply as access to something called
"information". Access to information refers us
to access to social practices. The problem for
the poor, the marginal, the outsiders, is not
that they lack laptops, but that they are
unjustly excluded from the social networks
essential for trust in documents, in
utterances, in representations and texts of
any kind, in short, for information to emerge
for them at all." (Frohmann 2000, 434)
The leading passion of our
time is the passion of communication which is
indeed an angeletic passion. I use the neologism
'angeletic' in order to draw the attention to
the phenomenon of messages and messengers.
According to sociologist Niklas Luhmann, there
is a difference between message ("Mitteilung"),
i.e., the action of offering something
(potentially) meaningful to a social system
("Sinnangebot"), information ("Information"),
i.e., the process of selecting meaning from
different possibilities offered by a message,
and understanding ("Verstehen"), i.e., the
integration of the selected meaning within the
system, as the three dimensions of communication
within social systems (Luhmann 1987, 196).
Message and information are related but not
identical concepts:
- a message is
sender-dependent, i.e. it is based on a
heteronomic or asymmetric structure. This is
not the case of information: we receive a
message, but we ask for information,
- a message is supposed
to bring something new and/or relevant to the
receiver. This is also the case of
information,
- a message can be coded
and transmitted through different media or
messengers. This is also the case of
information, a message is an utterance that
gives rise to the receiver's selection through
a release mechanism or interpretation.
The
message
phenomenon
implies thus a heteronomic structure between
sender and receiver. I have suggested that we
need not only a theory of media but a theory of
messages and messengers or an angeletics
(Capurro 2003a).
The
passion
of communication is a modern one as far as
modernity particularly since the Enlightenment
proclaimed the ideal of censorship-free
production and distribution of messages that
culminated in the principle of freedom of
the press. This principle which can
be seen as the modern version of the principle
of freedom of speech in oral societies,
became a basic element of modern democracy. The
passion of communication gave rise in the middle
of the 20th century to a new technology of
message distribution and use that we call the
internet. With its different possibilities of
distributing messages (one-to-many, many-to-one,
many-to-many, one-to-one) the internet brought
about a paradigm shift with regard to the
hierarchical structure of mass media
particularly since the widespread social use of
such tools as e-mail, chat, and mailing lists.
With the development of cellular phones these
internet tools became ubiquitous. The question
of freedom of access is seen as a
crucial issue as far as networked mediated
communication plays a major role in the
economic, political, social, and cultural
development of nations. The involuntary
exclusion from the internet is called the digital
divide.
But
we
live indeed in a time of "empty angels" or
“mediatic nihilism”, in which we forget what
message is to be sent while the messengers
multiply as Peter Sloterdijk remarks: “This is
the very disangelium of current times”
(Sloterdijk 1997). Nietzsche's word "Disangelium"
(Nietzsche 1999, 211) in contrast to evangelium,
points in this case to the empty nature of the
messages disseminated by the mass media,
culminating in Marshall McLuhan's dictum: "The
medium is the message." This is a paradoxical
outcome of hacker ethic with its passions for
free, open, and joyful research. Hacker's
alternative spirit that would "crack the lock of
the iron cage" (Max Weber) has produced an
invisible cage of surveillance, oppression, and
exclusion. Secondly, the abhorrence of
plagiarism has turned into a generalised
copy-and-paste syndrome. People lose the ability
and the joy to think by themselves.
This
is
exactly what Plato put into the mouth of the
Egyptian king Thamus who was not convinced about
how useful the invention of writing was, as
suggested by god Theut, the Hermes of Greek
mythology. According to Theut's marketing
slogans, writing was a medicine ('pharmakon')
for improving memory and making people wiser
but, in fact, king Thamus was not convinced with
this kind of technology assessment and foresaw
that his people would become idle and forget the
capability of remembering and thinking on their
own (Phaidr. 275 a-b). Finally, the message
society suffers from the call syndrome. Everyone
seems obsessed with the idea of receiving or not
a message that might be of crucial importance
for her life, his business, their business etc.,
and vice versa, everyone seems obsessed with the
idea of sending messages all the time, to
anybody, and anywhere that might be of no less
importance with regard to all these objectives.
The first obsession can be called the apocalyptic
obsession, the second one the prophet
obsession. Between them we can find all
possible degrees of passions of and in the
internet that becomes more and more the core of
society as it turns to be invisible and trivial.
The
hacker's
passion
of information sharing turns into the cult of
information protection. The Protestant ethic of
profit takes the lead of the internet and
creates for a few seconds a new economy that
immediately blurs and lets the iron cage become
even more powerful as it gets more digital
intelligence inside. This seems also the case
with regard to all kinds of 'flesh cages' that
become re-engineered and integrated into a super
bio-information system. But, in the meantime,
people are still hungry and suffer in their
everyday existence. It would be misleading to
oppose the passion of eating to the passion of
speaking or to believe that there is a simple
logic as to what should be done first. But,
obviously, first things first!
"Grand
est
le manger" - "Eating is great!" is a slogan of
Rabbi Yohanan recurrent in the work of Emmanuel
Lévinas, particularly in his comments to the
Talmud or "the oral law" (Ouaknin 2003). Human
beings are not only speaking beings but also
hungry ones. Both passions, the passion of
eating and the passion of speaking belong
together. Emmanuel Lévinas' "ethic of the Other"
is a heteronomic or, as we could also call it,
an angeletic ethic as it takes the call of the
other, namely 'I am hungry', as the basic one.
But, at the same time, it reflects on this call
in order to be able to answer to it not only
with regard to the materiality of her stomach --
usually Lévinas' ethic is well known for the
importance he gives to the face of the other
-- but in order to give her a message as
well. Humans do not live from bread only.
The
passions
of the internet and the passions in the internet
are passions of speaking. Also with regard to
them the ethic of passions, being a
pre-Protestant or a Protestant one, that gives
the primacy to the own passions can be ethically
twisted through a reflection and action that
gives the primacy to the passions of the other,
particularly to her stomach, a word whose Greek
origin means at the same time open mouth ('stoma')
and stomach.
Conclusion
Michel
Foucault
distinguishes
the
following kinds of technologies, namely:
- "technologies of
production, which permit us to produce,
transform, or manipulate things,"
- "technologies of sign
systems, which permit us to use signs,
meanings, symbols, or significations,"
- "technologies of power
which determine the conduct of individuals and
submit them to certain ends or domination, an
objectivizing of the subject," and
finally
- "technologies of the
self, which permit individuals to effect by
their own means or with the help of others a
certain number of operations on their own
bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way
of being, so as to transform themselves in
order to attain a certain state of happiness,
purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality."
(Foucault 1988, 18)
I
would like to suggest the following technologies
of the self -- to be considered no less as
technologies of the self for the other -- in
order to cope with the passions of the internet
as well as with the passions in the internet,
but surely not in order to attain immortality:
the art of friendship in the face of oppression,
the art of silence in the face of
verbosity, and the art of laughter in the
face of fear (Capurro 2003, 1996, 1995).
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