Cubitt Internetfactory

after tolerancePaper prepared for The Internet as Labor and Playground, A Conference on Digital Labor, Eugene Lang College, The New School, New York, Nov 12-14 2009

Sean Cubitt, University of Melbourne, [email protected]

Post-cartesian politics, post-kantian cosmopolitanism

METHOD

consideration

wonder

hope

PROBLEM

polis

physis

techne

AXIOMS(ontology)

stuff(matter-energy/space-time)

mediation (flux)

order (negentropy)

}

1. political economy

IGF Internet Governance ForumITU International Telecommunications UnionOSI International Standards OrganisationWIPO World Intellectual Property Rights Organi-sationWTO The World Trade OrganisationTRIPS Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property RightsGATS General Agreement on the Trade in ServicesICANN Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and NumbersISC, CENTR, APTLD + ccTLDs Country-code Top Level Domain registers and their regional associationsRIRs Regional Internet RegistriesISOC Internet SocietyIESG Internet Engineering Steering GroupIETF Internet Engineering Task ForceIAB Internet Architecture Board W3C World Wide Web ConsortiumUNCITRAL United Nations Commission on In-ternational Trade Law

UNHCR United Nations High Commission for Human RightsUNESCOUnited Nations Education, Social and Cultural OrganisationUN-ODCUnitedNationsOfficeonDrugsandCrimeEU/CoE European Union and Council of EuropeOECD Organisation for Economic Cooperation and DevelopmentAPEC/ASEANHague Conference Hague Conference on Pri-vate International Law (now focused on B2B con-tract law)ICC International Chambers of CommerceEBU European Broadcasting UnionIFPI International Federation of Phonogram and Videogram IndustriesMPAA Motion Picture Association of AmericaBSA Business Software Alliance

. . . . etcetera . . . .

Internet Governance

. . . either the rights of man are the rights of the citizen, that is to say the rights of those who have rights, which is a tautol-ogy; or the rights of the citizen are the rights of man. But as bare humanity has no rights, then they are the rights of those who have no rights, which is an ab-surdity (Rancière 2006: 61)

This is what the democratic process implies: the action of subjects who, by working the interval between identities, reconfigurethedistributionsofthepub-lic and the private, the universal and the particular. Democracy can never be iden-tifiedwiththesimpledominationoftheuniversal (Rancière 2006: 61-2)

Resistance is

futile

firstlawofthermodynamics

You can have it good

You can have it quick

You can have it cheap

Pick one

(filmindustryadage)

What is a photograph?

“It is an image created and distributed automati-cally by programmed apparatuses in the course of a game necessarily based on chance, an image of a magic state of things whose symbols inform its receivers how to act in an improbable fashion” (Flusser 2000: 76).

Information is 'any difference which makes a difference in some later event' (Bateson 1973: 351)

"Not only is there no contradiction in principle between evil and politics, but evil, as such, is from a certain point of view always political"

(Esposito, 1993: 183).

ifIknow,forexample,whatthecausesand effects of what I am doing are, what the program is for what I am doing, then there is no decision; it is a question, at the moment of judge-ment, of applying a particular causal-ity. . . . If I know what is to be done . . . . then there is no moment of decision, simply the application of a body of knowledge, or at the very least a rule or a norm. For there to be a decision, the decision must be heterogeneous to knowledge as such (Derrida 2001: 231-2)

The reciprocal interpersonal relations that are established through the speaker-hearer perspectives make possible a relation-to-self that by no means presupposes the lonely re-flectionoftheknowingandactingsubjectupon itself. as an antecedent consciousness. Rather, the self-relation arises out of an inter-activecontext(Habermas1992:24).

Inordertoconsolidateitsfieldofinfluence,capital demands a constant emergence of subjective and territorialized identities that, at the end of the day, require no more than anequalityofexposureaccordingtotheuniform prerogatives of the market. Thus we have the capitalist logic of general equiva-lences and the cultural logic of community and minority identities coming together in an articulated whole (Badiou 1997: 11).

2. post-cartesian politics

What if the refugee, the politi-cal prisoner, the disappeared, the victim of torture, the dis-possessed are not only con-stitutive of modernity but its emblematic subjects?' Anthony Downey (2009)

First ThesisAll of a creature’s natural capacities are destined to develop completely and in conformity with their end

Second ThesisIn man (as the sole rational creature on earth) those natural capacities directed towards the use of his reason are to be completely developed only in the species, not in the individual

Fifth ThesisThe greatest problem for the human species, whose solution nature compels it to seek, is to achieve a universal civil society administered in accord with the right

Kant, Imanuel (1784 [1983]), ‘Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Intent’ in Perpetual Peace and Other Essays on Politics, History and Morals, trans Ted Humphrey, Hackett Publishing, Indianapolis IN., 29-40.

Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they’re only animals. (Adorno)

the characteristic feature of markets is their essential incompleteness of being, which is transposed into a continuous knowledge project for participants. From a theoretical point of view, thedefiningcharacteristicofthemarketasanob-ject is its lack of 'object-ivity' and completeness of being, its non-identity with itself. Markets are always intheprocessofbeingmateriallyredefined,theycontinually acquire new properties and change the ones they have. (Knorr Cetina and Bruegger 2002)

AMATEUR

REFUGEE

GOVERNANCE/DESIGN

‘DEAD LABOUR’

included

excluded

included

excluded

PROBLEMS OF DISTRIBUTION

(. . . AND TEMPORALITY)

deprived of role as subjects of politics:

non-humannon-living

dead

(opposite of COMMUNICATION,

required for RECOGNITION)

The EconomicRenewal of (needed because of normativity [eg arithmetic enumera-tion {commodity}, actuarial averaging {biopolitics}] and

fallingrateofprofit)

premised on renewal of Politico-Legal including rights to property and to secrecy

(twoexpressionsofPRIVATION)

through recognition of

Objects

of government as

Subjects

PROBLEMS OF ORDER

if admitting new subjects creates a new polity . . . what kind of subjects do we wish to become?

what is the Good which we wish a renewed polity to achieve?

Mediation

(primordial connectivity)

subjected to Order

produces

Privation or Communication

QUESTIONS OF ETHICS