Kirsty Best - Open Software & Gift Economy

Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1286007

A R T I C L E

INTERNATIONALjournal of

CULTURAL studies

Copyright 2003 SAGE PublicationsLondon, Thousand Oaks,

CA and New DelhiVolume 6(4): 449470

[1367-8779(200312)6:4; 449470; 031105]

Beating them at their own game

The cultural politics of the open softwaremovement and the gift economy

Kirsty Best

University of Ottawa, Canada

A B S T R A C T This article interrogates the validity of claims that the opensoftware movement provides a substantial alternative to intellectual propertyand a challenge to the encroaching commodification of digital space. The opensoftware movement is participating in ongoing language wars of the newcommunication technologies; it is attempting to redefine the social and economicvalue of information and computer networking, and as such does present achallenge to digital commodification. However, this challenge is not mountedthrough traditional and public-oriented modes of cultural politics but insteadthrough personal and bodily re-imaginings and a direct engagement with thenew technologies. Indeed, similarities exist between discourses of the opensoftware movement and capitalist discourses of flexible work and the reinventionof labour as temporary, transient and empowered. In sum, the open softwaremovement can be considered to enable forms of visceral democracy, and itspolitical potential is capacitated but also restricted by this form of culturalpolitics.

K E Y W O R D S computer-networked communication cultural politics digital commodification flexible work discourse gift economy language wars open software movement visceral democracy

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Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1286007

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Introduction

The open software movement1 has been hailed by some to be a formidableand radical challenge to the encroaching commodification taking hold ofthe new communication technologies. The voluntary contributions of thou-sands of globally networked programmers to the development of softwarewhich might provide a substantial alternative to intellectual property andthe commodification of information has been suggested as heralding thecreation of a gift economy. This article will interrogate the validity of theseclaims, through an examination of the intersection between the discoursesinforming the open software movement, and another prevalent discoursecirculating in networking culture, one which glorifies trends toward flexiblework and the reinvention of labour as temporary, transient, fluid andempowered.

The open software movement and the culture of hackers who contributeto its formation are involved in the continuing and unresolved languagewars that are being made manifest through computer-networked communi-cation (CNC). Language wars (Lewis, 2000) are the continual struggles overmeaning-making that constitute human culture and add to its intenselypolitical nature. Contemporary digital culture can be characterized asincreasingly subject to the integration of networked technology with freemarket capitalist discourses. The open software movement is attempting toredefine the social and economic value of information and computernetworking, in a manner that could potentially challenge this discursivesway. The power of the open software movement to present an alternativeto the ongoing commodification of digital space is largely available becauseof changes in the mediated environment that emphasize the value of newskills based in computerized utility and the communicative and interactivepotentials of networking.

However, I will argue that the open software movements mode of resist-ance is no longer the prescriptive, collectively shaped discourse of public-based forms of democracy, but rather suggests the individualized practice ofwhat I will describe as visceral democracy. Resistance is built into an invest-ment rather than a rejection of the new technology, particularly at the levelof everyday practice in work, leisure and skill building. Partly because of thisshift in the form and force of resistance, questions arise as to how fully theseengagements present a radical alternative to digital commodification as somehave claimed, or, conversely, how much they replicate techno-capitalistassumptions. By focusing on the capitalist discourse of flexible work, I shallexamine the way in which the open software movement presents significantambivalence in terms of its political potential. In effect, then, I will arguethat alternatives to digital commodification presented at the level of immersion in computer-networked communication and the attempt to beatthem at their own game build on new forms of cultural politics in their

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engagement in these language wars, but also extend and illustrate thetensions of these new cultural politics in a computer-mediated environment.

The suggestion here is not that the open software movement has anypretension to topple capitalism or significantly rewrite its foundations.However, the movement may, indeed, challenge some of the assumptionsand operating principles of the pervasive contemporary drive toward theoutright commodification of digital technology, product and culture. Thediscourses that influence the movement are what interest me in this article,for they will indicate more precisely its potential as a form of culturalpolitics. That is, I am interested in the movement at the level of meaning-making, and its operation within the language wars. Certainly, in a generalsense, the open software movement can be related to a more extensiveposition in computer-mediated culture which claims that digitally mediatedproducts should be freely accessible, aided by the free exchange of infor-mation (see Thomas, 2000). This discourse is reflected in the commoncyberspace dictum Information needs to be free. In this sense, the opensoftware movement draws on a broader position which could be calledopen content, aligned to ongoing discussions concerned with restrictionson the copying and dissemination of digitized products. However, I willargue that an equally pervasive discourse influencing the open softwaremovement is that associated with the celebration of flexible work. Althoughthis influence does not mean that the movement does not present a certainliberatory potential, it does indicate that the discursive meaning of opensoftware is ambivalent in its challenge to digital commodification, and inits position as form of cultural politics.

The mediated environment of networking and the formationof flexible work discourse

Digital commodification and flexible work discourse

With the accumulating ever-presence of digital culture and digitized infor-mation products, capitalism has found yet another area to colonize. Severaltheorists have pointed to the trend toward the relentless commodificationof computerized communication and information (see Haywood, 1998;Webster, 1995; Wilbur, 1997). Digital commodification is a symptom of anincreasingly prevalent discursive thrust which imagines computer-networked communication as a means of establishing a global-girding, self-organizing web of technology, communication, trade and finance that willenable the spread of democracy, freedom and equality. This corporatizationand privatization of global organizing is linked, along with other charac-teristics, to the development of so-called flexible work along with adiscourse that justifies and supports it.

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As various commentators have pointed out, there have been a variety ofgeneral shifts in the conditions of organizing production and work in thepast few decades. These processes have been argued to be characteristics offlexible specialization (Piore and Sabel, 1984), post-Fordism (Murray,1989), flexible accumulation (Harvey, 1989), disorganized capitalism (Lashand Urry, 1987), the knowledge society (Drucker, 1969), post-industrialism(Bell, 1976; Touraine, 1974) and the network society (Castells, 1996,1997a, 1997b), depending on emphasis. One aspect in particular has beenthe evolution of work from full-time lifetime employment toward part-time,contract, outsourced, temporary and casual work: flexible labour andcapital relations in which workers expect to undergo several organizationaland career changes in a working life (Castells, 1996; du Gay, 1996b; Halland Held, 1989). Manuel Castells (1999) characterizes the contemporaryorganizational form as that of the network enterprise, an assemblage offirms or segments of firms, joined together through relationships ofoutsourcing, subcontracting, partnerships, mergers and alliances. Thediscourse that supports flexible forms of work suggests that not only is thisform of organization better for corporate competitiveness, but it should beconsidered equally beneficial for workers, who will enjoy more freedom,greater creativity and heightened initiative.

Flexible work discourse links these new organizational forms to particu-lar democratic elements most notably, freedom of choice, of empower-ment and of increased participation, and the equality of anti-hierarchicalformations of information. Manville (1995) has argued, in fact, that theflexible and knowledge-based organization increasingly resembles classicAthenian democracy, since the new organizations reflect a fundamentallyexpanded and different social role for the individual and that role is basedon the twin ideals of liberty and equality (1995: 378). In a similar vein,corporate culture programmes and management texts advocate an opti-mistic view of flexible work grounded in these democratic ideals, a cele-bratory position that is mimicked in more general discourse and mediareports. As du Gay argues (du Gay and Salaman, 1992; du Gay, 1996a,1996b), this discourse suggests that the flexibility that workers will developthrough their working career to accommodate changes in organizationalhiring patterns will actually allow individuals to increase their own self-development. Thus, the lack of security of a stable and lifetime employmentis offset by the increased creativity, challenge and empowerment that willresult from the ongoing quest of individual worker-consumers to developnew skills, increasing their marketability and hence their potential freedomand enjoyment.

Internet start-up companies are a prime example of these trends (see CodeRush, 2000; Dvorak, 2000). Netscape, for instance, was a company thatwas born and died or rather, was acquired in only four years, duringwhich time the pace of work kept programmers following the maxim that


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worktimes become . . . any-time-whatevers (days/nights, weekends,holidays, vacations), workspaces any-place-whatevers (factories, homes,offices, cars, planes, sidewalks, the cellular revolution) (Bogard, 1996).Job shifts too are the norm in this working culture, where if a programmerdoes not change jobs within two years, people start to wonder what iswrong with him/her (Code Rush, 2000).

The commodification of information, and its challenge

Although one important aspect of flexible work is the continual sharingof employee knowledge, the commodification of information in organiz-ational practices is intensified rather than diminished in so-called know-ledge companies, as information becomes centralized as the primarysource of economic value. Just as flexible work is designed to meet theorganizations needs, so is the sharing of employee knowledge designed tofurther the organizations strategic presence in an increasingly weightlesseconomy. Again, this issue pertains particularly to the realm of computer-networked communication. Thus, as Fitzwater and Henningsen (1999)claim, the commercial software industry is based on the development ofproprietary standards the commodification and ownership of intellec-tual property.

The quest to commodify information in networking culture is, undoubt-edly, hampered by the fluid, reproducible and porous nature of digitizedinformation. Even more challenging, however, seems to be the redefinitionof the social and economic value of information advanced by the increas-ingly influential open software movement. The open software movement isbased on an overt rejection of the anti-competitive practices and perceivedlack of quality in software development attributed to the commodificationof information by companies such as Microsoft. Indeed, according toFitzwater and Henningsen (1999), the threat this open software movementposes for Microsoft is much greater than that of the Department of Justiceantitrust trial.2

That Microsoft has recognized this threat seems obvious from theHalloween documents, internal memos leaked on 31 October 1998, inwhich the company suggests attempting to decommoditize or close thestandards used by the internet, and thus re-establish scarcity and a closedmodel of computer-networked development (also see Roberts, 2000). TheInternet relies significantly on open standards such as HTML and TCP/IP,which nobody owns. These standards have not only been responsible forthe explosive growth of the Internet, but also for open software projectssuch as Linux.3 Thus, the open standards that have enabled the develop-ment of and been created through open software are integral to thenetworked organization of the Internet.

Open software is becoming an increasingly formidable challenge to


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ongoing digital commodification for at least two significant reasons. Firstof all, the movement exploits the capabilities of networking and the archi-tecture of computer-networked communication; the capacity of network-ing, that is, offers increased liberties of action (Sawhney, 1996) to softwaredevelopment, programming and collaboration. Perhaps more importantly,the collaborators in the movement are blessed with recent shifts inpower/knowledge (Foucault, 1981) because of their possession of increas-ingly valuable computer skills. Through the heightened utility of infor-mation in a weightless economy and its capacity to be networked, hackersand their abilities have increased their proportion of power/knowledge, andhave become the new knowers (Ess, 1994) of networking culture.

Interestingly, the movement itself constitutes a form of knowledgeorganization of sorts, and, as I will argue below, the language used to justifyit draws directly on the type of flexible work discourse exemplified above.The question of what sort of alternative to digital commodification the opensoftware movement constitutes is a complex one, therefore, as it both chal-lenges and replicates its assumptions.

The open software movement: within or beyond digitalcommodification?

Certainly the open software movement redefines the social and economicvalue of information. However, the question is whether it constitutes asignificant challenge and alternative practice to digital commodification.The next section will argue that, unlike the traditional forms of resistanceoffered by public democracy, the open software movement draws on thenewer discourse of visceral democracy. The contrast between these twoforms of resistance will be illustrated by contrasting variant forms in theopen software movement: free software with open software. The follow-ing section will then outline both the potential advantages attributable tovisceral democracy, and its problems, through an examination of the gifteconomy. The final section will exemplify these problems and complexitiesby illustrating the confluence between the open software movement andflexible work discourse.

Language wars in the open software movement: the shiftfrom public to visceral democracy

Traditional challenge to the hegemony of unrestrained commodification hasprimarily been in the form of public democracy. For public democracy,collective action is understood to depend on shared memory and ground-ing, particularly in the nation-state; responsibility, mandate and decision-making lie with the people, constituted through citizenship, through the


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identification of public over private interests, through certain forms oforganization and regulation, and through boundaries of belonging andmembership. The communication that takes place is founded on infor-mation access and processes of intersubjective debate, leading up to policyor public opinion formation. Barney thus defines democracy as gatheringtogether the private individuals who make up a particular community todecide publicly on courses of action and inaction regarding their commonaffairs (2000: 23). His definitions of technology and communication arealso instructive in how they operate in this framework: technology isdefined as a productive practice that simultaneously tells us somethingabout our collective selves and communication as the locus of relations inwhich we share that which is common (2000: 2930).

However, the research undertaken in the current project suggests thatrecent practices and cultures surrounding computer-networked communi-cation seem to exist at a level closer to what could be termed postmodern oridentity-based politics. In particular, computer-networking often seems to bedrawing on visceral democracy, a form of cultural politics that entails amore open view of the subject, and constitutes democratic participation atthe individual level of the body and the everyday. Visceral democracy mightthus include aspects of trickery, pleasure, fluidity and self-gratification. Thisform of cultural politics can be called visceral (Lewis and Best, 2002) becauseit centralizes the pleasures, experiences and desires of the body as funda-mental to the project of freedom. Visceral democracy tends to be lessconscious, and experienced more on an individual level. It can be likened tothe resistances described by Chin and Mittelman: existing as challenges,protests, intransigence or even evasions (2000: 29) rather than defined anddefinitive countermovements, and as infrapolitics of everyday practices,lifestyles, values and undeclared challenges. Democracy becomes manifestthrough the representation of the self, through participation withoutconstraints, and through the ability to hold freedom and equality in onesown hands, on ones own terms. The visceral democracy of CNC is oftenformed out of the political articulation of everyday practices of computer use(including web-page design) and production (including programming).

The shift between these two modes of challenge can be illustrated by acomparison between free and open software. The original model of freesoftware was based on a conscious, ideological position that resisted thesocial and economic value of information implied by an adherence to freemarket capitalism without a recognition of other criteria of value. The func-tional value of software alone was not considered justification for its use ordevelopment the question became not just about what it can do, butabout what kind of society we want. To this question, the FreedomSoftware Foundation (FSF), as main proponent of this position, maintainedthat helping other people is the basis of society (Stallman, 1999). Openknowledge of software source code is considered, in this model, as a moral


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right. The levels of freedom that software should follow include: thefreedom to see about ones own needs, the freedom to share this freedomto meet ones neighbours needs, and the freedom to expand this freedomto fulfil ones whole communitys needs.

The FSF is born from and is still ideologically based in public democraticorganizing. The research culture of the university from which it sprangdepended on a different model of ascribing social and economic value toinformation and resource attribution from that ascribed to by the capitalistagenda of recent trends toward digital commodification. This public modelof knowledge sharing is indeed an important part of the formation of thecomputer-networked organization of the Internet, but it is being overtakenby a new understanding of knowledge creation and propagation based onthe flexible and market-driven economy.

The FSF idealizes the future in terms of a post-scarcity society, in whichthe inequities of resource distribution and workload will be evened out, andpeople will work fewer hours with more time for humanistic pursuits(Stallman, 1999). In this sense, the organizational model of free software ispart of a vision and a plan anchored in a public vision of value and collec-tive decision-making (Stallman, 1999). The overall purpose of themovement is aimed at benefiting an imagined community, which isconsciously and consistently being worked towards. Those elements of theoperating system, for instance, which do not have a free software counter-part become priorities to be created and distributed. In this sense, theprojects worked on through the FSF are not necessarily based on thecooking-pot model advanced by Ghosh (1998) or the cybercommunismof Barbrook (2000) or even the bazaar model of Raymond (1998a), whichI will examine below. Instead, its creations of knowledge distribution mighttend more toward a hierarchical or directive organizational system, for theexplicit purpose of pursuing a particular path. In the same way, the FSFcreates, in a sense, a form of avant-garde to lead programmers and partici-pants into the new utopia. The FSF position follows elements of publicsphere and social democracy in its participatory, community-building,citizen-focused agenda; it also, however, replicates elements of representa-tive elitism and the Leftist metanarrative of utopia, discipline and planning.

It was, most likely, this element of old democracy and its metanarrativequality that led to the rethinking of the model for open software andcomputer-networked communication. Another vision has developed, which,instead of replicating the ideological counter-organization of the FSF andfree software, re-forms itself into open source software. The renaming offree software to open software is a particularly important indication thatthe organization of computer-networked communication as imaginativeformation is played on the discursive level and as a language war. EricRaymond, self-proclaimed spokesperson and media celebrity for the cause,has argued that, with regard to the FSF, ideology is a handicap, a losing


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strategy: We need to be making arguments based on economics anddevelopment processes and expected return (quoted in Leonard, 1998). Theexpediency of open software, from this perspective, is what is important,rather than any moral vision or worth. Open software thus speaks an econ-omically viable language game which adds mainstream credibility to itspotentially subversive organizational mode.

For the movement does not abandon its potential elements of freedomand resistance. The first line of Raymonds canonical exposition of the opensoftware movement, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, states Linux issubversive (1998a). Furthermore, the participatory nature of open softwarecommunities is readily embraced, as well as the potential empowerment tobe gained through the blurring of writer and reader, as users gain the abilityto become modifier-developers. Raymond echoes the arguments ofBarbrook and Ghosh in Homesteading the Noosphere (1998b) by main-taining that the open software culture is in fact a gift culture one thatperpetuates itself, while integrating with traditional capitalist economies, bybuilding up a system of reputation. Participants in the culture work togetheras if in a bazaar, cooperating in self-motivated transactions, sharing infor-mation in a seemingly chaotic manner; however, the software results of thebazaar form of organization are far superior, Raymond argues, than the top-down, directive, authoritarian model of the Cathedral (for instance,Microsoft), where information is maintained within strict boundaries andlimits (Raymond, 1998a).

A central element of Raymonds argument, and the open source positionhe represents, is that the democratic and liberatory benefits that may arisefrom the movement are additional and not integral to its basic raison dtre to create better, more effective, more reliable software. From a modelthat is organized as explicitly ideological, and planned according to acollective vision, the open software movement has evolved into an indi-vidualistic, pleasure-based, pragmatic and semi- or unconscious model.Both models implicate a kind of community, but each understands it ina different way. The free software model imagines community as sociallyconscious and ideologically motivated, and participation in thatcommunity as decisive citizen action. The open software model, on theother hand, describes the community as a tribe, even an elite of particu-lar reputation-based qualities, and participation in the community is basedon pleasure and pragmatism.

In particular, Raymond describes the primary motivation for collabo-rating on open software projects to be that of scratching a developerspersonal itch (1998a). That this is the very first in a series of aphorismsthat Raymond provides about the open software movement is particularlytelling. The main ideological thrust of the open software model favours theindividual. Even though community is integral to the open softwaremovement, community here is a function of the network, one which,


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replicating the logic of techno-capitalism, links up a variety of individualnodes, thereby compounding their own individual value. The raison dtreof the project is not the planned, collective, motivated and integratedplanning of the FSF, but rather, the atomistic intersection of a variety ofinterests that happen to increase their value through an intensification ofcommunicational ability via networking.

Subversive visceral democracy? The idea of gift culture

The open software movement and its political potential needs to beexamined in the context of the broader practices of computer-networkedcommunication, and in the context of interpretations that celebrate theeveryday practices of individual participants in the internet and theconstruction of a gift culture. As Marshall (1997) has argued, the commod-ification of computer-networked space has consistently been challenged byan online culture founded on university research, hackers, user groups andshareware. And in response to the proclamation made by a new generationof Internet hypesters that Without advertising, there wouldnt be anInternet, Porterfield argues instead: Without freeware, there wouldnt bean Internet (1997; emphasis in original). Indeed, without the free contri-bution of thousands of programmers and hackers to the development ofopen standards and free software such as Apache (a web server which isused by more than half of all websites), Perl (a programming language thatis used for most active content on the Internet) and sendmail (the handlingand delivery service used by most email transactions) among many otherexamples the Internet would not exist.

Barbrook (1998, 2000) draws on examples such as these, as well as theordinary actions of people who voluntarily add content to the Internetthrough personal web pages or discussions in IRC (inter-relay chat) chatrooms and through newsgroups, to argue that the Internet is in fact basedon a new, subversive model of organization. These types of everyday prac-tices form part of a gift culture that destabilizes the ideological strongholdof techno-capitalism, or what he and Cameron label the CalifornianIdeology (1996), originating as it does mainly in the Silicon Valley. E-commerce enthusiasts, Wired editors and proponents of the InformationSuperhighway, primed to turn the Internet into an electronic shoppingmall, are missing the point, Barbrook maintains, of a networked space thatis profoundly tied to an alternative to capitalism. His theory can be sourcedto a marriage between de Certeaus concept of the resistant activities of theweak through their everyday practices (1984) and Mausss distinctionbetween gift and exchange cultures (1990). The result is a type of radicalfreedom that actually works with and in the traditional order of capitalism,based on the everyday exchange of gifts.

Ghosh (1998) also sees a new organizational model emerging through


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computer-networked communication, as the so-called knowledge economyforces the rethinking of questions of scarcity and of value. As Barbrookargues, the current regulation of intellectual property constitutes an arti-ficial imposition of scarcity in an environment where information is, inreality, abundant. Furthermore, Ghosh points out that the question of howto maintain and calculate value today is problematized when computer-networked communication is being used for the purposes of giving so muchaway, so openly. In gift culture, Ghosh argues, rather than being based onthe abstract commodification of information, each trans-action is poten-tially unique, based on the situated needs of individuals. When peoplewithdraw information from the Internet by, for instance, accessing awebsite or reading a submission to a news group they are fulfilling theirown criteria of desire and need. However, they are also increasing the valueof the information they access, especially if they respond or contribute tothe information with their own opinion. The distribution of free infor-mation expands the value of that information, in that its potentialresponses, contributions and additions expand as well. Thus, those elementsthat are the most useful to the culture are recognized and improved inproportion to their usefulness even if only a small proportion of computer-networked communicators participate in the return process.

Likewise, an open software project such as Linux increases in value themore people obtain it, use it, comment on it, or develop/debug/modify it.Open software is software where its source code is available to be examinedand modified; unlike proprietary software where value lies almost exclus-ively in that source code, as the central kernel of intellectual property, inopen software value resides instead in the community of developers andtheir process for modification and improvement. The large developer anduser base of Linux, an open product, thus directly correlates with itsenhanced value. The value of this information is not standardized throughprice either, but is based within the everyday practices of individual usersand their interests, desires and needs.

Ghosh and Barbrook suggest, then, that the model of the free marketcapitalist economy could in fact be substantially challenged by this emergingalternative. Similarly, Peter Lewis, editor of Workers Online, a New SouthWales Labour Council publication, argues that the new economy is notnecessarily in the long term interest of your big corporations and yourtraditional capital. The conceptual nature of a network society is that thecentres of information are no longer as powerful (quoted in BackgroundBriefing, 2000). Within this understanding, then, the open softwaremovement demonstrates an alternative to digital commodification in theform of visceral democracy, rooted in everyday practices, the fulfilment ofindividual needs and pleasures, and the radical contestation of the commod-ification of information in favour of information sharing and gifting.Although moving away from the conception of a unified or responsible


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public to which information should be freely available, the movementencapsulates a significant re-writing of democracy in a way that seems tobe inherently subversive of recent trends toward techno-capitalism.

How significant an alternative?

However, we need to interrogate further this claim that the open softwaremovement is inherently subversive of digital commodification. Is a giftculture or a gift economy indeed as radical an alternative to techno-capitalism as it seems? The open software movement certainly, in someways, constitutes a challenge because of its ability to appropriate the powerof networking, to enable immersion in computer-networked communi-cation in an active way that reforms relations of power/knowledge, and tomove beyond the simplified commodification of information to a morecomplete engagement with its ultimately abstract and reproducible nature.None the less, open software takes place in and through a direct involve-ment with the computer networking environment that has been moulded,to a large extent, by contemporary techno-capitalist discourses. Opensoftware avoids positioning itself as exterior to trends toward digitalcommodification and attempts instead to beat them at their own game: touse the systems own resources, value system and tools to better it and thusrework its central assumptions.

However, an immersion in CNC and the new economy to such a greatextent undoubtedly implicates an absorption of some of the assumptions ofthe discourse that informs it. Furthermore, the propensity of visceral democ-racy itself toward individual pleasures and interests tends to replicate theindividualizing ideology behind digital commodification and the collapsingof the collective. The implication of the open software movement in thepartial replication of the techno-capitalist logic can be illustrated throughan examination of how it draws from flexible work discourse, and cele-brates the utopian collapse of worker and capitalist interests throughempowerment, passion and skill-building.

The open software movement is characterized by the assumption that itsprogrammers are able to increase their active participation in networkingculture, thus increasing their possibilities for greater creativity and jobsatisfaction, and for greater decision-making or determination. This issimilar to the logic of flexible work, which discursively positions itself asdemocratic by articulating itself to ideas about freedom, equality and therenewal of participation. From different angles, both the open softwaremovement and flexible work discourse articulate an organizational andvisceral vision of democracy to a capitalist, information-based economicdiscourse.

The similarity between the discourses is evident in Raymonds remarksabout the benefits underlying the open software movement. He echoes the


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flexible work discourses reasons occasioning the blurring of work andpleasure, of passion and efficiency. He describes the project in terms of thecreativity and challenge that it promotes, which work to create, rather thandetract from, utility and efficiency: I think thats where much of the entre-preneurial world is going. People are developing business reasons to do thestuff that gives them pleasure (Raymond, quoted in Taylor, 1999: 200). Theorganization of open source software thus draws on the principle ofpleasure and increased creativity, and also on other elements characteristicof flexible work: networking, knowledge sharing and the transience ofemployment. Raymond discusses how an open source project, through itsintrinsic networking, capitalizes on the dispersal of knowledge and talentthroughout the world. Thus, as consumption in a networking culturebecomes ever more fragmented and niched, open source organization offersa way to increase information sharing, and thus the chance of satisfying amore diversified customer base: Adopting an open-source strategy andinviting lots of brains to think along with you will increase the chances thatyoull develop features that customers want to use (Raymond, quoted inTaylor, 1999: 200).

Raymond also suggests that another advantage in relying on thenetworked intelligence of the open software movement rather thancommodified information as property is that, in a flexible work environ-ment, the chances are that a worker will change positions, jobs andcompanies several times throughout a career. Thus, by freeing the sourcecode of software, a company is not dependent on the loyalty of those whowork within its walls, but can count on the development of a communityof programmers and users who will continue to upgrade the software. Theseelements of flexible work, integral to open source organization, create anenvironment not only of creative and passion-driven work, but also ofincreased efficiency and utility. Raymond contrasts this environment,indeed, with the drudgery and dead-end of bureaucracy: he proclaimsprogrammers are happiest when . . . theyre not overburdened withinappropriate specifications of meaningless bureaucracies, and, later, soyou should not mistake expensive bureaucracy or corporate conventions forrigour (quoted in Taylor, 1999: 200).

In flexible work discourse, a similar distinction is made between bureau-cracy and empowered, creative, knowledge-intensive, flexibly organizedwork. In fact, the language of change that du Gay (1996a) identifies asdriving this discourse is premised on the allocation of value in precisely thetype of organizational formation that is the antithesis of the stifling insti-tutionalization of bureaucracy academic, state, public or any sort: namely,the entrepreneurial vision of the capitalist organization. Value lies in therealm of the economic and technological, especially inasmuch as theyproduce progress and efficiency.

Open software embraces, then, certain digitopian (Lewis, 1998)


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assumptions about flexible work. In doing so, it aligns itself with techno-capitalism rather than offers a significant challenge to it. In its desire tomove beyond the constraints of public democratic organizing, opening upthe possibility of individual pleasure and gratification in the context of capi-talist networked relations, open software seems to neglect the criticisms ofthe new economy and flexible work articulated by public democracy.

For instance, the problem with continual self-representation of a workersskills and qualities is that work is never-ending. Workers internalize theirown value and self-discipline in a way that becomes imbricated with theirvery being. The instability of work means that workers must constantlyfollow the whims and fashions of technological society and the skills thatare of the moment. Furthermore, the passion and fulfilment that may beexperienced by some workers in great quantities, as worktime becomesall times is balanced by a growing number of the unemployed or partiallyemployed. As Viviane Forrester argues, worse than exploitation is beingconsidered unexploitable (1999). And as Bogard suggests, even the unem-ployed are disciplined intensely in the era of flexible work as unemploy-ment is always the highest and most intense form, and not just an effect, ofexploited work (1996: 107; emphasis in original).

Others argue that the inculcation of ideas about passion, empowermentand fulfilment upon employees is, to a large degree, the result of persistentattempts to control the productivity of workers. Instead of tallying, disci-plining and regulating the physical movement of workers as prescribed byTaylorism and scientific management, it is the subjectivity or workeridentity that is disciplined in the new knowledge economy and organization(see du Gay and Salaman, 1992; Knights and Willmott 1989a, 1989b;Willmott, 1993). Although this may not be the case for those lucky workerssuch as computer programmers who specifically enjoy their areas of work,not everyone in the knowledge economy falls into the realm of a digeratiwhose work is highly valued because of its compatibility with the newdiscourse. Much work, especially in the arts and humanities, is notconsidered highly valuable, so that many people end up in the morecommon drudgery of new service and knowledge occupations, and are mostlikely to face the interpellating ideologies of corporate culture programmesand their attempts at inculcating self-discipline.

Bogard (1996) affirms that the relaying of workers into the growingcybernetic assemblage signals a dramatic intensification of the control oflabor (1996: 99), as the flexible worker works round the clock and onlineeverywhere (1996: 101). He goes on to argue that networked informationhas furthered the abstraction of work, making it purely operational ratherthan productive, and hence virtual. The ideal of the knowledge organiz-ation, as the complete connectivity of human intelligence and information,is therefore the ideal of develop[ing] a closed system where all processescan be translated and managed as flows from and back into information


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(1996: 30). Baudrillard (1994) pursues a similar line of argumentation bysuggesting that the new all-out operationality (1994: 106) and the creationof these ultra-rapid communication networks immediately means trans-forming human exchange into a residue (1994: 78).

The trend of knowledge work, in essence, turns the individual into aninteractive, communicational particle, plugged into the network, gettingcontinuous feedback (Baudrillard, 1994: 106); flexible work is targetedonly by itself, a fully self-organised, self-referential mode of control(Bogard, 1996: 101). Presence in the workforce becomes, through all theseprocesses, profoundly individualized. Hence, the new work arrangementssucceed in fragmenting labour power, as well as the public or state presence,so that the only remaining force that is not atomized and particulated isthat of corporations. Workers are thus individualized in the placing of theirneeds against those of organizations not a very balanced equation, asCastells (1999) has argued.4

In a sense, however, the criticisms of public democracy face the sameproblem as do the ideological standard bearers of free software in the faceof the rearticulated movement of open software. The weakening of collec-tive power and bargaining strength of the new work formations is certainlya significant problem, but it does not necessarily resonate as comfortablyor immediately as the individual pleasures and freedoms claimed by theflexible work discourse and the possibilities of consumption. As severalcommentators have pointed out, the new work discourse takes place in abroader context of individualized politics. Leadbeater argues that in the pastdecades, trust in the states ability to act on societys behalf withered. Itsinterventions in the economy seemed an excuse for inefficiency. Its welfarepolicies ensnared clients in a demeaning web of bureaucracy and deliveredpoor quality services (1989: 139). Public democratic organizing thusproposes to read individual interests directly off those of the larger collec-tive and then creates institutional structuring to meet those perceived inter-ests; its main weakness is that such a formation positions individuals aspowerless to determine their own needs and pleasures. Flexible workdiscourse and its ideological individualism, in contrast, positions individualsas the source of power, responsibility and freedom.

In fact, numerous attempts have been made to create an agenda of progres-sive or resistant politics centred on individuals in terms of their power todefine their own freedoms, pleasures, meanings and resistances. De Certeau(1984) has suggested that everyday practices are often conduits to small resis-tances against hegemony, and to individual ways of creating meaning andpleasure. In particular, corporate raiding is the activity whereby employeesgain small freedoms in the corporate structure by pilfering time and companyspace for personal pursuits: employees wear la perruque, or a wig, whichdisguises the pleasurable and personal nature of these activities, cloaking themin the trappings of regular organizational process.


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Bogard (1996) also draws on de Certeaus ideas of la perruque as astrategy to use in response to the operationality and hyper-surveillance offlexibly networked organizational conditions. He argues that the resistancecyborg employees offer to their new work conditions needs to mimic thesimulated nature of informational work through their own tactics of playand pleasure, such as: Various hacking and viral strategies, recodings,doublings, the staging of simulated readouts, electronic decoys, and othermoves (1996: 123). Organizational and networked environments may notbe complete webs of discipline and commercial imperative, therefore, as thecritics of corporate culture and flexible work may suggest, but instead mayoffer avenues for visceral democracy in the form of freedom and pleasure,which themselves constitute small, unconscious political resistances. Politicsin general may need to be recognized in terms of these small movements,rather than in terms of overt and ideological positioning.

The acknowledgement and centring of individual experiences in flexiblework discourse is much more likely to resonate with personal experiencein contemporary culture than the overt ideological position of the corpor-ate culture critics, just as the pragmatic approach of open software hasgained far more popularity over the free software position. This is particu-larly true when one considers, as Brunt (1989) has pointed out, the apathythat seems to surround politics and the vast numbers who consider them-selves apolitical. Even those who relate strongly to a political position areconstituted by a combination of other identities just as workersconstantly also always fill the roles of consumer, and so on identitiesthat may support, remain neutral or clash with political identities. Thesense that is inscribed in visceral democratic discourses such as opensoftware or flexible work is that freedom, responsibility, power andpleasure can be personally and constantly pursued in a variety of forums,and through a variety of outlets. In contemporary culture, which isbecoming more particulated and individualized, this form of low-main-tenance, everyday, personal politics seems to be considerably more attract-ive than traditional collective or conscious forms of public democraticorganizing.

Conclusion

The open software movement draws significantly on the newer discourse ofvisceral democracy. In this way, cultural politics becomes more participa-tive, more everyday and more individual and in some sense, then, moreavailable, more common and potentially more radical than broader, organ-ized public forms of politics. Yet, concurrently, this everyday form ofpolitics seems to abandon conscious formations of democracy in favour ofthose that operate at a more subliminal, visceral or semi-conscious level. De


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Certeau himself theorizes his everyday practices as operating pre-symboli-cally, in contrast and in resistance to the structure of systems of social know-ledge and discipline. As Lewis argues, the problem with theorizing politicalparticipation and resistance as operating through these unconscious prac-tices is that the radical assault on institutional power remains necessarilylatent, unfocused and invisible (Lewis, 2000: 155). Indeed, he suggests thatit is only theorists themselves who attach the potentially open-ended signi-fier of individual bodies and their actions to a particular, politicized meaningof resistance. The open software model and the broader gift culture ofcomputer-networked communication more generally operate through asimilar type of subliminal politics. The participants in the exchange of infor-mation gifts or work are motivated by individual experiences and moti-vations of pleasure and the pragmatic orientation of identity creation andintensification, rather than the conscious adoption of an alternative modeof politics. In contrast, the free software model is indeed motivated by aconscious, overt ideological position even by a sense of morality, whichLeadbeater (1989) argues characterizes old-style progressive politics. Thisdivergence is, perhaps, a defining element in the potentials of each organiz-ational formation of democracy.

Everyday visceral democracy is constrained by this lack of conscious-ness, and hence lack of the benefits of intentional, deliberate humanorganization. Thus, although much may be accomplished through thechance intersection of various atomized particles the creation ofconsistently reliable software, for instance, as Raymond points out thereis no guarantee that such organizational systems will be necessarily demo-cratic, liberational, radical or resistant. The weakness of the free softwareapproach or of a collectivized, conscious organization of politicalposition more generally is also its strength. Although it faces the para-doxes and potential inequities of its own striving for a common or collec-tive vision, which will necessarily standardize and exclude, it also providesan organizational framework that is more able to formulate collective andconscious cultural projects and redefinitions of the social and economicvalue of information.

Furthermore, a democracy of everyday practices must recognize that theeveryday practices that are available to different participants in contem-porary culture vary. The flexible work discourse may be appealing as anindividuated form of democratic lifestyle to certain select participants whomay enjoy a greater amount of power/knowledge because of shifts in thesocial and economic value of computerized information. Thus, as Robertsargues,

The hackers options for remunerated employment are variegated, givingthem the choice of salaried work, consultancy, subcontracting and entrepre-neurship. This would confirm for them the consumerist myth of individual


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autonomy, largely unspoilt by the harsh realities that quickly disillusion thebuilding worker turned subcontractor or the academic choosing sessionalemployment. (Roberts, 2000: 42)

Nevertheless, the discursive construction of flexible work as democratic,and its imbrication with other discourses of visceral democracy, impels acertain radical motion toward freedom that cannot be entirely contained.As Roberts goes on to remark, Freed from the repressive bonds ofreligion, nationality, class, the postmodern worker might take the mythof autonomy a bit further than intended, decide what kind of society he/shewants, and go about implementing it (2000: 42). Similarly, the opensoftware movement cannot be entirely dismissed as a significant alternativeto digital commodification and techno-capitalism, for although its radicalpotential is not assured, every moment of everyday practice by its collabo-rating programmers might constitute it in some small way.

Notes

1 Open software is software in which the source code is made available toanyone, rather than being kept undisclosed, as in the case of closed software,where only the executable code is made available. Open software is not thesame as shareware or freeware, which is software that is available for differ-ing amounts of time without cost. Open software does not refer to the priceof the software, but to the availability of the source code. Thus, opensoftware may be commodified, but it still remains open software because itssource code remains available. Open software will be used as the general termfor both open software and free software, which will be discussed below,unless otherwise indicated. The open software movement refers to thecultural and organizational forms revolving around networked collaborationin order to create open software.

2 This refers to recent antitrust action against Microsoft, where a US federalcourt has argued that the software company can indeed be classified as amonopoly, and should be broken up (7 June 2000).

3 Linux is one particularly well-known and important example of opensoftware, the kernel of an operating system in competition with other oper-ating systems such as Windows, Mac OS and Unix; however, many otheropen software products and projects exist, many of which power the internet,including Apache, sendmail and others (see below).

4 Thomas suggests, indeed, that the contemporary trend is toward the whole-sale disciplining of world labour through the social extension of thediscourse of globalization, acceleration, informatization, risk, doubt andstate debilitation (2000: 127). Barney (2000) argues that individualizationof work is facilitated through networked technology that has enabled the


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deterritorialization of work, leading to lowering levels of unionization andworkplace regulation.

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KIRSTY BEST is Assistant Professor in the Department ofCommunication at the University of Ottawa, Canada. Her work in thearea of the cultural politics of computer-networked communication andmediated democracy has appeared in Television and New Media, MediaInternational Australia and Social Semiotics. Address: Department ofCommunication, University of Ottawa, 554 King Edward Ave., OttawaOntario K1N 6N5, Canada. [email: [email protected]]


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Kirsty Best - Open Software & Gift Economy