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February 16, 2005
network as unnatural? public ownership, then, unnatural?
Two passages I'd like to highlight from _Small Pieces_:
The first:
Our every social act implicitly conforms itself to the geographic and material facts of the real world. But the Web is an unnatural world, one we have built for ourselves. The facts of nature drop out of the Web. And so we can see reflected in the Web just how much of our sociality is due not to the nature of the real world but to the nature of ourselves. The Web confronts us with a different sort of brute fact: we are creatures who care about ourselves and the world we share with others; we live within a context of meaning; the world is richer with meaning than we can imagine.
Sorry that this is long, but the whole thing is necessary. I'm squirming because his first sentence allows the web to be a constructed place/space (unnatural), and the "real world" to be, well, "real." And while I'll grant that the web is "artificial" in that it is an artifact created by humans, I'm also clinging to a (possibly out-of-style) epistemology that says that *everything* we experience (geographic, material, whatever) is a construct.
And while I agree that the existence of the web is a direct reflection of humans-connecting-to-humans, I'm not sure that Weinberger needs to butt this up against (I mean juxtapose, or contrast) the notion that the web is NOT a reflection of the way the real world behaves. I guess I just don't want the web to be "unreal."
What he means, I think, is that the web actually allows us to exist and interact as humans *should*: with an implicit reverence for one another and to operate on a model of OPEN-NESS that the "real world" (capitalism? survival of the fittest?) rejects. OK, so maybe he does need the comparison. But I would then posit that the web is more "real" than the "real" real (real "real")--that the web is actually MORE natural an existence, closer to what humanity would look like if we could shed the trappings of physicality, geography, materiality--all things we claim to be superficial at best.
And the second snip:
The Web couldn’t have been built if everyone had to ask permission first. In the real world, we assume privacy and need permission to enter. On the Web, that flips. The politics of the Web, by its very nature, is that of public rights and public ownership.
Again, the distinction between the webworld and the realworld. And the notion that the web offers an open model where rights and ownership (which are both tied to corporeality/materiality) don't exist. Yes, I said *don't exist.* He says they're public, but if the model is free exchange, and equal rights and true communal ownership thrive, there isn't any purpose or point in distinguishing things like rights and ownership. If everyone is the owner, there is no owner. If everyone shares the same rights, there is no need to determine rights. The concepts of rights and ownership are results of exclusionary systems. The web doesn't exclude. At least, I want to believe it doesn't.
Posted by mryonker at February 16, 2005 12:01 AM
Comments
I, too, am uncomfortable with the ways he is drawing very sharp distinctions between Web and "real" worlds. However, I wouldn't have thought to put my finger on it until reading your post. One of the things that really bothers me about the way we theorize the Web is the tendency to throw all of the "real" world stuff into a sack and pitch it off the nearest bridge. We actually (as much of Weinberger's text alludes to) bring a great deal of the "real" world to Web space, even if we are using the model as an "it's not this" type of example.
I need to post more on this and my lovely experience working for a software startup. It will be titled "New Economy, Same Dollar."
Posted by: TR at February 16, 2005 08:40 PM