On 01/12/2012 05:02 PM, Simon Biggs wrote:
I'm an academic and an artist and totally champion the open book. Knowledge is 
made best when it is made shared.


There is a conflation often between open books as a product and open production as a process. It seems to be that Open in the field of publishing usually refers to distribution - the book has an open license that enables it to be distributed. More often than not however the books are not available to be altered and changed (ie the digital source is either PDF or not made available at all).

In software circles the differences in these kinds of freedoms has been spelled out:
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

1. The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
2. The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this. 3. The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2). 4. The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.


Open publishing largely doesnt seem to abide by these kinds of freedoms. Especially with regard to making the source available for change which is stated as a precondition for two of the above ie. "Access to the source code is a precondition....".

I have the feeling that Open mostly means free to distribute in the open publishing world. It does not mean or imply the right to have access to the editable sources, nor does it mean the right to fork.

It seems to me the reluctance to embrace these freedoms is closely related to the fear of losing control of a book and the fear of 'poor quality' creeping in. Hence open production seems pretty untenable for the majority of the academic world as far as I can see.


I'm not sure what you mean by texture Adam, but the open source ethic certainly 
gives life a different texture than a capitalist model.


Well I think the open source ethic is well aligned with capitalism. There is no disconnect there. Apache, Mozilla, Ubuntu, Blender...all seem to function pretty well within capitalism. The question for open source or open publishing is not it vs capitalism but more how open collaboration can effect the texture of production. Do books read differently and 'become different' in open models against the dominant paradigm which has been closed single authorship within proprietary publishing.

adam






best

Simon


On 12 Jan 2012, at 13:42, adam wrote:

hi,

A happy new year to all :)

On 01/11/2012 10:44 AM, tterranova wrote:

I'm not saying that I agree with all these different perspectives, but
my questions to the list would be: in which ways do open practices of
publishing, writing and reading interact with the general attention
economy of networked media, where attention is defined as a 'scarce
commodity'? How can they be used to counteract some of the
compulsive/destructive dynamics of Internet readership? What do your
experiences tell us of the difference between social interaction on
corporate media platforms and social interaction on alternative, open
platforms? What is it that in your opinion ultimately defines the
quality and affective texture of communication on succesful open platforms?

What defines the quality and affective texture of books on open and closed 
platforms? - is there anyone that can comment on the differences between books 
produced by open and closed platforms? It seems to me that there are some 
wonderful opportunities to transform the texture of books even within a linear 
container because of open production models enabled by the web. Yet there are 
many, academics being near the top of the list, that shoot down the idea of 
open book production.

adam







looking forward to the rest of the discussion

tiziana terranova



Il 09/01/12 12.07, Simon Biggs ha scritto:
Welcome to all empyre subscribers and, especially, this months
moderators and discussants, Penny Travlou, Smita Kheria, Tiziana
Terranova, Dmytri Kleiner, Adam Hyde, Salvatore Iaconesi, Joss Hands
and Marc Garrett. We have the collective responsibility of welcoming
in 2012, during the year's first monthly theme. For much of the world
2011 was, at best, a challenging year, and 2012 looks like more of the
same. This appears to be a period of socio-economic change as the
shifting tectonic plates of geo-political power grind against one
another. I've never been keen on futurology or fortune-telling but am
confident 2012 will be another year of turbulent events that will have
us end up in a different place to where we started.

In this globalised and highly mediated context, during the month of
January, we wish to focus empyre discussion on how writing and
publishing are currently evolving in the context of global networks.
We wish to engage a debate about open models of writing and
publishing. We hope to gain some insight into how changes in notions
and practices of authorship, media, form, dissemination, intellectual
property and economics affect writing and publishing as well as the
formation of the reader/writerships, communities and social engagement
that must flow from that activity. Specifically, we wish to look at
examples of open publishing, whether they be FLOSS manuals, copyLeft
or CopyFarLeft or other publication models, in order to look at new
methods for knowledge making and distribution. We also wish to
consider how communities of shared-value emerge through such
initiatives and how their members are able to identify themselves to
one another and others.

As usual, the month (the next three weeks) will be structured into
weekly bite sized chunks, each led by a moderator and involving two
discussants. Participants can choose to post to the list at any time
but the discussants for each week will have the opportunity to focus
the debate for that period. We hope that as many empyre subscribers as
possible will feel engaged and contribute to the discussion.

Our guests are, in the order of the weeks they will participate:

Tiziana Terranova lectures and researches cultural studies and new
media at the Università degli Studi di Napoli 'L'Orientale'. She is
the author of Network Culture (Pluto Press, 2004) and has recently
co-edited, with Couze Venn, a special issue of Theory, Culture and
Society on Michel Foucault's recently published courses. She is
currently working on a book about neoliberalism and digital social media.

Dmytri Kleiner describes himself as a Venture Communist. He creates
miscommunication technologies, including deadSwap, Thimbl and R15N and
is the author of the Telekommunist Manifesto. He lives in Berlin and
his url is http://dmytri.info

Simon Biggs is an artist, writer and curator. His work focuses on
interactive systems, new media and digital poetics
(http://www.littlepig.org.uk). He is involved in a number of research
projects, including the EU funded project Developing a Network-Based
Creative Community: Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and
Innovation in Practice (http://www.elmcip.net). He is Professor of
Interdisciplinary Arts, directing the MSc by Research in
Interdisciplinary Creative Practices, at the University of Edinburgh.

Adam Hyde lives in Berlin. In 2007 Adam started FLOSS Manuals, a
community for producing free manuals for free software. Through this
work he also started Booki (a book production platform) and has been
pioneering Book Sprints - a methodology for collaboratively producing
books in 5 days or less. Previously, as an artist, he was 1/2 of r a d
i o q u a l i a, Simpel and other artistic projects engaging open
source and free media.

Salvatore Iaconesi teaches cross media design at “La Sapienza”
University of Rome, at Rome University of Fine Arts and at ISIA Design
in Florence. He is the founder of Art is Open Source and of FakePress
Publishing, focusing on the human beings' mutations through ubiquitous
technologies and networks.

Penny Travlou is a social geographer and ethnographer lecturing in the
Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the
University of Edinburgh. Her research currently focuses on studying
emergent network-based creative communities. She is Co-Investigator on
the ELMCIP project.

Marc Garrett is an activist, artist, writer and co-director/founder
(with artist Ruth Catlow) of internet arts collective
http://www.furtherfield.org (since 96) and the Furtherfield Gallery&
social space in London. Through these platforms various contemporary
media arts exhibitions and projects are presented nationally and
internationally. Marc also hosts a weekly media arts radio programme
on Resonance FM, co-edited the publication "Artists Re: thinking
games" and is editing a new publication "Conversations As We Leave The
21st Century". He is currently undertaking a PhD at Birkbeck
University, London.

Joss Hands is a lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University where he is
Director of the Anglia Research Centre in Digital Culture
(ARCDigital). His research interests are at the intersection of
technology, new media, politics and critical theory. His focus has
been in two main areas. The role of technology in providing an arena
for the expression of dissent and the organisation of resistance
movements and the role of technology in more formal democratic
procedures, specifically the role of the Internet in contributing
towards the development of deliberative democracy. He has recently
completed a book on digital activism, @ is for Activism: Dissent,
Resistance and Rebellion in a Digital Culture, published by Pluto Press.

Smita Kheria is a lawyer and lecturer in law at the University of
Edinburgh. Her focus of interest is intellectual property law and
issues around authorship, especially concerning artists' practices
with new media. Smita is an associate of SCRIPT: the AHRC Research
Centre for Studies in Intellectual Property and Technology and is
Supervising editor (Intellectual Property) for SCRIPT-ed, the journal
of Law, Technology&  Society.


best

Simon


Simon Biggs
si...@littlepig.org.uk http://www.littlepig.org.uk/ @SimonBiggsUK
skype: simonbiggsuk

s.bi...@ed.ac.uk Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh
http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/ http://www.elmcip.net/
http://www.movingtargets.co.uk/




_______________________________________________
empyre forum
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http://www.subtle.net/empyre


_______________________________________________
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre

--

--
Adam Hyde
Founder, FLOSS Manuals
Project Manager, Booki
Book Sprint Facilitator
mobile :+ 49 177 4935122
identi.ca : @eset
booki.flossmanuals.net : @adam

http://www.flossmanuals.net
http://www.booki.cc
http://www.booksprints.net

_______________________________________________
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre



Simon Biggs
si...@littlepig.org.uk http://www.littlepig.org.uk/ @SimonBiggsUK skype: 
simonbiggsuk

s.bi...@ed.ac.uk Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh
http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/ http://www.elmcip.net/ 
http://www.movingtargets.co.uk/




_______________________________________________
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre

--

--
Adam Hyde
Founder, FLOSS Manuals
Project Manager, Booki
Book Sprint Facilitator
mobile :+ 49 177 4935122
identi.ca : @eset
booki.flossmanuals.net : @adam

http://www.flossmanuals.net
http://www.booki.cc
http://www.booksprints.net

_______________________________________________
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre

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