This would make an AMAZING standalone blog post, Eric (with a few added paragraph divisions). If you don't publish it anywhere else, can I use it for C4SS?
On Fri, Jun 17, 2016 at 9:34 AM, Eric Hunting <[email protected]> wrote: > When I was a child I was particularly fascinated with books like Stuart > Little, The Borrowers, classic fairy tales, The Secret of NIMH, The > Rescuers, and the like. Stories of little creatures that had created > secret, hidden, civilizations within the overlooked and forgotten > interstitial spaces of our built habitat, repurposing the detritus of our > own civilization. In cartoons mice are always repurposing our misplaced > stuff into some model of casual suburban living on their scale. Thimbles > become sinks and ottomans. Thread spools become various kinds of furniture. > Xmas lights become track lighting. Vast communities carrying on their daily > routine unseen in the spaces behind walls, under floors, in the forgotten > sealed-up space created as we built up our own infrastructures. Often they > would have their own independent infrastructures. They would create > miniature railways from toys, use pigeons as an airline, scavenge wiring > and electronics parts from our cast-off consumer junk and create their own > telegraph, telephone, and radio networks, all operating independently and > in parallel to our own. > > Then, as I got older, I moved on to SciFi but found similar themes. There > was Arthur C. Clarke's Rama; a vast, ancient, alien spacecraft housing a > rotating space colony. Its creators, purpose, and destination unknown, its > complex enigmatic systems and robots running on their own, Rama became the > host of multiple species who simply boarded and setup shop within its vast > space when it passed through their solar systems. They could live well by > simply not drawing the attention of the Raman systems, exploiting the > spaces the robots seemed to ignore, learning and exploiting their routine > patterns of activity and behavior. Then there was Larry Niven's Ringworld. > Another vast alien construction whose creator's original civilization > collapsed, leaving it running on its own automated systems as they reverted > to more primitive, fractured, societies and came to think of the ring as > some natural or divine phenomenon. > > As I began to study Post-Industrial futurism I encountered Ken Isaacs' and > the Urban Nomads of the late '60s and '70s. This brief movement was based > on the expectation of a new youth movement emerging amidst the slow > collapse of the Industrial Age to repurpose the urban and industrial > detritus to facilitate a mobile lifestyle. It's from this we got the > 'upcycling' craze, Lofting, Cargotecture, and the High-Tech design movement > based on the repurposing of industrial goods, hardware, and cast-offs in a > domestic context. Back in that middle third of the century futurists seemed > quite convinced of an imminent and dramatic collapse of corporate > capitalism, its economics, and institutions as suggested by the civil > unrest erupting at the time, though this prediction would prove premature. > The dinosaurs had a few last tricks up their sleeves and the oft-predicted > era of Total Automation was still a ways off. Later, I encountered Alex > Steffan's and Cory Doctorow's notion of Outquisition. They imagined a near > future where the growth of intentional communities in the late 20th century > had come to shelter, like cloisters, a counter-cultural civilization in the > midst of the mainstream culture and that this had become quite > self-sufficient in its cultivation of sustainable technologies ignored or > suppressed by the dominant culture. And as that dominant culture began to > incrementally fail from its inherent unsustainability, abandoning one > community after another to states of crisis, evangelistic missionaries, of > a sort, would emerge from these cloistered communities to intervene, > introducing the locals to the suppressed technologies that could rescue > them. > > And so I've come to regard the emergent Post-Industrial culture as a kind > of insurgent civilization emerging amidst the declining Industrial Age, > filling the gaps in its progressively crumbling edifice with new systems > and structures of its own, recycling and repurposing its detritus. New life > emerging in the decaying hulk of a fallen tree. The objective of the > Industrial Age was the creation of a kind of Santa Claus machine intended > to provide all our needs in its particular fashion. The market. But it has > become akin to some AI master computer that has succumbed to dementia as > its circuitry has corroded and been repeatedly hacked. It has become > pathological in behavior. A jealous god that seeks our total dependence > upon it, eliminating alternatives to itself by the systematic division and > enclosure of the commons, oblivious to its failing, unsustainable, > self-destructive, logic. But there is, in fact a lot that it has overlooked > or discarded because it didn't suit its limited paradigms and models. A lot > of blind spots. A lot of interstitial spaces. A lot of 'sodai gomi'. And as > it fails in expanding ways in its progressing decrepitude it produces even > more to exploit. And it's in that where we might find the initial resources > for the creation of a new commons and infrastructures deriving from it. > > So I see the task of contemporary Commons development as the cultivation > and engineering of an alternative, parallel, infrastructure building on > these overlooked resources. Adaptive reuse as a way of life. We are like > settlers in the ruins of a prior, alien, civilization whose sometimes still > dangerous machinery carries on blindly, stupidly, pursuing programmed > imperatives that no longer make sense or matter to us. We lack the power at > present to tear it all down and rebuild. Historically, that approach is a > bit rare anyway. But we can still exploit it. Settle in its forgotten > spaces. Exploit its behaviors. Repurpose its structures. Scavenge its > failing hardware. Defuse its hazards. Build on its decay and thus transform > it into something new. Now that the frontiers are all gone here on Earth, > now that the old machine has encircled everything, adaptive reuse is all we > can do. > > > Subject: > [P2P-F] New article from Michel Bauwens > > From: > Orsan <[email protected]> <[email protected]> > > Date: > 6/13/16, 10:01 AM > > > > -- > Eric [email protected] > > > _______________________________________________ > P2P Foundation - Mailing list > > Blog - http://www.blog.p2pfoundation.net > Wiki - http://www.p2pfoundation.net > > Show some love and help us maintain and update our knowledge commons by > making a donation. Thank you for your support. > https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/donation > > https://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation > > -- Kevin Carson Senior Fellow, Karl Hess Scholar in Social Theory Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org "You have no authority that we are bound to respect" -- John Perry Barlow "We are legion. We never forgive. We never forget. Expect us" -- Anonymous Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low-Overhead Manifesto http://homebrewindustrialrevolution.wordpress.com Desktop Regulatory State http://desktopregulatorystate.wordpress.com
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