Doyle Saylor wrote:
>
> Greetings Comrades,
> The form of e-lists is familiar enough. Some people have remarked on
> how the lists themselves don't serve as good organizing tools (see Carrol
Dunno what Carrol thinks - but I've made similar remarks, and it is NOT
that e-lists make poor organizing tools. It is merely that a single
e-list may be used primarily as place of open discussion and debate or
primarily as an organizing tool but not both.
In a discussion like Pen-l or lbo-list no subject is ever closed. Nor is
there any real limit on topics to be introduced nor on how abstract
discussion should be. Speaking personally, as someone more on the
grassroots end, I learn about things that will never be discussed in
day-to-day organizing. I get a continuous flow of facts from people on
the ground in struggles to which I do not devote my primary efforts. All
of this helps keep my day to day struggle grounded in a larger reality.
It helps to preserve me from an ignorance that could lead to a gradual
slippage to right on all issues but those I am active in (a phenomena I
see too frequently). In addition there are plenty of postings here on
opportunities for action, and on resources useful to activists. And if I
have a question I can usually get it answered quite quickly.
Now there is no reason why e-list cannot be used for other left-wing
purposes. I would be against turning existing lists such as pen-l or
lbo-talk into such an "organizing" list, but the establishment of
organizing lists could be useful in their own way. Such a list would
come out of either a single issue or organization, It would have an
agenda, with only a few issues at a time being discussed. There would be
fixed period of time for a given issue, after which discussion on it
would closed (possibly to be re-opened in the future when circumstances
change). If such a list were to be democratic then there would be a
democratic way of introducing a topic, and setting the length of
discussion. A list that belonged to an organization might actually vote
on a topic after discussion was over and decide on collective action.
Alternatively a list might serve as an organizing tool without
ultimately coming to a single decision but rather by ending each topic
with a document that summarized any area of agreement, and majority and
minority opinions on all areas of disagreement. It could also include
similar sections on tactics -- that is what tactics were universally
recommended, what tactics were supported by a majority, and what only by
various minorities of the group. Even when on lists that made decisions
such a summary of view could prove useful.
In either case such organizing lists would be limited to a particular
spectrum of opinion. For example, while a reasonably polite right wing
libertarian may be welcomed on a socialist discussion list, he or she
would simply excluded from a socialist organizing list...
I have nothing against other technology; but an e-list can be one of the
most inexpensive says for a large group to meet in cyberspace. No need
for fancy technology to accommodate it to a variety of goals.
Again, I want to emphasize that discussion lists like lbo-talk and pen-l
are extraordinarily valuable in their current form. It would be a
tremendous waste to change them into something with narrower purpose,
like transforming a university library into a Christian Science reading
room.
But we certainly can use focused on-line organizing lists as well.
Existing elist technology is more than sufficient to handle them. The
hard part is deciding how heavily to moderate. Intensive moderation will
produce the most productive organizing lists (as opposed to discussion
lists where a light hand by the moderator serves best). But intensive
moderation also takes the most time by the moderator.
BTW, without commenting on any specific personalities, optimistic, warm,
friendly, open people with a good sense of humor, and a low level of
condescendsion and hostility make the best moderators..
> Cox). I want to look at the contemporary business model of like forms of
> "knowledge" production for examples of how e-lists might evolve toward
> organizing tools. Knowledge management as a term summarizes capitalist
> thinking about managing the intellectual capital in an enterprise.
> Primarily how do workers get information in a timely way and how work groups
> communicate internally in knowledge production and that relationship to
> external communications.
>
> Typical of the tools being developed in the corporate site is something
> called Placeware. Combining some intranet or internet interface with
> telephone business conferences, these sorts of software solutions to
> combining work groups give us some picture of what to look for in e-lists
> with regard to organizing workers. The theory of practice of what to aim
> for I mean.
>
> For example for e-lists flaming is a typical problem of production of
> knowledge which confronts the list manager. A larger volume list will
> frequently overwhelm the manager so that problems arise but the
> manager/reader has lost content due to too much to read or not able to
> competently make judgements about the nature of conflict. In fact
> judgements are primitive with regard to knowledge management since much of
> the potential automation of knowledge production is not yet being reflected
> in list management. What precisely is the organizing point to the rules of
> participating on e-lists? The moderator may have some simple rules but are
> those rules really meant to produce knowledge, and is knowledge production
> really the goal for typical e-list managers?
>
> Placeware represents a method to coordinate a small group of organizers
> shaping the meeting of a much larger group of workers to facilitate
> knowledge production. A typical meeting might have several hundred
> participants, and maybe a dozen organizers performing different kinds of
> organizing functions. In addition various kinds of summary mechanisms for
> the whole group exists. Those summary mechanisms might be automated votes
> on questions that arise, common visual interfaces (charts and graphs to show
> the content of decisions made by a group in an election) in real time to see
> content being made jointly by designated individuals (a page being worked on
> by several hands at once).
>
> Let me just draw out some points here, collaboration in producing
> content is the norm for which these softwares are being built, therefore
> reflecting a sense that knowledge is being produced with a purpose of the
> group not individual production. So that e-mail writers would no longer be
> just making comments alone into the group, but that groups create the
> knowledge production together. The content is visual (aside from written
> text which is already available in e-mail), and sound content which gives
> quite a bit more reality (human emotional production) to what people feel
> that are working together. It is difficult in e-lists to know what people
> (lurkers) feel about debates yet their content is very important to e-lists
> in terms of growth of the audience, and dispersion of knowledge on wider
> scales across great geographic spaces.
>
> Bandwidth WAP and knowledge production
>
> On e-lists where a person is paying for the time spent online, there is a
> heavy cost to bear for large expansions of data coming down the pipeline.
> For example sending graphics may make the content of an e-mail go from 15 kb
> of space sent to 1.5mb. The download time would go from seconds (at the
> rate of standard 56 kbs modems) to many minutes and put someone in a
> particular part of the world that has only limited time access at a
> disadvantage with respect to others who do not pay for access by their time
> online in the larger context of e-list knowledge production. A parallel
> further to what can be said also of people with cognitive disabilities such
> as blindness where graphical information sent has to be seen to be
> understood.
>
> Knowledge production with visual content (pictures) depends upon broad band
> techniques to be useable in real time (responses go back and forth in
> seconds). Pictures and sound allow real emotional content to knowledge
> production, and real emotional content allows stabile group formation for
> common work processes. Frequently it is unclear to participants in e-lists
> that emotional content is important to knowledge production. This is an
> historical artifact of rationalists thinking which rejects emotions as a
> part of human thought.
>
> There are two main avenues for sending a lot of information at once, wired
> and wireless techniques. WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) does not
> require the implementation of wire infrastructures in places where there is
> no money to pay for laying wires and other support systems for broadband
> networks (see Cisco Systems, Nortel, and Lucent concerning methods for wired
> production). WAP refers to being online through a mobile device such as
> cell phones, or PDA (personal digital assistants). It is likely that as the
> expansion of knowledge management grows more important that large parts of
> the globe that are not now wired and won't be wired for economic reasons in
> the near future will be accessed through wireless means. More than two
> thirds of humanity will not be wired into the internet. Included in that
> are issues of literacy also. Wireless techniques are meant to be
> voice/speech controlled rather than written.
>
> Wireless production implies for a knowledge production group, very like the
> e-lists groups, that embodiment is an important issue. That is that we are
> carrying around on our bodies (literally to embody information to human
> being requirements) access to the knowledge production group (the
> contemporary e-list group). There are various methods that reflect
> embodiment issues, XML, GPS etc,. XML (a recent upgrade in HTML for the
> www) ties communications on line to the producer source-machine of
> information, GPS (satellite global positioning methods) locates a machine to
> a geographic point on the surface of the planet.
>
> Therefore lurking in the background anonymously in an e-lists impedes
> knowledge production. Said another way, embodiment of knowledge production
> implies that being connected anywhere anytime places new demands upon
> "privacy". With regard to Marxist, this is a business force that destroys
> individualistic understandings of how knowledge is produced.
>
> For example, to not participate in a networked group doing knowledge
> production puts one outside the capitalist economy. Wherever knowledge
> production remains off-line, the business manager (in the capitalist sense)
> no longer knows where or what the worker is doing. Keeping in mind we tend
> to think of work as being in one physical location for a group of people,
> whereas on-line knowledge production implies dispersed or de-centralized
> production of knowledge. A manager cannot rely upon knowing a person face
> to face in order to insure production being met. Therefore all that needs
> to be known about a person must go on line in order to produce knowledge.
> Thus ending individual autonomy in the sense that lurking implies.
>
> Typically Placeware tells organizers a great deal about each participant
> whether they speak up to the group or not.
>
> Bandwidth. Standard modems of 56 KBS for e-mail. Or slower. 3G systems
> (3rd generation) 2.4MBS which is fast enough for video and music downloads
> and uploads. (see Scientific American, October 2000, page 54)
> thanks,
> Doyle Saylor
