[ICTs-and-Society] Sustainable Internet Communities as alternative to the capitalist Internet and capitalist ICTs?

[parminder]

Dear All

The questions that Christian posits are the broadest and the most 
relevant in the present context, and as we all know not at all easy to 
answer. But let me try to briefly put out  how my organisation, IT for 
Change, based in India, is trying to grapple with them, both at the 
theoretical and practical levels (and we believe in working 
simultaneously on both levels, maintaining a close connection between 
them). The most important dilemma is the one presented in the following 
question

    Are alternative media and alternative projects that struggle for
    autonomy from capitalism trapped in an antagonism, in which they
    either create and reproduce precarious voluntary labour (if they
    lack resources, but maintain an autonomous character) or loose their
    autonomy (if they get commodified in order to increase their
    resource base)? How can alternative digital media project best be
    organized?

The broad and short answer to this, that shapes our strategy, is to try 
to link these alternative projects to centres of non-capitalistic norms 
and energy within the existing mainstream system. Our work on promoting 
peer-to-peer communities of teachers in government schools using ICTs, 
but also offline interactions, plugs into the non-capitalistic norms and 
energies within the public education system related to objectives of 
teacher professional development, increasing teacher motivation and 
involvement, looking at possible p2p systems of evaluation and 
incentivisation, producing dynamic and creative digital content (that 
these p2p systems have begun to do) etc.

Similarly; India has a very vibrant local governance movement with 50 
percent quota for women. Building capacity of women political leaders at 
the grassroot is a huge national priority with lots of money earmarked 
for this purpose. We are also associated with an attempt to develop p2p 
networks or women elected representative, many of them barely literate, 
and also being exposed to digital technologies for the first time.

Another project idea in the offing is to develop district 'development 
networks' as p2p (and new local 'digital public') spaces among various 
development agencies, including NGOs, working in a district, the key 
unit of development administration. At present such horizontal 
connections are very weak and most agencies interact vertically within 
their specific sector of working.

I wont go into details of these projects here. But the idea is to 
situate the use of ICTs, employing a non proprietary, sharing paradigm, 
into real life, relatively, non-capitalistic situations. While 
obviously, the primary purpose, at least outwardly, is to enable such 
use of ICTs to benefit the involved activities and sectors, the 
non-capitalistic non-proprietary ethics of the concerned activities/ 
sectors are hoped to also strongly influence the further development of 
the ICTs, and the techno-social systems around them.

It should however be noted that such attempts are much against the tide 
even in these sectors. Even here, when it is about ICTs, the default 
thinking seems to involve business sector, revenue models, individual 
users etc. Therefore, in India's public education system, while all 
other subjects are taught in the regular 'public institutional' way, for 
ICTs the same schools typically outsource teaching to private companies. 
In relation to community based governance systems, somehow use of ICT in 
service delivery seem to 'naturally' involve private sector and revenue 
models. For elected women representatives, mobiles is the much touted 
way to do, which is almost essentially a proprietary platform ... Even 
so, it is a contextual and situated use of ICTs in these sectors that we 
think provides some hope to developing alternative ICT models for the 
whole society.

Pulling together these ideas, and some others at macro and meso level 
social systems, we are seeking to develop a theoretical framework of 
'network publics' ( a paper to be published in a forthcoming book by 
IDRC on 'open development'). This concept seeks to fill in the serious 
gap in network society theorisation and practice whereby the ideas and 
institutions of 'public' (I do not want to get into the distinction and 
commonality between how we see 'public' and 'community', in this 
context) seem to be largely missing, and the new social fabric is often 
sought to be exclusively weaved out of private contracts.

parminder


On Friday 20 January 2012 12:58 PM, Christian Fuchs wrote:
> Dear Louis and Gilson
> Dear all,
>
> Thank you for the contributions. This list indeed welcomes 
> discussions, especially as preparation for the Uppsala conference in 
> May. I am one of the conference organisers and administrator of this 
> list.
>
> I think the question Louis brought up and upon which Gilson has 
> followed up is a very profound one: How can one establish sustainable 
> Internet communities and sustainable ICT? How can one establish 
> alternatives to the corporate control of the Internet? What is the way 
> forward and which actions should best be taken and supported? How does 
> the crisis of contemporary capitalism bring about (or does not bring 
> about) a legitimacy crisis of capitalism in general and therefore also 
> a legitimacy crisis of the capitalist Internet and capitalist ICTs? Or 
> formulated in other terms: How can struggles create such a legitimacy 
> crisis?
>
> I think one can envision alternatives as the struggle for autonomous 
> spaces, spaces that are autonomous from the colonization of digital 
> media from capital and power. The question is then how it is possible 
> to fight the powers that exist without having the same access to the 
> resources (money, power, visibility, reputation, personnel, labour, 
> etc) they control? What are experiences with working in alternative 
> digital media projects that aim to have a non-capitalist character? As 
> long as we live in capitalism, we have to get hold of money in order 
> to survive. So how to commit a lot of time for alternative projects if 
> these projects are non-profit and do not finance a living?
>
> Are alternative media and alternative projects that struggle for 
> autonomy from capitalism trapped in an antagonism, in which they 
> either create and reproduce precarious voluntary labour (if they lack 
> resources, but maintain an autonomous character) or loose their 
> autonomy (if they get commodified in order to increase their resource 
> base)? How can alternative digital media project best be organized? 
> How can economic, political and ideological autonomy from existing 
> powers be established? And how do these powers constrain struggles for 
> alternatives?
>
> ICTs and society in times of capitalism and capitalist crisis pose a 
> lot of interest questions.
>
> Best, Christian
>
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