blog

The relationship of asceticism, pastoral power, and open source software

2010-08-02T00:25:56Z

There are two elements to counter-conduct, against the pastoral power and newer formation, governmentality.

The first element of counter-conduct is asceticism. Asceticism. Asceticism is not the diminution of evil, rather, it is the mastery of the self's relationship to evil. Asceticism is a counter-conduct to pastoral power because it is incompatible with forms of pastoral power that "involves permanent obedience, renunciation of the will, and only of the will, and the deployment of the individual's conduct in the world" (Foucault, p.207). WIth the pastorate there is a level of respect for the law, but the ascetic "turns this around again by making it a challenge of the exercise of the self on the self".
The second element of counter-conduct is community. Whereas asceticism has an individualizing effect, the formation of community is something completely different. Two forms of counter-pastoral communities existed. The first kind was apocalyptic, which believed that the centrality of the Church, the Church itself, in Rome was the Antichrist. The second, more subtle and learned form of counter-pastoral community believed that if the pastor is in a state of sin his privilege and authority ceased to exist. In this formulation the pastor's power is not independent of his moral worth. The priest's power to administer the sacraments became a point of counter-conduct, with some communities refusing to acknowledge the ability of the priest to perform baptism on children, without the consent of the individual and the community.

These two elements of counter-conduct are found in contemporary discourse about open source software. The formation of an individual's own digital self can only be fully realized by creating the apparatus as one desires. For example, the subjectivity one gains from Facebook is that of the (public) face---the clean and sanitized face that is blue and columnar, open to the public (or with consent fear of accidental exposure), and necessarily corporate ("likes" and targeted advertising). Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X are customizable operating systems, with considerable latitude for expressive subjectivity, but at their root, the system pushes against counter-conduct, under the guise of protection against spam, viruses, and software instability. Open source software, however, is fully expressive, at least within the constraints of skill and programming language functionality (which deserves its own treatment, since it is not at all clear that open source software permits counter-conduct against base elements of digitally, networking, linearity, etc.). Open source programmers frequently speak of their ability to "scratch their own itch" and "hack around", which is both playful and generative of how they represent themselves to themselves. The community of open source is, and always has been, oriented towards counter-conduct, at least in discourse and intra-group conceptions. The freedom and ability to create new communities is paramount to open source software, and is increasingly popular as open source licensing becomes more permissive and business friendly. Forking, and especially forking without recognition of the past communities, is variously considered both necessary and problematic. If the direction of a community is problematic for a subset it is easy to create a new community, but it is just as easy to create a commercial enterprise that co-opts the community interests (as long as the license is permissive). Closed source software is considered, apocalyptically, the ruin of computing, and functionally, constraining. Sponsored open source software is very productive but also stifling, given that it needs to meet certain business goals.

There is certainly more to be said here, but this will have to suffice for now.

The (late) historical contingency of judiciary and confession

2010-08-01T23:07:04Z

In his 1977-78 lectures ("Security, Territory, Population", Chapter 8), Foucault observes that the judiciary was forming in the seventh and eighth centuries, and that by the eleventh and twelfth centuries the judiciary had already become "fairly generalized". In the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) it was established that at certain points in the year confessional was obligatory. This form of pastoral power subjected the individual to the punishment of the church. Whereas formerly the pastor had a responsibility for the salvation of his flock, the Church had come to establish the subjectivity of the individual without in turn being responsible for the individual's salvation. After 1215 governmentality came to be established through the Church; it continued until what may have been its zenith in the English Revolution of the seventeenth century, after which pastoral functions were taken up by government. Counter-conduct then arose less from religious institutions than political ones.

Successful PhD Letter of Intent (University of Toronto FIS)

2010-07-30T16:30:21Z

As a follow-up to my previous letter of intent I am posting my most recent successful Letter of Intent for the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information Science PhD program. (Also available in PDF format)

Internet Sabotage: Toward a new theory of information and ethics

keywords: sabotage, information ethics, Internet ethics, information theory, information topology, information constraint, knowledge, Internet, communication

My PhD research examines how Internet sabotage creates meaning. Further, ethical questions then arise directly from the acts of sabotage, but also from the economically productive nature of creating meaning in post-industrial societies. Although Internet sabotage is not well understood or well recognized it can be found everywhere. I define Internet sabotage (or more broadly digital sabotage) as actions that reduce or preclude alternative outcomes of information. Reducing alternative outcomes typically requires privileged or insider access to information to operate. For example, it is only with knowledge of peer–to–peer file sharing protocols that an effective cyber assault can be mounted against media pirates. Ostensibly, actions like these disrupt or destroy the flow of information, but actually, by restricting information possibilities sabotage entrenches a single meaningful outcome. This makes intuitive sense—the censorial power of mass media similarly creates ideologies, facts, and common beliefs.

According to Shannon and Weaver’s Mathematical Theory of Communication (MTC), communication can only occur when the receiver is moved from a state of disorder to order. This occurs when the receiver learns something new (from the created meaning), or to state the same thing, local entropy decreases. Laws of thermodynamics state that global entropy, unlike local entropy, can never decrease. Thus, without sabotage anything is possible, but entropy is maximal and effective communication is precluded.

Despite conventional wisdom about work and knowledge production, I will argue that meaning is socially produced through antagonisms rather than collaborations. The elastic push-pull of sabotage creates meaning in unexpected and local ways that fracture flat and global understandings of society, work, entertainment, and ethics. On this view, sabotage is normative, since it shapes the possible consequences of any action. Yet, because of the challenges of assigning justice and worth from this tangle of knowledge and power, it is still an open question whether information within digital networks is normative, long before it becomes meaningful and consequential.

I argue that by interrogating examples of digital sabotage it will become clear that information constraint is an ontological feature of digital networks. Sabotage is a form of power within these digital networks that produces knowledge by constraining alternative narratives, data, and possibilities. Because sabotage is common, constrains information, and plays a role in knowledge production, any ethics of digital information must be tied to a theory of social epistemology. As such, my PhD research will address the following practical and meta-theoretical question: What kind of information ethics can accommodate digital sabotage and how does this impact current socio-technological practice?

Current state of knowledge

Beginning in the mid–1990s a new form of information ethics emerged from Library and Information Science, in large part due to Luciano Floridi’s groundbreaking work. This new information ethics had close alliances with so–called continental philosophy and viewed all processes and objects as informational. The upshot is that information ethics has become a general ethics, applicable to all subjects and objects. Floridi believes that entropy is an evil that ought to be avoided; I argue, instead, that entropy sets the potential limits for communication and that information constraint can (somewhat paradoxically) lead to information flow. In addition to contemporary scholars of information ethics (such as Luciano Floridi, Lucas Introna, Deborah G. Johnson, Bernd Frohmann, Kenneth Himma, Adam D. Moor, Helen Nissenbaum, Rafael Capurro, and Herman T. Tavani), I will turn to an interdisciplinary range of scholars, on sabotage, power, and capital (Thorstein Veblen, Michel Foucault, and Michel Serres), on topologies of information (Bruno Latour, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, and Manuel Castells), on the ontology of information (Fred Dretske and Brian Cantwell Smith), and on social epistemology (David Bloor, Bruno Latour, and Richard Rorty).

Methodology

I will work from a genealogy of engineers and code to my theoretical claims. This genealogy will treat engineers and code as “objects” in a network. I will investigate the traces left from discursive practices by analysing source code repository logs, interviewing software engineers (and “informal” engineers), and I will attempt to identify and interrogate positions of interaction between code and engineer. Further, this network includes script kiddies, trolls, and crackers, as well as Internet Service Providers, media companies and e–government. I assume that power and objects are irreducible, ontologically occasionalist, historically nominalist, yet very real (broadly subscribing to the methodological tenets of Speculative Realism). Networked social epistemology and an ontology of objects where “abuse [appears] before use” (Serres) are cornerstones of this research. The underlying theory of information relies on meaning as an output for work, but this does not necessarily imply a doxastic account.

To help validate my findings I will also perform empirical studies of network (mis–) use. Network data will be collected and analysed using off–the–shelf and custom digital network analysis, data mining, and cyber forensics tools. I anticipate that empirical analysis will reveal subtle and hitherto unexplored acts of sabotage, often being performed at the transmission layer of digital technologies. The data and histories chronicling acts of sabotage will produce interim publications as my theoretical aims are constructed.

Preliminary Studies

When I previously studied the techniques and technologies that media corporations used to fight music and movie pirates I realized that adequate explanations for these behaviours were wanting. Neoclassical economics is the dominant narrative for understanding anti-piracy measures, but its inability to quantify value exposes ontological problems with the neoclassical model of capital accumulation. (Neo–) Marxism fares somewhat better, but it too fails for technical reasons. At the root of it, both explanations fail to properly recognize the social processes latent in capital accumulation. I discovered that, in actuality, production is a hologram of social processes that can be preconfigured by limiting the availability of certain social processes. The petty causes and information flows operated not in spite of the sabotage, but rather, because of the sabotage.

For over two years I have been developing software, processes and business logic for Algorithmics Inc., a risk management software development firm. The hard skills I acquired will allow me to develop empirical digital network analysis tools for my research. During this tenure, I also saw the interactions of code and engineers in a corporate setting, which has helped me to develop an intuitive sense of the locations and form of these discourses. During my Master of Library and Information Science degree at the University of Western Ontario (OGS funded) I explored information ethics and information organization, both as practice and theory. At the University of Toronto (Master of Arts, Philosophy, SSHRC funded) my close interactions with Brian Cantwell Smith sparked an interest in the intersections of philosophy of information, political economy, and metaphysics.

Impact of Research & Social Importance

My research will primarily contribute new theoretical challenges to media, culture, and information studies. The empirical data from digital network analysis, combined with my theoretical approach, will benefit researchers in other fields, such as Political Science, Economics, Computer Science, and Engineering. Given Canada’s rapidly changing digital landscape (e.g., Internet neutrality, spam and digital advertising, digital privacy), my research will challenge existing assumptions that fuel policy and business decisions. Hopefully these challenges will provoke business leaders, government officials, NGOs, and citizens to make more informed decisions about our shared digital future.

Suitability of tenure

The Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto is an ideal location for my PhD research. The faculty are globally recognized as being leaders in information ethics and is on the cutting edge of Internet research. My research would benefit greatly from the assistance of Brian Cantwell Smith, Yuri Takhteyev, Andrew Clement, and Stephen Hockema as members of my PhD advisory committee. The interdisciplinary nature of the program fits well with the scope of my research, cutting across critical theory, computer science, philosophy, sociology, and history. The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto will also prove an invaluable resource.

A defence* of distracted reading

2010-07-20T16:41:36Z

I’m on vacation. Maybe it’s just the colour or my crystal, or maybe it’s something more primal, but I’m reading on my vacation. And not just a little, and not just ‘easy’ stuff. I’m working through Foucault’s 77-78 lectures, Smith’s Origin of Objects, and Raunig’s A Thousand Machines. Yet, I’m not breaking my back here, I perceive no discomfort while reading these challenging monographs. I am, I’ll admit, distracted. Sometimes I’ll plow through a dozen pages, but typically I’ll read, and re-read, the same pages, very slowly, constantly shifting my gaze, my mental processes, and my attention. It’s a form of slow reading, certainly, because it is very slow.

I’m sitting on a cafe patio, going down every mental rabbit hole I come across. Instead of digging into authorial intent I am deeply contextualizing everything, searching out the meaning of every fleeting idea, phrase, or spark of imagination. And, most importantly, pace Nicholas Carr, I’m am enjoying it. It’s true that I am not flying through these books, and I may even miss some central concepts that the author is trying to pass along, but I am learning, and I truly enjoy it. Distracted ‘Internet-age’ reading is often thought to bring about the end of intelligent reading, turning all these young people into mindless drones with the attention span of a gnat. I’m probably not helping my attention span any, but I’m surely benefitting from reading, and since I enjoy it, I read often, even chronically. Sure, I could maximize my pedagogy by reading carefully and focused, but I’m sure to grow bored, and not just because of the allure of distractions from the Internet, video games, TV and any other electronic ill, rather, I’d grow bored in the same way that students have always grown bored. Instead, reading is an enjoyable, integrated part of my life, it isn’t something that requires tremendous focus or fortitude. I enjoy reading exactly because it isn’t hard, and doesn’t require steely focus.

*not really a defence per se, perhaps more of an exploration of possibility.

DODOcase for iPad quick review

2010-06-15T16:01:52Z

I recently recieved my DODOcase for my iPad, and I must say, what a beautiful and wonderful case! The construction videos on the DODOcase website tell the entire story, but basically, they make an iPad case by using traditional bookbinding techniques. In addition to being very attractive (black matte fabric outside, deep red fabric inside), the case is very functional. About as thin as any iPad case could be, the DODOcase holds the iPad with rubber bumpers in each corner, and keeps the cover closed with an elastic strap, just like book cases. The fit and finish are amazing, and they intelligently include cut outs for all the ports and buttons. The case won't keep your iPad dry, but it should be sufficient protection from scratches and the occasional light drop. The iPad is actually nicer to hold and use when in the case (feeling more like a book). I haven't used it long enough to assess longevity, but my guess is that it will last about as long as any book used every day, which is to say, not as long as a normal iPad case. I'm especially worried that the rubber bumpers which hold the iPad will come loose with time, but at $40 USD it wouldn't be too painful to purchase a new case in a year's time. Overall, it's a great case.

Receiving SMS alerts for Google Calendar on Fido phones (for free)

2010-05-28T18:44:57Z

To receive SMS alerts for Google Calendar events (either by default, or as selected) on Fido phones in Canada you need to jump through a hoop to avoid the $5/month SMS-to-Email gateway fee.

In Google Calendar, click Settings->Calendar Settings.
Click on the Mobile Setup tab.
Enter your appropriate Fido mobile phone information, but instead of selecting Fido for the Operator: field, choose Rogers.

Google will now send you a confirmation SMS, and you do not need to pay the $5/month fee. When selecting the alert type for Google Calendar events you can select SMS to have it notify you of the event.

Transfer iPad Pages documents to Google Docs

2010-05-02T19:55:45Z

Last December Google Docs stopped supporting the increasingly useful “email in” feature that allowed you to email in documents to your Google Docs account. Since the iPad version of Pages is so poor in sharing documents, I was hoping to be able to use this feature to send documents to my Google Docs account. Alternatively, you could use one of the still poor-quality third-party word processors that support Google Docs sync, available in the App store (Mobile Editor is a sham, while Office HD2 is decent, but far from elegant). I also had no luck copy and pasting from Pages to Office HD2, hoping I could create a document in pages and copy it over to the Google Docs-aware Office HD2 (this ended up crashing my iPad, actually).

Instead, here’s the roundabout way of sending your Pages documents to Google Docs:

Create a Pages document.
Email a copy of the Pages document to yourself (to a valid Gmail account, obviously).
Open Safari on your iPad, open Gmail. (Here’s the hack) At the bottom of the page switch from the mobile (iPad-specific) version of Gmail to the “Desktop” version. You may receive a warning about using an unsupported browser.
Open the email to yourself in the desktop version of Gmail. Click “Open in Google Docs”.

After a short conversion process the document will open in (read-only) Google Docs for mobile. You can now access this Google Doc document on any other computer or through third-party Google Docs-aware applications

Buying Apple American App Store applications from Canada

2010-04-25T15:54:17Z

Here’s a quick tip that originally came from @binarylibrarian. Buying Apple App Store items for your iPhone or iPad requires a credit card from the appropriate country, so if you want to purchase items from the US store you must have a credit card with an American address (at the time of this writing certain iPad applications are only available in the US store, including iPad iWorks applications). As a Canadian this is a problem, since most credit cards require identification checks. However, there is a loophole.

If you purchase over-the-counter prepaid credit cards you can type in any reasonable address and the App Store accepts it (this is probably technically fraud, but it seems like an innocuous white lie). I have personally tried the Vanilla brand of Mastercard purchased from Shoppers Drug Mart and had great success. There is a $5 charge for the card, but otherwise you have a normal pre-paid credit card with any arbitrary address.

Combine this tip with a US VPN (like BlackVPN), and you can download Pandora or ABC Player, set up the US VPN on your iPad, and listen to free music, and watch free TV, as if you were an American (but without the unfortunate politics).

BlackVPN Review

2010-04-19T23:09:04Z

Full disclosure: BlackVPN is offering additional free service for people willing to review their VPN service. They state that the reviews are to be accurate, and mine is.

I’ve recently switched my Internet access to Rogers in Canada. Rogers is notorious for traffic shaping content that they do not approve of, so I was naturally worried that my Bittorrent streams were going to be severely shaped or even artificially terminated (Rogers practices both forms of QoS). I have begun to look for fast, capable VPN services with a Mac OS X client.

BlackVPN is the first I have tried, and so far I am quite impressed. I am using the global service: US servers for Hulu, etc., British servers for iPlayer, and the Netherlands servers for Bittorrent. The US servers are plenty fast to stream Hulu, likewise the British servers for iPlayer, although I noticed that the HD iPlayer content struggled. Since I have the top Rogers Internet package (stated speed of 50MBit/S, although it is surely never that quick), I did not expect BlackVPN to keep up with my connection. Yet, for the Netherlands servers, the throughput was very reasonable, and frequently hit over 800Kb/S (I assume the British and US servers were even faster, but I never needed to saturate the connection with the exception of HD content).

The OpenVPN software works well with OS X, although I did have the occasional dropped connection, which in a few cases led to a very ugly kernel panic. These dropped connections are as likely a product of Rogers killing the connection as they are any fault of BlackVPN, and at any rate, the connection can keep live for 12+ hours, which is fine enough for me. BlackVPN offers a nice choice of connection types, such that you can use your iPhone or iPad with their service (once properly configured).

Overall I’m impressed with the service. It’s pricey, although not so much more than any other, and if you go for the more expensive Global service you get a great array of options.

Making Google Docs pretty with user-supplied CSS

2010-03-17T18:42:53Z

This tip comes via Merlin Mann, but since the tip was buried in a recent Macbreak Weekly podcast, I thought it would be helpful to surface here.

With Google Docs you can change a document look and feel with plain-Jane CSS editing. This is available from within Google Docs; with an open document go to Edit->Edit CSS. Inside the window that is displayed add any CSS rules you want to style your document with. The CSS doesn’t quite stay with the document if you export to Microsoft Word (it appears to make a best-guess), but internally to Google Docs (including exporting as PDF) the styling persists for the life of the document. Using Merlin Mann’s user-supplied CSS allows you to create really attractive Google Docs documents. Further, inside the CSS rules for font-family, you can supply your own system-only fonts within the font-stack, so you aren’t limited to Google Docs’ poor typefaces. Obviously, if you open the document on another machine that doesn’t have that local font available, it will not work and will instead default to the next item in the font stack.

You can download Merlin Mann’s user-supplied CSS here (includes specific instructions).