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ShayBanerjeeFirstEssay 9 - 04 Oct 2015 - Main.ShayBanerjee
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| | | My Perspective: The Relevance of Labor Time | |
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< | I remain skeptical about the ability for the free software movement to solve the problem of subsistence. In my experience, most people do not use learning, education, and technology to solve the social problems, but rather to pursue their own individualized economic goals. People who know the intricacies of CDOs, leveraged buyouts, climate denial, and wiretapping tend to be highly educated. That does not make their knowledge socially productive. | >
> | I remain skeptical about the ability for the free software movement to solve the problem of subsistence. In my experience, most people do not use learning, education, and technology to solve social problems, but rather to pursue their own individualized economic goals. People who know the intricacies of CDOs, leveraged buyouts, climate denial, and wiretapping tend to be highly educated. That does not make their knowledge socially productive. | | | The fact is that providing the children of India and China with free software will accomplish little by itself. As long as they are anxious and hungry, like most Americans they will simply acquire the knowledge that is valued in the labor market. Since the factors of production condition human culture and knowledge acquisition by extension, it is most important to change the economic base and the incentive structure to which it aligns. Absent systemic changes in the economy itself, knowledge resources merely reinforce existing systems of exploitation. | | | Well, people have also been resisting and engaging in revolution for thousands of years and will continue to do so most likely regardless of whatever you or I do with our lives. But there are small but vital opportunities to contribute to creating those moments and helping to advance their cause when they take the stage. Of course, a piece of infrastructure like the internet, like power lines, like roads etc make life easier for people but do not make social change themselves. They will reproduce and reflect the inequality that is already in society. But freeing up those paths between people is a necessary project. They present great opportunities to connect people in ways that foster collaboration, solidarity and often critical thinking.
-- LizzieOShea - 03 Oct 2015 | |
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Lizzie, I greatly admire your repeated attempts to assuage two competing approaches to social action, but I fear that you have missed the point. Here you simply restate the perceived benefits of the incumbent approach without fully engaging with the central criticism brought by the insurgent. This makes sense to you because a recurring theme underlying your argument is that the two approaches are not mutually exclusive, and that so long as the incumbent appears even slightly productive, it is undeniably worth our time. That belief is erroneous and must be corrected before we continue this discussion any further.
By approaching this subject the way you have, you are de-politicizing an essentially political decision that is shaping our common life together. To teach a subject one way involves a conscious choice to not teach it another way. Students are at liberty to question that choice, which is undeniably political. Teachers are obliged to explain it.
As far as I can tell, the purpose of this class is - or ought to be - to teach law students how to drive social impact using the Internet. The question hidden beneath our entire discussion (until the end of this sentence) is simple: Is the curriculum that we have purchased the optimal way to fulfill that goal?
As I have stated, based on my personal experience and understanding of social theory (both of which are admittedly less expansive than Eben’s), it is not clear to me that mass distribution of knowledge resources constitutes the most productive form of social action (or even close to it). There are ways to teach law that at once center on the Internet and also are more overtly materialist. For whatever reason, we have chosen one and not the others.
Here we are socially conscious and talented individuals sitting in one of the most privileged institutions in the world. Why are we not learning how to use the Internet to fight economic inequality, reduce the cost of living, and restructure governmental institutions? Why are those being written off as secondary goals to take a back seat to discussions about IP laws, free education, and data privacy? The answers to those questions involve some sort of judgment about what it means to be a lawyer in the Internet society (and also a judgment about the definition of human freedom). I do not think I am out of line demanding an adequate explanation about where that judgment came from.
-- ShayBanerjee - 04 Oct 2015 | | |
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