The Possibility of a Digital Commons Ft. Andrew

Andrew walks us through a better future of the internet in the form of a digital commons.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of It could
happen here once again. Who's still around myself Andrew and
also joined with Garrison is here as well, and me mea,
I'm also here. And of the things that I've been
thinking about lately, because I've been reading a lot more fiction, UM,

(00:27):
a lot of things and these sorts of sci fi's
fair particularly UM some Activia, but the UM, some orcum,
some Margaret Atwood, I recently read Orks and Creek. UM.
I've just been thinking about a lot of these concepts
that are presented in stories um in sci fi UM.

(00:51):
And what is more sci fi than the idea of
computers that sort of digital space, and what has become
of the digital would um as of late as you know,
and really since its inception, as capitalism has sort of
chopped it up and privatized it and sequested it and

(01:14):
monopolized it. As I think that it really um goes
against what the principles of the Internet should be m
in terms of how it is run, how it is structured,
how it is organized. Because the Internet as a concept
really brings together, um a variety of people, variety of

(01:37):
spaces and backgrounds and intersections and I believe it would
be a place of sharing, a place of collaboration, particularly
since the sort of resources that might be um limited
in the physical world, ah far more abundant in the
digital world. Um. I'm thinking too, of like educational resources

(02:01):
and otherwise, of course they are you know, infrastructural limitations.
But on the cloud, you know, um, in cyberspace. And
I cringe saying that because it makes me feel like
a boomer. Um. You know, they have the ability to

(02:22):
freely and easily copy and share and paste wherever and whenever,
basically without many limitations. Um. And instead of really seizing
that for what it could be, you know, we've we've
turned it into this sort of um corporate feudalism. Um.

(02:47):
We're all these uh digital margritcoporations, these social media giants
basically have carved of the Internet into their own little
you know, fiefdoms and dominated um the discourse, you know,
dominated how we communicate with each other, how we tend
to communicate each other bast in the main stream side

(03:09):
of the internet. What has become to mein stream things
what most people think of when they think of the Internet. Um,
But I'm not a big fan of that. Idea of
the Internet, that perception, that conception of the Internet in
fact um as something that I have been thinking about
and developing and discussing for the past couple of months

(03:32):
and researching for the past couple of months. I really
think that among all the other things that I've discussed
unnecessary components in developing the commons, in creating and re
establishing the commons, I think digital commons will be just
as important because the commons, uh, the rather, the inclusion

(03:57):
of the commons is what really kicked off the establishment
of capitalism. I believe the re establishments of the commons
will be required in that transition away from capitalism towards
a more collective, more communal, um, more sustainable way of life.

(04:19):
For those who um, I guess just tuning in this
perhaps your first episode with me at least, or perhaps
you've never seen any of the figures of my channel, UM,
I'll take a moment to, you know, explain what exactly
the commons are. The commons referred to the resources accessible

(04:40):
to all members of a society, the totality of the
material riches of that part of the world, of that world,
regarded as the inheritance of humanity as a whole, something
to be shared together the commons, or something that are
based on common pool resources or cprs, which is any
natural or man made system that is organized to benefit

(05:04):
a group of people, but would provide diminished benefits to
everyone if each person pursued their own self interest. And
of course these resource systems, like I said, it could
be natural or man made, so they could be forests,
you know, traditionally there are things like forests and irrigation
canals and fisheries and pastures and drown water basins. Um.

(05:26):
But I think it's it can be expanded even food.
I mean things like energy infrastructure like windmills, winterwo banes
or as. Um. Going to describe different portions of the Internet,
different resource systems within the interntion of course the Internet
as a who well, I believe all of those things
can um can be brought under the commons um And

(05:54):
of course the commons. The theory of commons, history of
the Commons is it's all uh lengthy discussion. Of course,
you could read about it and Governing the Commons by
eleanor Ostrom. You could listen to a sort of a
condensed version of that. In my video on my channel
on the commons as an institution, but when it comes

(06:17):
to you know, information and communication technologies, when it comes
to I c t S and sort of applying that
commons idea to I C T S, I'd like to
think about it in terms of these sort of digital
communities bringing together people who share, you know, common goals
to collaboratively build and share those resources through technology. So

(06:41):
I would say that digital commons are or can be,
and can be because I think some of them already
exist in some form. But they are basically these online
creation communities where you know, there's a free flu um
and free access to and free collaboration, um. You know,

(07:04):
the sharing of this non exclusive digital information and the
collective creation of like knowledge resources. These resources of course
being owned and used freely between or among the community
and also available for use by three parties. So and
instead of being exchanged as commodities, you know, these resources

(07:25):
are used and reused and reused without artificial restrictions to
sort of enforce an artificial scarcity. UM. I just actually
thought of a really funny example that I hadn't initially
conceived of in a sort of guideline for this episode,

(07:48):
I don't know. If you're a lot of familiar with
Martin Scorsese, is gonetro of no? Okay? So in three
Martin Scorsese developed this film called Gone. It's a historical
epic um, a sort of a post war era mafia movie.

(08:09):
And it was directed by scotts Czy and it started
Robert de Niro and Alpuccino and Gene Hackman. It had
a sort of deep hume eroticism blended with a sort
of exploration of of medial aggression. It's a sort of
a look at the relationship between Gon Shrev, who is

(08:29):
a Russian mafia boss, and his partners slash rival, slash
old friend Andrew, who I believe is supposed to be
an Italian mafia boss. But the thing about Gone Sharov
and I mean, you can find posters about it, you
can find fan art of which you can find many, many,

(08:53):
many fan fictions about it. Um, But Gonsuv is not
a real movie. V. It does not exist. Everything I
described it's entirely fake. The litany of colorful side characters
that you know, people have developed for this movie, the

(09:14):
hundreds of fan fictions, the dozens of methanalyses and pieces
of fun arts people have, you know, generated for this movie.
The movie itself does not exist. The movie only exists
in the collective um co creation of it that took
place over a Tumbler of all places. Essentially, a couple

(09:40):
of Tumbling users basically came up with this idea of
this lost Martin Scorsese film that everybody has seemingly forgotten,
and they would rave about it, and they would come
up with fake plot points and fake characters, and before
you know it, you know, it's sort of like this
massive Internet phenomenon, sort of inside joke Internet, inside juke UM.

(10:03):
One of people started building on top of it and
respecting what came before um, and that sort of spirit
of co creation is what it ended up creating. This
gone this teal of gone throw, this gone through of fandom,
this whol development of Gone Through as a character of
the side characters as you know, fully developed characters. And

(10:26):
it all started because you know, one user said to
another like, oh, don't you know the movie Gone Shurov's
only the greatest Mafia movie ever made. On that tagline,
the greatest Matthia movie ever made would be built upon
with further photoshops and embellishments and developments, and there's now

(10:48):
like a really comprehensive document of gone shureoff law. Um.
Things are added and just things added in complete seriousness.
But it's just a thing that exists. It's a thing
that I believe. UM. It's just one manifestation of many
of what the Internet has the capacity to produce. When

(11:08):
online creation communities are allowed to operate freely UM and develop,
they wouldn't sort of common creative UM resources. I think
other examples of I guess the seeds of what I'm
talking about can be seen in UM. I guess like
rule play UM servers and role play communities, role play

(11:33):
message boards. I think some fandoms also have some of
the seeds of what I'm talking about. Of course, the
Minecraft community with everything they've created, modern communities across different games.
They all sort of manifestations of, you know, human desire
to create and human desire to share without you know,

(11:54):
the artificial restrictions and boundaries of of mainstream couples imagination.
I think another manifestation of the digital commons in a
sense could be found in resources like z library, UM
and a few others that I'm afraid of naming in

(12:18):
case you don't think get taken down as well. And
I mean that's really the sad part of ours. The
library is lost. I mean I haven't really been feeling
that loss because I am aware of the alternatives. Um,
but it's lost on the last because of the way
the library is formatted, it was a bit more accessible.
It's a lot of people and people aware of it

(12:38):
and stuff. UM, but Z library, and I'm glad that
it's called a library. It's called Z library. It's just
you know, one manifestation of the UM the routes of
the library as a concept and how it can manifest
UM in the digital speece, how the commons through the

(13:04):
I guess the conception of the library can manifest in
a in a digital space. I mean even you know,
mainstream ones we have like we have, we have stuff
like archive dot org and I know archive dot org
is trying to launch something to host a whole bunch
of scientific journals and other articles that are harder to
access as well, but I mean they already host you know,

(13:26):
quite impressive plethora of copyrighted books. UM. Me and Robert
have gotten into arguments on Twitter dot com with many
an author who is mad about their book being on
archive dot archived dot org. And so that is you know,
there is, there is, There is many resources if you

(13:48):
know where to look. But sadly some are some someone
are no longer with us and people have been have
been u punished by the state for trying to provide
open access to information. Yeah, I mean who controls information? Right? Well, however,
the same goes I think another as you mentioned, kind

(14:17):
another example of that sort of collaborative information sharing can
be seen and of course Wikipedia, you know, yeah, as
personal computers and the intents became more more accessible, the
lower barriers of expression and stuff. Um, this Internet culture
as and it was initially born, it was one with

(14:40):
the aim of, you know, collaboratively creating cultural content. Is
that developing and generating you know, univer we sell access
to knowledge, you know, Wikipedia just one example. Of course,
different wikis blural but of course longer called wickies. I
think it's called fandom that all or something now. Yes, Unfortunately,
fandom bought a whole bunch of uh different wiki sites

(15:03):
that were independently operated over the course of the past
twenty years, and then they kind of consolidated under the
big fandom company. Yeah, now like half of them are
unusable because of ads and stuff. Yeah, it is, it is.
It's it's pretty rough to scroll a fandom site. It's

(15:24):
not the easiest thing. But I will see, as a
youth with a few regulations and my access to the Internet,
it was actually quite nice to be able to go
onto fandom and just like well I was, you know,
around when it was still Wicky. Um, but you know,
going like Marvel Wicky or going TC Wicky and read
up on all the different characters I was into at

(15:46):
the time. Oh yeah, absolutely. You know I used to
go on like power listing Wicky and like come up
with characters, you know, piece on certain superpowers. Um. And
I also created my own Wicky for my own like
meat up, uh sort of world building project. Um. And
just the fact that resource was available, you know, that

(16:07):
the tools were easy, were free to access, um, and
that easy to understand as well. UM. And of course
they were always tutorials and stuff available if you don't
know how to function and what to do certain things.
Just that that that accessibility, UM and freedom is something

(16:29):
that I think is still exists, you know, in some sense,
despite you know, this company buying out everything, and I
appreciate the fact that you know, unlike you know that
company Wikipedias and me and e og. Wikipedia continues to
maintain their steadfast anti ad um you know, standing um

(16:52):
and continues to you know, um run on I guess
crowdsourced donations just just today as of the day that
we're recording. Uh. People whole a whole bunch of the
right wingers that have coalesced around Musk after his purchase

(17:15):
of Twitter have gotten mad at Wikipedia for not for
they've They've gotten mad that Wikipedia wasn't was wasn't re
posting their fake Twitter files drama thing um as glowingly
as some of them might like. And they're complaining about

(17:37):
Wikipedia's left wing bias. And a whole bunch of these
Musk fan boys are talking about being like, hey, Elon
Musk should buy Wikipedia and fix Wikipedia's left wing bias.
And this there's this one, this this one guy who
was like, um, I wonder how much Wikipedia would cost
to buy at Elon Musk and then the the uh,

(17:58):
the founder of Wikipedia's like, absolutely not, this is not
for sale. We are not letting Elon muskmpie Wikipedia. Yeah,
I mean if if conservatives really want um a platform
that badly, there's always conservative Pedia or whatever it's called. Um,
there's always Encyclopedia if they want to get really wacky. UM.

(18:22):
But yeah, Wikipedia is going to continue being Wikipedia, thankfully. UM.
I appreciate the rabbit holes it has let me through.
I appreciate the Wikipedia games that I've been able to play.
You know, like you have to go from one page
to another. Uh, you know that kind of degrees of
pages how you link two different completely different topics. But yeah,

(18:43):
zero advertising, accessible to all many different languages. Of course,
you know it's not completely flawless. They're sitting um, very
contentious articles of course, UM. They always be attempts to
hijack that those peaches for the post of propaganda. Of course,

(19:03):
every article has its bias. But By and Lodge, because
of the collaborative nature of the project, they have been
ways to mitigate bad actors and respond to um those
sorts of attempts at corruption and cooptation. So you know,
it goes to show that you know, even something as
I would say, the centrally organized as Wikipedia, um, is

(19:25):
still able to regulate itself collaboratively. Yeah. I think around
this time last year here on the show, we interviewed
somebody from Wikimedia UM specifically talking about how the talking
about the the regional differences of the wikipedias that are

(19:46):
in different countries and in different regions, how that impacts
access access information, and how people in their own communities
can work towards providing a fuller better picture of the
types of information that people are getting. UM. And the
great part about it is that it really does put
the power into anyone's hands. It's not it's it's not

(20:07):
gate kept the same way a lot of other information is. Yeah. Yeah,
that's the beauty of it. Really, I think another prominent
case of information sharing rather file sharing and just sort

(20:29):
that that payer to pay architecture we found in really UM,
the pirating community could and could you know, there's facilities,
access and the exchange of cultural products there might otherwise
be lost, you know, as we're seeing with a lot
of these shows being axed, and you know, people's hard
earned UM, you know hard people who you know, really

(20:52):
worked hard on sitting projects and stuff. These companies with
their you know, tax dodging schemes and whatever, you're able
to basically sweep all out a side UM and so
the fact that um, we are able to preserve and
of course in films and view and TV shows being
taken down by sit in streaming services and not eve
being able to be found easily physically. UM. You know,

(21:17):
having these files and stuff just accessible online UM shared
between payers is it's really great to see, UM, and
it really allows for the preservation of things right otherwise
be lost. And of course there's also as another example
of a sort of digital comments UM, the idea of

(21:39):
open source, or really the free software movement, which is
a social movement aimed at attaining and guaranteeing certain freedoms
for software users, you know, to run the software, to
study software, to modify the software, and to share copies
of that software, whether the modified or not. UM. The

(22:00):
philosophy of this free software movement is really this idea
that computer you should not lead to people being prevented
from corporating with other In fact, it should be the opposite,
should be allowing people to cooperate with each other. So
things like you rejecting restrictions on software, promoting free software,
and liberating people who use technology, use computers. It's really

(22:26):
what you know, the free software movement is trying to
do um. One of the founders of the movement again
name is Stilman. He has said that the idea of
the free software movement is that, you know, by allowing
free access to software, it allows it promotes, rather than
hinders the progression of technology, because it means that much

(22:48):
of the wasteful duplication of system programming effort can be avoided,
you know that EFFLCA instead of going into advancing different projects.
So you open source and you know, free software movement
what you want to call it, it's although I know
there's some people make a distinction, um it is I
would believe, I would think a manifestation of digital comments

(23:11):
people are able to self organize through the associate and
really just allowing people to you know, get their hands
on some software, to create, to run, to redistribute, to
change their software, to look to pick apart and learn
from certain code. Um, I really just allow people to

(23:38):
continue to create and share. And the sort of culture
that open source and free software creates is one of
you know, courtesy, is one of collaborations of helping one
another to contribute to a greater whole, um, to sort
of regulate each other's monitor activity that might jeopardize the project,
and we see the benefits of that. You know, out

(24:00):
of the most recognizable, high traffic open software projects, uh stable,
you know, they're secure and they're very thoroughly understood by
the people who collaborate to create them, compared to a
lot of the more clues and proprietary projects that are
not as accessible, not as open to scrutiny and study.

(24:24):
So it is, I think, in a sense, a phone
of of anarchy and um of people governing themselves and
cooperating to create a whole greater than any individual could
create a loan um. And speaking of you know people
I guess coming together and communicating and collaborating. Um. It's
this sense that I guess people have been discussing a

(24:46):
lot lately of the digital public square, and Twitter teams
is usually at the center of that conversation, This idea
that we have this space that you know, that shouldn't
be privatized, shouldn't that should be freely accessed and everyone
could communicate without restriction. And when you have the free

(25:10):
speech people within that honestly question the value of Twitter
pretty much every day. Uh you know, obviously some good
let's come out of it and the really other sort
of quote and quote digital public squares like any sort
of me and extreame social media. Some good you know,
comes out to them. You know, you meet people, you

(25:32):
are able to work in projects, able to meat like
minded folks. All that is is good. But also a
lot of you know, terrible, terrible things have come out
to these platforms and continue to every single day. UM,
So it's it's a mixed bag. But I think any
sort of digital commons project will need a space, um

(25:55):
and how that space is conceived what of course need
to be unmoored from you know, havelessmashination, um that the
act whole um, you know, potential economy, reach economy that
aims to keep us divided and button heads. But I
do think they will need to be they will need

(26:15):
to be a space for communication across boundaries, across regions
around the world easily. Last thing I really wanted to
touch on on this topic. It's really the sort of
the overlap between the idea of digital commons and t growth,
so you know both sort of question that sort of

(26:36):
means an idea of consumption. Um, digital commons, you know,
they promote this this idea of someone who both consumes
and produces, consumes value and digital space, but also adds
to that value. That doesn't could modify UM the resources
available in the digital space, but rather, you know, makes

(26:59):
it accessible and adds to it, contributes to it. And
that's at the idea of open access really something to
the growth also tries to emphasize, you know, even though
we're trying to scale within planetary limits, we still want,
you know, a good life for all. We still want
people to to collaborate and create UM and fract beople

(27:21):
more free to do so without limitations that the growth
oriented capitas economy imposes on us. The idea, of course
digital commons also brings the means of production in the
digitals fare under the control of the communities who use it.
We use that resource, who use that service, in complete

(27:41):
contrast the capitalist them of keeping them perfectly health and
aiming to serve profit. Digital commons and deep growth both
emphasize access UM it's information to knowed three resources as

(28:01):
part of our human heritage, as part of our human rights.
The commons should be something that is openly available rather
than restricted, commodified, privatized. Of course, unlike traditional commands, UM
you know, digital commons are not easily exhaustible, not really exhaustible. UM.

(28:26):
They're not subject to many of the limitations that physical
commons would have. But at the same time, you know,
they depend on a certain infrastructure, and infrastructure that relies
on you know, energy, and that energy has to come
from somewhere. Being able to access the internet requires UM
certain tools, certain technologies, computers, phones, whatever, UM, and the

(28:51):
resources required to create those technologies has to come from somewhere. UM.
The cables and the oceans, the satellites and space. You know,
the electricity for the computers, the materials for the phones
and the computers. All of those things UM consume and
contribute the exhaustion of environmental resources. And so balancing that

(29:13):
and being COmON sense of environmental impact, we still have
to be essential component and you know, any development of
the digital comments. At the end of the day, I
believe that humans are sort of pre program to create
and to collaborate with each other UM, and I think

(29:34):
digital comments are one way in which we can do that.
I really appreciated, UM the way that different writers and
thinkers on the subjects have UM sort of explore those ideas.
Of course, I drew a bit from one particular author,

(29:55):
Mayo Foster moral um and the exploration of the idea,
but there's a lot available if you're interested in covering
topic and what happlin. Of course, the same goes for
the communs in general. There are a lot of different
resources out there. Um eleanor Ostrom's work is a great
place to start, and I really think it's important that

(30:18):
we do um get these conversations rolling in the mainstream,
in the background, in every corner and every space, because
we stand to benefit a lot from it, and we
honestly really need it in a time like this. That's

(30:39):
it from me for this episode. You can follow me
on YouTube at androids um, on Twitter at and disclosing true,
and on patreonic and support me if you'd like at
patre dot com slash saying true yeah, and you can
find it could happen here on Twitter and Instagram. Apparently

(31:01):
we have the cool zone as a TikTok a thing
that we learned. Do we officially have one? I thought we?
I don't know. I I okay, well that we did.
Who knows? We may or may not have a TikTok.
You'll never know. By earlier January. We definitely will because
we have something special planned. Um but yes, Twitter, at
least Twitter and Instagram at at happened here. Pondon, cools

(31:23):
and media still on where despite despite the digital town
square collapsing, we are holding out in the in the
dystopian ruins of Twitter. Um so yeah, anyway, it could
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(31:43):
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