http://guerrillatranslation.com/2013/10/18/la-mision-de-la-web-2-0-es-destruir-el-aspecto-p2p-de-internet/

Translated by Google: Guerrilla Translation!
Exporters of fine memes interlinguistic

OCTOBER 18, 2013

"The mission of Web 2.0 is to destroy the P2P aspect of the Internet"
Marc Garrett interviews Kleiner Dmytri

In Stacco Troncoso, edited by Carmen Lozano Bright - Guerrilla Translation! Image Studio Leon & Loes
Original article in Furtherfield "At the dawn of the new millennium, Net users are developing a collaborative way far more effective and enjoyable: cyber-communism." Richard Barbrook, " The Manifesto CyberComunista "

Dmytri Kleiner , author of Manifesto Telekomunista , is a software developer involved in projects that "investigating the political economy of the Internet, along with the ideal of worker self-organization of the means of production, as a form of class struggle." Born in the USSR, Kleiner raised in Toronto and currently resides in Berlin. He is the founder of Telekommunisten Collective (Colectivo Telekomunista) , a provider of phone and Internet services that also engaged in artistic projects deadSwap (2009) and Thimbl (2010) to explore how social relations are outlined in technologies communication.

"Recently, we received a physical copy of the Manifesto Telekomunista Furtherfield in writing. After reading the manifesto, it is clear that is a shock to the discussion on collaborative initiatives based on the commons. It is a call to action that challenges our social behavior and our relationship with the ownership and production methods. The manifesto proposes alternatives to Creative Commons and hierarchical forms of capitalism (both networked and physical spaces) by showing copyfarleft and collective strategies of Telekomunismo and "Risk Communism." at Many digital art collectives trying to safeguard their ethical principles in a world in which almost inevitably be absorbed by institutional power. We hope that this conversation offers some alternatives to proceed with mutual dignity in this whirlwind we call life ... "

Let the discussion ...

Marc Garrett: Why did you decide to create a copy of the Manifesto republished by the Institute of Networked Cultures (Institute of Network Cultures), Amsterdam?

Dmytri Kleiner: Geert Lovink he contacted me offering to publish it and I accepted the offer. With longer texts, it seems more practical to read physical copies.

MG: Who is headed the Manifesto?

DK: I identify with hackers and politically conscious artists, especially artists whose work is related to technology and online culture. Many of the themes and ideology outlined in the Manifesto comes from an ongoing conversation with these communities and the Manifesto is a further contribution to this dialogue.

MG: Since the advent of the Internet, we have experienced the rise of various online communities that have explored a individual and collective expression. Many agree in their opposition to the massive systems deployed by corporations such as Facebook and MySpace. Obviously, your critical project all that hegemony that influences our behavior by outlining networking, neoliberal appropriation and surveillance apparatus increasingly expanded. In the manifesto say "In order to change society must actively expand the reach of our commons, that our independent communities of equals, to be materially sustainable and able to resist the advances of capitalism." Can you give examples of alternatives " materially sustainable "?

DK: Right now there are none. To be precise, the only thing we have in common is immaterial wealth, so any capital gain from these new platforms and relationships will always end up in the hands of those who manage scarce resources, either because they are physically limited, or because they have been imposed limited by laws protecting patents and trademarks. The sustainability of online communities depends on access to a common property capable of supporting these same communities. We need to expand the scope of the commons to include these assets.

Kleiner Dmytri in presenting the 'Manifesto Telekomunista "in" Economies of the Commons 2 ", November 2010, De Balie, Amsterdam.
MG: The Manifesto reopens the debate on the importance of class, and says "The condition of the working class in society is essentially associated with powerlessness and poverty, the condition of the working class on the Internet does not far. "Can you give us some examples of the working class in the context of the Internet?

DK: My concept of working class is very classic: anyone whose livelihood depends on be working continuously. Class system describes a series of relationships. The proletariat is that class which has no independent means of production necessary to ensure their own survival and, therefore, needs a salary, sponsorship or charity to survive.

MG: For a variety of personal and social reasons, I would like the working class not only perceived as marginalized or economically disadvantaged, but also see it as a class involved in situations of individual and collective empowerment.

DK: Of course, the working class includes a wide range of people. What unites them is that, generally, do not own productive assets. As a class, they have no ability to build goodwill. You see, my class concept is nothing new.

MG : After the death of Marx, Engels reminded students of this that "All history must be studied again." 1 Within the working class in contemporary culture and networked culture who are the individuals or groups that look more chance to escape from their social class?

DK: There have always been individuals who are able to overcome their social class. Many entrepreneurs bubble Dotcom gouged party "sales" multimillion platforms, like other individuals devoid of property in other areas. Right now, mobility between classes and large scale has become much more unlikely. If you are born poor today, you will have less chance of not dying to be poor or to prevent your children remain mired in poverty itself. It is the global condition.

We see class transcending these conditions until an abolition of classes. Although now, and based on mistake, you can convince people that the concept of social class is no longer applicable. In fact, it is a widespread tactic between right to degrade class consciousness. Even so, conditions are relational class. The power of classes varies over time and depending on historical conditions.

The condition of a class lies in the balance of his fight against other classes. This balance is determined by its ability to fight. The commons is one of the components that affect our ability, especially when replacing goods for which, in other circumstances, would have had to buy a capitalist owners. If we could transfer production from productive assets to community property owners, there would be a shift in the balance of power between classes and, well, more than escaping our class status, the transform. But this transfer is proportional to the economic value of the assets, thus requiring an expansion of the commons to include real economic value, or what is the same, scarce goods capable of producing income.

MG: The Manifesto Telekomunista proposes a "Risk Communism" as new operating model for peer production, claiming that "the risk communism provides a structure for independent producers share a common heritage of productive assets, allowing forms of exclusively associated production before creating intangible value, like free software, is extended to the material sphere. " Apart from your obvious linguistic appropriation of the term "Venture Capitalism" to become "Risk Communism", how did the idea?

DK: It began with the appropriation of the term.

The idea came from the realization that everything we were doing in the communities of free culture, free software and free networks, was sustainable only when it serves the interests of capital and therefore lacked the capacity emancipatory I and others saw in them. The capitalist funding means that, basically, all that remains free is capital itself. Free software was at its time of growth, while free culture was plunged into a war over the right to share and reuse the resulting shift from free networks to centralized platforms, censorship and surveillance. Realizing that this was due to the capture logic precondition income and capital, I knew we needed an alternative modes of financing and support emancipatory ideals, to me, are implied in free communication, along way to build a communication infrastructure conceived as free and with the ability to remain as such. I named this whole concept as "Communism Risk" and began to work to understand how it could be done.

MG: It is an effective vehicle for the revolutionary struggle of the working class. There is also a proposal for a "Risk Commune," as a company. How would it work?

DK: The commune of risk would work the same way that a mutual fund venture capital, but fund companies based around the commons. Commune paper scarce properties would distribute the same way as a distributed network intangible property. Acquire funds by issuing securitization of credits - such as bonuses - and taking over productive assets to put up for sale, thus benefiting firms under their tutelage. The workers of the companies are also owners of the commune, and the income earned is divided equally among all. This, in addition to any compensation that they receive for their work within companies.

This is just a sketch and never say that communism risk model is finished, or express ideas around it are final. This is an ongoing project and, while you have a future, I have no doubt that will evolve as encountering reality, not to mention the ideas of others and their innovations.

The main thing is we need a model like this, its implementation and the details I propose are ... for that, proposals.

MG: So this combination of free software and copyleft licenses and media copyfarleft peer production, would collective title properties or cooperative, as with the actions of a company?

DK: The support model that now is the commune which includes many companies, each independent, so that the commune would own 100% of the shares of each company. Workers in companies would also owners of the commune. The commune shares would be distributed among the owners and would play to a per head.

MG : In the Manifesto is a section titled "ANTI-CREATIVE COMMONS" b in which we speak of Creative Commons as contrary to the commons, selling "the capitalist logic of privatization under a deliberately misleading name". This for many, whether liberal or a radical mindset, is controversial, since it challenges the very nature of many network behaviors. I am intrigued by the choice of the word "privatization". Many, and I include myself, we assume that describes a process in which a nonprofit organization becomes a private business, typically government agencies and with the aim to add more revenue to the national budget through widespread dismantling of public services. Are you saying that Creative Commons works the same way, but in its role of corporate and internet-based distributed?

DK: There are significant parts of the Manifesto which are remixes of previous texts and that phrase originally comes from a longer article called " COPYRIGHT , COPYLEFT AND CREATIVE ANTI - COMMONS , "written by me and Joanne Richardson under the pseudonym of "Ana Nimus".

By this we mean that the "common" Creative Commons "is privatized because the author continues to retain your copyright while, in most cases, all that is offered to the community is under noncommercial clauses. The original author enjoys special privileges, while the commons users have limited rights, specifically limited, so that eliminates any possibility of earning a living through this work. Therefore, these works do not belong to the commons, but are private works. The original author is solely entitled to profit from the work.

All previous conception of intellectual or cultural commons - including pre culture copyright and anti copyright, and the principles of the free software movement - was based on the concept of special privileges not the original author, preferring to insist on the right of everyone to use and reuse this material in common. Noncommercial licenses represent a privatization of the idea of ​​the commons and the reintroduction of the concept of an original and unique artist with private and exclusive rights.

Moreover, as I believe any expression as an extension of previous perceptions, ideas "original" on which this series is derived rights are not really original, but an appropriation executed by self-granted rights of licensors Creative Commons . Beyond the mere privatization of commons concept and composition of modern culture, to determine a single author, Creative Commons colonizes our common culture, provides a unique responsibility to a growing body of work consistently and, in fact, expands the scope of the private culture to the detriment of the culture of the commons.

MG: That brings us to Thimbl a microblogging platafroma distributed, open source and free, according to your words, is "... similar to Twitter or identi.ca. But Thimbl is a specialized web application based on user information protocol called Finger. The Finger protocol was developed in the 70s and, as such, is compatible with all current server platforms. "Why did you create Thimbl and what types of individuals and groups think they're going to use and how?



DK: First, and above all, is an artistic Thimbl.

A base currents Telekomunismo is that capital does not fund distributed platforms and free, but prefers to fund centralized platforms and private property. Thimbl is, in part, a parody of supposedly innovative technologies like Twitter. When you create a platform similar to Twitter but using the Finger protocol, Thimbl shows that "micro-blogging" and was part of the online culture of the 70s and that therefore neither the billionaire capital investment or centers massive centralized data are really needed to run these forms of communication, but rather are used to centralized control and get income from the platforms themselves.

MG : In InfoEnclosure-2.0 , c collaborative trial with Brian Wyrick published in Mute Magazine, you say that "The mission of Web 2.0 is to destroy the P2P aspect of the Internet. Now you, your computer and your Internet connection you depend on a centralized service that controls your ability to communicate. Web 2.0 involves the ruin of free peer systems and the return of the 'online services' monolithic. " 2 Think Thimbl is an example of the type of platform that will free us from the corporate domination Web 2.0?

DK: Right. Thimbl, apart from being a parody, proposes a vision feasible, because extending the use of internet platforms as an alternative to classic platform implementation "full-stack" hypercomplex. Anyway, we explain why these options have been neglected and that "... the most significant challenge is not technical but political." Our survival as software developers compels us to work for some patterns, most of the time are funded by capital and therefore have a primary interest in the control of the user data and interactions, since the marketing of these data is a prerequisite for capital.

Thimbl would have to be adopted by a broad community before becoming a viable platform. A small group like ours can only bring the project to some extent. We are happy to help anyone who wants to join our server through Thimbl. I think we "know" to most users, since I personally keep all existing users Thimbl, or I think, and this is how you can view the status of "Thimbl-sphere" within an overall timeline .

But even if the development of a platform like Thimbl not terribly significant (because there is much to accomplish, very quickly), the value of a social platform is derived from the size of its user base, so organizations with more range than Telekommunisten will to adopt the platform and contribute to it to go beyond being a concept graph and that works as a platform.

On the other hand, as the website itself says, "the idea is more important Thimbl himself Thimbl" and would seem great to see the creation of other free and open platform to extend classic Internet protocols. Some have suggested using smtp / nntp, xmmp or http / WebDav instead of Thimbl, and each of these has its advantages and disadvantages. Our goal is to develop an open and free platform, however it works, and Thimbl is a technical and conceptual artistic contribution around this goal.

MG: Another project is the page of Facebook to Telekommunisten , which already have more than 3000 fans. It is a good example of the complexity and contradictions that affect many independent initiatives. We feel that the Internet, at present, is controlled by a number of core nodes, it is like when a neighborhood is dominated by large commercial spaces, while smaller, independent shops are displaced. With this in mind, how sorteas these contradictions?

DK: I did not want to use Facebook and other similar platforms for long. Preferred to use email, Usenet and IRC, as I have been doing since the 90s. When I wrote InfoEnclosure 2.0 was not yet a user of these platforms. Still, it was increasingly clear that not only were people adopt them, but preferred to receive information through them, prefer to be contacted by social networks rather than through email. Share on Facebook are interested in things while receiving emails is tiresome for some people. I think this is due to a number of reasons, in themselves, are interesting and begin with the fact that capital has invested millions to improve the usefulness of these platforms, while Internet platforms "classic" have been more or less as they were in the 90s. In addition, there are many people using social networks was never the type of participant mailing lists or Usenet groups, etc. I used before to share information.



I realized that, to reach more people and share information, should do so through technologies employing others, which are not necessarily the ones I would prefer to use.

My criticism of Facebook and other similar platforms is not that useful, but are private platforms, centralized and proprietary. Also, refrain from using Facebook on behalf of my own media asceticism does not interest me. I see capitalism as a consumer choice, I'm more interested in the condition of the masses, which in my own correction consumer. In the end it is clear that platforms like Facebook criticize today is a use of these platforms. For all this I became user and threw Telekommunisten page on Facebook. No wonder it has been so successful and that through it we get a lot more people through our other channels such as websites, mailing lists, etc.. The hope is to help us promote new decentralized channels, as they are implemented.

MG: I downloaded deadSwap and I want to use it and explore it. On page says "Internet is dead. To evade the fanfare of capitalist control, peer communication Internet has to leave to settle in the dark alleys of covert operations. Peer cooperation has left the network and can only survive in clandestine cells ". What can you tell me about this project? Do people use it now?



DK: I have no idea if there are people using it, right now I'm not wearing any network.

Like Thimbl, deadSwap is an artistic. But unlike Thimbl, which has the potential to become a platform usable deadSwap is parody pure and simple.

Conference was developed for sousveillance , 2009, "The art of inverse surveillance", held at the University of Aarhus. deadSwap is a dystopian urban game where participants act as secret agents share information on USB, hide them in secret locations or, alternatively, the clandestine exchange and communicate through a web SMS Anonymizer. It is a parody of the "dome hacker" and his reaction to the siege of the Internet: the conviction that new technologies will overcome everything covert attempt to censor the Internet and, thanks to this entire clandestine apparatus we will always be more ready, and walk one step front of the owners and drivers of our communication systems. This attitude denies any early class analysis, with unshakable belief in the ability we have hackers to overcome state repression and corporate. Although a simple concept, deadSwap would be very difficult to implement. The manual itself says: "The success of the network depends on the competence and diligence of the participants" and "become a super spy is not easy."


Sousveillance. "The art of inverse surveillance". University of Aarhus, Denmark, February 8-9, 2009
MG: What other services / platforms / projects offers the Collective hackers Telekommunisten imaginative, adventurous and socially conscious?

DK: We offer services for hosting to individuals, small organizations, and especially for artists. We have hosting to newsletters , and service of calls to long distance . You can find us on IRC in # telnik within freenode. We will be especially focused on Thimbl and we welcome anyone who wants to participate in the project. We also have a community forum with which to coordinate all of this that you can find here .

Whoever wants to follow my personal updates, but prefers to stay away from social networks, almost all my updates are also posted here .

MG: Thank you for this fascinating conversation, Dmytri.

DK: Thank you, Marc

End of interview.

<snip> =============================

References:

1. [Marx / Engels. Internet Archive (marxist.org / Spanish) Marx-Engels Correspondence: Engels to Conrad Schmidt, London, August 5, 1890.