<nettime> Renewed Tyranny of Structurelessness (was: rise and fall of

[biella <biella@riseup.net>]

   *As long as the, let's call it "hacktivist community", is a free
   form unconstituted something, it is always subject to the rules of
   the outside society: attention capitalism, spin doctor style
   manipulation. Will we ever know if the ioerror drama was, even if
   based on true human weakness - easy to do given the position of
   omniscience, but still possibly orchestrated by JTRIG to achieve
   certain goals in shattering the apparent cohesion of the
   community? Could the community have had a method such that
   misbehaviour is addressed and treated soon, better and without
   reaching media attention? A method to make it immune from
   manipulation, be it by individuals or entire governmental powers?
   I believe this is possible. And Paris Commune isn't the only
   historic reference to learn from. Think also of the Tyranny of
   Structurelessness.  Even Elinor Ostrom's way of organizing a
   Commons teaches some lessons on how an entire networked community
   could constitute itself as a power for good, to a larger extent
   immune against the interests of evil than if it just lets things
   be unstructured and individually "free", but not free in a social
   sense. Free for aggressors, not free for victims.  

   Anyone else in here willing to leave the Structurelessness behind?*

I think it is important to talk about what could have been done
differently but I don't buy into this argument. There are plenty of
institutions and organizations in hackerdom that are structured from
many free software projects (including Tor) to the Pirate Parties to the
CCC. Jake was kicked out from a structured project, an endeavor with
policies and which is so not open to all.

There are plenty of other hacker projects that are more ad hoc and
flexible, to be sure. But I am glad both types of organizing--
institutional and non-instit utional--exist.

The social movement as a whole, like most social movements, are hard to
structur e (not sure I would want that anyway as social movements are by
definition transve rsal to any one organization, group, or entity) but
there are many  important examples of structured projects built by
hackers.  The idea that they don't build institutions is the myth we are
in need of debunk ing.

Sure they can have different structures or some may need more structure
but ther e are plenty examples of structured hacker projects and I am
not sure that was the sou rce the problem in this case either.

Biella

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