{"id":1081,"date":"2009-06-01T07:13:12","date_gmt":"2009-06-01T12:13:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/06\/01\/more-lessig-kelly-socialism\/"},"modified":"2009-06-01T07:13:12","modified_gmt":"2009-06-01T12:13:12","slug":"more-lessig-kelly-socialism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/06\/01\/more-lessig-kelly-socialism\/","title":{"rendered":"more Lessig, Kelly, socialism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now that I’ve taken the time to read the growing list of responses to Lessig’s post<\/a>, I have to say that I’m much more impressed with the collective hive mind — the network of respondents he’s grown around himself — than with the Queen Bee (Lessig himself) on this matter. (That metaphor is not very rhizomic, I know.) Several respondents play variations on the same themes I argued in my post yesterday, i.e. that Lessig’s use of the word “socialism” is inaccurate, somewhat irresponsible, a little alarmist, and very ethnocentric. Lessig writes in reply that<\/p>\n

“We all need to recognize (speaking now to the cross cultural crowd) that different political systems internalize the concepts differently. So I am criticizing an American writing in an American publication about his use of a term — ‘socialism.’ I don’t pretend to understand how well the use fits other cultures, or traditions. I am speaking to one of my own about my own tradition.” <\/em><\/p>\n

To which Kelly replies that he’s not writing as an American but is “at this point half Chinese, and, as much as possible, a citizen of the world.” He could have added that Wired magazine is read all over the world, especially on-line, and that Lessig is, too. To his credit, Kelly sticks to his guns.<\/p>\n

An interesting side-discussion seems to be emerging from Kelly’s challenge to “Give me a better word to describe the type of governance that is emerging”, with the issue being whether what is emerging from Wikipedia, etc., qualifies as governance at all. Of course it isn’t, but it could be considered part of a larger, more diffuse network of governance mechanisms that are evolving in fits and starts at every scale from the local to the national to the global, from peer pressure and the institutionalization of accepted practice to enforceable regulations. These are neither purely capitalist nor purely socialist. They, ideally, should have something to do with nested systems of collective monitoring and adaptive governance, with mixtures of rights and obligations, checks and balances, individual and collective forms of behavior, etc. And if there isn’t an accepted word to describe them, Kevin Kelly’s attempt to test at least one of them (socialism) for its appropriateness seems laudable. At the very least, it’s nice to see this discussion happening in a public forum where political philosophers aren’t huddled together in their own, mutually exclusive camps.<\/p>\n

See Lessig’s “On “socialism,” Round II<\/a>” for continuing discussion of these issues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now that I’ve taken the time to read the growing list of responses to Lessig’s post, I have to say that I’m much more impressed with the collective hive mind — the network of respondents he’s grown around himself — than with the Queen Bee (Lessig himself) on this matter. (That metaphor is not very […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[689701,691215],"tags":[293,4477,4478,280],"class_list":["post-1081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media_ecology","category-politics_postpolitics","tag-digital-culture","tag-lessig","tag-media-ecology","tag-socialism"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-hr","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1080,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/05\/31\/socialism-or-not-lessig-responds-to-kelly\/","url_meta":{"origin":1081,"position":0},"title":"socialism or not: Lessig responds to Kelly","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"May 31, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"\"When I use a word,\" Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, \"it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.\" \"The question is,\" said Alice, \"whether you can make words mean so many different things.\" \"The question is,\" said Humpty Dumpty, \"which is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Media ecology"","block_context":{"text":"Media ecology","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/media_ecology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"humpty%20dumpty.bmp","src":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2009\/06\/humpty-dumpty.bmp","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1060,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/04\/16\/lessig-on-the-ecology-of-culture\/","url_meta":{"origin":1081,"position":1},"title":"Lessig on the ecology of culture","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 16, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Thanks to Mediacology for sharing this presentation on \"Green Culture\" by Lawrence Lessig from the recent Green Festival in Seattle. Lessig is the guru of the creative commons movement, and his talk, on what he calls \"cultural environmentalism,\" is really on media ecology, i.e. the \"ecology\" of cultural production and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Academe"","block_context":{"text":"Academe","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/academe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6485,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2013\/02\/04\/thinking-through-media-ecologies\/","url_meta":{"origin":1081,"position":2},"title":"Thinking through media ecologies","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"February 4, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"On e\u00b2mc we're thinking through the various meanings of \"media ecology.\" The first, chronologically, is the medium theory of Harold Innis, Marshall McLuhan, Walter Ong, and others -- sometimes called the Toronto School of communication theory. Neil Postman's \"New York school\" can be considered a more critical and pessimistic adjunct\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cultural politics"","block_context":{"text":"Cultural politics","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/cultural_politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6451,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2013\/01\/18\/introducing-e2mc-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":1081,"position":3},"title":"Introducing e\u00b2mc","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"January 18, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"e2mc, short for \"evolving ecological media cultures,\" has gone online. e2mc\u00a0begins as the class blog for the University of Vermont course \u201cMedia Ecologies and Cultural Politics.\u201d Its long-term goal is to become the online face of the UVM Ecomedia Studies Lab, which is still in development. The blog is open\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Media ecology"","block_context":{"text":"Media ecology","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/media_ecology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/e2mc\/files\/2013\/01\/7229651-albert-einsteins-famous-matematical-equation-e-mc2-written-on-a-chalkboard2-300x201.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6240,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2012\/10\/13\/take-home-message\/","url_meta":{"origin":1081,"position":4},"title":"Take-home message","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"October 13, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"... from Bill McKibben and 350.org's new roadshow, \"Do The Math,\" previewed tonight here at the University of Vermont: If climate scientists (and climate change modelers) are correct that the burning of more than a small fraction of the world's available fossil fuel reserves will trigger changes that will induce\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Climate change"","block_context":{"text":"Climate change","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/climate-politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.english.rfi.fr\/sites\/images.rfi.fr\/files\/aef_image\/2012-08-07T075801Z_1893471262_GM2E887175W01_RTRMADP_3_PHILIPPINES-FLOODS_0.JPG?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1334,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/09\/06\/eco-marxism-the-4-laws-of-ecology\/","url_meta":{"origin":1081,"position":5},"title":"eco-Marxism & the “4 laws of ecology”","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"September 6, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Marx\u2019s insights for ecology are many. The four \u201cinformal laws of ecology,\u201d as Levi Bryant points out in his post on John Bellamy Foster's Marx's Ecology, are not one of them (let alone four). These \u201claws\u201d have been making their rounds ever since biologist and eco-socialist (and one-time Citizens Party\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1081\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}