Reviews and Comments

This is a love story with power dynamics that will make you angry - an older, married man with a much younger women, the former often manipulating the latter. But all of this happens in the context of 1980s Berlin, just before (and then during) the fall of the Wall. The writing is great, which makes me wonder how much we should thank the translator (Michael Hofmann).

There are moments in this book that remind me of China Miéville's The City and the City. Here's one:

"Through a tunnel and then up to the platform, and now she's suddenly on the other side of the steel barrier. She knows what it looks like when seen from the East. You're almost forced to look at it when you stand on the eastbound platform, waiting for the train heading towards Strausberg or Erkner or Ahrensfelde. But now all of the sudden what was inside is outside, and what was ordinary is now cut off from her and no longer visible. Suddenly everything is inverted, topsy-turvy, now she's behind the picture, behind what was once the surface of some unreachable beyond. The white line, a foot and a half from the edge of the platform, is not to be breached before the train has come to a complete stop, says the voice on the PA. Katharina and all those others waiting follow the rule, they don't cross the line, they even prefer to stand in the middle of the platform, On the short side of the station the glass facade cuts off the top of the building from the air outside, which in principle is still Eastern air, but because it gives access to the West is sort of Western air too, and outside the glass facade is an iron platform, where soldiers patrol back and forth with rifles on their backs, their silhouettes clearly visible. Behind the steel barrier that runs parallel to the train track, and that on this side too is a steel barrier, the S-Bahn prusumably continues to run, in the familiar way, towards Strausberg or Erkner or Ahresfelde. Or not? Does the East, which so far has been her element, cease to exist the moment she can no longer see it? Has she, Katharina, displaced it from present to past with those few strides to the other side of Friedrichstrasse station? Or is this gray station endowed with the power to hold two different sorts of time, two competing presents, two everyday realities, one serving as the other's netherworld? But then where is she, when she stands on the borderline? Is it called no-man's-land because someone wandering around in it no longer has any idea who he is?" (67-68)

This essay/short book is an extension of the research Saper did in Networked Art. It continues his thinking about how artists use sociopoetics to "score social situations" and how those same artists use "intimate bureaucracies" to cultivate and maintain small networks. Whereas bureaucracy is thought of as a management tool for "everyone" or for large groups of people, these groups use the tools of bureaucracy (rules, procedures, stamps) to build tigh-nit, smaller groups.

This text ties some of these ideas to Occupy Wall Street, but it also introduced me to a text I'd never heard of - 'bolo'bolo:

"The pseudonymously written bolo’bolo (1983), published by Semiotext(e) in their conspiratorial-sounding Foreign Agents series, describes the practical steps toward a utopian international social system. The author known only as “p.m.” (at least before post- publication interviews revealed the author’s identity) explains how small groups gathering outside the functions of an economy will form the foundation of this new social system. Instead of impersonal production and consumption, in which people’s work, for an abstract economy, defines the social system, people join together only in groups of common enthusiasms. No group, or “bolo,” forces anyone to stay, and individuals move from group to group depending on their current enthusiasm. The examples of common enthusiasms listed by p.m. include a very wide, and endlessly elastic, range of interests: garli- bolo, blue-bolo, coca-bolo, no-bolo, retro-bolo, les- bolo, etc." (7)

This decentralized (federated) structure is one more example of something folks working in/on federated networks might turn to as they think about how to build and maintain federated networks.

This book lays out both the theory and practice of platform collectives, platforms that are cooperatively owned. As we continue to seek something other than the feed driven by ads, the dopamine hit that never actually satisfies anything, Scholz offers a way to actually experiment:

"Experiments with Collective ownership are one way forward. What if digital platforms were cooperatively owned? What if communities, including users and workers, had ownership and governance over the algorithms and servers of digital platforms as well as Upstream services?” (5)

He has a complex view of scale or "scaling up" that is useful:

“Any discussion of scaling must begin with a clear statement of what scaling is not. It is not the thing we are working against; that is, it is not a mirror of venture capital logic, which prioritizes growth for its own sake as a source of increased investment and profit, and maximizes the economic interests of operators.” (49)

“Scaling can be achieved through alliances and federations that replicate successful local and translocal models and act as force multipliers for their members and social goals” (51)

Approaches to scaling: franchising (57), replication - “a new business simply applies an existing template, usually including open-source or source-available software” (64), “conversion of existing legacy cooperatives into platform cooperatives” (69), federation “multiple smaller cooperatives collectively own and manage a shared digital platform. This forms a second-level cooperative known as a platform co-op, allowing them to connect with clients and expand their reach” (70)

It also discusses Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and Data unions.

It's short and offers a number of examples of cooperatives. It's a nice mix of a journalistic approach (interviewing people on the ground, doing this work) and a theoretical account of platform cooperatives.

This book is of interest to anyone who is interested in how social networks operate over and beyond digital networks and also to those who are interested in thinking about how artists can develop alternative political approaches and orientations. These artists (Fluxus and others) were/are doing more than mailing zines and art - they were modeling alternate network designs and situations.

The book shows how Fluxus and other groups created "intimate bureaucracies":

"An intimate bureaucracy makes poetic use of the trappings of large bureaucratic systems and procedures (e.g., logos, stamps) to create intimate aesthetic situations, including the pleasures of sharing a special knowledge or a new language among a small network of participants." (xii)

It also develops the term "sociopoetics" to understand how artists "score" situations:

"The term sociopoetic describes artworks that use social situations or social networks as a canvas; intimate bureaucracies are a type of sociopoetic work...I employ a theoretical approach that involves examining how situations function poetically (or sociopoetically)...my focus remains on how the artists and poets have manipulated and scored situations." (xiv)

Caroline Levine argues that humanists, for too long, have thrown their lot in with indeterminacy and the disruption of systems. We have been anti-instrumentality for too long, and she suggests a set of forms for building infrastructures/spaces that enable thriving: routines (perhaps best understood as habits?), pathways (ways to move people and things), enclosures (abodes). She offers a number of examples of how these forms can be combined in various ways, and she also argues for the importance of "hinges."

A hinge can be temporal, as in a turning point. One example of how this concept is useful - organizing people can be especially effective when they are at a turning point in their lives or in their thinking. But a hinge can also be a linkage between two networks, and it was this concept I found most interesting as I think about federation:

"What does this mean in practice? It means neither valorizing the small, local action over the massive revolutionary subject, or vice versa, but rather paying attention to the linkages between groups. It means focusing on the form of the hinge. Po­liti­cal theorists have long argued that social movements are most successful at recruiting new members when they tap into existing networks: families, workplaces, friendships, neighborhoods, unions, churches, schools, and colleges. A person might bring her new neighbor to a meeting, for example, and that neighbor will ­ tell her cousin about it, who in turn gets so excited about the experience that she invites her ­ w hole youth group. As the social movement grows, its events and organ­izations create a vibrant new network of their own, which carries a sense of purpose and belonging that can make it attractive to new members." (135)

"hinged organ­izations can succeed, even if they are ideologically composite or even incoherent, because ­ of their massive size. ­ There is no need for purity or consistency. In fact, precisely the reverse may be true: movements grow large and power­ful in part by linking groups with views that do not necessarily align perfectly." (139)

Yunkaporta offers Indigenous modes of thought and storytelling as a method, but he's clear that “‘ancient wisdom’ is not your one-stop-shop for salvation through regenerative design.” (24)

But he offers "right story" as a method, a way of offering a complex, multi-dimensional set of stories that ground technologies and cultural practices in relationality and responsibility toward one another, nonhumans, and land:

“Right story is not about objective truth but the metaphors and relations and narratives of interconnected communities living in complex contexts of knowledge and economy, aligned with the patterns of land and creation. right story never comes from individuals, but from groups living in right relation with each other and with the land. wrong story wrong way - this means unilateral or unbalanced ritual, word and thought.” (21)

"Right story" is a lot of things, but the idea I found most useful was Yunkaporta's argument that any technology must be accompanied by a psycho-social technology, a set of ideas and practices that ensure that this entire technological ecology will not do harm:

“You need to leave the ore in the ground until you have strong enough story to regulate its use in the world.” (192)

This is a nice, detailed walk-through of the history of solidarity as a term/concept and as a practice. It argues that we need to revive that practice and that a number of structures and forces are in the way of that.

It has a bunch of examples, and it's written by an organizer of the debt collective and a person who's working hard to rethink how to transform the way wealthy people think about charity.

It's great as both a guide and a meditation on solidarity

“Appeals to benevolence, altruism, deference, or allyship are widespread, and invite us to be empathetic and kind; but they all place the onus on individual action rather than larger collective engagement, and on harnessing pity or guild, rather than a sense of shared responsibility or shared fate.” (xx)

“Building transformative solidarity involves acknowledging and overcoming imposed categories that pit us against one another and forging new bonds” (39) Polarization is a “necessary component of building transformative solidarity...[it is “preferable, and more strategic, for [borders] to be porous, allowing members to come in and out” (46)

“The erosion of solidarity has been incorporated into the social structures we inhabit, like those metal spikes designed to deter people without reliable shelter from resting comfortably under a bridge or on a low wall. We are nudged toward resentment and rivalry, fear and defensiveness; selfishness is incentivized and institutionalized; individual solutions are encouraged over collective action. Incredible ingenuity has been directed toward constraining our cooperative and solidaristic impulses, in ways that are sometimes subtle - and sometimes violent and shockingly overt.” (96-97)

“Transformative solidarity, we argue, doesn’t require the creation of new religious or political dogma, but it does require a baseline of reverence for the fragile ecosystems and communities on which we depend. Solidarity asks each of us to attend to those around us” (276)

I don't recommend this book. I read it for research purposes because it's written by Frank McCourt, a billionaire investing in a decentralized protocol called "Project Liberty." The book is invested in giving people "ownership" of their own data through decentralized structures and blockchain technology. The argument is built on the idea that a new internet should be built with the same ethos as the "American Project." It cites Paine's Common Sense throughout, and it has no real self-reflexive moments about what the "American Project" required (land theft and slavery). Their vision is an internet of individual rights in which you control your data and you have ownership of your data. The audience is likely libertarians who are ready for technosolutionism.

It's worth reading only if you want to see how billionaires want to fix the problem of a broken internet, even when those billionaires (and you have to give them a bit of credit for this at least) aren't necessarily trying to make more billions with that new internet (though, one should be skeptical).

This is a quick read and an interesting argument. Uber arrived in D.C. to some initial resistance, but that resistance quickly dissipated. The authors argue that the company was successfully able to shift the "common sense" of D.C. That shift was both in the sense of "plain wisdom" and everyday habits (taking an Uber and not a taxi or a train became the sensible, practical thing to do) and in the sense of a significant shift in the political terrain - Uber was able to shape what people expected from cities and government. Or, better, it was able to radical reduce those expectations, to convince everyone (politicians, citizens, everyone) that cities are bad at providing basic services and we should just "let Uber do it."

One interesting idea that emerges from the authors' analysis is that Uber succeeds in reducing complicated problems to a simple solution that doesn't actually address the problem, ostensibly solving that more minor/misleading problem, and then considering it all done and dusted. It's not surprising if you follow Silicon Valley discourse. Reduce a problem to one that a computer can solve (even if that computable solution doesn't actually solve the problem), write software, profit.

A solid analysis of the gig economy that goes beyond "mere" critique and gets at some of the bigger complexities. The strong parts of the book are where they interview drivers and find out about how drivers try to resist Uber or game the system. There's also really good stuff about how Uber's model prevents labor organizing by preventing spaces of gathering (spaces for workers to commiserate, organize, plan). A section on the D.C. Airport is especially interesting.

This book is a lot of things (poetry, prose, fiction, metafiction), and it is an honest and well-written account of parenting. I haven't experienced motherhood, but I have experienced parenthood and have been adjacent to motherhood. I feel like this book is unflinching and honest.

It also reflects on the difficulties and sometimes impossibilities of parenting and writing (one seems to always get in the way of the other). Perhaps this goes with any work, but it might feel more acute when it comes to writing?

There are tons of passages I'd love to quote, but here's one:

"It was not through housekeeping but through writing that she wished to approach all the objects of the world. Was writing in that case a form of housekeeping? A way of bringing things into order? When Adam names everything in the Garden of Eden, was he in fact doing the work of a housewife?" (67)