Reviews and Comments

I spent a good bit of time trying to figure out what this book was trying to accomplish. Given the title, I was assuming there would be a large discussion of racer/racism and the worlds of ornithology, birding, naturalism. I assumed the book was designed to show that these fields are (I assume?) very white. But that's not really what this book is - it's primarily just a memoir, one that does directly take up race (especially in some sections that address the horrors of slavery and genealogy) but not in the way I expected.

The most gripping and depressing section addressed moments when Lanham was trying to just do his job (going to a place and logging the birds he sees and hears) and had to be constantly vigilant about his own safety, since he's a Black man walking through the South. I was struck that he needed to have the ability to both do a job that needs so much attention while also having to split his attention between that job and the violent, terrifying world around him.

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)