Blueprint for TOYWAR II
From Net Criticism to a Politics of Code
Theses on Network Economics and Network Politics

Written by Reinhold Grether
(Reinhold.Grether@uni-konstanz.de)
and translated by Brian Currid (bcurrid@gmx.de)

Lecture, Tulipomania Dotcom Conference
June 2, 2000
Amsterdam
(http://www.balie.nl/tulipomania/)

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In memory of Benno Ohnesorg who was killed on this day 33 years ago
during an Anti-Shah-Demonstration in Berlin.

Kung Fu and Cheng Ho

Around 1400, no region of the world could measure up to China. Since
the eleventh century, all fertile lands were linked by a huge network of
canals. Paper money accelerated the exchange of commodities, printing
with movable type accelerated the transfer of knowledge. Gun powder and
cannons had defeated the Mongols and secured the caravan routes to
Russia and the Middle East. However, the new medium was fresh water –
even more so, salt water. Private and public fleets competed over trade
in the canals, on the coast and over the Indian and Pacific Oceans to
Africa and Japan. The navigation instrument of the seas, the magnetic
compass, is a Chinese invention, it is conceivable that the official
fleets of Cheng Ho could have "discovered" the Portuguese natives on the
Southwest tip of Europe. But within a few years, the Confucian
bureaucracy let the routes of the new medium silt up, and in 1436 even
forbade the construction of sea-worthy ships. The Chinese spent the
next 564 years around their canals, and they are still waiting today for
entry into the World Trade Organization.

Professionalization of Sects

Imagine an infinite regress, leaving behind world, body, and the ego
(das Ich). In a purely mental process, the empty reception faculties
experiences itself as pure medium. Adepts from all around the world have
created this condition of luminous self-medialization, and interpreters
from all cultures have semanticized "notions" (Einfaelle) of
transcendence into the conventional world to every form of belief
system. Western philosophers theorized this pneumatic process as a
reflection of eternal ideas, and the bearer of this reflective knowledge
stretches from the ancient theoria through the medieval artes liberales
to the modern humanities. In contrast, if we isolate a technological
process in a black box, we are using a totally different form of
knowledge. At issue here is a applicable, control knowledge, intent on
obtaining from a process the most efficiently produced output possible.
Here, the Western lines of tradition lead from the ancient techne
through the medieval artes mechanicae to the modern engineering
sciences. The object-oriented programming of computer science, in my
opinion, professionalizes a third form of knowledge, which I term
"network knowledge" (Netzwissen). Again, this begins with an
encapsulation. The informatized "object" is encapsulated as a module.
This is still all quite similar to the industrial black box. But the
object would merely be a meaningless component on its own if it could
not by definition communicate with other objects. A system of objects is
structurally a communication network, the conditions of which are always
in fluctuation. Object-oriented software is nothing but the "self-
descriptive language" of the network knowledge implemented in it.

Clash of Codes

1. In all human societies, there are three forms of knowledge:
reflection knowledge, application knowledge, and network knowledge. 2.
In all human societies, there are clashes of codes between the forms of
knowledge and their representatives. 3. With the technological media,
network knowledge is undergoing a tremendous burst of
professionalization. 4. Beside reflection science and application
science, network science (Netzwissenschaft) will establish itself as a
third pillar of science. 5. Modularization creates degrees of freedom.
6. The communicability of objects will become increasingly intelligent.
7. The controlling powers find themselves strategically in the
defensive. 8. The controlling powers must operate in codes of network
knowledge. 9. All codes are beautiful, because they increase complexity.
10. The essence of the Net is flow, and in its disjointed character
cannot be controlled. 11. The happy Chinese: a second 1436 will not take
place.

Informational Cultivation

Information emerges as a local event in a narrow personal context. Fixed
as a freely duplicable sequence of bits, the now mobile information
loses its local horizon of understanding and reaches in a process of all
world wide personal environments, which can use the information; this
process has no monetary value and is temporally successive. Structurally
speaking, information is not a good of scarcity, but a good of
abundance, and there are essentially only three strategies to impose a
fictional scarcity onto information. First: one can make the
transmission channels scarce, and thus secure a transaction premium
(Maut). This is precisely what is done by the current domain name
system, which only makes a tiny spectrum of the in principle limitless
space of addresses available, and thus cultivable. Second: individualize
information, and thus create a positional surplus value which makes the
free good tradable in the market sense (the formation of brands). If one
imposes a lexicon of domain names on the asemantic field of numbers in
the IP-address space, then all social differences which this lexicon
contains are capitalized to become to positional goods with a monetary
value. The first information transfer which here takes place is that of
the social distribution of the power structure itself. Third, the
abundant good information takes on commodity form through strategies for
the informational production of surplus value. If one for example
reconstructs the semantic environment where information makes sense, or
if one develops a scenario of application options, or if one shortens
the time interval required until the information reaches an interested
customer, or if one translates it into another language, one adds to the
information a monetizable informational surplus value. The DNS System
can take credit for the fact that in relation to the IP- System it
accelerates and simplifies search and bookmarking operations, and thus
creates an informational surplus value. If information must be first
produced, the theory of property rights, which predicts a more steep
path of knowledge production for private rights of use, and open source
theory, which expects comparative development advantages through
prestige-driven cooperation chains, given open competition. An optimal
information production and distribution, which both produces information
and distributes it rapidly, can probably only be achieved in a hybrid
mix – which must constantly be renegotiated – of property rights and
open source, and from partial information cultivation with largely free
information access. General solutions here arouse the most doubt.

Research Agenda

1) The principle of counter-differentiation formed an enormous drive for
European development. In this model, two irreducible antagonists are
sent out to compete in expenditures – for example, pope and emperor - -
and both attempt to achieve hegemony by stimulating, evolving, and
outdoing the resources of their counterparts. This leads at first to
remarkable increases in internal differentiation on both sides, and at
some point to a shared collapse, which allows those sailing along on
board, protected from the wind – for example mercantile territorial
states – to then set full sail. Instead of now require from the
Internet economic theory a decision between market economy and gift
economy, perhaps it is more productive to first play out the model of
counter differentiation and to thematize the complex interplay of market
and gift economy.

2) I consider the fact that highly developed societies, down into the
upper margins of the lower classes, are pumping gigantic sums of money
into high risk sectors like the Internet economy, to be a burst of
vitality, regardless of any stock market crash, comparable to tattooing
and piercing; it burns the ships it leaves behind, in order to then
break out into the unknown. For just that reason, it would be good to
know exactly where the money has ended up. We need to study the actual
property and power relations in the Net. How much actually flows into
the evolution of net technology, content and social structures? How much
is spent consumeristically on the sweet trip of the dolcefarniente to
bankruptcy? And how much is being skimmed off the top of the bubble
economy, without having seen anything of the Net besides financial
transfers?

3) Since the end of the 1960s, economists outdo one another with
arguments about why national economies suffer a loss of prosperity due
to inflationary tendencies. By now, every television viewer jumps at
the word inflation. The high flights of the exchanges are however
universally praised in the most glowing terms. The million dollar prize
question is then why moderate inflation for consumer goods is an evil,
but a galloping inflation on the stock markets a blessing?

4) We now need to separate the dotcom from the Net economy, and to
study both separately. I see most of the dotcom economy as nothing else
but a transfer of the paradigm of process control from the industrial
age to the Net, in many cases doomed to failure. These are businesses
with vision, corporate identity and business plan. None of this
functions in the Net. Net economy is pure fluxus, micro-networking,
modularization of the smallest units, work in parallel worlds. Following
emerging paths, delete everything else. Fluid borders, fluid knowledge.
Multilogic instead of monologic.

Don't be afraid of dotcoms.

In the 1950s, in the factories of the Northern Italian automobile
industry, small groups of worker radicality formed which distinguished
themselves from the traditional union and party representation with the
term "operaismo." The basic idea of operaimso was to attack the
capitalist production of surplus value at the center of the capitalist
production process, and thus to block the capitalist dynamic of
development. In order to do this, the entire production logistic of the
automobile industry, across divisions and factories, was reconstructed,
all by hand and without the help of a single computer. In the end, all
neuralgic points of the entire matrix of value production were known, so
that a counter matrix of absenteeism, blockades of deliveries and
surprise strikes in the shortest period of time brought the entire
automobile industry to a standstill. The trick was to bring a more
powerful enemy to the mat without expense.

EToys ran into a similar trap. After going public on May 20, 1999, it
could barely walk, weighted down by all its financial muscle. In June,
they began dealing with etoy, the first offer was $30,000 – answer a
smiley – in order to get rid of the annoying domain neighbors once and
for all . When etoy refused higher offers, they played the only trump
card they had, to bury etoy in an avalanche of legal costs – and
disappeared until the end of the campaign from the radar screen. As a
typical dotcompany lost in the Net, it was stuck in the circle of their
business-plan economic monologic, and found no way to counter the
possibilities of the Net which were breaking down on top of their heads.
To refresh your memory: legally speaking, this was a disagreement about
brand names. In the course of the legal battle, eToys' argumentation
crumbled more and more. They even risked losing their legal claim on the
trademark to etoy. On the business level, in direct contact with the
opponent, etoy by no means limited itself to defending their domain.
etoy even offered a merger, where they would have brought their own
domain into the merged company. This kind of business logic confused the
enemy as much as the gearing of the campaign to totally annihilate the
stock value of eToys, which I developed and set up, together with
RTMark. I have extensively described the motives for this strategy in
"Telepolis," and therefore will here only give the pure numbers. When I
threw out the suggestion to the lists, eToys stood at $55, when etoy was
back on the Net at $13.75: this means a loss in stock value loss of
$4.97 billion dollars. Stock market insiders attribute the loss in part
to the campaign. In terms of the campaign, it is even more interesting
how a seemingly decisive strategy element occupied minds on both sides.
A direct shock to customer relations, which eToys can only build up on
its web page, was threatened by a virtual sit-in; on the 10 days before
Christmas, for five 15 minute periods, campaign participants called up
the web page of the web server of eToys in masses, and sent it spinning.
Shortly afterwards, a chain of 700 avatars formed on the Toywar
platform, one more ready for battle than the next, and no one knew what
they were plotting. Soon, there were 3 toy warriors for every eToys
employee. To top it all off, a constant stream of protest mails, and a
media campaign which spun faster and faster until it reached the peaks
of the world press. Web campaigns are won by those who tax the time and
fantasy of the management to an unimaginable extent.

What isn't code, isn't real.

A world cultural medium shaped by hundreds of millions of people needs
other rules than an Internet for a few ten thousand military officers,
scientists and computer freaks. First, because the cultural bearers of
past epochs, modeled for reflection and control, legally attack the
openness, freedom and transparency of implemented net architectures with
their claims on copyright, patent, brand and liability and try to recode
their ideological and mercantile interests accordingly. Second, the
regulations governing of bourgeois collective life like anonymity,
crypto, privacy, and security need new regulations. Third, because the
incompatibilities between transnational attempts at regulation, national
legal systems, and the system of developing rules are dramatically
growing, this opens for some a nostalgia for the good old days of the
pioneer years, for others, areas for action for a progressive politics
of the code, and for still others hopes for a "contrat digital" of all
netizens towards constructing a global net democracy.

Areas of action for a progressive politics of the code

In conclusion, a short sketch of possible areas for action, which –
like dotcoms and the rest of us – must answer the following questions:
what is to be networked? Why? Which kinds of network knowledge will be
professionalized? Is the Internet making progress as a world culture
medium? Are new chances opening up for the production of world cultural
capital?

1.) ICANN. ICANN stands for a total control of the Internet by the US
government and for an artificial limitation of domain names. ICANN is to
take over the management of the A-Root Server and become the highest
regulatory authority of the Internet. For this, there needs to be a
double strategy: a relentless delegitimization from outside and a
massive democratization movement from the inside. On the one hand,
implementing new top level domains throughout the entire existing
system, on the other hand obtaining ICANN membership and offering a
progressive politics from the inside.

2) Directing development policies towards financing wireless broadband
networks for developing regions.

3) A world-wide campaign towards introducing Open Source in
international organizations, governments, administrative units, firm
networks and schools.

4) Globalization of the multiplicity of languages. 90% of Net
intelligence falls through the cracks due to the forced use of English.
The Anglocrats are just the other side of the virtual class.

5) The development of peer-to-peer architectures. Peer-to-peer means
that users give free access to files from their hard drive to the Net
without a server between them. The future belongs to Open Source
projects like Freenet, especially if they export all file formats,
encrypt all files and make all computers anonymous.

6) Calling in old protocol promises. Further development of the WWW
towards a multiplicity of versions on user-alterable web pages (editable
documents) and towards free linking in existing web pages (reversible
links).

7) The establishment of browserless networks as a further development
of Netomat.

8) Technification of the Internet culture. Mailing lists embody the
ideology of the status quo. They can be transformed into real
cooperation platforms, so that multiple working groups can work on
parallel projects. Mailing list archives gain in value, if the
contributions are constantly re-linked with one another. Blaster
technology can do this: it automatically links references to topics.

9) The construction of technical, media, and social infrastructures of
virtual protest. In this direction, Alvar Freude, a co-author of the
"association blaster", as a semester project for Olia Lialina's "Active
Link" seminar at the Merz Academy in Stuttgart, is developing a "virtual
demonstration network" which can be used for virtual sit-ins. Parallel
to this, an accompanying group of lawyers, political scientists, and
journalists has formed, which will bring the discussion on the
legitimacy and legality of net-activism to the public.

(This text was written as a discussion paper for the Tulipomania Dotcom-
Conference in Amsterdam and Frankfurt. The political part of the paper
owes a great deal to the net politics debate in the mailing list
"rohrpost". Much of my thinking on this owes a great deal to Dirk
Schroeder. Brian Currid provided in no time the excellent English
translation.)

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Benno Ohnesorg
http://www.hdg.de/lemo/objekte/pict/KontinuitaetUndWandel_photoTodBennoOhnesorg/index.html
Code and other Laws of Cyberspace
http://code-is-law.org/
ICANN
http://www.icann.org/
Freenet
http://freenet.sourceforge.net/
Netomat
http://www.netomat.net/
Alvar Freude
http://student.merz-akademie.de/user/alvar.freude/
Assoziations-Blaster
http://www.assoziations-blaster.de/prixars/
rohrpost
http://www.mikro.org/rohrpost/

Reinhold Grether
How the Etoy Campaign Was Won
http://www.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/te/5843/1.html
Reinhold Grether
Durchbruch zum Weltcode
http://www.heise.de/tp/deutsch/inhalt/sa/8090/1.html
Reinhold Grether
Von der Netzkritik zur Politik des Code
http://www.heise.de/tp/deutsch/inhalt/co/8212/1.html

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