[iDC] Bloggers Code of Conduct

Sat Apr 21 15:14:23 EDT 2007

Dear Michel or should I call you Bauwens

This is not as trivial a question as it might seem. One of the interesting aspects of new media is the immediate presumption of intimacy, signalled by the automatic use of the first name in emails and postings, even to people one has never met. By contrast my father, who worked in the British Museum in London as a curator for all his working life from the 1940s to the 1980s, never referred to or addressed his colleagues, while at work, other than by their surnames, as it were 'Smith' or 'White' (never Mr Smith or Dr White; titles were only to be used for social superiors or inferiors or in written correspondence), and certainly would not have been comfortable if someone he had never met had called him John, either on a first physical encounter or in a letter. When I was young I thought this was extraordinarily old-fashioned and slightly ludicrous. Now I am older I am not so sure, especially as I work in a university department which is going through a crisis partly because of a failure to distinguish between what it means to be a mate and to be a colleague. Apart from anything else the immediate presumption of intimacy makes it very hard to properly engage in the business of working together and, in particular, being appropriately critical as well as appropriately respectful, when necessary. I think that this kind of unearned intimacy is the corelative or flipside of the kind of offensive behaviour the Bloggers' Code of Conduct is supposed to deal with.

Now to your interesting and useful comments. I am using the term 'gnostic' fairly loosely, much in the way Bloom uses it or, by extension Zizek, but also Voegelin, in his description of modern science as 'gnostic' or Blumenberg in his account of the West's continuous struggle with gnosticism in the broadest sense, from Augustine to early modernity. I know this is a little problematic, and I should nuance this, but there it is for the moment.

Your second comment is complex and interesting. I suppose my immediate response would be that we need protocols and, quite possibly, rituals (for want of a better word) that mitigate the violence of the social, in virtual space as much as in meat space, and I am not sure that technical structures of distribution answer that need

Yours 

Gere (or Charlie)

-----Original Message-----
From: idc-bounces at mailman.thing.net on behalf of Michel Bauwens
Sent: Sat 4/21/2007 9:51 AM
To: iDC
Subject: Re: [iDC] Bloggers Code of Conduct

Hi Gere,

If this is a quick reaction, then what to expect when you're really put your
tooth in it. In any way, thanks for this marvellous rendering of such
complex material.

I'll be really quick.

One comment is to recognize that we in the West are really post-Christian,
just as we are post-Marxist and post-Freudian. Whatever we think of its
merits, it is constitute of who and what we are. Being post-Christian means
that central to our being in the world, and why we are not really Gnostics,
is the notion of Incarnation. The gnostics, I was once part of such a group,
really require a total rejection of the world, which is the creation of
false Gods. The orthodox Christians accept the world, imperfect as it is, as
part of creation. The difference for me is that as post-Christian, we reject
any external, 'transcendent' explanation, and that we replace it with
infinite immanence.

Question: don't you think that the effects of mimetic desire can be
mitigated by 'distributing it', i.e. by augmenting the combinatory
possibilities, which is what happens in peer to peer networks, and why I
think they have such a positive contribution to make?

Michel

On 4/20/07, Gere, Charlie <c.gere at lancaster.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> I want to sketch a quick reaction to the issues Trebor has written about
> below, in preparation, possibly, for a more considered response
>
> It seems to me that cyberbullying and other similar phenomena (in the
> UK, for example, 'happy slapping', in which acts of violence are
> committed in order to be photoed or filmed on mobile phones and
> distributed) exemplify the innate violence of the social, and the
> failure of our current phase of capitalism to develop any means by which
> it might be mitigated. I want to think about this through a
> consideration of the work of French philosopher Rene Girard and his
> defence of Christianity (and here I must issue the usual disclaimer that
> I am not a Christian and thus I am not proselyting on behalf of
> Christianity, but I do admire its cultural force and meaning, and I
> believe that, inasmuch as we live in a culture absolutely structured by
> its religious history, failure to understand Christianity means a
> failure to understand our current situation)
>
> According to Girard what distinguishes humans from other animals is
> 'desire', which is not an instinct or programmed into us, but is
> something that must become activated for us to be human. Desire is bound
> up with imitation through which the human infant learns to become human
> by observing others. Thus we learn to desire what those we imitate
> desire. This is what Girard calls 'mimetic desire', which is positive
> inasmuch as it gives us models of what and how to desire, but also leads
> to social conflict as this mimetic desire leads to the coveting of what
> the other possesses or even what he or she is. This state of everybody
> imitatively desiring and coveting the other's possessions leads to a
> state of war of all against all, and of social anarchy (sounds a lot
> like late consumerist capitalism). In almost all societies this war of
> all against all has been resolved through an act of collective, mimetic
> violence enacted against a victim, upon whom the general anxieties and
> conflicts are devolved and who thus becomes a sacrifice for the purposes
> of social cohesion. Thus for Girard human society and culture is only
> made possible by such collective, founding acts of violence and murder.
> Girard's name for this mimetic cycle of covetousness and murder is
> 'Satan'. Girard then suggests that, because the victims of such
> collective violence are not just the supposed causes of social conflict
> but also the means by which it is resolved, they then are accorded
> sacred status and worshipped accordingly. This is the origin of the gods
> and also the beginnings of kingship.
>
> For Girard Judaism and Christianity both try to deconstruct this mimetic
> desire. Girard points out that the longest and most explicit commandment
> is the tenth, which states that 'you shall not desire your neighbour's
> house, his field, or his manservant, or his maidservant, his ox, or his
> ass, or anything that is your neighbour's'. The power of Christianity in
> particular lies in the fact that the crucifixion, which appears to
> replicate this sacrifice of a scapegoat, is, in fact, the inverse.
> Christ refuses to be demonised as an outcast or consequently rendered
> sacred. He is instead resurrected, which forestalls the process of
> making the victim sacred. That he is innocent thus undermines the
> satanic process by which social cohesion is made possible through the
> victimisation of the weak and powerless, and introduces the central
> concern of Christianity, that of 'concern for victims'. He also thus
> demonstrates that the emergence of the sacred is a direct result of
> violence. As Girard points out it is Nietzsche who recognises that this
> concern is the beginnings and basis of democracy (though of course this
> disgusts Nietzsche). The term used to denote Christ's refusal of divine
> status, or rather God's incarnation in human form, is 'kenosis' or
> 'emptying'.
>
> (Here I start to wonder about the relation between art, mimesis and some
> of these religious/post-religious ideas. Art has traditionally been
> regarded as a form of mimesis, an imitation of nature. Christianity,
> along with Judaism and Islam, has a complex relationship with visual
> imagery. The second commandment forbids the making and worshipping of
> graven images, which is adhered to in Judaism and has led to periodic
> outbreaks of iconoclasm in Christianity. At the same time, of course,
> the Christian or post-Christian west has produced some of the most
> extraordinary visual art ever seen. Here I wonder if the suspicion
> evinced by Judaism and Christianity towards visual representation is
> part of their deconstruction of mimetic desire. (There is a lot that
> needs to be thought about here about the relation between religion in
> general and Christianity in particular and the image, including a
> consideration of the difference between the 'icon' and the 'idol', as
> well as the relation between the incarnation and realism in Western art.
> Also I think there are links to be made to Richard Rorty's analysis of
> 'philosophy and the mirror of nature'.) What is obvious is that, in a
> society of the spectacle increasingly saturated with imagery of all
> sorts, such imagery is a source of considerable amounts of mimetic
> desire and envy, and corresponding social and cultural antagonism. As
> the rise of the modern society of the spectacle became increasingly
> obvious from the late 19th century onwards so artists engaged in a kind
> of kenosis or emptying out of mimesis in their work (and here we might
> make special mention of Malevich, Reinhardt, Rauschenberg, and Ryman).)
>
> Christianity was, in part at least, a response to and eventually a kind
> of solution for the Roman Empire and its contradictions. Alain Badiou
> has recently written about the apostle Paul as the founder of
> 'Universalism' and a universal community. We are now apparently living
> not in an empire, but in 'Empire', as Toni Negri and Michael Hardt have
> it. The last paragraph of their book Empire notoriously advocates St.
> Francis and his espousal of poverty as a model for future communist
> militancy. Slavoj Zizek has also recently proposed the necessity of 'the
> Christian experience' for dialectical materialists. Of course, even if
> 'Empire' is bound up with the increasing irrelevance of the nation
> state, the United States remains the most powerful nation and is also,
> despite the separation of church and state, a country in which
> Christianity is politically extremely powerful. Given that the United
> States is engaged in the most blatant exercise in victimisation and
> scapegoating in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, this would appear to militate
> against any claims for Christianity as offering a form of belief that
> necessarily takes the side of the victim. Of course the history of
> Christianity since its adoption by Constantine as the state religion of
> the Roman Empire in the 4th Century CE has involved considerable abuses
> of power.
>
> But one might also follow Harold Bloom's suggestion that 'the American
> Religion' is not actually Christianity, but a kind of Gnosticism, which
> denies the incarnation and many of the communal aspects of Christianity
> in exchange for an elevation of the individual's own self-directed inner
> spirituality, a creed perfectly suited to the individualism so prized in
> late capitalism. This would Dubbya a kind of Gnostic, which makes sense
> in relation to his extraordinarily dangerous practice of relying on a
> kind of gut instinct to make decisions. In Omens of the Millennium Bloom
> describes himself as a Gnostic, a claim that Zizek takes apart in the
> opening paragraphs of his book On Belief. There are some interesting
> parallels between the situation in the later period of the Roman Empire,
> when numerous pagan and Gnostic cults emerged and competed with each
> other in offering salvation and hope to an increasingly anxious
> population, and now, when Western Buddhism, New Age spirituality, Kabala
> and so on. Zizek is particularly trenchant about the first of these
> which he sees as the 'paradigmatic ideology of late capitalism' in that
> it allows people to serenely accept things as they are. St Augustine of
> Hippo was converted to Christianity following a period in which he
> followed the teachings of the dualist Mani. Among the disagreements
> Augustine had with the Manicheans was their denial of the incarnation,
> and of the fact that Jesus was human.
>
> Erik Davis' wonderful book Techgnosis shows the degree to which our new
> media are or have thoroughly Gnostic tendencies. In particular the
> repudiation of the world of meat, atoms and the material, in favour of
> the world of bits and information, which has characterised much of the
> early cyber-rhetoric shows a Gnostic contempt for matter. Similarly much
> of the rhetoric around the digital or knowledge economy evinces a kind
> of Gnostic eschewal of matter, in favour of faster-than-light,
> friction-free capitalism. This kind of discourse occults the real bodies
> that are needed for production, including the production of signs, from
> the children stitching footballs in Vietnam to the call centre workers
> in India, the factory workers in China, and even those in the so-called
> developed world working in well-paid and relatively comfortable jobs in
> the service and cultural industries.
>
> What we lack perhaps are the kinds of rituals and protocols that bind
> together embodied communities and try to mitigate the innate violence of
> the social, such as the Mass in the Middle Ages, or the rituals that are
> to be found in almost any other time or culture other than our current
> phase of late capitalism. This binding together of the community through
> the rituals of religion enabled what John Bossy describes as the 'Social
> Miracle', which was an expression of the vision of social beatitude or
> 'state of charity, meaning social integration', which 'was the principle
> end of Christianity' from the time of Dante to that of Luther. Rituals
> such as the Eucharist, along with institutions such as guilds, and new
> forms of social protocol involving the formalising of friendly greeting
> were all part of a deliberate attempt to enable the renunciation of
> violence. Bossy sees Dante's greeting of Beatrice, which would inspire
> much of his poetry, including The Divine Comedy, as 'not simply about
> the girl but about the social universe as a whole, a love which
> instantaneously occupied the entire social field and burned away the
> passions of hostility felt towards any person within it'. Bossy also
> singles out the feast of Corpus Christi, which commemorates the
> institution of the Holy Eucharist, and which was invented in the
> thirteenth century though only gaining popularity in the fourteenth. It
> is celebrated on the first Thursday after Trinity Sunday, which in turn
> is the feat Sunday after Pentecost. The feast of Corpus Christi often
> involved the performance of mystery plays. Bossy suggests that the 'play
> of Corpus Christi... meant more than the theatrical performance; it
> meant the event itself as a gratuitous release, a representation of homo
> ludens under the aegis of the Host'.
>
> Given the impossibility, at least as far as I am concerned, of believing
> in Christianity as an explanation for the universe, the question then
> might be, how can we find meaningful ways of binding communities
> together, that are appropriate for our secular culture
>
>
> Charlie Gere
> Reader in New Media Research
> Director of Research
> Institute for Cultural Research
> Lancaster University Lancaster LA1 4YL UK
> Tel: +44 (0) 1524 594446
> E-mail: c.gere at lancaster.ac.uk
> http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/cultres/staff/gere.php
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: idc-bounces at mailman.thing.net
> [mailto:idc-bounces at mailman.thing.net] On Behalf Of Trebor Scholz
> Sent: 20 April 2007 03:33
> To: IDC list
> Subject: [iDC] Bloggers Code of Conduct
>
> "Don't speak-- point," seems to be the modus operandi of many mailing
> lists. Isn't it better attention economics to share such information
> through the del.icio.us' network feature or other social bookmaking and
> referral systems?
>
> Let me point you, however, to a few links surrounding the recent
> discussion on Tim O'Reilly's "Bloggers Code of Conduct" triggered by
> death threats against the blogger Kathy Sierra. If you did not come
> across this conversation yet, get a speedy introduction here:
>
> Death threats against bloggers are NOT "protected speech" (why I
> cancelled my ETech presentations)
> http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2007/03/as_i_type_
> this_.html
>
> CNN Video
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQ6IxYaD774
>
> Exclusive Interview About Free Speech Video
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obGtVGfP2Mg&mode=related&search=
>
> Cyberbullying is the term used to refer to bullying and harassment by
> use of electronic devices though means of e-mail, instant messaging,
> text messages, blogs, mobile phones, pagers, and websites. "Bullying on
> the sociable web" may be a better term as "cyber" sounds really all too
> 80s. And Kathy Sierra is surely not alone. Jeneane Sessum reports 11,000
> results for Google search results on her name and death threats. And
> bullying is hardly limited to the WWW.
>
> Jeneane Sessum
> http://allied.blogspot.com/2007/04/as-long-as-everyones-able-to-leave.ht
> ml
>
> Now, Google spits out 139,000 results for a search on the "Bloggers Code
> of Conduct." Tim O'Reilly wrote, "Yes, you own your own words. But you
> also own the tone that you allow on any blog or forum you control. Part
> of 'owning your own words' is owning the effects of your behavior and
> the editorial voice you foster. And when things go awry, acknowledge
> it."
>
> After NYT and BBC responded, O'Reilly quickly grabbed his credit card
> and bought http://www.bloggingcode.org/. Being the first means that you
> own the conversation. Jimmy Wales joined O'Reilly in setting up a wiki
> on the topic. O'Reilly suggested, "the idea of sites posting their code
> of conduct might gain some traction given some easily deployed badges
> pointing to a common set of guidelines." Badges? A-list certificates?
>
> In the United States it is a federal crime to anonymously "annoy, abuse,
> threaten, or harass any person" via the internet or telecommunication
> system, punishable by a fine and/or imprisonment." But it's not always
> easy for an individual to track down a bully online.
>
> I think that bullying is definitely not just limited to blogs. It
> appears online and off. It is mainly focused on youth and often targets
> young women.
> Trolls sometimes harass people writing on mailing lists. Online
> visibility may also attract stalkers. I'd be curious what you think
> about the actual proposed
> guidelines. What can be done to stop bullying on the sociable web (and
> beyond it)?
>
> -Trebor
>
> Code of Conduct Wiki
> http://blogging.wikia.com/wiki/Blogger%27s_Code_of_Conduct
>
> 1. Responsibility for our own words, 2. Nothing we wouldn't say in
> person, 3. Connect privately first 4. Take action against attacks 5. a)
> No anonymous comments OR b) No pseudonymous comments 6. Ignore the
> trolls 7. Encourage enforcement of terms of service 8. Keep our sources
> private 9. Discretion to delete comments 10. Do no harm
>
> O'Reilly's Draft
> http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/04/draft_bloggers_1.html
>
> BBC
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6502643.stm
> Guardian
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,2054181,00.html
> NYT
> http://tinyurl.com/24ps3e
>
> O'Reilly is surely not the first to consider ethical guidelines for the
> sociable web.
>
> EFF: Legal Guide for Bloggers
> http://www.eff.org/bloggers/lg/
>
> Society of Professional Journalists  Code of Ethics
> http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp
>
> Blogher Community Guidelines
> http://blogher.org/community-guidelines
>
> http://wiki.nethique.info/wiki/Nethic_Charter_for_blogs
>
> More comments:
> David Weinberger
> http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/mtarchive/code_nah_codes_maybe.html
>
> danah boyd
> http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2007/04/07/cyberbullying.html
>
> Linda Stone
> http://surfette.typepad.com/surfette/2007/04/theoretically_g.html
> http://blogher.org/node/17319
> http://blogher.org/node/12104
>
> Not on board:
> Bloggers Code of Conduct - Please NO!
> http://radio.weblogs.com/0121664/2007/04/02.html#a935
>
> Civility my arse
> http://blogs.theage.com.au/media/archives/2007/04/civility_my_ars.html
>
>
>
>
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