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Geert Lovink – Theses on wiki politics

Geert Lovink

Wikis reflect a culture of pragmatic non-commitment, argues Geert Lovink. “It’s got to do with low-intensity involvement. I am not saying disinterest, non-engagement, apolitical and similar types of accusations. One edits, adds, deletes, changes and quits. Then it is time to stand up, get a coffee, smoke a cigarette, talk on the phone or chats, and return to the screen again…”


An exchange with Pavlos Hatzopoulos for Re-public


Pavlos Hatzopoulos: Are wikis the opposite of blogs? The creation of collective intelligence vs. solipsism?


Geert Lovink: It is interesting that you position blogs and wikis as antagonistic players. Usually, within the Web 2.0 craze, blogs, wikis and social networking site are portrayed as complimentary applications. It is true that blog culture, as it exists right now, facilitates the idea that ‘I am the only mind that exists’. In my essay Blogging, the Nihilist Impulse, I have analyzed the blogosphere as one that is by and large introspective. Blogs recast postmodern techno subjectivity in a way that has not yet been fully researched. Why? Because the outcome would be straight-out boring. The fact is that most blogs have a two-month lifespan and contribute little to the liberal myth of our time which proclaims that bloggers are ‘citizen journalists’. This is a sad state of affairs, in particular for the first and second generation of bloggers who believed in linking and responding to each other’s postings. However, by 2004 the collaborative atmosphere in the blogosphere had vanished. The original values disappeared and the blogosphere became noisy and self-promotional.


Whether wikis recapture the lost ‘collective intelligence’ remains to be seen. Blogging has become a self-referential project. If we leave out the Wikipedia debate here, wikis are much more tool-like and are more open than the rather restrictive blog software that most people use. Having said that, it is obvious that both blogs and wikis have a hard time including one’s antagonist into the picture. In the same way as you do not link on your blog to one’s enemy you also rather not like to have your competitor or stalker mess around with your wiki. This is the general problem of the ‘collective intelligence’ concept that has grown out of the ecstatic 90s culture of geeks and nerds who of course discuss but always within the framework to reach consensus on a commonly shared project. In real life, most people lack such a shared project to work on. We can only discuss the nature of blogs and wikis within limited social networks and thus have to reconcile with the limited validity of its knowledge and ethics.


P.H.: How does the proliferation of online collaborative methods affect political subjectivity? Does it mark the dawn of the multitudes as political subjects?


G.L.: It might be known that I do not overestimate the role of new media technologies on the rise of political formations. Tactical media can play an interesting, assisting role in the everyday life of social movements. However, we should be cautious to expect that network gadgets can create discontent out of the blue and then transform this looming subversive potential into some form of organization. We have to be modest here and speak out against all quasi techno-determinist expectations that only lead us away from the more pertinent issues. We, artists, activists and critics have to say stop once and for all! It is true that we study the Laws of Media, that we try to invent alternative interface and software, develop alternative content, set up blogs and wikis for all sorts of causes, but we, the techno workers are over asked to solve the big political questions of our times. We have to promote a new media modesty. It is true that (new) media can contribute to a solution but we cannot expect too much from networks and communication. Once the multitudes are out on the streets, yes, then they can make optimal use of ‘smart mob’ technologies but we have to insist that politics and power are the key players when it comes to change making.


P.H.: What is the current relation between free cooperation networks and traditional institutions?


G.L.: It’s early days but a shift is becoming visible, in particular in the corporate world. Cultural institution, the educational sector and NGOs lack behind, but that should come as a surprise as the avant-garde has moved into business long time ago. Fights in art schools and the cultural sector are pathetic as there is a real resistance, in particular from the ruling baby boom generation, to let go and accept the pleasure part, the schizo-productive element of networking technologies. It’s all about control and suspicion, if you, for instance, look at how paranoid bureaucrats and their geek-executors respond to the rise of wifi networks. Users are treated as criminals, if not terrorists. Parts of the business world are more open. I am sad to say this, in particular as they are willing to experiment to see how they could extract value from the blogosphere and social networking sites. That, in part, means that you will have to study the rules of how all these Web 2.0 application come into being and are able to attract millions of users.


Free cooperation networks are not a threat to traditional institutions as they lack resources. Their marginality, their invisibility might be a mythical source, but in fact it is not. Leaving out the participants fom whom the game, blog or network is of an extraordinary significance, free cooperation aims at distributing power. I am not saying that power as such disappears, but there is certainly a shift, away from the formal into the informal, from accountable structures towards a voluntary and temporal connection. We have to reconcile with the fact that these structure undermine the establishment but not through recognizable forms of resistance. The ‘anti’ element often misses. This is what makes traditional, unreconstructed lefties so suspicious, as these networks just do their thing and do not fit into this or that ideology, be it neo-liberal or autonomous marxist. Their vagueness escapes any attempt to deconstruct their intention either as proto-capitalist or subversive.


PH: Does all the hype around new online collaborative tools spring from their tendency towards non-hierarchical structures?


GL: The hype around Web 2.0 and YouTube, in particular, is driven by traditional media outlets that panic and feel the need to catch up in order to regain control. Hype is not an Internet feature. Recommendation is (and that can cause millions of hits), and so is (news) aggregation. Ranking is too. All these phenomena do not lead to hypes but to dispersed masses, or (online) crowds as it is called these days. Like in the past, crowds gather and then quickly disappear again. I am a trained mass psychologist and have never given up that field, even though it no longer exist within academia. Through Wilhelm Reich it is a discipline that is associated with the rise of fascism, but at the time it was general knowledge that was applied to all sorts of social, historical and political events. Mass psychology came up in the late 19th century and disappeared in the 1980s, mainly due to the rise of media and communication studies. Now it is time for a come-back of mass psychology for the simple fact that media are becoming social, there is talk of media as a ‘participatory culture’ and it is pertinent to study the underlying dynamics.


Crowds grow organically and are invisible up to the point when they cause an uproar. Is that what you mean with non-hierarchical? Maybe the non-hierarchical nature you ask about is the least understood, and most difficult aspect of networking. We have to be careful not to celebrate it as it obvious prevents people from deeper, sustainable ties and hampers efforts to organize discontent. The fluidity of it all is nice for a while but then unveils itself as non-commitment, further fuelling the escape mentality.


PH: Are wiki communities “organized networks” in action? Do they at least have the potential to become so?


GL: Wiki clouds could potentially mutate into some other social form, but so far there is no evidence for such a thesis. What wikis do best is to assist dispersed groups in editorial work. The smaller the community, the shorter the deadline, the better a wiki can be utilized. The more we start projecting expectations onto such an application, the more we preprogram its failure. Instead of speculating its potentialities it is better to sit down for a while, shut up and watch the wikis in action. My thesis would be that wikis reflect a culture of pragmatic non-commitment. It’s got to do with low-intensity involvement. I am not saying disinterest, non-engagement, apolitical and similar types of accusations. One edits, adds, deletes, changes and quits. Then it is time to stand up, get a coffee, smoke a cigarette, talk on the phone or chats, and return to the screen again. Wikis operate in such informal, partial, parallel processing environments.


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Geert Lovink / webpage

Geert Lovink is founding director of the Institute of Network Cultures and Associate Professor of New Media at University of Amsterdam

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