[-empyre-] the man as a prototype - the limits of open source

[davin heckman]

I think, at some level, we are always engaged in some level of
prototyping the self.  Certainly, this is the gist of Foucault's
"Technologies of the Self" and the larger theory of discourse, where
competing ideas about how to understand and fabricate the self compete
for ascendancy.  There are also shades of Lacan's "future anterior"
here, that interrelation between present and future in the form of an
anticipated sense of what one will have become.  Fiction, too, is an
area where we experiment with alternative methods of interaction,
social organization, belief, imagination, and history.  Spiritual
practices, drug cultures, and political utopian movements also engage
in these sorts of experiments in altered states and constructs,
creating new types of people for immanent eschatological scenarios.
And, finally, there are the many, many practical examples of mundane
experimentation from fashion to body modification.    We are forever
adjusting culture and matter to suit our needs.

My concern, I suppose, following Christopher Sullivan's comments, is
in the adoption of a technical paradigm to account for practices which
have a wide and rambling established history.  As a thought
experiment, I think there is much value to thinking about our everyday
practices as "prototyping."  On the other hand, I think we do lose
something if we embrace this metaphor with too much enthusiasm.
Prototyping implies the pursuit of a desired utility.  The very things
which make it useful, perhaps, from an ad hoc, tactical sort of
perspective....  also might make it onerous in another perspective
(imagine, for instance, if div prototyping were a prescriptive,
ethical imperative or something, if it were invoked with connotations
of goodness).  I think of some of the great art that rides the edge
(like subRosa), playing with the culture of technocapitalism without
falling back on essentialisms, these experiments can inspire rigorous
questioning of "utility" itself.  In this case, some diy bio
prototyping might serve as a pretext for interrogating the very
practice of controlling our bodies.  (Who the hell are we managing
ourselves for?  For our anticipated career?  To service long term
debt?  To get married and make babies?  To consume more effectively?
What the hell are all these treadmills for?  Why do people need a
phone on their ear?  Why should I take these pills?)  At some level,
putting the question of daily life through the crucible of capital can
be a productive exercise, in the same way that I can imagine that
their might be something useful about giving a mean drunk a dozen
bottles of Midori to drink (provided they aren't riding home in my
car).  The nauseating pain of the encounter might lead to a moment of
clarity (at the very least, allowing a belligerent booze troll to
baste in green, sticky-sweet, melon-flavored vomit is sweet revenge).

For my thinking, the language of prototyping is useful in that it can
be used to intervene against time.  I would say one of the most
pressing problems we face is the very pressing nature of the problems
we face--there is too little time for thought, reflection, and
deliberate action.  The result is real drive to augment
decision-making through automated processes or to constantly adopt the
changes, applying feedback in retrospect.  The construct of the
prototype allows people to engage in this process with a certain level
of consciousness, transparency, and reflexivity.  To prototype is to
anticipate the shortcoming in the current model.  To allow progress to
unfold while allowing for disasters of various stripes, displacing
accountability from the self onto the apparatus.  This certainly might
be unavoidable in cases.  I think squatters certainly are exploring a
new models of dwelling in response to the crisis of capitalism.  I
think that people who share information as simply hashing out new
norms for intellectual property in a changing world.  In these case,
the diy prototyping model offers a new way of thinking about social
norms, outside of the established patterns.

On the other hand, I don't know that anyone should be asked to live as
a prototype.  It frames the question of existence as a problem to be
solved, while skirting the larger social question of practical
problems in need of solutions.  Finding the bugs in the system means
that these same people will also have to confront various challenges
to their existence.  Yet this is the pattern I see across society at
large.  I have lots of friends that like living in big cities....  and
I am always impressed by the creative ways they solve problems that I
had never even imagined....  but it is also horrible that people are
consistently expected to make do with a smaller and smaller share of
society's wealth.  If the best we can imagine is a world where change
or die remains the law, while an entire social class exists who is
always accelerating this change, while consolidating its
privileges....  I think that we shouldn't bother with politics at all.

Davin