Re:Linux, art, and open source culture
on
Focus Group Art
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· Score: 1
Thanks, Ron.
I think it would be very interesting to study the cultural practices of the free software community. There's a lot of good data in Eric Raymond's stuff, as well as the things that have been written on the gift-exchange culture of open source. It's amazing what elaborate and subtle systems of creating and maintaining relationships of trust and mutual benefit there are, and in an world where no one can see anyone else's face.
I'm struck by the similarities to the practices of the aristocracy in archaic Greece (say, 8th to 6th century BC). These people established and maintained reciprocal relationships over distances of hundreds of miles, and through the course of many generations. Thus it was possible (as it is in a sense with the open source community) for people who had never met to know that they were guest-friends. Foremost among their methods was the exchange of valuable gifts (and the vehement rejection of the use of money or of any attempts to place a cash valuation of those gifts), which would bring prestige to the giver and benefit the recipient while putting an obligation on him to return the favor at some later date. They also shared a vast knowledge of ``right ways'' to think about things and do things which were, in principle, unforgeable. In a sense, these were both communication and authentication protocols. (So also with e-commerce: the problem of anonymous authentication is not new.)
Anyway, this is getting kind of off the topic. But it's interesting stuff.
Cheers,
Jed
Re:One Point You Make Is Off A Bit - clarification
on
Focus Group Art
·
· Score: 1
I should have clarified what I meant by controlled or restricted. Perhaps I should have said inaccessible or exclusive. The point is that learning the ``right way'' to appreciate a work of art requires a lot of education. At the same time, the content of that education is the product of the group that can afford to be educated by it. In this (circular) way, knowledge of how to look at art and what to say about it is in fact restricted (though perhaps never consciously). It's not enough to go to the public library and read the books, either. Books don't teach the many other subtle but important habits of the learned art critic, such as how to walk or speak in a gallery, what tone of voice to use, what allusions to make, how to make the knowing glance, and in general how to emanate knowledge and control over that knowledge. State of body is as important as state of mind, and the uninitiated is easily spotted. (Perhaps here I should restate another point I made, namely that this is not an unbreakable loop. The impressionist painters you mention somehow managed to thrive, despite the hostile reception of art critics and Paris salons, to the extent that they have been immortally canonized today.)
On another topic, I think your Linux example is related, though for other reasons as well. There is no doubt that the Linux community has its own social practices, among which is the deprecation of Microsoft's stifling mercantilism. (People have written about the ``gift exchange'' economy of the open source community.) At the same time, though, see what happens when someone from, say, AOL posts to/. and makes errors in content and the spelling of technical terms. He or she is very quickly flamed for being so ignorant, with the same contempt you can see in the eyes of a university art student when the old lady next to him scans a Monet and says ``Ooh what a pretty picture!'' in the same way, AOL lusers don't stand a chance: they don't belong here is the immediate consensus. So I think in fact the Linux community is as much an example as any other that you cannot be accepted until you learn to talk the talk, and walk the walk. (This coming from a dedicated Linux user:-)
People's reactions to art, which can be quite strong, are nevertheless conditioned by a number of factors they are probably not aware of. Anyone interested in the way taste is constructed might want to read Distinction by French anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu (Eng trans edition in print).
Class, status, and educational background play a strong role in conditioning what we like and don't like in our art. Bourdieu's results are similar to the artists': The majority of the populace, being middle class and of average education, likes pictures of animals, water, sunsets, children, people relaxing, etc. A group with higher education prefers more abstract images. Above all, each group hates what the other likes. According to Bourdieu, the elites shun what is associated with inferior taste, while the lower- and middle- classes hate what would be prohibited from them anyway. (Remember that enjoying art is never simply a neutral aesthetic experience: there is a whole language of appreciation that must be learned and which can therefore be controlled and restricted.)
To make a point, I have simplified Bourdieu's presentation. His data, on French subjects, cover a wide range of very finely-subdivided social groups. Furthermore, I believe we must leave some room for personal beliefs that are not entirely conditioned by cultural forces. Overall, though, one must agree that social and cultural factors over which a subject may have little or no control condition his or her ``appreciation'' of art to a significant extent.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks, Ron.
I think it would be very interesting to study the cultural practices of the free software community. There's a lot of good data in Eric Raymond's stuff, as well as the things that have been written on the gift-exchange culture of open source. It's amazing what elaborate and subtle systems of creating and maintaining relationships of trust and mutual benefit there are, and in an world where no one can see anyone else's face.
I'm struck by the similarities to the practices of the aristocracy in archaic Greece (say, 8th to 6th century BC). These people established and maintained reciprocal relationships over distances of hundreds of miles, and through the course of many generations. Thus it was possible (as it is in a sense with the open source community) for people who had never met to know that they were guest-friends. Foremost among their methods was the exchange of valuable gifts (and the vehement rejection of the use of money or of any attempts to place a cash valuation of those gifts), which would bring prestige to the giver and benefit the recipient while putting an obligation on him to return the favor at some later date. They also shared a vast knowledge of ``right ways'' to think about things and do things which were, in principle, unforgeable. In a sense, these were both communication and authentication protocols. (So also with e-commerce: the problem of anonymous authentication is not new.)
Anyway, this is getting kind of off the topic. But it's interesting stuff.
Cheers,
Jed
I should have clarified what I meant by controlled or restricted. Perhaps I should have said inaccessible or exclusive. The point is that learning the ``right way'' to appreciate a work of art requires a lot of education. At the same time, the content of that education is the product of the group that can afford to be educated by it. In this (circular) way, knowledge of how to look at art and what to say about it is in fact restricted (though perhaps never consciously). It's not enough to go to the public library and read the books, either. Books don't teach the many other subtle but important habits of the learned art critic, such as how to walk or speak in a gallery, what tone of voice to use, what allusions to make, how to make the knowing glance, and in general how to emanate knowledge and control over that knowledge. State of body is as important as state of mind, and the uninitiated is easily spotted. (Perhaps here I should restate another point I made, namely that this is not an unbreakable loop. The impressionist painters you mention somehow managed to thrive, despite the hostile reception of art critics and Paris salons, to the extent that they have been immortally canonized today.)
On another topic, I think your Linux example is related, though for other reasons as well. There is no doubt that the Linux community has its own social practices, among which is the deprecation of Microsoft's stifling mercantilism. (People have written about the ``gift exchange'' economy of the open source community.) At the same time, though, see what happens when someone from, say, AOL posts to /. and makes errors in content and the spelling of technical terms. He or she is very quickly flamed for being so ignorant, with the same contempt you can see in the eyes of a university art student when the old lady next to him scans a Monet and says ``Ooh what a pretty picture!'' in the same way, AOL lusers don't stand a chance: they don't belong here is the immediate consensus. So I think in fact the Linux community is as much an example as any other that you cannot be accepted until you learn to talk the talk, and walk the walk. (This coming from a dedicated Linux user :-)
People's reactions to art, which can be quite strong, are nevertheless conditioned by a number of factors they are probably not aware of. Anyone interested in the way taste is constructed might want to read Distinction by French anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu (Eng trans edition in print).
Class, status, and educational background play a strong role in conditioning what we like and don't like in our art. Bourdieu's results are similar to the artists': The majority of the populace, being middle class and of average education, likes pictures of animals, water, sunsets, children, people relaxing, etc. A group with higher education prefers more abstract images. Above all, each group hates what the other likes. According to Bourdieu, the elites shun what is associated with inferior taste, while the lower- and middle- classes hate what would be prohibited from them anyway. (Remember that enjoying art is never simply a neutral aesthetic experience: there is a whole language of appreciation that must be learned and which can therefore be controlled and restricted.)
To make a point, I have simplified Bourdieu's presentation. His data, on French subjects, cover a wide range of very finely-subdivided social groups. Furthermore, I believe we must leave some room for personal beliefs that are not entirely conditioned by cultural forces. Overall, though, one must agree that social and cultural factors over which a subject may have little or no control condition his or her ``appreciation'' of art to a significant extent.