From: tmaddox@netcom.com (Tom Maddox)
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk
Subject: Re: Rights in cyberspace
Keywords: Freedom information cyberpunk
Date: 3 Sep 92 08:15:09 GMT
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)

In article <4856@balrog.ctron.com> mattb@olympus.ctron.com (Matt Brown) writes:

>Hi Tom.  Is the text of Bruce's speech available anywhere? FTP or in an
>ALA publication?  Your synopsis contains the germ of some interesting ideas,
>particularly delivered to Information and Media specialists.  

	I asked Bruce this question today, and he said he believes the 
conference proceedings have just been published.  I sent e-mail to one of 
the editors; I'll tell you more when I know more.

>Also interesting
>coming from a writer who derives some economic success from information that
>has aquired commodity status. 

	I'm not sure that art is just information.  Certainly not just a
commodity.  I believe it has a mixed nature.  Lewis Hyde says, in _The Gift:  
Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property_, "[W]orks of art exist 
simultaneously in two 'economies,' a market economy and a gift economy.  One 
of these is essential, however:  a work of art can survive without the market, 
but where there is no gift there is no art." 

>Are you implying that most "information"
>(most as a measure of volume) has no economic value?  Or is this like saying
>that iron isn't a commodity until mined from ore and put up for sale? I
>mean, is anything, in essence, a commodity in and of itself?

	The notion of commodity is complex and elusive in the opinion of 
people from Marx to Hyde who have worked with it.  The key text for beginning 
to think about the weird mysteries it entails is "The Fetishism of 
Commodities" in _Capital_, _Vol. 1_. 

	George Lukacs also writes about it, so does Guy Debord (see _Society 
of the Spectacle_; Debord was the lead provocateur in the abortive and 
fascinating Situationists--you can read about them in Greil Marcus's 
_Lipstick Traces_).


	The essence of commodification, however (in a simple statement 
serendipitously found in a letter to _The Nation_ from George Stubbs), 
is "Thus, commodification reduces everything to its exchange value."  It is 
this reduction (along with its high- toned neighbor reification, about which 
I'll pass for the moment, thank you very much) that causes the trouble.  I 
do not mind particularly that the forthcoming paperback of _Halo_ is priced 
at $3.99; I mind very much if that price is construed as its *value*;
I mind if n copies of _Halo_ at $3.99 is construed as its value.  Etcetera.

>Also, in your example of losing nothing in the transfer, would your fulfilling
>my request above cause a "commodity" loss to Bruce or the ALA (ie, I didn't
>pay to attend the conference or buy the proceedings)?  Would that
>be an example of Bruce's own speech aquiring commodity status?

	Fortunately, even Capitalism Triumphant can't manage to reduce all 
things to commodities at all times.  Though Waldenbooks will in fact calculate,
e.g., _Halo_'s value in the manner I've objected to above, public libraries 
do something very different.  One could argue that I sustain a loss when a 
library acquires the novel and lends it out--free!--to whoever wants it.  
However, writers, publishers, lawmakers and law interpreters agree that a 
common good is served by this process; I would argue that *my* good is 
also served.  Though I might be deprived of a few sales (or in the case 
of S. King-level popularity, a great many sales), I have gained what I 
most desired when I began to write:  readers (as Hyde also points out 
in _The Gift_, for a gift to function as a gift, it must be received).

>So for a thing to become a commodity (I`m inferring, please correct),
>it must be:
>- owned/aquired by some one
>- be wanted by some one else
>- be transferable
>- the transfer must be an exchange (something of value expected in return)
>- in the usual sense, this transfer must be repeatable enough to establish
>  a "going" price (a market value). This is not inferred from your synopsis
>  but from the traditional sense of the term "commodity."

>Applied to information, the surprise is that raw information doesn't really
>meet the last criteria! 

	"Raw information" is a dubious concept at best.  Genuinely raw 
information is noise.

>Even in cp novels, most exchanges of raw data 

	Again, dubious--"raw" data has in fact been prepared; merely 
gathering it does so.

>were
>one of a kind transfers, like stolen art (almost; the 1 of a kind part, not
>the raw part. On second thought...)

>However, when that information is processed, packaged, and sold (books,
>video or audio recordings, programs or implants), and there is a generally
>perceived price (you wouldn't pay $300 for a mass market music CD in a
>non-collectibles situation), that information can aquire commodity status.

>If this is the case, then a sizable amount of information does aquire
>commodity status, but it represents only a small percentage of the total
>information that exists.

>Is this anywhere near what Bruce was saying, if you or other readers care to
>comment further?

	Read it for yourself when it's available.  I won't presume to speak 
for Bruce. I will note, however, that he appeared to be concerned to remind 
librarians of the importance of their function of preserving non-commodified 
transfers of information.

	And I would add that none of us should expect to unravel one of the
central mysteries of the market quickly or easily.

-- 
				Tom Maddox
		    	    tmaddox@netcom.com
		   "I swear I never heard the first shot"
                Wm. Gibson, "Agrippa:  a book of the dead"