[Nettime-bold] The Digital Artisan is Dead! Long Live the New Product!

[Micz Flor <micz.flor@web.de>]

THE DIGITAL ARTISAN IS DEAD! LONG LIVE THE NEW PRODUCT!
Agreeing on Standards as a Strategy for Independence

     ---

     New economic models of collaboration such as the Digital 
     Artisan are still built on a conventional understanding 
     of the product. If we move attention away from the 
     product and towards the spaces in-between, literally 
     nothing seems to stand in our way. It is the interfacing 
     of products which best describes the new reality. This, 
     not collaboration per se, holds the strategic key for 
     independent development.

     Micz Flor, Berlin Aug2001 (written for ASU 2)

     ---

A few years ago, the sudden surge of a revolutionary 
scent took hold of the developed world. The 'Digital' had 
arrived and melted into all kinds of discourse. The 
'Digital' seemed to bring together the social and the 
economic, the information and the product, the 
communicative and the competitive. Enthused by the 
digital era's utopian powers and its free floating 
potential of the shockingly new, many alternative 
economic and social models were formulated.

Many such models responded to the dramatic changes 
perceived in the way we work and the way we exchange 
goods and labour. Collaboration became a central tenet in 
getting things done. A prominent sign of the time was the 
Digital Artisan, originally conceived, conceptualised and 
implemented by Richard Barbrook.

Today, the Digital Artisan is dying. At the time of 
birth, much effort was spent formulating the differences 
between the work process involved in digital media and 
the conveyor-belt factory. During this process, one 
crucial phenomenon did not receive much attention, namely 
the gradual disappearance of the product itself.

The downfall of the Digital Artisan might be used to 
outline the profound ways in which the concept of 
collaboration is being restructured. Today, efficient 
collaboration has little to do with making products. 
Instead, successful collaboration focuses on the 
interfaces between products: these invisible, almost non-
existent, but immensely powerful and strategic in-between 
spaces.

THE RISE OF THE DIGITAL ARTISAN

The 'Digital Artisan' was born in the mid 90s, the last 
decade of the 20th century. This was the decade in which 
the depressing, economic slide downward was suddenly 
overturned by the arrival of the 'there's-no-limit' 
digital world, which was vast and as globally networked 
as locally possible. The 90s offered us an endless sea of 
interactive experience and mind-expansion and, along with 
them, a desire for tools and solutions - the key to 
success for the Digital Artisan.

In those days, CDs weighed heavier than gold. There was a 
belief that the economic logic of the digital world would 
ultimately supersede the restraints and repression of the 
factory-based conveyor-belt slavery of Fordism. The 
effect digitised formats and networks had on day-to-day 
life influenced not only the hard structure of markets 
and products, but also the soft reality of the way we 
live and work. Based on such experiences and realities, 
the Digital Artisan was invented as an alternative model 
to embrace this change. In fact, further developments of 
the concept attempted to postulate all requirements of a 
scientific theory: describe the existing structure 
sufficiently, expose points of potential intervention to 
control the reality of the market, and predict a future 
development or - at least - allow a qualified guess.

THE DIGITAL ARTISAN IN A NUTSHELL

In one sentence, within the digital world modes of 
working underwent dramatic change, which in turn 
generated a new social and economic structure of 'work', 
which in turn triggered the emergence of socio-cultural 
work structures, then described in Richard Barbrook's 
Digital Artisan Manifesto.

But, the most significant change is implied by the 
product itself. It is digital. This means that the 
existence of a working prototype is all that is required. 
Then you can go and launch global distribution. This is 
very different from other product cycles. Imagine the 
reproduction of the prototype of a car (probably from 
Ford). In comparison, the digital prototype is re-
produced at next to no costs. The car, on the other hand, 
requires the factory, the conveyor-belt, the workers, the 
material, the logistics. When the Digital Artisan is at 
work, very little of that is needed. Once the first Tomb 
Raider game is burnt onto a CD, the costs of reproduction 
are laughable.

More importantly, not only is the product different, but 
the production process is a different one entirely. The 
Digital Artisan locates himself (mostly him, sometimes 
her) in a quintessentially different working environment. 
When working in the field of digital media, your skills 
are situated at the centre of production. Your skills 
will get you a job. Additionally, when a task needs to be 
done, you form workgroups which come together to solve 
the problem, and everyone chips in their skills. This 
means that your work is self-determined and your learning 
is too. Workgroups are also project oriented, a distant 
cry from the organisational structures of ancient 
factories. In other words: it's your decision if you want 
to work on weekends or stay in the office late.

THE FALL OF THE DIGITAL ARTISAN

Many factors contributed to the end of the Digital 
Artisan. To name but a few, the Internet - which had 
played such an important role in his rise - accelerated 
his death. Instead of passing work to the skilful Digital 
Artisan from the West, the Internet turned out to be a 
brute tool of capitalism, buying into cheap HTML and 
Flash labour camps in the East and beyond.

Not only was the exquisite position of the Digital 
Artisan at risk from cheap competition outside of his/her 
cultural region. Even within its own habitat it became 
the victim of vicious competition. The implicit irony: an 
alternative economic model which positioned itself 
centre-left and outside of the old economy would be 
suffocated by the most fundamental equation of 
capitalism: supply and demand.

In the golden years of the Digital Artisan, there were 
very few skilled in quite the same way she was. This 
potential was immediately discovered by all sectors of 
society, and to reshape society as a whole. 'Digital' 
became desirable not only for education and economy, even 
art and culture, but also ex-convict rehab programmes, 
adult education courses, training centres, weekend public 
library courses. You name it, it discovered the Digital. 
In the end of this intense and short period of 
development, the Digital Artisan lost its exclusive 
status and became cheap.

But was the Digital Artisan all that new in the first 
place? Despite his futuristic and utopian assumptions, 
the Digital Artisan's concept of work, products and 
resources was astonishingly closely to those of times 
prior to the industrial revolution - which is not that 
surprising given the name 'artisan'. The pre-modern 
artisan would contribute his specific skill and artistry 
to a project, let's say building a gate. One would be the 
blacksmith doing the iron work, another artisan would 
contribute the masonry. By combining their skills, they 
would build the gate. In theory and practice, the Digital 
Artisan would do the same. Together they would build the 
CD, the software, the website, the trailer. Following the 
same principle, collaboration meant working on a product 
together. The fact that it was digital is more or less 
secondary.

AWAY FROM THE PRODUCT AND BETWEEN THE PRODUCTS

The concept of the Digital Artisan so clearly illustrated 
a contrast to the Fordist model of factory production 
that it ended up proposing something new by doing the 
same... only differently.

Modelled on pre-industrial concepts, the Digital Artisan 
failed to give full credit to the dramatic change of the 
developmental Process, while pondering the product. 
Collaboration would still be measured by the outcome, 
functionality and/or acceptance of a product. This 
product would be the result of a more flexile work 
process, but it was still oriented towards deadlines and 
budgets.

True, collaboration is a mighty strategy for developing 
products in the networked world. Looking at successful 
collaborations today, the Linux OS is most commonly held 
up as a shining example. And rightfully so. But what is 
most striking about successful products in the Open 
Source community is not the product itself, but the 
process by which such collaborations become powerful.

Prior to product development, yet another process of 
collaboration lays the most essential foundation for any 
larger development: the invention and agreement on 
standards and interfaces. The key to new modes of working 
in the digital age is the collaborative decision making 
on standards, rather than combined efforts of developing 
applications.

THE WIN-WIN SCENARIO OF COLLABORATIVE DECISION MAKING

One prominent example of the powers of standardised 
interfaces is the development of the Apache webserver. 
And for good reason, since this example is rooted in the 
Open Source community. Standards require two things: 
clarity and transparency - not necessarily key objectives 
of most software developers aiming to own code and patent 
algorithms.

What the Apache webserver does is hand out required files 
using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol HTTP. There are 
many applications which do exactly that. What makes 
Apache so interesting however is the clear definitions by 
which third parties can produce plug-ins to be used by 
Apache before returning HTML to the users. Such 
applications are called Apache Modules.

Running a module on Apache means little to the Apache 
application. It simply means passing a piece of text onto 
the module before sending it back through the Internet. 
All the work is done by the module. One very successful 
example is the module for PHP, which allows the creation 
of flexible and dynamic webpages. Many similar modules 
exist which allow the expansion of the Apache webserver 
into a powerful tool, interacting with many different 
applications or data formats on the server.

Once interface standards have been established, this co-
evolutionary development becomes like a chicken and egg 
race (if there is such a thing). Media Players are a very 
good example of this process. If you want a player to 
become very prominent, it should support many types of 
media. And if you develop a new codec for playing video 
or audio, you would want it to be compatible with as many 
players as possible. The Player is little more than a 
shell in which codecs can be placed. And the strength of 
that shell is the clarity and transparency by which the 
interface standards are defined.

AGREEING ON STANDARDS AS A STRATEGY FOR INDEPENDENCE

Agreeing on standards is not exactly new, in fact it is 
one of the foundations of the industrial revolution 
(following artisanship...). What is new though is the 
strategic use of such standards to remain independent and 
flexible, not unlike the initial goals of the Digital 
Artisan.

We can observe such a process today in the field of 
streaming media. In terms of market presence, Microsoft 
and RealMedia are in a neck-to-neck race. Sticking to 
their very corporate policy, neither would release their 
property (i.e. codecs) openly. Quite the opposite. 
Smaller developers who are trying to establish themselves 
on the market are increasingly going for alternative 
solutions.

In the case of video streaming, this seems to be MPEG-4 - 
instead of Windows- or RealMedia. With such a mutual 
agreement in place, independent developers can work on 
their individual products while still ensuring a cross-
compatibility between products. If you are working on 
motion tracking for MPEG-4 or live streaming for MPEG-4, 
it seems obvious that in the end your motion tracking 
software can be used for a live video stream as well, as 
long as both systems are based on the MPEG-4 standard. 
Such common denominators, i.e. standards and interfaces, 
might well break the backs of larger corporations with a 
less developer-friendly attitude.

STANDARDS WANT TO BE FREE

The Digital Artisan was conjured up to describe a new 
mode of collaborative working. Its shortcomings are 
twofold: its failure to provide an accompanying 
redefinition of the outcome (i.e. product) of its 
collaborations and a thorough understanding of the 
qualitative changes in collaboration itself.

It could be argued that by proclaiming the necessity of 
generalised standards and interfaces between products, we 
seem to be re-entering the first phase of the industrial 
revolution all over again: re-confirming the rule of 
standards as the key to mass-market conveyor-belt 
production.

In which case, it seems even more significant to stress 
the importance of collaborative work on standards and 
interfaces, as well as demanding that such standards and 
interfaces should exist in the Public Domain by default, 
thus resisting the 'destiny' of private property.

Micz Flor - micz@mi.cz

content and media development                       http://mi.cz
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