Re: <nettime> VW

["t byfield" <tbyfield@panix.com>]

Jaromil, I agree with much of what you say, so I'll try to find a 
focused place where a response might actually get somewhere.

On 2 Oct 2015, at 10:31, Jaromil wrote:

> > Relying on open-source metaphor-mantras ('Would you buy a car with 
> > the
> > hood welded shut?') to analyze peculiar dynamics of the car industry
>
> this is NOT a peculiar dynamic of the car industry. This is how the 
> current
> necrotizing capitalist regime of patents works in every sector of 
> industrial
> production, thriving wherever no open source business model is 
> embraced, let
> alone the free software ethic. There are different degrees of 
> responsibility
 <...>

This 'curatorial' approach to quoting turned what I said into its 
opposite, the better to rail against. Here's what I actually wrote:

> Jaromil, I think it's a bit premature to counter claims that this is 
> 'just about Volkswagen,' because no one said anything like that. 
> Obviously there are many ways in which this is symptomatic of broader 
> structures. But Lehman Brothers and Fukushima were symptomatic as 
> well, and would you really argue that 'there was nothing to be learned 
> there' either? *And* hold hold up Android's OEMs cheating on 
> benchmarks as a more illuminating example? I don't think so. Relying 
> on open-source metaphor-mantras ('Would you buy a car with the hood 
> welded shut?') to analyze peculiar dynamics of the car industry is 
> like relying on Godwin's Law to understand neo-nazis. :^)

My point isn't that VW -- or Fukushima or Lehman Brothers (or 
Hackingteam or Greece) -- is sui generis, and that we should flit from 
one spectacle to another without connecting the dots. On the contrary, 
they're all *symptomatic* of structural problems; and they're also (not 
'but...instead of') edge cases that we, and various publics, can learn 
from. Unless you're hoping for some apocalyptic total transformation 
from the 'necrotizing capitalist regime of patents works in every sector 
of industrial production' to a garden of open-source delights, progress 
will be happenstance and incremental. As you yourself point out:

> wake up to these news: there is an actual dark market for software 
> like the one VW used to counterfeit their autos 
> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/volkswagen-wasnt-the-only-company-rigging-emission-levels-says-expert-a6668611.html

If the VW fiasco (which, like 'Greece,' is far from over) ends up 
shedding more light on the complicity at the heart of environmental 
regulatory regimes, so much the better. But my first mail on the subject 
was aimed at pointing out the *many* ways in which the fiasco might 
unfold. If you think that waving aside the knock-on effects in every 
context except for IP fights is the best strategy, then do that. I don't 
think it is. And while I can't speak for Florian, I think he was 
pointing out different ways in which VW and the issues *as reported* 
(not as they 'are' according to a reductive and universalizing 
ideological conflict) are embedded in larger social and political orders 
-- which move at different speeds. VW's place in the particular postwar 
order of Saxony unfolds according to one logic, and the ways in which 
trade secrecy obfuscate systemic problems unfold according to another. 
Their coincidence -- when a break in the smooth functioning of trade 
secrecy invites us to think about political orders at different scales 
-- is akin to what Mako called 'revealing errors.' Thinking about them 
isn't opposed to what you're advocating.

 <...>
> for software, sure, and there could be various degrees of attention on
> different parts of software, as Florian mentions, sure, but then with 
> open
> access at least we'd have infinite possibilities for researchers to 
> choose
> their independent code analysis MA project, etc. etc. instead of 
> isolated
> scandals popping up here and there. We need to switch to such a 
> condition as
> tech is becoming more pervasive and entrenched with life-critical 
> functions,
> there is no way out of this and I hope we can thrive in the open 
> system picture
> that John gives us with a numerous enough population, rather than 
> after a total
> desaster.

Again, I agree with much of what you say, but it's also pretty much the 
same message that we hear when crypto advocates tell us to 'trust the 
math' and hobble along on antiquated proposals that everyone should 
review the source code themselves. I don't 'trust the math' because the 
math has to be implemented in concrete contexts -- and there are 
countless ways in which those implementations can introduce subtle 
biases and weaknesses. The power to do that, to analyze it, and to the 
review the source code, may be here but it's unevenly distributed. 
People with a disproportionate share of those power can wear whatever 
color hat they want -- black, white, gray, transparent, whatever. But as 
the Hackingteam fiasco you mention shows, the shared 'interests' of the 
people wearing those hats draws many of them together; and their more or 
less adversarial relations take the form of markets.

As you yourself argue, the VW fiasco just recaps that same logic. So 
let's say, by some unlikely chain of events again, that the 'hood that's 
welded shut' gets pried open and the software in every 'life-critical 
function' is open-sourced. What we'd be facing are endlessly ramified 
landscapes in which subtle biases would proliferate, some quickly, some 
slowly -- not so different from what we face now, just implemented in 
software.

Cheers,
T


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