Complexity and Social Movements: Multitudes at the Edge of Chaos ...

148 The map is not the territory
therefore contingent upon cultural norms, these rules include rates of return,
amortisation periods, forms of ownership, liability and so on. These are the
social constructs shaping market formation and the currently exploitative
relations associated with ‘turbo-capitalism’, which are consolidated within
legal traditions where the sanctity of private property represents the
axiomatic orchestrating the entire assemblage. The exploitative intensity
associated with these constructs increases with distance from the centres of
modernity but the underlying anatomy of priorities remains the same.
It is worth noting that profit before people and planet and innovation
within existing supply chains are habits of mind that produce incremental
refinement of established technologies and techniques consolidated in the
nineteenth century. These habits and relations were formalised in relation
to the production of material products but extend now to an era where
immaterial labour has become an increasingly important phenomenon and
immaterial products increasingly problematise these constructs. Compare
buying a pressed vinyl record to downloading a digital signal through
peer-2-peer file sharing and one arrives at the situation where Sony takes its
consumers to court. Commodified platforms (e.g. MP3 players) and immaterial
exchange (P2P Networks) have thus perturbated the relations governing
the exchange of the product of immaterial labour (e.g. music). The hacking,
replication and assimilation of immaterial product is in its infancy but is
growing precisely because the manipulation of information (electronic,
genetic etc.) remains embedded within established commercial relations
underpinned by the notion of an abstract self-interest maximising individual.
Established habits of mind typically incorporate innovations within the
familiar resulting in inappropriate initial applications, an area where
computing stands out as a particularly clear example (Levy 1984), with sustainable
energy production being another. For instance, market-led wind
turbine development requires that generators are aligned to central grid
provision under rates of return requiring turbine location in prominent
windy positions, thereby fuelling controversy over the damage done to the
aesthetics of wilderness. Wind farms are perceived commercially as broad
equivalents to power stations, whilst dispersed generating approaches
remain the preserve of entrepreneurial margins hampered by prevailing
social constructs. Until recently, reverse metering (selling surplus domestically
generated electricity back to the grid) was not permitted and technically
difficult. The advent of micro-wind generator systems suitable for
rooftop mounting offers the prospect of households generating significant
amounts of electricity reducing demand on centralised generating systems,
whilst free fuel removes a key step in prevailing supply chain, commodity,
and exchange relations. A shift in cultural orientation towards dispersed
networks and autonomous production coupled to the availability of nonproprietary
technologies, as is already taking place around broadband
wireless technologies could quickly tip the balance with regard to patterns
of ownership and control.