Software: Work or Labor?
Is software work or is it labor, asks David M. Berry in the Free Software Magazine. He refers to Hannah Arendt’s distinction of labor and work.
Following the Ancient Greek tradition, Arendt defines labor as something done of necessity. Labor used to be the duty of slaves, now it has become the life of the masses, something that docile bodies do to “make their living”. Work is seen as an activity that creates something that lasts. Work is important because it makes politics possible:
This is important because it is only by escaping necessity (i.e. the constant requirement to produce things we need) that we can begin to communicate and become human as political animals. For Arendt, Work is a prerequisite for the possibility of Action – the realm of great deeds and great words.
Berry argues (like Marxists and the critical theory before him) that in today’s society, we’re all caught in a spiral of laboring and consuming and always alienated from the product of our work. Free software is promising in this respect because the products of free software activities are work - something that lasts - and also commons, i.e. something everybody has access to.
Free software certainly has liberating potential but what makes hacking possible, economically? Free software might turn labor into work, but at whose expence? While we build an information society here in the North, we’re at the same time “outsourcing” the labor into the South in the form of production of food, clothing and electronics. And often on not so fair terms.
Digital divide conference papers available
Recently we had a conference dealing with several digital divide related topics: citizen participation, free software, biopatents, copyright, and sustainable information society. Some papers are available. Keynotes by Colin Lankshear and Rishab Aiyer Ghosh may be of interest to FLOSS researchers, as well as the papers in the “Open and Collaborative models” session and Tere Vadén’s paper from the IP session. My presentation is missing from the conference site; you can read the slides while I’m finishing my paper. I think the conference was succesful. I met some good people to work with in the future.
Also, hello to people reading Planet FLOSS Research.
Linux Asia 2005
Frederick Noronha asked me to give a report on Linux Asia 2005.
After Asia Source, Linux Asia was a boring event. The difference between community events and corporate-driven conferences is that the latter have lots of PR talk and you need to work to find out what is the reality. But I also wanted to see the corporate side of FLOSS. Some random notes below.
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