2003
MMLA
New Histories of Writing II:
Technologies
Writing
the Revolution: Open Source and the Performance of a Radical Democracy
How
can the emergence of a computer operating system comment on the history
of writing? In an attempt to examine this question, I would like to consider
the way both narratives written about the Linux Open Source system and
the language of the systems themselves mimic and represent the counter
cultural narratives of the 1960's. These narratives, along with the actual
operating systems and software, address and enact the democratic political
struggles that were at the forefront of counter cultural narratives. Presented
as driven primarily by the information revolution, the forces of globalization
have become detached from their political dimensions and appear as a fate
to which we must submit. The Linux Open Source system (free software downloadable
from the web created by bands of programmers around the world collaborating
to write programs and fix bugs on a volunteer basis) provides a concrete
example of the discursive conditions for the emergence of a collective
action, directed towards struggling against inequalities and challenging
relations of subordination.
Linux is a world-class operating system that coalesced out of part-time
hacking by several thousand developers scattered all over the planet,
connected only through the Internet. This community contains a combination
of different agendas and approaches out of which a coherent and stable
system emerges. Users become co-developers of the system, a collaboration
which leads to rapid code improvement and effective debugging. The programs
and operating systems produced by the Linux programmers can be read as
moments of political activity that threaten the control of such hegemonic
corporations as Microsoft. The accretion of activity that creates these
systems works to subvert the medium of universal integration by producing
a viable alternative to Windows.
Open Source programmers construct online virtual communities which shed
light on counter-culture narratives by providing a concrete example of
how a counter-culture can reach the otherwise idealist goals of both enforcing
a radicalized democracy of truly free enterprise and producing a localized
resistance to hegemonic corporate structures. The Linux world behaves
as a free market and also operates as a community that converges through
interests and attempts to return to the traditional conception of liberty,
a conception that characterizes it as non-interference with the right
of unlimited appropriation. By producing a free alternative to expensive
software, this system allows for a radical disaffiliation from Microsoft.
Although each operator works individually, this system becomes collaborative
as the isolation and fragmentation of the individual artist is overcome
by the virtual community and collaborative effort offered by the web.
Like the sixties counter cultures, these communities reject the regime
of hegemonic corporate and technological expertise that dominates industrial
society. The narratives written by coders, in which programmers identify
themselves in these stories as rebellious artists, imitate the counter
cultural narratives of the sixties.