On a University of Historical Materialism.net

[Greg Schofield <gschofield@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

My first contribution to this list was an ill-conceived piece on computer
programming. Having been advised that it was not really what the list had
in mind as a good read, I withdrew while promising a better conceived
posting in the future.

Unfortunately for those on the list who find techno-babble painful, this
post is it.

Rather than drift immediately into the tortuous convolutions of
computer-speak, it is at least sensible to state why such a thing may be of
some political importance.

The title of this thread is meant to reflect the political objective of the
topic. However the first question must be what is meant by the idea of a
"University of Historical Materialism.net"? A notion which sounds too
ivory-towerish to be politically important, so why not the "International
Communist Party.net" instead?

And the question which immediately follows this, is why a ".net" at all?
Surely it is rather hackneyed idea of "dot coms" which so recently
dominated the press and stock market, no matter how useful the internet is,
it is a rather restricted and elitist tool, plus it is a very ethereal and
unstable environment.

It is easy to wax on about the spread of the computers and the internet,
however, the reality is that for the vast majority of people computers and
all the wonderous bells and whistles of the net are not within even a
distant reach. Even societies as rich as the first world the minor costs of
internet connection is relatively not so minor to a large section of
working people.

However this can all be thrown aside with just a simple comparison. How
much further out of reach are the resources of a competent leftwing office,
even on which by first world standards lacks all but the most rudimentary
facilities. Consider how much cheaper a simple computer box can be, how
much can be held in a handful of CD-ROMs and how much experience and help
may be available to those who can access, even for a short while, the
digital "superhighway".

In such a comparison, the computer and its potential programs and data
could provide the poorest of the poor with a political and organisational
weapon far superior to maintaining some office of scant resources.
Moreover, as communists we must acknowledge that we have a duty to at least
work towards such a possibility and it follows from this we must in some
way provide for this potential.

How best to do so?

I would believe some sort of digital comintern is beyond us politically,
that it would be presumptuous for us to assume any organisational authority
by default. Rather I would say that we can provide a university-like
consolidation of what is already on the net and make far better use of the
resources that are available.

What is a university, except a place for education, research, publication
and discussion? In a sense this is what is already happening albeit in a
disorganised way. Place this on the net in a way that is technically
organised and we have something of substance - that is not the solutions
themselves but one step towards finding such solutions. The political
importance of such a move lies in its side-stepping of all the other issues
maintained by organisational existence which stop political party's
fulfilling their duty.

I have used the term technical organisation, and I have done this
purposefully. First, in embryo, because what we are doing on this list and
others, on sites across the world does not essentially change by this
suggestion -  it is about improving what already exists. However, if we
were to attempt to politically align all the groups and people who partake
or maintain this internet presence - well you don't have to be Machiavelli
to know it is a fool's errand.

Technical organisation does not presume political agreement. Indeed groups
are drawn to use Yahoo's list servers because it is technically better
organised than most. Of course technical organisation exists in both
arrangement (how things are done and who is involved) and actual technical
application. The first part has only meaning when the second part is taken
on, so the determining factor for doing this or anything else effectively
on the net relies on creating an application which can serve - hence first
and foremost are those boring technical questions.

Moreover, the relationship we communists have to the internet is merely as
clients, whether it is this list or a site there are imposed technical and
commercial restrictions which may no be in our interests and these too have
to be dealt with. Breaking away from client status is the equivalent of
owning our own press rather than struggling to print between other people's
print-runs. If we take technical ownership we can design it to our needs
and not simply be content to adapting what is available as is now the case.

Moreso, determining the technical progress of our internet presence has
many other benefits, it means we are also in control of the process and
what can become available to individuals and organisations which want to
take advantage of this presence - where as now we are extremely limited in
how we can practically present ourselves and properly integrate others who
may wish to join us. This goes beyond design and involves actually
delivering applications that are of some organisational benefit to
communists around the world.

So what are some of these technical questions?

As I have failed so miserably in exciting much interest in this area I will
plunge on ahead and touch on some of the vital technical questions - those
whose eyes glaze over at acronyms can stop reading now.

EMERGENT TECHNICAL QUESTIONS FOR COMMUNISTS TO CONSIDER.

Most of us a fairly well aware of the technologies such as emails and
browsers and this is a good place to begin. First the parameters of what I
am exploring are set by the concept of a communist organisation - a
University of Historical Materialism.net. The parameter is important as I
will be talking about applications internal to this "University" which
naturally would also present itself in the familiar form of the technology
we are no using.

That is once "enrolled" in the "university" you would have available
specialist software that made belonging to it worthwhile and far easier
than using standard applications. There is no difficulty at making the very
same material simultaneously available for more general software (ie the
stuff you are presently using), in fact the data format and the
transmission technology would be the same standard in both cases - it is
how it is dealt with after transmission and the extra manipulations of the
data which become important, for that is the question I am addressing.

For those interested everything I am saying is compatible to the MIME email
standard and the HTML - XML standard of browsers (more on the relation to
these two "HTML and XML" later). This must be born in mind, as any attempt
to break standards is effectively a method of cutting us out of the net
altogether.

First emails. I sent a previous post on my many problems with emails (too
many, too disorganised and wasteful to print). Standard email readers only
make use of a tiny fraction of what is possible. For instance the "header"
(the garbled nonsense that can sometimes be seen at the top of an email) is
in fact a language.

It is entirely possible to add useful information to any email (though you
need a designed reader and email writer to make use of it). For instance,
emails could tell you that they are a news item, about a country and
particular organisation or event, relevant to such and such a date,
covering the following keywords (a little like ISBN information used to
catalogue books).

Emails already have individual id numbers which could be used as references
(they are presently used internally on email readers). Likewise we need not
restricted to a typing format, lines need not be cut, paragraphs can be
marked and title and other information can be included (paragraph numbers
for instance). All of which could be used to organise email traffic into
some kind of useful order.

All of this effects how information might be usefully presented, usefully
archived and printed.

However, none of this can be usefully done, especially for the novice
unless an email reader and writer is designed to do it. General purpose
emailers despite their power can only give general purpose results and that
is not good enough for us and the comrades we should expect to join us.

Second, the issue of browsers. All current browsers on all platforms adhere
to the HTML standard (Hyper Text Markup Langauge) this is currently in the
process of being replaced by XML (eXstensible Markup Language) and
supported by CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). HTML and XML are sister
languages (you might be famliar with the markup <p> etc). They are sister
languages because they have a mother language SGML (Standard Generalised
Markup Language) not something to be approached by the faint hearted I can
assure you.

The importance of this is the potential power XML delivers (and yes it can
be integrated directly into Emails and still provide a simple text
version). XML allows for (as its name implies) flexible marking up of text
and other data. Instead of Marx's Capital just being so many characters in
a file, or being styled by HTML, it instead becomes to both the user and
the computer a volume consisting of sections, chapters, paragraphs and figures.

In otherwords, not only can it be printed out in a variety of ways, viewed
on screen in a variety of ways, even spoken via voice synthesis in near
human fashion (thanks to CSS - a system of describing how one object can be
rendered many different ways), it can be referenced directly. Marx, K.
Capital vol1 chap12 para23-21 now becomes a computer command (this is
extremely important for manipulation of all forms of electronic data).

Now rather than continue in this vein, let me sum up - the existing email
system is far more powerful and flexible than the present emailers make it
appear - this however requires an emailer to be written (given its
restricted use not a big as job as might be imagined). Meanwhile browsers
are already heading in a direction which impels us to reorganise the
existing literature on the net in order to make use of this emergent power.

Of course it does not stop at browsers, manipulating XML data can be
achieved by all sorts of very simple mini-applications, browsers will have
their place, but to be truly useful they need to come under other software
control - this however is already in making and I will touch on it below.

HOW TO PROCEED
At the moment, strictly speaking, there is already a technical means for
achieving all this JAVA. However, there are also reasons for avoiding it.
Sun Microsystems created JAVA to do exactly what I am on about - but they
dismally failed for our purposes. JAVA is an object orientated programming
language (OOPs is its acronym - unusually fitting in my view).

To cut through all the shit, OOPs was conceived as a grand vision of
integrated and hierarchical dependances. Supposedly it would make code
reusable, and the data itself would carry the calling codes through which
it could be manipulated. OOPs langauges are notoriously arcane and
extremely prone to be being unnecessarily restricted and bloated (large in
size and slow in execution).

Because JAVA was designed to work on different platforms industry jumped on
it, especially the dot coms. Unfortunately it remains and will forever
remain a hog, to large to move easily and greedy for resources - it
provides far more fat than meat. OOPs was a faulted idea, but one industry
will cling to because it also gives control over programmers - something
deemed to be very important (despite the fact that it is so
counter-productive).

I would suggest for many other reasons JAVA is a dead end.

Another approach and one with far more promise is also much more modest -
the language REBOL, it has an interpreter for each Operating System and CPU
(well for most) and works via scripts (near English programing language
which is compiled when it is run). However, while REBOL is capable of doing
much of what JAVA can do (but not everything) it is not a full environment
there fore the user is restricted to their normal applications and can
resort to REBOL (it is also relatively easy to understand).

There is another contender (due out in June) the new Amiga operating
environment. This takes a completely different attitude to the question. In
the end (sometime next year) it will be a complete self supporting OS
(operating system) but meanwhile it is an OS which exists as a hosted
system on another operating system (LINUX, Windows, Sharp's PDAs and soon
MAC OS X). The logic here is that while it aims to be an OS in its own
right it also intends to be a parasite OS (that is one hosted by an
underlying foreign OS).

The AmigaDE (not to be mixed up with Amiga OS) has a very small footprint
(it is presently being used on the new Sharp Tauros PDAs). And it is
scalable (can be built up). However its real magic is that all applications
are compiled to a virtual (that is an idealised)  CPU and are translated to
whatever CPU is on the machine being used.

That is an AmigaDE application can be run anywhere, on any machine.
Moreover the environment can be cut down to a degree that games (for
instance) include it in their installation - the user need never be ware
that there is a foreign OS being employed (games manufacturers like this
because they can work on just one version of their product and sell it to
all customers).

There are some other attributes - every AmigaDE application will have a
port - that is a means by which it can be controlled by another application
or simple script (the one being designed is called SHEEP). You see a common
garden variety browser can be now coerced into other roles because it can
be controlled externally (this is something the old Amiga did very well
through a scripting language called AREXX).

It follows that a handful of applications on AmigaDE can be cobbled
together into customised mega-applications and this is what we need.
Perhaps an emailer need not be written at all to take advantages of the
hidden potential power of emails - perhaps all that is required is a script
which makes the emailer do what we want it to do.

It is early days, but this is not vapor-ware, it is already being used and
it is only the commercial release that is being waited upon (with no doubt
a lot of fixing along the way).

I have been waiting for many years for all these developments to mature.
The fact they are after all this time happening almost at the same time is
a stroke of good fortune that cannot be ignored - politically the computer
as a tool for agitation, perfected perhaps in the next few years, has an
importance that should not be dismissed or passively viewed.

More technical discussion is desperately needed, as this technology emerges
we should be amongst the first to exercise its power.

So if I have not bored you to death I hope to see some contributions to
this discussion.

Greg Schofield
Perth Australia