Re: Tom Kruse's world: was [the mita]

[Michael Perelman <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Doyle, thanks for your comments, but please be careful about bringing people's
behavior [even on other lists into the discussion].

Doyle Saylor wrote:

> Hello Economists,
>     Where Yoshie writes,
> Yoshie,
> The main reason why discussion on PEN-l has often no immediate
> implication -- for better or worse -- for people in Bolivia (to take
> just one example) is that struggles here & struggles there have no
> explicit political link.  There was once such a political link.  The
> Communist International, along with various fellow travellers & left
> oppositions to it, was the link.  That disappeared from the stage of
> world history.  There is now no shared coherent political program to
> link various local & national struggles, perhaps excepting the
> opposition to the IMF & the WB.
>
> Doyle
> I would make the point that the use of elists is not being thought of
> properly.  First of all elists could easily be thought of as having a direct
> connection to struggle.  That is that portable email sending devices such as
> "Blackberry" could bring people into the thick of a social action where
> archiving and wide scale networks of activists supporting something local
> could profoundly change the nature of social organizing.  In all kinds of
> ways.  Secondly Xml forces community connection upon communication
> exchanges.  I mean by that that data is retrievable to the source of the
> data.  Therefore the community connectivity that favors the working class is
> explicit.  Thirdly, as the controversy about "LBO talk" shows the email list
> system forces upon people the necessity to understand what is a productive
> way of communicating in the community.  To answer in relation to real
> productivity issues what is the role of a moderator in effecting both
> productivity and quality of product in an email list.
>
> Louis Proyect is wrong in his criticisms he is raising of Pen-L.  Michael
> Perelman is much closer to the necessary role of the moderator.  The science
> behind that and the engineering of automated systems that do the same thing
> will prove the validity of my claim here.  The claim to be explicit is that
> a moderators role is to enhance the productivity of the group.  That role is
> about a certain degree of understanding what makes people able to continue
> to produce data in greater quantity and to also be qualitatively productive
> also.  Where Louis writes,
>
> Louis,
>  If
> it is out of bounds to make such points on PEN-L, I will unsub right now.
> Frankly, I was happy to be off PEN-L and concentrate on my own list which
> gets 7,000 visits a week, more readers I suspect than all of those print
> journals put together. I only resubbed because Michael Perelman said that
> some people complained that I had left. We all know that anybody with my
> kind of politics is always getting into clashes on PEN-L, from Henry Liu to
> Jim Craven to Michael Yates to Xxxx Xxxxxx. I only post here because I feel
> obligated to defend a kind of Marxism that will get you an FBI file and not
> invitations to speak at an academic plenary.
>
> Doyle
> Here Louis is theorizing that first of all Jim Craven, Henry Liu, Michael
> Yates and Xxxx Xxxxxx are something unified and more productive of a kind of
> position than what we find on Pen-L.  I don't think so.  I think the level
> of discussion is higher on Pen-L.   I furthermore think that the
> productivity claims of Louis Proyect are not geared to an understanding of
> what makes qualitative performance in human cognition production on e-lists.
> Far from being unified, Louis Proyect's list is not more unified than is
> this list.  Who knows what a claim to have a FBI dossier is supposed to
> mean.  I am not an academic, but I think I prefer (as a human being
> relishing calmness over intensity) in general the approach that Michael
> Perelman embodies in moderating.  And that Michael Perelman's overall method
> is key to the development of the tools of information technology for the
> broad range of human beings to be a part of the social fabric in a vast
> system of networked electronic communications.
>
> I think as a means of organizing working class people we need to clarify
> this issue and make decisions about what works and what doesn't in this much
> beyond this level of debate.  I'm not talking directly here about the
> organizing qualities of this list, I am talking about the method of
> production in an e-list and what it does whether in an academic setting, or
> a street organizing setting.  The methods about thinking processes and
> theories of Louis Proyect are not adequate to the needs of list production.
> Nor for that matter is his list less inclined to the kind of food fights
> that he reproaches Michael Perelman for.
>
> Louis,
> The same
> people antagonizing each other and the same dialog of the deaf and the
> dumb.
>
> Doyle
> In the disabled rights community where I organize this statement is a
> representation of creating an otherness of disabled cognition.  This is good
> example of how Louis Proyect does not adequately theorize what cognitive
> productivity is about.  In this case Louis is saying that the deaf and the
> blind people cannot communicate to each other which is a slander to these
> groups of disabled people.  It is on the same level as saying that an ethnic
> group is naturally inferior in intelligence.  My wife is blind, my wife
> communicates just fine with deaf people using information technology which
> is directed by the law (whether or not in reality that happens) of the land
> to be both accessible to blind people and to the deaf.  This is fundamental
> to the development of information technology that disabled people have
> rights and that Mr. Proyect intellectually fails to grasp.  It is not right
> to grasp at an anti-disabled  stereotype to characterize this list.
> thank you,
> Doyle Saylor

--

Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx