User:Mp:Thesis

From Aktivix
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Bioethical Implications of Globalisation: Property, Human Rights and Technology

Introduction

The title may and is likely to change, perhaps even substantially. However, the relations to bioethics and globalisation are given by the studentship, which is part of an EU FP5 research project.

The research is concerned with movements/projects related to the the interfaces of technology, property rights and social organisation. This is contextualised in what can be called a globalisation debate. the basic questions i am asking are....how can we have free minds if we don't have free information? how can anyone think that ideas can be owned? how can things be owned at all, or what does it mean to own things? what does property rights refer to? how does self-organsation and community building relate to human rights? how can a global community be organised beyond the nation-state? and why should we care?...

I look primarily to the...

...and propose that the experiences of Free Software are very useful for finding a balance between technology, human rights and community building...social organisation or an architecture of organisation would then be "a whole" emerging from such a balance...there is nothing new to it, self-organisation and anarchism are some of the labels we find in history... the thesis will commence with an appreciation of Hindu Jurisprudence to avoid a Eurocentric perspective and because it is a much older system of thought. Somewhat a healthy calibration of thought to exercise the imagination...

  • Human Rights and Information & Communication Technology (ICT)


Within political philosophy there is a longstanding division between exclusive private property rights on the one hand and state ownership centrally regulated on the other. This division was part of a debate between Plato (who advocated central state ownership) and Aristotles (who advocated private ownership). The viewpoints of these classical philosophers, of course, should be understood in terms of their own time and societal context; but the tension between state and private ownership certainly seemed to have been at the heart of the Cold War. With the end of this war, public policy makers, so we are led to believe, are left with but one choice: privatisation. With no popular and politically acceptable alternatives to enclosure, hence fragmentation of all things into the ownership of private companies, corporations and individuals there seems to be no survival chance of what we understand as "the commons" or the collective.


In other words, there appears to be nothing left in the political and philosophical imagination to create alternative forms of social organisation an community building than privatisation. While there might be various more or less lively debates in academic political theory, such as Communitarians versus Liberal's, these discourses remain wihtin abstraction derived mainly from theory - i.e, theory about theory with little touch with "the world out there" and therefore also little value or potential for implementation.

In the thesis I will assume that public policies are best implemented on the basis of of an analysis of actual events, human conduct or, in brief, practical stuff; then articulated and implemented with the view to strengthen community building.


CHAPTERS

The following is an outline of chapters.

What is Globalisation?

If the work of the city is the remaking or translating of man into a more suitable form than his nomadic ancestors achieved, then might not our current translation of our entire lives into the spiritual form of information seem to make of the entire globe, and of the human family, a single consciousness?” Marshall McLuhan; Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1994), p.61

The phenomena of globalisation will be treated as if globalisation was an era or a transitional historical phase within which a capacity or potential for significant social, cultural, political and economic change can be found, identified, facilitated and nurtured - for better and worse. Globalisation is thus seen as a tool with two handles and it will be argued that it is imperative that we beware of the wrong one, namely "Globalisation from Above" and seek to to nurture that emancipatory promise inherent in what I call "Globalisation from Below"...

  • Globalisation from Below
    • Grass-roots collcetives and organisations working and experimenting with horisontal organisational architectures through self-organisation based on voluntary efforts.
    • NGOs and PGOs (Pseudo Governmental Organisations, who reproduce the hierarchical patterns of the very system that they oppose
  • Globalisation from Above
    • Social Liberalism
    • Economic Liberalism

In this chapter I will first consider the history of ICT and the relations to the development of human societies in order to substantiate the claim that globalisation is driven by tehnology and that globalisation drives technology.

It begins with the "origins of silent reading" and ends with a consideration of the "technological occupation" of our societies and the colonisation by technology of our consciousness.

Different configurations of property rights

One of the purposes of this chapter is to show that advocates of privatisation have a very selective and deceptive reading of the philosophy with which they "substantiate" their claims and that, in fact, what is provided for within the exclusive private property rights regime can also, and even better, be provided for through other configurations of property rights that have a stronger identification with community building. (An example of one such configuration can be found in the Free Software movement, which is the topic of the following chapter).

The perspective arising from this examination have two implications.

Firstly, we don't need to embrace private property rights fully and unquestioning; secondly, those who do so have no philosophical bearing.

The project of the chapter entails a look at the philosophical frameworks that historically have been used to advocate, justify, and legitimise privatisation and enclosure; these are...

  • Aristotelian "distribution of care"
  • Utiliarian "efficiency and optimisation of happiness"
  • Lockean labour incentive and individual rights
  • Hegelian "recognition - or bridging of the subject and the object"

Through an analysis of the frameworks, their relevance for private property and a comparison with the form of ownership known as 'a commons', the good things about private property rights will be shown in contrast to the undesirable implications that follows from privtatisation and decisive steps towards an argument for distributive propertya rights are taken.

Ownership in Free Software

In this chapter I will explicate the particular ownership configuration in Free Software as articulated in the GNU General Public License and based on the wider philosophy of the GNU project, particularly the concept of Copyleft. In doing so, I will label the particular kind of ownership as 'distributive property rights' and show that such property rights are more adequate for a complex and ever-changing world. In brief, I will show that exclusive private property rights are uneconomic and inadequate as a means of social organisation in the era of globalisation.

Human Rights: ambivalences, oppression and activism

In this chapter I will ask the question: What are the origins of human rights and how can the concept be used for emancipation and social change? And in particular with reference to Free Software.

User:Mp:Thesis:Chapter:Human_Rights_&_Free_Software

Human Rights projects and politics

Virtual Rights & UNICTTF versus AktiviX & Indymedia: same aim, different conception of what human rights in practice are.......- part of the inspiration of both factions is capture in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "Everyone has the right to the freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."

A seminar User:Mp:Thesis:Presentation_nov_04

Public Policy in a Global Information Society

The final chapter in which it will all be summed up.


Conclusion

Additional materials

The Wiki overview

Which is constituted by these pages


Bibliography

  • Feenberg, Andrew; Transforming Technology
    • particularly the concept of 'code'
  • Saenger, Paul; Space Between Words

Appendices

  • Globalisation from Below
    • an overview of Indymedia
    • and of AktiviX
  • Globalisation from Above

Communication Technologies Task Force]?


Stand-alone articles

DOGS RUN FREE

A documentary film called DOGS RUN FREE

and whatever else may be added

such as .... .....In the thesis I will be arguing for "distributive property rights" and I am collecting an overview of how these are imagined here... User:Mp:Distributive_Property_Rights

Click here for a suggested format for book editing: User:Mp:BIG

Retrieved from "https://en.wiki.aktivix.org/w/index.php?title=User:Mp:Thesis&oldid=3096"