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Information vs. material production (was: Re: [ox-en] Welcome)



Hi Thomas, all!

5 days ago Thomas Uwe Gruettmueller wrote:
On Friday, 14. December 2001 11:11, steve tekell wrote:
It seems like when
you are dealing with food, shelter, and the essentials certain
"principles" of Free software development wouldn't necessarily
match up or be sufficient to something which can't be
duplicated without cost. Maybe it's useless nitpicking, but it
just sounds weird to me.

I tried to make my oppinion on this point clear on the German
list for 1 1/2 year. But it seems that noone understands me. :o(

I'm not so sure. Others may use other terms, however.

IMHO, when we speak of "producing" things, we should keep in
mind, that these words have two essentially different meanings:

a) "To produce something" can mean to *develope* something. When
   you say that you produce a new computer program, you usually
   mean that you develope it hacking, not that you manufacture
   material instances with your CD toaster.

b) "To produce something" can also mean to *manufacture*
   something previously developed. So, when you say that you
   produce a car, you usually mean that you assemble material
   instances of it, and not that you develope it, drawing
   sketches and calculating parameters...

So, you cannot produce a computer program in the same way as you
produce a car, but only because the word "to produce" means
something *entirely* different in each context! Of course, you
can *both* develope and manufacture computer programs, and you
can *both* develope and manufacture cars. Both, computer
programs and cars, exist as pure information, and both of them
exist as material instances.

I agree that there is a difference between the development of a good
and the manufacturing of a good (it's nice how the English term
carries the Latin root "manus" (hand) in it pointing directly to the
material activity :-) ).

But - when you develop something as a side effect you're producing
material goods also. Think of the construction plans plotted onto
paper and so on. However, as you rightly distinguish the production of
the construction plans on paper we don't call manufacturing the plans.
Instead we see at as what it - IMHO - is: The side effect of a
development process which its main part is a informational one.

By definition, free software does not care, how material
instances of the software are made. You can toast CDs yourself,
and give them away gratis, but you can also make them in a big
factory, and sell the copies for 1,000 $ each. This is up to you.
So, there are no principles of free software manufacturing, but
only such of free software developement.

And this is where I (for 1 1/2 years ;-) ) disagree. While you're -
rightly - neglecting the production of construction plans, when
software comes into play, you insist on software being a material
good. One of the main features of information goods, however, is, that
their material representation is as irrelevant as the material
representation of construction plans.

Imagine a situation where the Evernet is reality. Where you're mobile
PDA is able to get the content that you want out of the air right at
the moment you need it. IMHO this vision is not that far BTW. At this
point at least your personal copy of an information good is only
represented by the presence or absence of a number of electrons in the
RAM of your PDA - dissolving when you switch of the current. In this
situation would you say, that the digital information is a feature of
the RAM? Sorry, that simply makes no sense to me - i.e. I see no point
where this view of things leads to anything useful.

Of course, it is much more expensive to manufacture a car than
to manufacture a CD. So, why are CDs so cheap?

The answer that I give to myself is

 o that a CD is a highly standardized mass product (like paper
   or drinking water) and

 o that CDs are manufactured by several competing companies
   (this might explain why Iomega ZIP disks are so expensive).

So, if free cars will be more like CDs than ZIP disks, they will
only cost 1/10th of what the cost today.

Puh... That heavy stuff again.

May it be the case, that producing an instance of a car still involves
far more human work than an instance of a CD? After all there are some
people out there - and in here ;-) -, who think, that the average
societal amount of labor embodied in a product is the main source of
the value of the product being reflected in the price of the commodity
on the market.

Instead you're suggesting, that competition and standardization alone
drive the prices. Frankly I find that adventurous.

In Fordism standardization of a product drove prices down, because it
made it easier to mechanize the production. The silly machines were
not able to produce other things than standardized ones and to reduce
the amount of human labor you needed to mechanize and thus to
standardize. In our discussion the most interesting feature of modern
machines / robots is, however, that they *are* able to produce highly
customized / individual products.

And for competition driving prices down. Yes, it does in capitalism.
But if the prices are driven below the costs of the sellers, than the
sellers will be out of business soon. And the costs of the sellers are
determined mainly by the amount of the labor embodied in the product
s/he's selling.


						Mit Freien Grüßen

						Stefan

_______________________
http://www.oekonux.org/


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