Computers are doing to
communication
what fences did to pastures
and cars did to streets.
Minna-san, gladly I accept the honour of addressing this forum
on Science and Man. The theme that Mr. Tsuru proposes, "The
Computer-Managed Society," sounds an alarm. Clearly you
foresee that machines which ape people are tending to encroach on
every aspect of people's lives, and that such machines force
people to behave like machines. The new electronic devices do
indeed have the power to force people to "communicate"
with them and with each other on the terms of the machine.
Whatever structurally does not fit the logic of machines is
effectively filtered from a culture dominated by their use.
The machine-like behaviour of people chained to electronics
constitutes a degradation of their well-being and of their
dignity which, for most people in the long run, becomes intolerable. Observations of the sickening effect of programmed
environments show that people in them become indolent, impotent,
narcissistic and apolitical. The political process breaks down,
because people cease to be able to govern themselves; they
demand to be managed.
I congratulate Asahi Shimbun on its efforts to foster a new
democratic consensus in Japan, by which your more than seven
million readers become aware of the need to limit the
encroachment of machines on the style of their own behaviour. It
is important that precisely Japan initiate such action. Japan is
looked upon as the capital of electronics; it would be marvellous
if it became for the entire world the model of a new politics of
self-limitation in the field of communication, which, in my
opinion, is henceforth necessary if a people wants to remain self-governing.
Electronic management as a political issue can be approached
in several ways. I propose, at the beginning of this public consultation, to approach the issue as one of political
ecology. Ecology, during the last ten years, has acquired a
new meaning. It is still the name for a branch of professional biology, but the term now increasingly serves as the label under
which a broad, politically organized general public analyzes and
influences technical decisions. I want to focus on the new
electronic management devices as a technical change of the human
environment which, to be benign, must remain under political (and
not exclusively expert) control. I have chosen this focus for my introduction, because I thus continue my conversation with those
three Japanese colleagues to whom I owe what I know about your
country - Professors Yoshikazu Sakamoto, Joshiro Tamanoi and Jun Ui.
In the 13 minutes still left to me on this rostrum I will
clarify a distinction that I consider fundamental to political ecology. I shall distinguish the environment as commons from
the environment as resource. On our ability to make this
particular distinction depends not only the construction of a
sound theoretical ecology, but also - and more importantly -
effective ecological jurisprudence Minna-san, how I wish, at this point, that I were a pupil trained by your Zen
poet, the great Basho. Then perhaps in a bare 17 syllables I could express the
distinction between the commons within which people's
subsistence activities are embedded, and resources that
serve for the economic production of those commodities on which
modem survival depends. If I were a poet, perhaps I would make
this distinction so beautifully and incisively that it would
penetrate your hearts and remain unforgettable. Unfortunately I
am not a Japanese poet. I must speak to you in English, a
language that during the last 100 years has lost the ability to
make this distinction, and - in addition - I must speak through translation. Only because I may count on the translating genius
of Mr. Muramatsu do I dare to recover Old English meanings with a
talk in Japan.
"Commons" is an Old English word. According to my
Japanese friends, it is quite close to the meaning that iriai
still has in Japanese "Commons," like iriai, is
a word which, in preindustrial times, was used to designate
certain aspects of the environment. People called commons
those parts of the environment for which customary law exacted
specific forms of community respect. People called commons that
part of the environment which lay beyond their own thresholds and
outside of their own possessions, to which, however, they had
recognized claims of usage, not to produce commodities but to
provide for the subsistence of their households. The customary
law which humanized the environment by establishing the commons
was usually unwritten. It was unwritten law not only because
people did not care to write it down, but because what it
protected was a reality much too complex to fit into paragraphs.
The law of the commons regulates the right of way, the right to
fish and to hunt, to graze, and to collect wood or medicinal
plants in the forest.
An oak tree might be in the commons. Its shade, in summer, is
reserved for the shepherd and his flock; its acorns are reserved
for the pigs of the neighbouring peasants; its dry branches serve
as fuel for the widows of the village; some of its fresh twigs in
springtime are cut as ornaments for the church - and at sunset it
might be the place for the village assembly. When people spoke
about commons, iriai, they designated an aspect of the
environment that was limited, that was necessary for the community's survival, that was necessary for different groups in
different ways, but which, in a strictly economic sense, was not
perceived as scarce.
When today, in Europe, with university students I use the term
"commons" (in German Almende or Gemeinheit, in
Italian gli usi civici) my listeners immediately think of
the eighteenth century. They think of those pastures in England
on which villagers each kept a few sheep, and they think of the
"enclosure of the pastures" which transformed the
grassland from commons into a resource on which commercial flocks
could be raised. Primarily, however, my students think of the
innovation of poverty which came with enclosure: of the absolute
impoverishment of the peasants, who were driven from the land and
into wage labour, and they think of the commercial enrichment of
the lords.
In their immediate reaction, my students think of the rise of
a new capitalist order. Facing that painful newness, they forget
that enclosure also stands for something more basic. The
enclosure of the commons inaugurates a new ecological order: Enclosure
did not just physically transfer the control over grasslands from
the peasants to the lord. Enclosure marked a radical change in
the attitudes of society towards the environment. Before, in any
juridical system, most of the environment had been considered as
commons from which most people could draw most of their
sustenance without needing to take recourse to the market After
enclosure the environment became primarily a resource at the
service of "enterprises" which, by organizing wage-labor, transformed nature into the goods and services on
which the satisfaction of basic needs by consumers depends. This
transformation is in the blind spot of political economy.
This change of attitudes can be illustrated better if we think
about roads rather than about grasslands. what a difference there
was between the new and the old parts of Mexico City only 20
years ago. In the old parts of the city the streets were true commons. Some people sat on the road to sell vegetables and
charcoal. Others put their chairs on the road to drink coffee or
tequila. Others held their meetings on the road to decide on the
new headman for the neighbourhood or to determine the price of a donkey. Others drove their donkeys through the
crowd, walking
next to the heavily loaded beast of burden; others sat in the saddle. Children played in the
gutter, and still people walking
could use the road to get from one place to another.
Such roads were not built for people. Like any true commons,
the street itself was the result of people living there and
making that space liveable. The dwellings that lined the roads
were not private homes in the modern sense - garages for the
overnight deposit of workers. The threshold still separated two
living spaces, one intimate and one common. But neither homes in
this intimate sense nor streets as commons survived economic
development.
In the new sections of Mexico City, streets are no more for
people. They are now roadways for automobiles, for buses, for
taxis, cars, and trucks. People are barely tolerated on the
streets unless they are on their way to a bus stop. If people now
sat down or stopped on the street, they would become obstacles
for traffic, and traffic would be dangerous to them. The road has
been degraded from a commons to a simple resource for the
circulation of vehicles. People can circulate no more on their
own. Traffic has displaced their mobility. They can circulate
only when they are strapped down and are moved.
The appropriation of the grassland by the lords was
challenged, but the more fundamental transformation of
grassland (or of roads) from commons to resource has happened,
until recently, without being subjected to criticism. The
appropriation of the environment by the few was clearly
recognized as an intolerable abuse By contrast, the even more
degrading transformation of people into members of an industrial labour
force and into consumers was taken, until recently,
for granted. For almost a hundred years the majority of political
parties has challenged the accumulation of environmental
resources in private hands. However, the issue was argued in
terms of the private utilization of these resources, not the
distinction of commons. Thus anticapitalist politics so far have
bolstered the legitimacy of transforming commons into resources.
Only recently, at the base of society, a new kind of
"popular intellectual" is beginning to recognize what
has been happening. Enclosure has denied the people the right to
that kind of environment on which - throughout all of
history - the moral economy of survival had been based.
Enclosure, once accepted, redefines community. Enclosure
underlines the local autonomy of community. Enclosure of the
commons is thus as much in the interest of professionals and of
state bureaucrats as it is in the interest of capitalists.
Enclosure allows the bureaucrats to define local community as
impotent - "ei-ei schau-schau!!!" - to provide
for its own survival. People become economic individuals that
depend for their survival on commodities that are produced for
them. Fundamentally, most citizens' movements represent a
rebellion against this environmentally induced redefinition of
people as consumers.
Minna-san, you wanted to hear me speak on electronics, not
grassland and roads. But I am a historian; I wanted to speak
first about the pastoral commons as I know them from the past in
order then to say something about the present, much wider threat
to the commons by electronics.
This man who speaks to you was born 55 years ago in Vienna.
One month after his birth he was put on a train, and then on a
ship and brought to the Island of Brac. Here, in a village on the
Dalmatian coast, his grandfather wanted to bless him. My
grandfather lived in the house in which his family had lived
since the time when Muromachi ruled in Kyoto. Since then on the
Dalmatian Coast many rulers had come and gone - the doges of
Venice, the sultans of Istanbul, the corsairs of Almissa, the
emperors of Austria, and the kings of Yugoslavia. But these many
changes in the uniform and language of the governors had changed
little in daily life during these 500 years. The very same
olive-wood rafters still supported the roof of my grandfather's
house. Water was still gathered from the same stone slabs on the
roof. The wine was pressed in the same vats, the fish caught from
the same kind of boat, and the oil came from trees planted when
Edo was in its youth.
My grandfather had received news twice a month. The news now
arrived by steamer in three days; and formerly, by sloop, it had
taken five days to arrive. When I was born, for the people who
lived off the main routes, history still flowed slowly,
imperceptibly. Most of the environment was still in the commons.
People lived in houses they had built; moved on streets that had
been trampled by the feet of their animals; were autonomous in
the procurement and disposal of their water; could depend on
their own voices when they wanted to speak up. All this changed
with my arrival in Brac.
On the same boat on which I arrived in 1926, the first
loudspeaker was landed on the island. Few people there had ever
heard of such a thing. Up to that day, all men and women had
spoken with more or less equally powerful voices. Henceforth this
would change. Henceforth the access to the microphone would
determine whose voice shall be magnified. Silence now ceased to
be in the commons; it became a resource for which loudspeakers
compete. Language itself was transformed thereby from a local
commons into a national resource for communication. As enclosure
by the lords increased national productivity by denying the
individual peasant to keep a few sheep, so the encroachment of
the loudspeaker has destroyed that silence which so far had given
each man and woman his or her proper and equal voice. Unless you
have access to a loudspeaker, you now are silenced.
I hope that the parallel now becomes clear. Just as the
commons of space are vulnerable, and can be destroyed by the
motorization of traffic, so the commons of speech are vulnerable,
and can easily be destroyed by the encroachment of modem means of
communication.
The issue which I propose for discussion should therefore be
clear: how to counter the encroachment of new, electronic devices
and systems upon commons that are more subtle and more intimate
to our being than either grassland or roads - commons that are at
least as valuable as silence. Silence, according to western and
eastern tradition alike, is necessary for the emergence of
persons. It is taken from us by machines that ape people. We
could easily be made increasingly dependent on machines for
speaking and for thinking, as we are already dependent on
machines for moving.
Such a transformation of the environment from a commons to a
productive resource constitutes the most fundamental form of
environmental degradation. This degradation has a long history,
which coincides with the history of capitalism but can in no way
just be reduced to it. Unfortunately the importance of this
transformation has been overlooked or belittled by political
ecology so far. It needs to be recognized if we are to organize
defense movements of what remains of the commons. This defense
constitutes the crucial public task for political action during
the eighties. The task must be undertaken urgently because
commons can exist without police, but resources cannot. Just as
traffic does, computers call for police, and for ever more of
them, and in ever more subtle forms.
By definition, resources call for defense by police. Once they
are defended, their recovery as commons becomes increasingly
difficult. This is a special reason for urgency.
Ivan Illich is doing to computers what he did to education
(De-Schooling Society, 1971), to energy (Energy and Equity,
1974), to medicine (Medical Nemesis, 1975), and to sex roles
(Vernacular Gender, 1983). Each time it has been radical analysis
that changes our perception of what is really going on. Each
time, and with growing clarity, it is an economic/historical
analysis having to do with the idea of scarcity as a means of
exploitation. This article is from Illich's remarks at the
"Asahi Symposium Science and Man - The computer-managed
Society," Tokyo, Japan, March 21, 1982. The ideas here are
part of a book Illich is working on, The History of Scarcity.
- Stewart Brand
THE CoEVOLUTION QUARTERLY WINTER 1983
