recursive public

nationality

American

occupation / innovator as

anthropologist

university professor

UCLA

innovator in the field of

anthropology of media

Science and Technology Studies (STS)

science studies

STS scholar

anthropology

is not an object, but a 'feeling' that has no recognizable form. Paintings, sculpture, music and dance are objects left behind after the artist has tried to give this 'feeling' structure.

Art is not an object, but a 'feeling' that has no recognizable form. Paintings, sculpture, music and dance are objects left behind after the artist has tried to give this 'feeling' structure. (Christopher John Hollins)

is a public that is vitally concerned with the material and practical maintenance and modification of the technical, legal, practical, and conceptual means of its own existence as a public.

recursive public.' A recursive public is a public that is vitally concerned with the material and practical maintenance and modification of the technical, legal, practical, and conceptual means of its own existence as a public... it is a collective independent of other forms of constituted power and is capable of speaking to existing forms of power through the production of actually existing alternatives. (kelty 2008: 3) Free Software is one instance of this concept, both as it has emerged in the recent past and as it undergoes transformation and differentiation in the near future. There are other instances, including those that emerge from the practices of Free Software, such as Creative Commons, the Connexions project, and the Open Access movement in science. These latter instances may or may not be Free Software, or even 'software' projects per se, but they are connected through the same practices, and what makes them significant is that they may also be 'recursive publics' in the sense I explore in this book. Recursive publics, and publics generally, differ from interest groups, corporations, unions, professions, churches, and other forms of organization because of their focus on the radical technological modifiability of their own terms of existence. In any public there inevitably arises a moment when the question of how things are said, who controls the means of communication, or whether each and everyone is being properly heard becomes an issue. A legitimate public sphere is one that gives outsiders a way in: they may or may not be heard, but they do not have to appeal to any authority (inside or outside the organization) in order to have a voice. Such publics are not inherently modifiable, but are made so and maintained through the practices of participants. It is possible for Free Software as we know it to cease to be public, or to become just one more settled (kelty 2008: 3)

Christopher Kelty

Authors(0)

Christopher KeltyThinkers

Christopher Kelty