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ok idc im still talking about this because everyone is doing wack tech political philosophy
paul's statement is like intensely interesting and also intensely wrong imo. i was gonna write a blog thing about this yesterday but i thought i was out of steam
imo there are several overlapping concepts at play here (these are stipulated definitions, anachronistic and kinda ideal typic):
federation: a group of actors organized under a central authority they comprise
confederation: a group of actors comprising a common organization, crucially
with the right to succession.
"tech federation": as far as i can tell this is basically interoperability. a common communication method that actors can use to interface with one another.
there are sub-questions here about the internal decision-making procedure of such entities. two forms this can take i think are best explained with reference to the way power is distributed to roles:
representative: a group of actors appoint another actor to present their interests and make decisions on their behalf.
delegate: the delegation i'm thinking of is informed by the social anarchist tradition. delegates are strictly mandated and instantly recallable.
i'll let kropotkin explain strict mandates: "the delegate is not authorized to do more than explain to other delegates the considerations that have led his colleagues to their conclusion. Not being able to impose anything, he will seek an understanding and
will return with a simple proposition which his mandatories can accept or refuse". unlike representatives, delegates do not provide their own perspective, but summarize their mandatories' collective perspective to another group of actors.
instant recall is the enforcement mechanism to ensure this happens. if the delegate deviates from the mandatories' desires, they can be recalled and replaced with someone who can summarize their views accurately.
ok wow thats neat alice, what the fuck. well yea idk thats what im thinking bro. literally what is anyone talking about. i glided past the tech federation thing but it has like nothing to do with anything????? i get that it's like the metaphor people use and we're kinda stuck with it, but i agree
with christine that this is like the most absurd, incongruent, misleading set of metaphors in the world. people are not servers. in fact, people run the servers, and there are relations of power within the organizations that run them that are usually like way more important
don't get me wrong like the ability for multiple actors (and actors can be internally organized in any number of ways) to communicate with one another is fucking awesome, and theres a ton of potential here for FOSSy shit that i'm really into
BUT ALSO GUESS WHAT - i don't even like agree with christine because she was making a totally separate point ???? and like yea its a concern but SHES DOING THE METAPHOR THING I HATE AHHHHHH WHATS GOING ON
i should note that while i didn't really make much of the decision-making roles. i was originally going to make them additional categories of organization (representative federation (US), representative confederation (EU), delegate confederation (anarchist), etc. but i feel like they are two
separate dimensions maybe and shouldn't be jumbled. it's also interesting because historical anarchists would use their terms in funny ways. like they called their organizations "federations", but the most abstracted organization where all the federations federated a "confederation".
its differences in usage here that establish why im so ornery later, because these concepts only have meaning in historical and sub-cultural context, and it seems like the tech usage is just naively supposing "oh here's this well defined concept from something i'm familiar with, and it has
something to do with power i think. let's use that" and its like skreeee it was already messy. i don't think this is going to do the conceptual or normative work you want it to because to be consistent it's either going to be way too thin or way too thick