Technologies of the common : toward an ethics of collaborative constitution

Abstract

The arrival and generalization of social software - often subsumed under the misnomer Web 2.0, conveniently (and in true new economy manner) obscuring decades of social innovation - was greeted with a wave of economic enthusiasm (new markets), as well as a corresponding sense of political possibility regarding remedies to the democracy deficit of institutions of governance (e-democracy, e-inclusion, m2m/p2p as new model for public sphere communication). In the following, I will insist on a more comprehensive sense of social technologies as technologies of the common that take seriously the return of political ontology and its engagement of the question of political constitution. Situated between social technologies and techniques of governance, technologies of the common serves here as a heuristic device to explore differences and similarities of related processes of social constitution, and identify their relevance to the articulation of alternative modalities of governance.