第七届网络社会年会｜Nevermind the Web3，Here’s the P2P！

中文 | English

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🔴 引言

文 / 黄孙权 教授

网络社会研究所召集举办的六届 网络社会年会 包括”网络化的力量“（2016），“与列斐伏尔前行：算法时代的都市论与日常生活批判”（2017），“智慧都市网络”（2018），“网民21：超越个人账户”（2019），“实践智慧之网”（2020）和”时刻互惠：合作生活的瞬间“（2021）。六年里，网络社会年会汇集了全球专家学者和行动者，形成独特的批判与行动的学术生态网络。一直以来，每届都有指向性的实践智慧思考，非是抽象普遍化却常常失去行动与关爱的理论交谈。

第七届网络社会年会以”Never Mind the Web3, Here’s the P2P”为题，企图重访信息技术史上最有社会性的技术启发——P2P（Peer to peer）。这挑衅的命题，源于我们对Web3发展与通证化万物（tokenized everything）发展的关心。P2P 是一种网络技术和网络拓扑结构，至今已发展出赛博空间中各种兴趣社群；著作权和学术生产的共享精神及其伦理的复杂辩论；合作经济的形态等等。如今，Web3 正以先进姿态将技术金融连结上个人价值，同时也将六零年代的”接通，调谐，脱离”（Turn on, tune in, drop out）这种自我精神启蒙和反体制的姿态，进化成高强度自由主义式的个体投资动力：全下（all in）和从大公司跳槽（drop out）。在近 60 年的信息技术发展历史里，人们使用个人电脑与网络，是为了沟通、连结，独立而能彼此合作，演变至今却让人们对技术需求高于对彼此需求，信任程式码治理而非社会协调。如 MIT 科技社会教授 Sherry Turkle 所说：人们离机器越近，人们离彼此就越远，科技让人们在一起孤独（alone together）。P2P 采取的技术策略、伦理及其联邦化（federalization）的理想与 Web3 的“去中心化”（decentralization）蓝图显然不同。P2P 是小社群广连结，轻量级的共产；而 Web3 则希望一切都能货币化（是的，这是最终目的），因此昂贵复杂，层层依赖，失败率更高，更耗能。相较于个体隐藏在匿名与安全背后永不断线、持续分心，被化为物或者一串哈希数值的近似物的状态，可供彼此浏览、暂停和即时取用；我们更关心个体间的关系，人们如何聚集，群体间的交流如何产生。

更重要的是，当前的web3议程似乎缺乏对于从世纪交替以来自由软体、独立媒体运动、政府开放资料，数字民主化城市、参与式预算、创意公众授权（creative commons）等丰富的经验的传承，如果少了民主数字技术运动曾带来社会变革的成果与愿景，社会将成为新技术自身的进化，替代了人类对于社会文化发展的构想。对维讷（Norbert Wiener，1894-1964）控制论有意思的质询并非针对他本人，而是人如机器这个机械与生物的类比论，信息传递与回馈要解决的震颠难题，却怪异成为控制社会的立法政体，导致了技术发展论者一心想著机器能够成为什么，而非机器能为人类做什么。这难道不正是对今天Web3发展的质问？

回顾历史上P2P技术文化所产生广泛效用与意义，例如1999年Napster创立后，当时美国大学校园的网络流量有70─90％是使用P2P的。2000年反全球化运动高峰之际，独立媒体的全球网络节点与参与原则，其透过RSS技术将全球120个城市站点汇整到西雅图站点，以”民众─城市─全球”的形式由下而上地打造的人民新闻通讯社成为了草根化流动空间的典范。这是Web2时代我们非常熟悉的场景。如今Web3展示是翻新的旧技术，修辞性地将去中心与自由交易包装成政治─社会─文化发展的最终答案，真的如此吗？以音乐产业为例，音乐创作者的确因为P2P或者串流服务收入大减，但每年唱片公司仍透过串流服务赚取大比财富，每年约142亿美元的收入，在Spotify听一首歌，音乐人仍只有不到一美分的酬劳。将创作者的作品价值绑定是答案，透过区块链、加密货币、NFT来贩售，还是应追究音乐发行与唱片公司与音乐人收益分配的问题？一本书或文章，要透过Writing NFTs来保存贩售，还是应该让世界有更多的公共图书馆？去中心化自治组织（DAO)若真心期望改变目前的政治经济结构，那反托拉斯法不是更有效？Web3的前途能绕开电信基础设施正垄断掌握于全球少数国家与企业之吗？一切为了更快速自由交换“交换能力”的技术想像，不就是资本主义的核心运作原则吗？

这些问题恐怕都没有立即的答案。这是本届年会通过青年学者发表，七个城市论坛组织，召集各领域的主题演讲者，共同探寻P2P技术社会性内涵所构成的丰富社群文化的原因。福柯（Michel Foucault）在“不同空间的正文与脉络”（Texts/Contexts Of Other Spaces）的结语处留下了一句箴言：若文明中无船，则梦幻枯竭，间谍活动取代探险，而警察取代海盗。未来，我們要以程序取代社会协商与冲突，以财产证明取代公共财吗？

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🔴 关于城市论坛

计算机脱离纯粹计算的功能，成为增益人们智慧，相互沟通与跨学科合作，始于六零年代，就在几乎五英里半的圆圈范围之内，美国加州旧金山中半岛区域上，有史丹佛研究院的 Douglas Engelbart 主导的人类知识增益研究中心（Augmented Human Intellect Research Center, AHIRC）；John McCarthy 主导的人工智能实验室（Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, SAIL）；Kepler书店上的人民电脑公司、搞出第一台个人电脑的全录研究中心（PARC, Palo Alto Research Center)，还有CIA主导的迷幻药实验，Steward Brand的全球概览(Whole Earth Catalog）总部与网路。这区域形成的特殊技术-文化，如死之华乐队 (The Grateful Dead)所代表的：学生运动、反战、迷幻药、心灵解放；嬉皮应如是。几十万青年迈向乡村边境，形成新公社派，与政治上的新左分道扬镳，后者关系政治改革，前者关系技术如何使个人意识自由，希望离开体制、对抗军工赴合体的掌控（虽然与之共享同样的技术进步之意识型态）。总之，虽然有历史与政治的偶然，但说城市气质（city ethos）塑造了至今为止的电脑与网络文化不为过。

六零年代发展个人电脑与连结彼此的梦想逐渐实现，计算机及信息网络成为人们思考、沟通、表现以及社交行动的“共同世界”。至此，一切凝固和不可穿越的都透明了仿佛在没有摩擦力的世界中运转。技术的发明，与其技术的传递适用是有时间差的。亦即，做为空间（space）与抽象统一的技术，需经过地方（place）与社群的翻译才能落地。从技术史的观点而来看，十九世纪的电力与蒸气机，二十世纪的信息论与计算机并非由中心无损传递至每个地方，而是被城市的政权、社会与文化重新格式化的。每一项技术实践都受到城市精神的重构。

筹组城市论坛，是田野也是询问，是年会主题P2P的社会扩展论述：当代的科技艺术常显示普遍化和技术表演的倾向，而非技术要服务对象（因而是特定的，地方的）之关切。如果城市气质为一个社会的代表性精神，被生活在这个城市的人普遍承认的一套价值观和视角，那全球化下的国家可能越来越千篇一律，但城市会同时成为反全球化基地，以及将文化重新同质化的机制。城市如何影响了当代的科技艺术家们？身处不同城市地方的科技艺术家又在作品与社会实验上表达了什么样的差异特性？且让七个城市里的组织者与艺术家们、设定自身关切主题，表述城市作为多物种花园的可能。

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🔴 主题演讲嘉宾

本届年会为分布式的会议，全球线上线下在七个城市同时开展。邀请了学者、艺术家、策展人、黑客、法律教授等不同领域的11位主题讲者与会，他们是：

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中文｜English

🔗 AGENDA

🔵 10 keynote speakers, groups of organizers from 7 cities, 40 artists, and 18 young scholars enrolled. A dialogue between the city ethos and the communities.

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🔵 INTRO

Professor Huang Sunquan

For the 6 years, the former 6 Annual Conferences of Network Society, “Forces of Reticulation”（2016）, “Another Walk with Lefebvre: Critique of Urbanism and Everyday Life in the Algorithmic Age”(2017), “Intelligent Urban Fabric”(2018), “Netizen 21: Beyond Personal Account”(2019), “The Web of Phronesis”(2020), and “Instantly Reciprocal：The Moments for Cooperative Life”(2021) has formed a unique academic network of worldwide experts on Network sociological studies.

The Seventh Annual Conferences of Network Society, “Nevermind the Web3, Here’s the P2P” is going to critically look back at the P2P(Peer to Peer), one of the most inspiring social technology throughout Tech history. This provocative proposition stems from our criticism of the development of Web3 that is tokenizing everything.

Today, Web3 is taking a progressive stance in linking technological finance to personal values, while evolving the self enlightenment and anti-establishment gesture of the 1960s of “turn on, tune in, drop out” into a high-intensity libertarian drive for individual investment: “all in” and “drop out (from large companies)”. Turn to P2P, a network technology and network topology, has so far developed various communities of interest in cyberspace; the spirit of sharing of copyright and academic production and its ethical and complex debates; the shape of the collaborative economy, etc. In the past 60-year tech history, people used personal computers and networks to communicate, to independently connect, however, today’s technologies have made people interested in technology more than in communities, trusting in code more than in social coordination. As Sherry Turkle, a Professor of the Society of Technology at MIT, indicates: the closer people get to the machines, the further they get from each other, and the technology makes people alone together. 

The technical strategy, the ethics and the ideals of federalization adopted by P2P are clearly different from Web3’s blueprint of decentralization. P2P creates small and light-weight communities, while some Web3 projects are monetizing (yes, this is an ultimate goal), getting increasingly expensive, complex, and technology-dependent, with high failure rates and more energy consumption. We are not willing to see the individuals hiding behind anonymity and security, never disconnected, constantly distracted, reduced to objects or a string of hash values that can be browsed, paused, and instantly accessed by each other. Instead, we care about the relationships between individuals, especially how people gather together and communicate as groups.

Moreover, it is noticeable that some ongoing Web3 project has neglected the rich legacy of social movements including free software, Indymedia, open government data, digital democracy cities, participatory budgeting, creative commons, etc. Without the vision brought about by the democratic digital technology movement, there could be only evolutions of new technologies rather of society or culture. Since then, to criticize Norbert Wiener‘s cybernetics is to criticize today’s Web 3. In Wiener’s cybernetics, the analogy between man as machine and creature, where the shocking dilemma of information transmission and feedback to be solved has strangely made technological development theorists keep talking about what machines can be, rather than what machines can do for people.

At an earlier time, the sense of community the P2P generated was absolutely broad. In 1999, when Napster was found, 70-90% of network traffic on US university campuses was P2P. Around the year 2000, when the anti-globalization movement was on the rise, the Seattle Indymedia site integrated nodes from 120 cities through RSS technology, creating the News Agency of the People. It has been widely recognized as a symbolistic case of grassrooted space of flows, being built from the bottom up in the form of People-City-Global”. Web2 netizens are very familiar with this scenario, While Web3 netizens refurbishes old technologies, rhetorically packaging decentralisation and free trade as the ultimate answer to political-social-cultural development. Should we all in this game? The Seventh Annual Conference of Network Society tries to gather people who cares about the issues, to critically and creatively review the rich community culture constituted by the P2P thtough seven City Panels and one Young Scholar Forum.

In the conclusion of Texts/Contexts Of “Other Spaces”, Michel Foucault says: “In civilizations without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes the place of adventure, and the police take the place of pirates.” Now, its time for us to question in the future where negotiation and conflict are being replaced with the procedure and public property with proof of individual property.

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🔵 CITY PANELS

From the 1960s onwards, computers were no longer purely computational functions. It became a tool for acknowledging, communicating, and collaborating across disciplines.

Within a circle of almost five and a half miles, the Mid-Peninsula region of San Francisco, California, is home to the Augmented Human Intellect Research Center (AHIRC), headed by Douglas Engelbart of the Stanford Research Institute; the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL), headed by John McCarthy; the People’s Computer Corporation (PCC) on the Kepler‘s Book; the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), which created the first personal computer; the CIA-led psychedelic experiment, and the company’s global headquarters and network, Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog. The techno-culture developed in this area, as represented by bands like The Grateful Dead, included student movements, anti-war, psychedelic, spiritual liberation, hippie, etc. At the time, hundreds of thousands of young people marched to the rural frontier, forming a new communitarian faction that parted ways with the political New Left. When the New Left concerned with political reform, the young people concerned with freeing the individuals through technologies, to keep away with the establishments and fight the grip of the military-industrial complex (to some extents, they all believed in Technological Optimism). Accordingly, it is not too much to say that city ethos has shaped computer and Internet culture.

In the 1960s, the dream of developing personal computers and connecting each other came to fruition. The information networks brought by computers became a “common world” in which people thought, communicated, expressed themselves and acted socially. Everything frozen and impenetrable was then “transparent” as if a frictionless world.

There is a time lag between the invention of technology and the application of its transmission. Technology, as a unity of space and abstraction, is realized through the ‘translation’ of place and community. According to the mainstream tech-history, electricity and steam engines in the nineteenth century, and informatics and computers in the twentieth century were not transmitted from the centre to each place fluently, but were reformatted by the regime, society and culture of the places. Each technological practice was reconfigured by the “ethos” of the city.

The City Panels at the Seventh Annual Conference of Network Society are both fieldworks and questions about socially extended discourse on the conference theme. Today’s technological art is becoming increasingly homogeneous. Artists demonstrate new technologies a lot, paying little attention to who, especially the places, the technologies are made for. We believe that the ethos of cities are sets of values universally recognized by their inhabitants. When nations are becoming increasingly global, cities could become bases of counter-globalization, through constructing local cultural identities. Since then, We are curious about the way the city ethos works, especially about how they effect technological art maker based in different places. Therefore, the city panels invited curators and artists from seven cities, to set their own themes of concern, and express the possibilities of cities as “multi-species gardens”

🔵PANELISTS

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议程 AGENDA（GMT+8:00）

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🔗 Bilibili Livestream｜🔗 Youtube Livestream

城市论坛 CITY PANELS

2022/11/20-28

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🔗 青年学者论坛 YOUNG SCHOLARS FORUM

2022/11/24 09:30-18:00 （GMT+8:00)

地点：👉 浙江省杭州市西湖区转塘街道象山艺术公社 32幢 平行所工作坊 ｜VENUE：👉 NO.32, XIANGSHAN ART COMMUNE, XIHU DISTRICT, HANGZHOU, ZHEJIANG, PRC.

👋 线上互动提 ｜👋 I HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY!