Present: Spiro, Jerimi, Jon, Kate, Krista, Patrick.
1. Why software should be free, by Richard Stallman.Of all the technical papers we've read so far, this one caused the most debate. That's partly because Stallman's idea seems whacko at first glance, and then you have to step back and recognize that it works, at least in the sense that Microsoft now considers free software to be its number one threat.
I love to replace words. I automatically replace the word "Software" with "Art" whenever I read it, just to see how it feels. And, in this article, it feels worrying: If artists did not own what they made, how would they survive?
This is, of course, the central question to making things free: if everything is free, who pays? Its not a question that can be easily answered or dismissed.
Stallman tries to draw a distinction between material creations, such as a car, which cannot be quickly "cloned", and software, which is nearly free to copy. But it seems to me that many artistic products (e.g. photographs) are in the "nearly free to copy" territory.
Art wants to be free too, in my opinion, if only we could raise enough taxes to pay the artists.
2. The Rhizome, chapter 1 of A Thousand Plateaus, by Deleuze/Guattari.The language in this essay is gorgeously over the top: Patrick pointed out that words like "biunivocal" appear with impressive regularity. How "uni" and "bi" can be sandwiched together is hard to figure. It is all part of D+G's attempt to make the essay a living example of the ideas it presents - to show how our rich multi-variant multiplicity is essentially a "flat plane" - there is no "One" or "Meta", no escape to a higher plane. Its a noble goal, and it does illustrate that theory, too, is restricted by the structure of our language.
Spiro pointed out that Guattari was another Suicide case.
After an hour of discussion, we understood the difference between a Rhizome and a Tree root, but not much else really felt that clear to me.