On murxism
It's not a typo.
I made it up. I probably wasn’t the first one to come up with it. It's a pun. I am pretty sure it's funny in German.
It came about as a little thought experiment. What if Marx had been a digital native? And what if he had written about digital economies?
I was planning this whole thing.
Create social profiles for Karl Murx
Release his work bit by bit
Create a website for the decentralist party
Come up with more as I go along
Then I realised: It’s a ton of work and I do not want to invest that kind of time.
I got as far as writing the preamble for his manifesto though - and I figured that needs to go somewhere.
Where do ideas go when they die?
On my blog. Apparently.
Enjoy
Manifesto of a decentralised society
Preamble
A spectre is haunting the globe – the spectre of decentralization. Embraced by some, fought by others, misunderstood by most.
The history of digitalization hitherto ist a history of centralized and increasingly fossilized power structures. While “disruption” has been the trend driving the story behind this development in recent years – promising to disrupt incumbents and monoliths – this only ever served to further the accumulation of control in the hands of a few technocrats.
I N F O R M A T I O N is the fundamental, underlying asset to all of this. This is common knowledge to the point that there is widespread talk of us living in the information age. A newly discovered ressource – or rather, newly discovered processes of exploiting its value – with implications so profound that it is the namesake of our times.
But who O W N S information? In order to answer that question – that, admittedly, is the substance our spectre is made of – we have to consider the following questions first:
How is information created, harvested and what – in its essence – is it?
“[…] information is the knowledge that a sender conveys to a receiver via an information channel. The information can take the form of signals or code. In many cases, the information channel is a medium. In the receiver, the information leads to an increase in knowledge.”
Information leads to an increase in knowledge when received. It is – in fact – the R A W R E S O U R C E that, when properly processed, becomes knowledge.
The expression “Knowledge is power” has become another commonplace in our times. It has become a commonplace to the extent that it pains me to write it in a serious manner in a document such as this. That does not however decrease the truth it holds. On the contrary it is one thing that we can agree upon collectively.
Commonly attributed to Sir Francis Bacon and first ever published in this exact phrasing – or its counterpart in Latin – by Thomas Hobbes this phrase is now more potent than it ever has been before.
Information[processed] = Knowledge = Power
In brief: Information is power in formation.
She who controls the information, controls the formation of knowledge and therefore the distribution of power.
That is indeed the starting point of our investigation. And furthermore it explains why the narrative of disruption has done nothing but further the centralisation of power. Only a select few technocrats are equipped to harvest, store and process information on a societal and global scale. This – fellow friends – is the manifesto of a decentralized society.
–
So yeah, that’s the preamble to the “Manifesto of a decentralised society”.
If Karl Murx would’ve been alive a little while longer he might’ve finished his main work. A book simply titled “Information”.
It would’ve gone a little bit like this:
Information: A Critique of platform economy
Preamble
Part 1: The flow of Information
Chapter 1.1: On the matter of harvesting
Chapter 1.2: On the matter of storing
Chapter 1.3: On the matter of processing
Chapter 1.4: On the matter of ownership
1.4.1 Social Contracts & Pointers
Chapter 1.5: On the matter of access
Chapter 1.6: On the matter of control
Chapter 1.7: On the matter of manipulation
Part 2: The resulting knowledge
Part 3: The genes of society – memes
Part 4: A call to build
And that is all Karl Murx ever wrote.
