First Monday Special Issue on Governance

The online journal First Monday has just published their 7th special issue, Command Lines: The Emergence of Governance in Global Cyberspace, wherein you will find a number of articles by current and former Terra Novans, including Ted, Richard, T L Taylor, and me. (NB: the articles are appearing in three sets over three months; the complete list of them is at the link.)

The special issue (edited by Sandra Braman and me) grew out of the Command Lines conference at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (sponsored by its Center for International Education), where we brought together a number of people interested in governance online. In many ways I saw it as a chance for scholars of virtual worlds to contribute their unique perspective to a broader conversation, and the conference was a tremendous success. Anyone interested in how to make sense of the moving target that is governance in and beyond virtual worlds is encouraged to dive in.

Comments

[Michael Chui]

1.

I'm not very familiar with First Monday; the link gives me what appears to be a table of contents, except over half of the articles aren't linked. Am I missing something?

[Thomas Malaby]

2.

The articles are appearing in three sets over three months -- accessible now is the first slate of them; the remaining links will be active in October and November.

[Michael Chui]

3.

Boo. Hiss. Thanks.

[Michael Chui]

4.

Governance, it is always important to remind ourselves, is not reducible to control.

Thomas, have you see Michael Crichton's talk on complexity and management (as opposed to control)? Two links are present here, though the content of that post refers to something slightly tangential.

[Thomas Malaby]

5.

Thanks, Michael. Good read, although I find it interesting that the same insight into the irreducible complexity of the world has been hit upon by at least 6 different schools of thought over the last 140 years (longer, if you want to count Machiavelli and Vico), but yet it's always presented as local and novel.

The interesting question I would pursue from his focus is that of the roots of the linking of fear and unpredictability. I think (as I said in comments here), that this is an essentially modern problem, where bureaucratic practice, as a core legitimating technique for modern institutions, ends up demonizing contingency; i.e., that which it cannot control.

I like this quote:

What happened at Yellowstone? I would say, somebody really believed the world operated like this schematic diagram. And they acted on that belief.

This is, in a way, what the pragmatists were saying, but it keeps needing to be resaid. Another nice version of this (if you can navigate the writing style, at least in the English translation) is in Pierre Bourdieu's Outline of a Theory of Practice, where he nicely points out the dangers of mistaking our models of kinship for the kinship practices themselves. My approach to games seeks to underscore this same difficulty, and find a pragmatic way around it.

The real challenge, as Crichton's talk makes clear, is how to find grounds to act once we recognize the deep open-endedness, or contingency, of the world (I prefer contingency over complexity, because it points more directly to the root unpredictabilities). For the pragmatists, this meant a somewhat dismissive (from a certain perspective) take on articulated ideals and principles (really, any kind of formalist effort), leading to either a crotchety cynicism (Holmes), or, interestingly, an optimistic faith in collective judgment over the long run (James, Dewey).

[katalog]

6.

This site is interesting and very informative, nicely interface. Enjoyed browsing through the site. Keep up the good work. Greetings

[Thomas Malaby]

7.

The next set of articles in the First Monday special issue is up! This set happens to be entirely about virtual worlds. Here is the list:

Beyond Management: Considering Participatory Design and Governance in Player Culture
by T.L. Taylor

Why Governments aren’t Gods and Gods aren’t Governments
by Richard A. Bartle

Coding Control: Governance and Contingency in the Production of Online Worlds
by Thomas M. Malaby

Synthetic Economies and the Social Question
by Edward Castronova