Photo courtesy of Farfando.

Chris Kelty. Teaching at Rice University as a professor of anthropology. Visiting Harvard to teach History of Science & Tech. Popping out of a small beach top.

Actually, this is not Chris Kelty. This picture just so happens to be the first result in a Flickr tag search for “kelty.” However, it’s not unfortunate that Chris isn’t a black-haired, bikini-clad bombshell, because he is, in fact, the author of Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software (read it here or buy it here).

If you’ve been turned off to this post because I have disappointed you with dreams of scantily-clad ladies, I apologize. To make up for my indiscretion, I present to you the real Chris Kelty, to provide an introduction to what will henceforth be called the Two Bits Processor Project:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdGBxCqDLJ8]

Chris explains Two Bits as a toolbox for asking questions. A quote that acts as a perfect segue into explaining the methodology behind the *echoing announcer’s voice* Two. Bits. Processor. Project. Essentially… Five people. Five blogs (FYI, each letter of the word blogs is a separate link). Nine chapters, one introduction, and one conclusion. One section per week. Compose and comment and collaborate. Chris calls this modulation (I call it awesome). Hopefully our endeavor will succeed more fully than a two-bit processor would ever operate, but I have much confidence. For a much more starry-eyed and reflective introduction to our (Tim, Christina, Diana, Mike’s, and my) project, check out Diana’s post.

Following is, first, a reaction to the Introduction of Kelty’s Two Bits and then two lighthearted rejoinders in light of the book as a book.

一番：前置き

Two Bits is an anthropological ethnography, which might also be known as a description of the customs of a people. Example: puking into their children’s mouths might be a topic relevant to a penguin ethnography. Together, these multiple customs equal a culture. For geeks, the focal group of the book, Kelty describes their culture in terms of, in one light, “figuring things out… in discussion… designing, planning, executing, writing, debugging, hacking, and fixing” (Kelty 18). Since Two Bits comes off as a more anthropological text, Kelty writes that a lot of stories will “illustrate what geeks are like.”

But where do geeks stand as a culture in society? I think this is necessary to understand before tackling a book of this caliber (unless Kelty explains that in Chapter One and thence I am hosed). Bluntly, he emphasizes geek nature: “vocal, loud, persistent, and loquacious” (19), a strange dichotomy compared to a backdrop of popular opinion regarding ’80s and ’90s high school kinetics (à la Sixteen Candles. A couple of decades later and geeks are getting more press than getting shoved into lockers. Basically, geeks have a voice. A statement that leads into a revelation of my own English-major-based nerdgasm when I spotted a convoluted reference to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s seminal essay, Can the Subaltern Speak? (1988). In her treatise, Spivak defends what she terms the subaltern, associated with the regional persons or groups outside of the hegemonic structure of power. Specifically, she argues for a dominant voice not to represent the repressed classes of the Indian subcontinent, but for some utterance to escape these peoples’ mouths, to speak for themselves by themselves. The remixed allusion that Kelty creates is that “The superalterns can speak for themselves” (19). In the twenty-first century, geeks have leapt up the social ladder in measures of numerous rungs. We geeks have a voice that others listen to in society. And because we have a voice, we can initiate what Kelty describes as the “reorientation of power and knowledge” (6).

Because geeks have a voice, though, it seems that Kelty finds this fact to be a barrier in the composition of the book. However, it is not a hindrance. Instead of having to explain geeks as a people, he can use them to explain themselves, since they are so prominent on the Internet that it’s impossible not to find the unavoidable information. He elucidates, “I am less interested in treating geeks as natives to be explained and more interested in arguing with them: the people in Two Bits are a sine qua non of the ethnography, but they are not the objects of its analysis” (19).

The wonderful thing about geeks becomes their habitation: the Internet. Kelty explains the benefit: “[A] very important aspect of the contemporary Internet… is its singularity: there is only one Internet” (9). Tim highlights in his modulation that Kelty’s ethnography isn’t localized. We don’t see a professor exploring the forbidden highlands of Southeast Whoknowswheresia. Instead, Kelty deals with people, what they do, and how they do it, via the Internet. But the point that the monopoly of the Internet exists solely by itself goes beyond possibility and potential of geographic limitation or liberation. Just like geography, geeks work in one space and work for that space. Proud, Kelty says, “The outcome of [the decisions to create certain configurations, standards, and protocols to make the Internet work] has been to privilege the singularity of the Internet and to champion its standardization” (9). The convenience is simply that the world’s geeks live a beep and a click miles away from each other. It’s glocalization on a metaphysical (both senses) scale.

二番：題名

I want to have a bit of fun trying to dissect Two Bits. As an English major, I take pleasure in titles, so I want to examine what the moniker suggests as we move into the text.

An excerpt from Kelty’s website explaining the cover art of the book:
“The cover of Two Bits features one panel from a series of paintings by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (1824-1898), a symbolist painter from Lyon and co-founder of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. The series is called The Muses of Inspiration Hail the Spirit, the Harbinger of Light and decorates the entrance hall of the Boston Public Library. The particular panel on the cover is called “Physics: By the wondrous agency of Electricity, Speech flashes through Space,” and represents the telegraph. I’ve heard it said of this panel that it is colloquially called “Good News and Bad News.” Hence, Two Bits” (http://twobits.net/cover/).

So, good news and bad news. Is that what I’ll have to expect from the book? I wasn’t foreseeing a Zittrain in the least. Personally, the first impression of the title alluded to the phrase my two cents to refer to a unique opinion, namely Kelty’s. Considering the idiom, would such a cheaply-priced opinion be of any worth? A minimal amount of sleuthing revealed both value (importance of putting a stamp on your letter) and aquality (disrespect for pennies as currency).

However, two bits may also refer to the equivalency of twenty-five cents. Hey, that’s one pay phone call, or used to be. Lack of value now that we’re all on cells?

I’ll tell you what gives value to the phrase, though. Apparently two bits is a response to the idiom shave and a haircut, which isn’t an idiom at all but a tune with which we should all be familiar. If you peruse that Wikipedia entry, you’ll discover that the equivalent of “two bits” in vulgar colloquialisms equates to “You bastard!” I have no idea how this fits into Kelty’s vision in the least, but if you’re ever reading the book on the T and someone insults you, shove the text in his face. Maybe Free Software will make a small impact on that SOB’s life.

三番：本か画素

Another influence of the literature concentration on my approach to texts is to view the content in terms of the form. I attended the talk that Kelty gave at MIT to announce Two Bits, and in the Q&A session an audience member inquired as to the benefits and consequences of the book being released in PDF form online for free. Thus the room gave birth to a discussion concerning the value of books. In the end, it really comes down to paying for a physical object that satisfies the carnal needs in our fingertips. Kelty did succeed in arguing that bookstores in most rural communities across the U.S. would probably not carry the text due to its highly technical nature, not relevant to the general populace in the area. The PDF online provides the opportunity for individuals in these communities to check out the book with the potential for them to purchase it post-skim.

I bring up the argument, though, because the circulation of a text online satisfies the criteria of an instance where the attitudes behind the Free Software movement transfer to another realm, namely market politics. Two Bits in PDF, as a form, reflects the practices that Kelty enumerates in his arguments. The book online also mirrors what Kelty explains as part of the “spectrum of political activity” in which geeks participate: “[Geeks] can both express and ‘implement’ ideas” of Free Software in Free Software.

I’ll end this post with some of the other excepts that I marked off whilst reading through the Introduction that I felt were necessary to mention, if not explicate, and to which I might return in the reading of Two Bits:

• “By culture, I mean an ongoing experimental system…” – When we approach the concept of a culture, do we not consider it in light of its traditionalism more than its fluidity?
• “‘For more people, the Internet is porn, stock quotes, Al Jazeera clips of executions, Skype, seeing pictures of the grandkids, porn, never having to buy another encyclopedia, MySpace, e-mail, online housing listings, Amazon, Googling potential romantic interests, etc. etc.’ It is impossible to explain all of these things…” – Can these items actually be explained?
• “Nearly all kinds of media are easier to produce, publish, circulate, modify, mash-up, remix, or reuse.” – Which media are difficult to [verb]?
• “Coding, hacking, patching, sharing, compiling, and modifying of software are forms of political action that now routinely accompany familiar political forms of expression like free speech, assembly, petition, and a free press.” – It seems as if this statement was more applicable a few years ago…
• Modifiability therefore raises a very specific and important question about finality. When is something (software, a film, music, culture) finished? How long does it remain finished? Who decides? Or more generally, what does its temporality look like…? – No comment. This deserves it’s own future post.
• What does it mean to plan in modifiability to culture, to music, to education and science? – I wonder how many people would comprehend the potential to/for remix.

I, along with my benevolent colleagues over at the Two Bits Processor Project, always encourage commenting on our modulations, or creating a modulation of your own.