TWO BITS, HASTAC, and The Cultural Significance of Free Software

HASTAC is very proud to have helped to sponsor and supportChristopher M. Kelty's important new book TWO BITS: THE CULTURALSIGNIFICANCE OF FREE SOFTWARE. It's a book, its an online presence,it's a blog, it's a virtual book club, it's a movement. You can buy the book here: http://www.dukeupress.edu/books.php3?isbn=978-0-8223-4264-9.

You can read about and join the TWO Bits book club here: http://dukeupress.typepad.com/dukeupresslog/2008/07/ Or you can download free and remix. To download TWO BITS, click here: http://twobits.net/

At HASTAC we first read this important book in manuscript and wantedto be part of the process of multi-modal publishing--in conventional paperback and with an online presence, including moderated contributions by readers, scholars, Free Software advocates. We helped support it, which meant we wereamong those (in a small way) who made it possible for Duke UniversityPress (a nonprofit, of course) to support Chris in all of the online,free download, remix possibilities that he and the Free Softwaremovement could dream up. I mention that not to blow our own horn, butbecause I'm both a True Believer in the Free Software movement and alsoaware that unpaid labor, rip offs, and jeopardizing nonprofit organizations whoalready face enormous challenges in this economy is not a common good. "Free" is one of those words that, behind the scenes, can cost a wholelot of money, time, energy, and dedication of someone. HASTAC wanted to be partof this vision of a collaborative production, wanted to be part of anexperiment in multiple ways of book distribution, and wanted to supporta really terrific manuscript.

NB: Our own publication, of the firstHASTAC conference, is also available from LULU, a self-publishingsource from which you can buy or download and remix. We are trying to explore many forms of publication and want to hear from others who are trying different forms of publication as well. As I've noted previously in blogs, the "free" in that LULU book was actually ten months of intense voluntary labor plus work by several people who were on our HASTAC staff and one Research Assistant who came in and did all of the myriad things--organizational, copyediting, proofreading, design, all that--that a press would normally do. The end result is good but none of the team was a professional publisher so "free" meant a lot of labor, paid and voluntary, and a publication that couldn't possibly conform to all the normal rules and professional standards of academic publishing.

That's one form of publishing hybrid in this transitional moment for all forms of publishing. We learned so much from that process, including that none of us is a professional editor. It was humbling.

Chris Kelty's book is something quite different. It is a fully professional book in every way, a gorgeous university press publication, beautifully produced by pros. AND it has online supplementary components for participation, modulation, remixing, downloading. It's not so much a new model of electronic publishing as a traditional model of scholarly book publishing with an add-on of a free, downloadable version with an online website that is interactive and collaborative. Again "free" is interesting since, of course, adding this "free" component also cost lots of time and money.

However, it will be interesting to learn what happens. What is the ratio of books sold in the conventional paperback university press version and what downloaded for free onto either someone's laptop or onto paper someone supplies (neither of which, of course, is "free" either). Also, will the online version encourage sales of the paperback or take away? How will that be measurable? Will excitement about the download help spread word about the book in a terrible book environment where there are fewer and fewer reviewing media out there? And does internet word translate into sales? Does this blog mean someone actually will "click here" and order the book? All of these are part of an interesting experiment by Duke University Press, Chris Kelty, and HASTAC wants to learn from this experiment too. Thus our support and participation, both in helping to defray a very small amount of the costs (to support "free" downloading) and in spreading the word. In the end, we hope to learn more about how much free costs.

So what is TWO BITS about? For those who haven't read it yet, you are in for a treat. It's smart, it's written in an engaged and engaging style, it's intellectual scope is huge, and it moves between technology and the people who create those technologies, with a sophisticated awareness that "technology" is never just a tool, a thing, but a complex of social uses, practices, and communities. TWO BITS is an ethnography of the people and practices of the Free Software developer community, those who collaborately create software source code and make it openly and freely available through activist and sometimes unconventional copyright practices. The impact has been huge on music, film, science, education, and all forms of publishing. Kelty's interest is in all aspects of the culture of Free Software, including the creation of a public sphere---"recursive publics."

The specific sites Kelty examines: an Internet healthcarestart-up company in Boston, media labs in Berlin, youngentrepreneurs in Bangalore. He analyzes technologies, a moral vision, and a mission to create and distribute free software that binds together hackers, geeks, lawyers, and otherFree Software advocates. They share source code, conceptualize openness, write copyright licenses, coordinate collaboration, and proselytize the Free Software movement.

They are, in a real sense, descendants of Tim Berners-Lee who created the World Wide Web as a free and open space. They are fellow travelers with activist groups such as Creative Commons, a nonprofitorganization that creates copyright licenses, and Connexions, a projectto create an online scholarly textbook commons.

HASTAC, of course, works with Creative Commons Licensing. To find out more, click here: http://creativecommons.org/

At HASTAC we first read this important book in manuscript and wanted to be part of the process. We helped support it, which meant we were among those (in a small way) who made it possible for Duke University Press (a nonprofit, of course) to support Chris in all of the online, free download, remix possibilities that he and the Free Software movement could dream up. I mention that not to blow our own horn, but because I'm both a True Believer in the Free Software movement and also aware that unpaid labor, rip offs, and jeopardizing nonprofits who already face enormous challenges in this economy is not a common good. "Free" is one of those words that, behind the scenes, can cost a whole lot of money, time, energy, and dedication. HASTAC wanted to be part of this vision of a collaborative production, wanted to be part of an experiment in multiple ways of book distribution, and wanted to support a really terrific manuscript. (Our own publication, of the first HASTAC conference, is also available from LULU, a self-publishing source from which you can buy or download and remix.).

Big congratulations to Chris Kelty and Duke University Press! To download TWO BITS, click here: http://twobits.net/

To purchase: http://www.dukeupress.edu/books.php3?isbn=978-0-8223-4264-9

To download ELECTRONIC TECHTONICS: THINKING AT THE INTERFACE (THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL HASTAC CONFERENCE), click here: http://www.lulu.com/content/2124631

------------

[Special thanks to Brennan Moore's photostream on Flickr for these images from the Internet Cult Leaders Talk at Rice University, moderated by Chris Kelty. Please click on the image for the rest of the photostream and full documentation and terms of use. And courtesy of YouTube, below, Chris Kelty talks about TWO BITS.]