II. Dialogues on Knowledge in Society - Part Two

Virtuality and the Knowledge Question: Complete collection of papers presented at the Workshop held at the World Social Forum in March 2006 at Karachi. (pdf format)

The New Command and the Knowledge Question

(This is the invitation issued for write-ups, presentations, participation in the workshop.)

Virtual Domain: Questions related to knowledge have assumed radically new dimensions with the emergence of the virtual world. We shall not attempt to define what is a virtual domain or a virtual world. Is it the network society? Is it the world of Internet? Is it the world of those who have access to the Internet? Is it the world of just those who have started spending a lot of time and doing a host of activities on the Internet? Is it the new world of knowledge activity, power play and finance? We have heard of virtual community, virtual society, virtual forest, virtual experiment and what not. The idea and reality of the 'virtual' is in the making. The Internet (www) came into existence in 1990. So we shall not attempt a definition of the virtual. However it is already perhaps an acknowledged fact that it is now the commanding domain. The activity, development, interaction, formulation, transaction, creation, invention, discovery, collaboration, criticism etc. in the virtual world have taken lead and tend to give direction to human activity everywhere, ...finance, science, art, entertainment, name any.

Knowledge in Society: Knowledge in Society may be seen as knowledge in different locations - like the university and research institutions, monasteries of different traditions, media, artisans, peasants, ethnic social formations, social movements, ideological formations etc. These are places where people engage in a variety of activities - productive, religious, artistic, scientific and others. Their activities exhibit paradigms of knowledge that are different from one another. Another way of saying this would be that they have different bodies of knowledge, with different structure and logic, values, ontologies, ways of thinking and speculation.
Such knowledge in society, other than in universities and research institutions, is often described as just empirical, cumulative, practice-based, and even superstitious. But then these qualifications stem from a point of view that belongs to an era which is perhaps drawing to a close. We, who have great regard for people's knowledge, lokavidya, or generally knowledge in society, believe that it is not in need of criteria external to it because it is embedded in the life of people at large where correctness and legitimacy has a time-testing criterion (a real life consistency and delivery criterion). But in so far as this knowledge is applied in broader contexts, these criteria themselves are open to contention and dialogue.

Hierarchy and Emaciation: Virtuality seems to legitimise all traditions and locations of knowledge while elevating itself to a higher position from where all knowledge is sorted and organised. In the process it creates a new hierarchy in the sphere of knowledge. It is not merely a structural rearrangement of locations but entails a certain emaciation or atrophy of knowledge in society. They are now seen as places of genuine human activity only to the extent and in the manner they relate to virtuality. Can we propose a radical equality of all knowledge locations as the basis of a future democratic society which is also at peace with virtuality?

Knowledge Dialogue: Is virtuality the new location of the unity of the ruling classes of the world? Has virtuality broken the concept of a community as a face-to-face society? Is virtuality a new reality or is the virtual world only a world of representations? How do we start addressing these questions? One way perhaps is to construct a universe of knowledge dialogue that is simultaneously a political, economic, and philosophical dialogue. This requires that no strict paradigm of knowledge be allowed to govern the initial premises or the boundary conditions.
The knowledge dialogue that we are suggesting therefore can take place in a universe of knowledge traditions and locations where none is superior or inferior to another, virtuality included, and by a method which recognises theoretical constructs only in a mode of transcendence, that is, the method involves transcending one's own theoretical constructs. It is in some such knowledge space that this dialogue is being proposed.

Participation/Contributions: Contributions can take various points of departure and attempt to address the question of virtuality or knowledge in society, or the relationship between them. Writings that do not take explicitly the context of virtuality are also welcome. Most welcome will be contributions written in a non-technical language. Short stories or narratives or even other forms of artistic creations may help in creating fresh spaces of epistemic activity, not held down by the given knowledge paradigms.
Topics can range from the question of property and knowledge, violence and virtuality, art and science to knowledge and information, innovation and freedom, law and virtuality to money and finance, cities and media, and so on.

In what follows, we have formulated an illustrative list of questions:

In what sense is virtuality altering our concepts of property? Present debates on intellectual property rights seem to be largely governed by considerations of economics, law and politics. Are fresh questions being thrown up in regard to the relationship between private property and alienation? Is property now related to some new form of alienation and human activity? Will addressing such questions be relevant to reconstructing the debate on politics of emancipation?   Is virtuality just a new location for organisation or a radically new mode of organisation? Is there a relation between this question and images of new architecture of human settlements? Is the concept of network essential to it or just a contingent expression?   How is virtuality reshaping scientific research and institutions? Is the organisation of science changing in a far-reaching manner? What implications does it have for scientific practice?   Is network society the virtual society? Is weakening of the boundaries of the nation-state because the ruling classes are reconstituting themselves through a new unity in the virtual space? What is the consequence of such understanding for both the politics that there is and the politics of emancipation?   In what sense is virtual real? Are human sensibilities, physical, aesthetic and ethical simulated in the virtual space? Does it add only a new dimension to human existence or transform it altogether?   Would art now be as respectable as science in the world of knowledge? That is, does virtuality legitimise not only different locations of knowledge as suggested, but also create legitimate space for art in the epistemic world?   Knowledge in society is related to livelihood activity of the people without often being mediated by business. Does the virtual realm also provide such scope?   Software as knowledge, knowledge as software? What does the primacy of software imply for knowledge?

06-12-2005

Sunil Sahasrabudhey