The work I do

(en;–)

Bildschirmfoto 2015-02-06 um 00.10.46

Lately i get more often asked about my work and motivations – as Artist & „Open Source Economist“. Why, What for, How & …? I post 4 quotes below. In between those you can capture a good portion of my motivation.

1
„In the future  … does not remain about the big, genius designer but it is more about the network – about architectures of collaboration and participation.“  Anab Jain (Superflux)
2
„It is not my goal to have everything made open source, but to allow the people/the public to discuss about it.“
3
“I aim to design settings, where new knowledge about economy can emerge from.”
4
“Open Source is the tool I use for my work (at this moment). – Because it is open and ready to be used by anyone, for every purpose.”

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Explanations:

About 1

The thought expressed here is older then the quote by Anab Jain. We discussed it already in the university around 2004 and other people probably way earlier. Don’t have the time to search for an early origin, so I took the youngest source I came across. Quote Source

About 2

This is of course a rephrase of the famous Edward Snowden quote about his motivation: “I don’t intend to destroy those systems [NSA surveillance technology] but to allow the public to decide whether they should go on.” My Quote Source

About 3

Since I dropped out of the university in 2007 I almost always use this sentence to start pitches about my work/ongoing project. “Es geht darum, Settings zu designen, in denen neues Wissen über Wirtschaft entsteht – emergiert!” And it is still the center.

The understanding of “emergence” in this context is to look for something that cannot be anticipated or foreseen upfront sitting on a desk. The technique is to create spaces for people that offer new possibilities to act. And if people decide to enter these spaces new „stories“ appear. Stories become knowledge. The Wikipedia offered a new possibility to act in 2001. And people took it. The resulting story did not fit with the models economists had in their books or what Science-Fiction authors had thought about or forseen.

About 4

Obviously :-)

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by Enver Hirsch (c)