the re-emergence of the guild, pt one
over the past while i’ve been brushing up on my history of craft for a course i’m teaching in september, and i keep coming back to an idea that first emerged back in the winter. i’m glad it wasn’t lost, and regret that it’s only now i’m getting to it ‘cos i think it might be neat. i’d love to know what you think.
a broad swath of the tech-and-media-enabled communities that we see and participate in today demonstrate patterns that relate quite strongly to various guild systems of the past, collecting, controlling and propagating both codified and experiential knowledge to direct members and indirect affiliates.
more after the jump…
historically, guilds existed to create and share innovative developments and specific forms of knowledge – such as the practices of goldsmithing or stonemasonry or other recording of ideas into tangible form. guilds primarily relied on the manipulation and transformation of materials into social, cultural, economic, political or military capital, and were key in the emergence of money and credit as goods were produced and exchanged on larger and larger scales, across greater geographic territories and cultures. the ability to utilize a raw material’s transition into a cultural artifact with high economic value was highly prized and, in cases such as the medieval guilds, extremely protected within a particular guild.
access to those communities required commitment and authenticity - and i don’t think mastery was never truly acquired as your learning never really ended – there were always new problems to solve, new tools that worked better, new materials, new processes and, perhaps most importantly, new socio-economic factors like war, drought or flooding, political upheaval or cultural desire. the hard, repetitive (yet mentored) labour of apprenticeship eventually led to a deeper understanding of the physical and social possibilities of a material, and in turn masters then took on apprentices to invent, innovate and share knowledge, strengthening the capability of the guild. knowledge, and the skills to implement and innovate upon it, was the most powerful competitive advantage you could have. the guilds controlled the production and flow of knowledge, embodied primarily in the goods whose trade fuelled the economies of just about every culture.
sound familiar? looking at the innumerable communities that have emerged and exploded, in large part due to what people are doing with web/mobile technology, over the past 15 years or so, it’s apparent that their underlying social and economic structures are guild-like. i hesitate to say that they’re absolutely guilds in the historical sense, because there’s alot of historical baggage attached to the word, but i think that because most guilds responded to and reflected the nature of the culture they were a part of the same could be said for the current situation. and by communities i think they run the gamut from facebook to barcamp to assignment zero to WoW to cyworld to random piles of unfolded socks. practice, proximity, interest, play, circumstance, values – all of the explicable and inexplicable things that gather people together.
some of the key similarities between past and present…that knowledge is the most resilient form of currency, paralleled with the capability to use/share it. that entrance into a new community usually takes the form of noobs learning from community champions/experts, slowly gaining insight and experience into the context of a group, reifying their knowledge through increased participation and building upon it through their actions. that mastery requires continual feedback, self-awareness and engagement with others, with yourself and the subject at hand. that innovation and invention need support and equally curious minds to understand it.
some critical differences…
i don’t think knowledge is controlled or distributed in the same way – which has multiple implications. yay for access, self-organized literacy and cultural empowerment, boo for unequal distribution and access, loss of tacit knowledge (the difference between learning to ride a bike by reading about it or by actually doing it), and accelerating pressures to acquire knowledge.
also that current guild communities are a lot more flexible and fluid than their predecessors – the materials that were so central to the survival of a guild have receded, leaving knowledge and ideas – like a flexible frame of a house before it’s dressed in brick. this lack of materiality translates into community that is codified firstly by ideas, then the tangible artifacts that are embedded with meaning.
more soon.
