<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body>
<address align="CENTER"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://web.archive.org/web/20140712120815/http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Illich/Silence.html">https://web.archive.org/web/20140712120815/http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Illich/Silence.html</a><br>
</address>
<h1 align="CENTER">Silence is a Commons by Ivan Illich</h1>
<h3 align="center">Computers are doing to communication<br>
what fences did to pastures<br>
and cars did to streets.</h3>
<h2 align="center">by Ivan Illich</h2>
<p>Minna-san, gladly I accept the honour of addressing this forum on
Science and Man. The theme that Mr. Tsuru proposes, "The
Computer-Managed Society," sounds an alarm. Clearly you foresee
that machines which ape people are tending to encroach on every
aspect of people's lives, and that such machines force people to
behave like machines. The new electronic devices do indeed have
the power to force people to "communicate" with them and with each
other on the terms of the machine. Whatever structurally does not
fit the logic of machines is effectively filtered from a culture
dominated by their use.</p>
<p>The machine-like behaviour of people chained to electronics
constitutes a degradation of their well-being and of their dignity
which, for most people in the long run, becomes intolerable.
Observations of the sickening effect of programmed environments
show that people in them become indolent, impotent, narcissistic
and apolitical. The political process breaks down, because people
cease to be able to <i>govern </i>themselves; they demand to be
<i>managed.</i></p>
<p>I congratulate Asahi Shimbun on its efforts to foster a new
democratic consensus in Japan, by which your more than seven
million readers become aware of the need to limit the encroachment
of machines on the style of their own behaviour. It is important
that precisely Japan initiate such action. Japan is looked upon as
the capital of electronics; it would be marvellous if it became
for the entire world the model of a new politics of
self-limitation in the field of communication, which, in my
opinion, is henceforth necessary if a people wants to remain
self-governing.</p>
<p>Electronic management as a political issue can be approached in
several ways. I propose, at the beginning of this public
consultation, to approach the issue as one of <b>political
ecology</b>. Ecology, during the last ten years, has acquired a
new meaning. It is still the name for a branch of professional
biology, but the term now increasingly serves as the label under
which a broad, politically organized general public analyzes and
influences technical decisions. I want to focus on the new
electronic management devices as a technical change of the human
environment which, to be benign, must remain under political (and
not exclusively expert) control. I have chosen this focus for my
introduction, because I thus continue my conversation with those
three Japanese colleagues to whom I owe what I know about your
country - Professors Yoshikazu Sakamoto, Joshiro Tamanoi and Jun
Ui.</p>
<p>In the 13 minutes still left to me on this rostrum I will clarify
a distinction that I consider fundamental to political ecology. I
shall distinguish the <i>environment as commons </i>from the <i>environment
as resource. </i>On our ability to make this particular
distinction depends not only the construction of a sound
theoretical ecology, but also - and more importantly - effective
ecological jurisprudence Minna-san, how I wish, at this point,
that I were a pupil trained by your Zen poet, the great Basho.
Then perhaps in a bare 17 syllables I could express the
distinction between the <i>commons </i>within which people's
subsistence activities are embedded, and <i>resources </i>that
serve for the economic production of those commodities on which
modem survival depends. If I were a poet, perhaps I would make
this distinction so beautifully and incisively that it would
penetrate your hearts and remain unforgettable. Unfortunately I am
not a Japanese poet. I must speak to you in English, a language
that during the last 100 years has lost the ability to make this
distinction, and - in addition - I must speak through translation.
Only because I may count on the translating genius of Mr.
Muramatsu do I dare to recover Old English meanings with a talk in
Japan.</p>
<p>"Commons" is an Old English word. According to my Japanese
friends, it is quite close to the meaning that <i>iriai</i> still
has in Japanese "Commons," like <i>iriai, </i>is a word which,
in preindustrial times, was used to designate certain <i>aspects
</i>of the environment. People called commons those parts of the
environment for which customary law exacted specific forms of
community respect. People called commons that part of the
environment which lay beyond their own thresholds and outside of
their own possessions, to which, however, they had recognized
claims of usage, not to produce commodities but to provide for the
subsistence of their households. The customary law which humanized
the environment by establishing the commons was usually unwritten.
It was unwritten law not only because people did not care to write
it down, but because what it protected was a reality much too
complex to fit into paragraphs. The law of the commons regulates
the right of way, the right to fish and to hunt, to graze, and to
collect wood or medicinal plants in the forest.</p>
<p>An oak tree might be in the commons. Its shade, in summer, is
reserved for the shepherd and his flock; its acorns are reserved
for the pigs of the neighbouring peasants; its dry branches serve
as fuel for the widows of the village; some of its fresh twigs in
springtime are cut as ornaments for the church - and at sunset it
might be the place for the village assembly. When people spoke
about commons, <i>iriai, </i>they designated an aspect of the
environment that was limited, that was necessary for the
community's survival, that was necessary for different groups in
different ways, but which, in a strictly economic sense, was <i>not
perceived </i>as <i>scarce.</i></p>
<p>When today, in Europe, with university students I use the term
"commons" (in German <i>Almende </i>or <i>Gemeinheit, </i>in
Italian <i>gli usi civici) </i>my listeners immediately think of
the eighteenth century. They think of those pastures in England on
which villagers each kept a few sheep, and they think of the
"enclosure of the pastures" which transformed the grassland from
commons into a resource on which commercial flocks could be
raised. Primarily, however, my students think of the innovation of
poverty which came with enclosure: of the absolute impoverishment
of the peasants, who were driven from the land and into wage
labour, and they think of the commercial enrichment of the lords.</p>
<p>In their immediate reaction, my students think of the rise of a
new capitalist order. Facing that painful newness, they forget
that enclosure also stands for something more basic. The enclosure
of the commons inaugurates a <i>new ecological order: </i>Enclosure
did not just physically transfer the control over grasslands from
the peasants to the lord. Enclosure marked a radical change in the
attitudes of society towards the environment. Before, in any
juridical system, most of the environment had been considered as
commons from which most people could draw most of their sustenance
without needing to take recourse to the market. After enclosure,
the environment became primarily a resource at the service of
"enterprises" which, by organizing wage-labor, transformed nature
into the goods and services on which the satisfaction of basic
needs by consumers depends. This transformation is in the blind
spot of political economy.</p>
<p>This change of attitudes can be illustrated better if we think
about roads rather than about grasslands. What a difference there
was between the new and the old parts of Mexico City only 20 years
ago. In the old parts of the city the streets were true commons.
Some people sat on the road to sell vegetables and charcoal.
Others put their chairs on the road to drink coffee or tequila.
Others held their meetings on the road to decide on the new
headman for the neighbourhood or to determine the price of a
donkey. Others drove their donkeys through the crowd, walking next
to the heavily loaded beast of burden; others sat in the saddle.
Children played in the gutter, and still people walking could use
the road to get from one place to another.</p>
<p>Such roads were not built for people. Like any true commons, the
street itself was the result of people living there and making
that space liveable. The dwellings that lined the roads were not
private homes in the modern sense - garages for the overnight
deposit of workers. The threshold still separated two living
spaces, one intimate and one common. But neither homes in this
intimate sense nor streets as commons survived economic
development.</p>
<p>In the new sections of Mexico City, streets are no more for
people. They are now roadways for automobiles, for buses, for
taxis, cars, and trucks. People are barely tolerated on the
streets unless they are on their way to a bus stop. If people now
sat down or stopped on the street, they would become obstacles for
traffic, and traffic would be dangerous to them. The road has been
degraded from a commons to a simple resource for the circulation
of vehicles. People can circulate no more on their own. Traffic
has displaced their mobility. They can circulate only when they
are strapped down and are moved. </p>
<p>The appropriation of the grassland by the lords was challenged,
but the more <i>fundamental transformation </i>of grassland (or
of roads) from commons to resource has happened, until recently,
without being subjected to criticism. The appropriation of the
environment by the few was clearly recognized as an intolerable
abuse By contrast, the even more degrading transformation of
people into members of an industrial <i>labour force and into
consumers </i>was<i> </i>taken, until recently, for granted.
For almost a hundred years the majority of political parties has
challenged the accumulation of environmental resources in private
hands. However, the issue was argued in terms of the private
utilization of these resources, not the distinction of commons.
Thus anticapitalist politics so far have bolstered the legitimacy
of transforming commons into resources.</p>
<p>Only recently, at the base of society, a new kind of "popular
intellectual" is beginning to recognize what has been happening.
Enclosure has denied the people the right to that <i>kind </i>of
environment on which - throughout all of history - the <i>moral
economy of survival </i>had been based. Enclosure, once
accepted, redefines community. Enclosure underlines the local
autonomy of community. Enclosure of the commons is thus as much in
the interest of professionals and of state bureaucrats as it is in
the interest of capitalists. Enclosure allows the bureaucrats to
define local community as impotent - <i>"ei-ei schau-schau!!!" </i>-
to provide for its own survival. People become economic
individuals that depend for their survival on commodities that are
produced <i>for them. </i>Fundamentally, most citizens'
movements represent a rebellion against this environmentally
induced redefinition of people as consumers.</p>
<p>Minna-san, you wanted to hear me speak on electronics, not
grassland and roads. But I am a historian; I wanted to speak first
about the pastoral commons as I know them from the past in order
then to say something about the present, much wider threat to the
commons by electronics.</p>
<p>This man who speaks to you was born 55 years ago in Vienna. One
month after his birth he was put on a train, and then on a ship
and brought to the Island of Brac. Here, in a village on the
Dalmatian coast, his grandfather wanted to bless him. My
grandfather lived in the house in which his family had lived since
the time when Muromachi ruled in Kyoto. Since then on the
Dalmatian Coast many rulers had come and gone - the doges of
Venice, the sultans of Istanbul, the corsairs of Almissa, the
emperors of Austria, and the kings of Yugoslavia. But these many
changes in the uniform and language of the governors had changed
little in daily life during these 500 years. The very same
olive-wood rafters still supported the roof of my grandfather's
house. Water was still gathered from the same stone slabs on the
roof. The wine was pressed in the same vats, the fish caught from
the same kind of boat, and the oil came from trees planted when
Edo was in its youth.</p>
<p>My grandfather had received news twice a month. The news now
arrived by steamer in three days; and formerly, by sloop, it had
taken five days to arrive. When I was born, for the people who
lived off the main routes, history still flowed slowly,
imperceptibly. Most of the environment was still in the commons.
People lived in houses they had built; moved on streets that had
been trampled by the feet of their animals; were autonomous in the
procurement and disposal of their water; could depend on their own
voices when they wanted to speak up. All this changed with my
arrival in Brac.</p>
<p>On the same boat on which I arrived in 1926, the first
loudspeaker was landed on the island. Few people there had ever
heard of such a thing. Up to that day, all men and women had
spoken with more or less equally powerful voices. Henceforth this
would change. Henceforth the access to the microphone would
determine whose voice shall be magnified. Silence now ceased to be
in the commons; it became a resource for which loudspeakers
compete. Language itself was transformed thereby from a local
commons into a national resource for communication. As enclosure
by the lords increased national productivity by denying the
individual peasant to keep a few sheep, so the encroachment of the
loudspeaker has destroyed that silence which so far had given each
man and woman his or her proper and equal voice. Unless you have
access to a loudspeaker, you now are silenced.</p>
<p>I hope that the parallel now becomes clear. Just as the commons
of space are vulnerable, and can be destroyed by the motorization
of traffic, so the commons of speech are vulnerable, and can
easily be destroyed by the encroachment of modem means of
communication.</p>
<p>The issue which I propose for discussion should therefore be
clear: how to counter the encroachment of new, electronic devices
and systems upon commons that are more subtle and more intimate to
our being than either grassland or roads - commons that are at
least as valuable as silence. Silence, according to western and
eastern tradition alike, is necessary for the emergence of
persons. It is taken from us by machines that ape people. We could
easily be made increasingly dependent on machines for speaking and
for thinking, as we are already dependent on machines for moving.</p>
<p>Such a transformation of the environment from a commons to a
productive resource constitutes the most fundamental form of
environmental degradation. This degradation has a long history,
which coincides with the history of capitalism but can in no way
just be reduced to it. Unfortunately the importance of this
transformation has been overlooked or belittled by political
ecology so far. It needs to be recognized if we are to organize
defense movements of what remains of the commons. This defense
constitutes the crucial public task for political action during
the eighties. The task must be undertaken urgently because commons
can exist without police, but resources cannot. Just as traffic
does, computers call for police, and for ever more of them, and in
ever more subtle forms.</p>
<p>By definition, resources call for defense by police. Once they
are defended, their recovery as commons becomes increasingly
difficult. This is a special reason for urgency. </p>
<hr>
<p><i>Ivan Illich is doing to computers what he did to education
(De-Schooling Society, 1971), to energy (Energy and Equity,
1974), to medicine (Medical Nemesis, 1975), and to sex roles
(Vernacular Gender, 1983). Each time it has been radical
analysis that changes our perception of what is really going on.
Each time, and with growing clarity, it is an
economic/historical analysis having to do with the idea of
scarcity as a means of exploitation. This article is from
Illich's remarks at the "Asahi Symposium Science and Man - The
computer-managed Society," Tokyo, Japan, March 21, 1982. The
ideas here are part of a book Illich is working on, The History
of Scarcity.</i></p>
<p>- Stewart Brand </p>
<p>The CoEvolution Quarterly, Winter 1983</p>
</body>
</html>