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What I Like About SDF
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Well ... that was quite the autumnal funk, but I
seem to be coming out of it now. And a good thing
too, just in time for the holidays.
And just in time for my two-year anniversary here
on SDF. Admittedly, the coming celebrations of
Christmas and New Year's will at least _somewhat_
overshadow the anniversary of my MetaArpa
membership, but still, it should not pass
unremarked. And to that end, I dedicate this
phlog post to the topic in the headline.
I must first acknowledge that some part of my
liking for SDF is rooted in sheer nostalgia. SDF
really does an excellent job of (re-)creating an
idealized version of the university computing
environment I experienced in the 1990s, one that I
had thought gone forever now that university IT
has become, of necessity, so much more locked down
and corporate.
Tilde accounts! Personal web space! Gopher! Emacs,
Pine and Mutt! Heck, even Kermit! Hooking up with
SDF was a bit like coming home, in that
respect. Throw in some lingering traces of BBS
culture (bboard!), and what's not to like?
But you have to be careful with nostalgia. While
there is nothing wrong will indulging the
nostalgic impulse from time to time, one must keep
a sense of perspective. Some things really were
better back then (eg, the Net wasn't yet overrun
with scams and advertising) but some things
weren't (computers were harder to use and networks
were a lot more expensive and a lot less reliable,
etc, etc). Not all the changes have been for the
worse.
So rather than celebrate SDF as a kind of living
museum, keeping alive a few relics of a bygone age
(which fair enough - that would be worthwhile, I
do like museums) I would instead like to celebrate
it as a living alternative, or collection of
alternatives, to the mainstream corporate
Internet. A kind of "road not taken" thought
experiment, where instead of outsourcing
university computing to the private sector it was
allowed to live and grow alongside the commercial
Internet, and so retain its unique identity. An
identity rooted in its past, but not bound by it.
And the nature of that identity ... ? One that
encourages learning and exploration. One where the
nature of the system is not so buried in layers of
abstraction that it is virtually impossible to
divine its inner workings from the applications
and services running on top of it. A system that
doesn't coddle you too much, because it assumes
you'll be able to learn a few keystroke commands
if you need to. A hackable system built on open
protocols and free software (for the most part). A
system where text, not multimedia, still reigns
supreme.
Since joining SDF, I've set up a personal web
site, tried out gemini (didn't take), participated
in a few bboard discussions (mostly in scifi),
joined mastodon.sdf.org, and now I'm trying out
gopher. And there's so much more I haven't done
yet! Really must get it together for one of those
Plan 9 boot camps next year ...
In the meanwhile, I wish everyone here all the
best for the holidays.
