I caught a short bit of an NPR news piece the other day, in which they
invterviewed the author of a book about the Los Angeles Library fire of
1986 [1].  The fire destroyed some 200,000+ books and left the library
closed for several years.  In addition to the obvious sadness about losing
so many books, what struck me was a comment the author made about the loss
of a public space.

This caught my attention because it resonated with previous ideas I've
heard about public space from Noam Chomsky and more generally in the social
science literature.  According to some, decreasing availability of public
space in modern society corresponds to the marginalization of
citizen-directed forms of social organization.  When individuals organize,
they are powerful -- and that power is often "inconvenient" for
un-democratic forces.

Public spaces in modern society traditionally include things like town
squares, public parks, streets, and libraries.  In these places,
connections can be made; things can happen; people can organize in support
of actions that communities want.  But generally, there aren't a lot of
expectations about what you're "supposed to do" there.  There are some
pseudo-public places as well, like shopping malls; but these come with the
expectation that you will be a well-behaved consumer when you're there.

Although I hadn't made this connection before, the notion of public access
gnu/linux systems [2] as public spaces feels good to me; systems like SDF
or CS.  They have the characteristics of a public place, but one not
bounded by geography.

But like physical public places, many non-commercial online public spaces
have been largely squeezed out by commercially-oriented pseudo-public
places such as Facebook.  It takes more effort, more openness, more
thought, to use CS or SDF, and the path of least resistance is probably one
reason places like Facebook are so popular.  But they're bad for democratic
society, and they've lost something important compared with their older,
non-commerical, command-line-based counterparts.

This gopher entry is really just a mental bookmark for me on this topic.
I'd like to come back to it and put some deeper thought into it.  And as
always, I'd also be curious to hear what others think about it.

Not surprisingly, Wikipedia has an entry on public space too [3].  It would
be cool to see some type of representation of public access gnu/linux
systems there.

--

[1] https://www.npr.org/2018/10/13/656896695/mystery-of-a-massive-library-fire-remains-unsolved-after-more-than-30-years
(full disclosure: I still haven't heard more of it than I caught in my car)

[2] I've taken to calling them public access gnu/linux systems after a
valuable and highly appreciated interaction I had with Richard Stallman on
a paper I previously wrote.  The more common term is, of course, public
access unix systems; but I increasingly support the significance of
highlighting GNU, especially in modern systems.

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_space