Re:tfurrows, sketches & enterprise/fellowship .moji
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Thanks tfurrows for the positive reply to my post re sketches on
computational culture. Glad to have contributed something
stimulating/refreshing to the Zaibatsu, where I find myself very much
in awe of the folks here and all the good things being developed.
re squatting:
Don't get me wrong: it's not as though before the criminalisation of
residential squatting meant that this kind of living would go
unnoticed, or not prompt some intervention from landlords, the
council, sometimes folks in the neighborhood and, ultimately,
bailiffs. It's just that there were legalities similar to the
squatters rights you write about in Arizona[1]. The specific ins and
outs of what these rights, I couldn't tell you. But similar to what
you say in terms of a certain length of time and occupancy re
ownership status. But also, key I think, was the absence of blanket
illegality. This meant that the practice itself was possible, to
varying degrees: that groups of people would find unused properties,
bring new life to them, and often live relatively off-grid in this way
for many years. Of course, these individuals and communities faced
their own internal struggles and changing lifestyles, no doubt, but
there was a time when for many people, squatting was an option - and
opened up possibilities. In terms of the clamp-down, I think more than
anything it was the rising value of properties in locations that had
been historically poorer and less desirable as a sale, now very
marketable.
In terms of the US squatting scene, I enjoyed Kim Stanley Robinson's
fantastic 'Green Earth' trilogy and wonder how much the squatter-types
encountered in those novels reflect real communities in the US.
re self-hosting & stability:
'...we rose up from where we were, and we can do it again'
Thank you so much for your words here - you really put my mind at
rest. I'm trying to appreciate more the 'ephemeral' nature of these
systems as well. Something I read on sloum's phlog[2] stuck with me in
this regard recently: '...communities grow and die...(an inevitable
part of any kind of social space).' This helped make it clearer to me
that perhaps a design that embraces this kind-of ephemeral nature is a
design that entails freedom and also reflects our communities that
come and go as we grow, change, diverge, explore, etc.
And *this* got me thinking very much about the Dennis Ritchie quote in
cmccabe's awesome pubnix research article[3] (and it's appearances on
the Zaibatsu server):
"What we wanted to preserve was not just a good environment in which
to do programming, but a system around which fellowship could form."
This note on fellowship made me realise that my compass was a bit off
in some aspects of my earlier post[4], in particular where I'm talking
about systems scaling and Web technologies. When I consider this
notion of fellowship, and technical communities that are both about
delivering technical developments (e.g. the zaibatsu, very much a
beehive of activity lately) and the fellowship around, through and
within those developments, it's clear this kind-of project is very
different to the, perhaps 'consumer-facing' developments of the Web or
the Net. Over the past few days I've been considering this as a
disparity between 'fellowship' and 'enterprise' thinking in regards to
technical communities. This has coincided with some slightly stressful
job-hunting where I've been coming up a lot against terms like 'agile'
and 'UX' and many of these current trends that I'd now broadly
consider to be 'enterprise' thinking in the mainstream of tech
development. Yes it's certainly true that I think technical
communities need to help fix or improve the Web, but now I'm also
wondering whether actually this kind-of 'fellowship' is an entirely
different technical life that is itself a divergence or way out of
enterprise/enterprise thinking.
* * *
I want to echo trashHeap on trying to be more focused[5]. I've got a
lot going on with job and flat hunting, but at the start of the year I
have reminded myself of all the things I want to learn and pursue.
Recent time spent on the Zaibatsu has been really humbling, to be
around such talented technical tinkerers and programmers. I thought
for a minute that I was perhaps a bit in the wrong place, given how
lacking my own skills were, but actually being around you all has, I
think, spurred me to get more organised in my approach to pursuing
learning programming and improve my skills on *nix systems, which
certainly aren't complete beginner, but aren't advanced either.
Watching the developments in homebrew software has been inspiring.
Last year I made the big mistake that all the guides/advice tells you
not to do: when sitting down to get into programming, I ended up...
configuring my working environment (VIM/EMACS? etc), self-hosting a
software dev environment (Phabricator), spent some time dwelling on
whether/how to work locally or on my home servers, which ended up
prompting me to learn git (this was a useful detour, mind) and then
not getting so much of the programming-learning actually done. This
year I'm trying to develop a more structured approach within the
content of coding and try to forget about all the context (though,
hey, I did finally end up with a whole little personal setup that I'm
completely happy with... (...except for that atom color scheme, is
that the right one?!:p)). It's helped that I just got super-organised
on all my job hunting, phd application and other 'life admin' tasks.
And now I'm trying to work in a kind-of daily and weekly routine on
learning. If anyone has any tips in this regard, I'm all ears - hmu @
the Zaibatsu.
~ moji
[1]
gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space:70/0/~tfurrows/phlog/2019-01-02_replyMoji.txt
[2]
gopher://circumlunar.space:70/0/~sloum/phlog/20181210-22.txt
[3]
https://cmccabe.sdf.org/files/pubax_unix.pdf
[4]
gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space:70/0/~moji/phlog/20190101-sketch1.txt
[5]
gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space:70/0/~trashHeap/phlog/2019-01-05#040Trying#040to#040Be#040More#040Focused.txt
