[HacktionLab] ogg camp

Tue Jun 21 17:32:52 UTC 2011

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Hi

I'm partly feeling guilty that I started a discussion that has led to
some bad feeling. But also positive that some good & interesting points
have given me some food for thought.

> by agreeing with
> someone else's comment that there could be value in some tech 
> activists
> thinking a bit more politically

That was roughly what I said, but in the context of (warning - false
dichotomy coming up) tech activists supporting political activists to
think a bit more about tech. I think there's room & need for both in
general, but the scale of the need varies greatly from person to person.

In terms of taking things forward, I'm not so sure that more emails at
this time will create solutions (but I'm certainly not trying to
restrict conversation - just putting my view - for what it's worth - out
there).

For me, I think I'll take a step back to reflect [1]. But I will bear
this conversation in mind when I'm next planning some sort of
political-tech-activist thing and try to get people who are more towards
each end of the false dichotomy together (face to face if possible) and
see what practical ideas come up.

Cheers

G

[1] I have a simple way of reflecting. It's a bit like floatation
therapy, but without getting wet. http://ox4.org/~graham/reflect.jpg

On Tue 21 Jun 2011 18:15:10 BST, Zoe Young [zoe at esemplastic.net] emailed
subject: "Re: [HacktionLab] ogg camp" saying ...

> hi again,
> I'd been going to leave  this be, as there's little left for me to add
> and I'm not making myself very popular... but then I saw this:
> 
> On 21/06/2011 17:32, Ben Green wrote:
>>
>> Quoting Sy <sytaffel at riseup.net>:
>>
>>> On 21/06/11 10:34, hacktionlab-request at lists.aktivix.org wrote:
>>>> I don't even want particularly to be 'included in techies'
>>>> processes' so much as
>>>> to know that design of the most important of those processes are
>>>> starting from the needs and desires of ordinary activists, particularly
>>>> those with a lot less techy knowledge and interest than me..
>>>>
>>> This seems like a deeply problematic approach to me.
>>
>> Me too, coders and users are one community. Don't expect to have a say
>> in software where you aren't contributing to the community.
>>
> and it raises questions about people who don't fit into this community
> very well
> 
> What if you are - or have been - contributing as much as you could to
> the 'community', and yet you lose energy, partly because you feel that
> you aren't being heard? Do you still have no right to a say?
> 
> What if you don't have the courage, confidence, access, time, language,
> ability, awareness etc to contribute to the 'community' in the first
> place? Do you still have no right to a say?
> 
> What if you really, really want to use free software, and to find a way
> to contribute to the community within your particular limitations, but
> you haven't found a way that fits the way you are in the world, your
> immediate concerns and forms of action?
> 
> what real encouragement, facilitation is there for such outsiders to
> make ourselves heard? how can we realistically contribute to a community
> if we are, for any reason not comfortable stepping into it, eg attending
> a barncamp is a step far too far for most activists?
> 
> this is basically why I started this discussion - by agreeing with
> someone else's comment that there could be value in some tech activists
> thinking a bit more politically .. which I understood in terms of paying
> attention to who tends to be excluded by certain ways of working, and
> how this could be rebalanced a little further in the future...??
> 
> just asking difficult questions really - sorry. better crawl back under
> my stone now.
> 
> Happy Solstice!
> 
> xx Z
> 
> 
>> I think though Sy that you seem to saying that Free software is really
>> good, whereas in fact lots of it sucks. Lightworks is in Beta and not
>> even available for Linux. LibreOffice has a sucky spreadsheet
>> implementation. Crabgrass is a pain in the arse. Ubuntu is not stable
>> enough and Debian is not accessible enough. These are all opinions of
>> course, but I'm not the only one with them by a long shot.
>>
>> Free sofware takes longer to make because we need to find ways for a
>> large number of unpaid people to collaborate. Because of that we need
>> to build small components which work together and can be independently
>> maintained. We also end up scrapping large frameworks because they
>> just don't do what we want anymore. It all takes time. We don't really
>> yet have methodologies for deciding how to improve these structures
>> either.
>>
>> Ah, if only providing nice GUIs was all we needed in Free Software,
>> we'd probably be there by now. Things is, Free Software is getting
>> better, getting stronger. We can speed that up by using it with
>> tolerance of it's faults and contributing to the development. Free
>> Software is not a service.
>>
>> Woops, bit of a rant there.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> ==
>> From Ben Green
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> HacktionLab mailing list
>> HacktionLab at lists.aktivix.org
>> https://lists.aktivix.org/mailman/listinfo/hacktionlab
>>
> 
> 

- -- 
penguin

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