Re: [NetBehaviour] Know Your Filesystem (and how it affects you)

2015-10-28 Thread Aymeric Mansoux
Hello!

Thanks Dave for the text and cheers to Furtherfield for publishing it as
well as hosting this discussion.

I'm very much looking forward to tomorrow's event. Actually, some of the
points discussed in this thread so far, relate quite closely to the
topic of my presentation for RWX, namely how nowadays modes of
production and social structures are sandboxed both at a technological
and juridical level.

Some of my comments below are derived from this idea:


Rob Myers said :
> Xanadu was started a decade before the Star project, and Computer
> Lib/Dream Machines was published in 74. There may be something to the
> idea of epochs, or at least eras. :-)
>
> [...] 
>
> UNIX's file/directory system is no more "natural" than DOS/Windows'
> version with the slashes going the other way. They and the desktop
> file/folder metaphors contrast with other historical filesystems: BeOS's
> database, VMS's versioned file system, the Lisa's search system, the
> original Mac's flat list of files. It's more weird that UNIX won than
> that other systems do it differently.

There has been a Cambrian explosion of OS research during the 60s
up to the early 80s, but the rise of the computer industry made it so
that such diversity was only seen as a pool of competitive products from
which a few were meant to survive. The Unix-like operating systems
won unintentionally this race because they had a simple way to implement
portability, time-sharing, process interoperability and showed promises
of standardisation (the latter which led to a big failure during the
so-called Unix wars), but most importantly Unix benefited from a
proto-free software distribution model in its early days, and this
benefited a lot to AT to turn it into a commercial product once the
telco, liberated from its monopoly position, was able to sell its UNIX
branded software, after a decade of development and distribution as part
of a "fellowship" (term employed by Unix authors themselves). Within
this fellowship the social structure linked to the production of
software was closely informed and reflected from news ideas in computer
science, most notably the notions of library and utility (that were
initially explored in Project MAC during the mid-60s), and became quite
explicit with Unix, where cooperation and collaboration followed similar
patterns of modularity and reuse in the couples software-software,
human-software, and human-human.

If Bell Labs had tried to turn Unix into a commercial product right away
in the early 70s and if its development had depended exclusively on its
immediate commercial success, I am not sure if Unix would have been so
widely present nowadays. Maybe there is a parallel universe where smart
phones are not Unix based (like Android, iOS) but instead Lisp machines?
:)

Anyway, from a technical perspective, as the preface of the UNIX-haters
handbook says, from the top of my head, Unix won because it was "good
enough", and that's also why an OS like Plan 9 which was supposed to
replace Unix eventually never got adopted because Unix like systems were
doing just fine with the odd duct tape fix every now and then.

In fact it is quite interesting to realise that much of the smartness
described below...


Dave Young said :
> > I find the use of the term "smart operating systems" strange. 
> 
> The term 'smart phone', like 'cloud computing', is the produce of the
> dark arts of corporate tech marketing, happily echoed by the likes of
> The Verge, Engadget, Guardian Tech, etc.
>
> [...]


... is built on top of development approaches where it is quite common
to avoid qualifying tools as "good" but as "sucking less" than others,
and where the playful cleverness of the hacker cohabits with crude hacks
and piles of temporary fixes, and where ultimately, methods such as Keep
It Simple Stupid (KISS) contrasts with whatever smartness is added
during the marketing stage. To some extend an automagical tech slogan
like "it just works!" could easily be reversed to another interpretation
as something that in fact *merely and barely* works.

So indeed it should not be a surprise that todays computational culture
is reduced to the making and polishing of fanciful user interfaces and
user experience, UI and UX, and ...


> I think we are really losing the entitlements that come with
> user-agency and tool-ownership as a consequence of these
> 'smart operating systems' and their reluctance to share their
> dirty laundry (filesystems, background processes,
> data-caching, and so on) with us - should we ask them to.

... as a strategy to hide the dodgy business behind these facades.

In that regard the way Android permissions and sandboxing are
implemented on top of the Unix user/group system is quite illustrative
of both the crudeness and flimsiness of these things and how the notion
of home folders and user files has became completely irrelevant in the
age of smart phones being in fact dumb terminals for remote services.
And of course this very 

Re: [NetBehaviour] Know Your Filesystem (and how it affects you)

2015-10-25 Thread Dave Young
Hi Marc,

> But when you say a "sense of agency/ownership is important", I cannot
> help thinking of comparisons relating to land restriction and its
> ownership, and privatization of our spaces. This is where issues around
> boundaries come to the fore and a critique about us living in a
> proprietary based society, historically, socially, culturally,
> psychically and technically (analogue and digital).

The point I was making about ownership was intended to focus on the
closed relationship between the system/interface and its user, rather
than the relationship between one user and the next. At the moment, I
get a sense that we are more tenants of our devices - while the hardware
can be purchased, the OS is provided to us as a kind of 'service', and
there is an impact on our autonomy associated with that relationship. So
when I say 'ownership' I am not at all calling for enclosure, I am more
calling for autonomy - to allow us to be root users, to use Android
without the overly intrusive Google Play Services or to say 'never' to a
software update, to freely install a different OS on the device, for
instance.

> I find the use of the term "smart operating systems" strange. 

The term 'smart phone', like 'cloud computing', is the produce of the
dark arts of corporate tech marketing, happily echoed by the likes of
The Verge, Engadget, Guardian Tech, etc.

>  From this
> standpoint the term "smart operating systems" looks like a euphemism or
> feels like doublespeak, when really it could lean more towards 'unsmart'
> as we become more needy of technology but not able to delve into its
> structures and frameworks, break away from its protocols. Perhaps we are
> "human operating systems" being engineered by the technology.

It is precisely a euphemism. The Operating System is only "smart",
because it gives the impression that it is taking care of the labour of
computer use on your behalf, so you can focus on simply enjoying the
"content".

I quite like the challenge of developing an unsmart or anti-smart OS.
What would that look like? Perhaps a question for one of the RWX
worksession groups next week. :)

Cheers,
Dave


> 
> On 21 October 2015 at 23:15, Dave Young  > wrote:
> 
> Hi Marc and all,
> 
> Thanks for the quote & question! To draw a minor correlation between my
> text and this Illich quote – Illich wrote Tools for Conviviality in the
> early 1970s, the same time the first GUI (Xerox Alto, later Star OS)
> operating system was being developed. So it's interesting to think that,
> while he writes at a time not too long ago but before even the personal
> computer and the GUI, his comments are very easily read within the
> present context where mass production quickly brings to mind the
> manufacturing of information. His ideas about isolationism, destruction
> of 'community' and relentless individuation recur frequently in
> contemporary net criticism, and his declaration that “corporate
> endeavours which thus threaten society cannot be tolerated” is
> especially resonant these days, with Google's rebranding etc.
> 
> I think the shell metaphor is also quite fitting. What I wanted to get
> at in the text was that any interface acts as an enclosure: it presents
> options to the user, but in the end these parameters are designed and
> constrained - some possibilities of user-responses/interactions must be
> omitted, and we shouldn't readily consider these omissions to be inert
> gestures but moments where interaction is governed. I think the
> interfaces of Android, iOS/OSX, and Windows have been moving towards
> what Illich might have considered a “man-made shell” for quite some time
> already - our shifting perspective on the filesystem is to me emblematic
> of this. The more we find ourselves within this shell, perhaps the less
> we consider our devices (laptops, tablets, phones, etc) as tools? I have
> the impression that, when it comes to tool-use, a sense of
> agency/ownership is important. I think we are really losing the
> entitlements that come with user-agency and tool-ownership as a
> consequence of these 'smart operating systems' and their reluctance to
> share their dirty laundry (filesystems, background processes,
> data-caching, and so on) with us - should we ask them to.
> 
> Regards,
> Dave
> 
> On 21/10/15 12:26, marc garrett wrote:
> > Hi Dave,
> >
> > I've been reading your article 'Know Your Filesystem (and how it
> affects
> > you)', and I'd like to ask a question...
> >
> > The article reminds me Ivan Illich's 'Tools for Conviviality'...
> >
> > In his book, he says "Society can be destroyed when further growth of
> > mass production renders the milieu hostile, when it extinguishes the
> > free use of the natural abilities of society's members, when it
> 

Re: [NetBehaviour] Know Your Filesystem (and how it affects you)

2015-10-25 Thread John Hopkins

Hei Dave -


Maybe for the RWX worksession we can borrow your comment and proudly
begin development on a new mobile platform - "Stupid F**king OS".


hehe, GO FOR IT!


So long as you don't trademark it first, that is. ;)


got my Stupid F**king™ lawyers all over that one...

!!!

JH


--
++
Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD
grounded on a granite batholith
twitter: @neoscenes
http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/
++

___
NetBehaviour mailing list
NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org
http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour


Re: [NetBehaviour] Know Your Filesystem (and how it affects you)

2015-10-25 Thread Dave Young
Hi John,

Maybe for the RWX worksession we can borrow your comment and proudly
begin development on a new mobile platform - "Stupid F**king OS".

So long as you don't trademark it first, that is. ;)

Cheers,
Dave


On 25/10/15 16:24, John Hopkins wrote:
> 
>> It is precisely a euphemism. The Operating System is only "smart",
>> because it gives the impression that it is taking care of the labour of
>> computer use on your behalf, so you can focus on simply enjoying the
>> "content".
> 
> Hah! I suppose we can begin to reverse this trend by referring to such
> devices as "stupid f**king phones" or "goddam idiotic computer" perhaps?
> It's all in the naming, anyway ;-)
> 
> jh
> 
> 
___
NetBehaviour mailing list
NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org
http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour


Re: [NetBehaviour] Know Your Filesystem (and how it affects you)

2015-10-25 Thread John Hopkins



It is precisely a euphemism. The Operating System is only "smart",
because it gives the impression that it is taking care of the labour of
computer use on your behalf, so you can focus on simply enjoying the
"content".


Hah! I suppose we can begin to reverse this trend by referring to such devices 
as "stupid f**king phones" or "goddam idiotic computer" perhaps? It's all in the 
naming, anyway ;-)


jh


--
++
Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD
grounded on a granite batholith
twitter: @neoscenes
http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/
++
___
NetBehaviour mailing list
NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org
http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour


Re: [NetBehaviour] Know Your Filesystem (and how it affects you)

2015-10-22 Thread Dave Young
Hi Rob,

> Xanadu was started a decade before the Star project, and Computer
> Lib/Dream Machines was published in 74. There may be something to the
> idea of epochs, or at least eras. :-)

Xanadu is a fascinating example, and the rules that governed its
development offer a good starting point for any software development
project!

> Does this relate to the idea of "affordances"?

Yes indeed - that certain interactions are streamlined and prioritised,
whereas others are either inordinately complex or simply not presented
to the user as a possibility. The issue here is that it may take a
certain amount of 'technical literacy' to overcome these affordances -
many people do not have the time or the inclination to root their phone,
for instance.

> As we lose the ability to exercise our freedom we also lose the
> awareness that we can?

I think this is true, but also the incredibly powerful sense of
seduction around these devices means that people may not actually -want-
freedom in the first place. Many would rather a beautiful object in rose
gold with the latest hype feature (fingerprint sensors, 4k selfie
cameras...)

Olia Lialina has a very interesting perspective on the erosion of user
agency in Turing Complete User -
http://contemporary-home-computing.org/turing-complete-user/

> At the same time that apps and search are firewalling users from
> filesystems more and more, Git, Urbit, IPFS, and other modern
> distributed/versioned/cryptogrphically secured filesystems are putting
> filesystems beyond the control of locked-down software and making them
> truly distributed tools for storage and communication. Escaping the
> lockdown in this way is good, at least relative to that lockdown.

This is a good topic for a follow up. I just barely touched on
distributed storage in the text, and mainly from a negative 'cloud'
perspective. It is true that there are some very interesting
alternatives, but often they are quite technical and exist outside of a
practical workflow for the mainstream user.

> On a related note, where has "View Source" gone in mobile web browsers?

Certainly a related note - and a good question.

> - Rob.
> 
> ___
> NetBehaviour mailing list
> NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org
> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
> 
___
NetBehaviour mailing list
NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org
http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour


Re: [NetBehaviour] Know Your Filesystem (and how it affects you)

2015-10-22 Thread marc garrett
Hi Dave & all,

Thanks for answering the last question.

I just want to respond by unpacking some of the terms used in your
paragraph below, and then see where it takes us...

>The more we find ourselves within this shell, perhaps the less we
>consider our devices (laptops, tablets, phones, etc) as tools? I have
>the impression that, when it comes to tool-use, a sense of
>agency/ownership is important.

>I think we are really losing the entitlements that come with
>user-agency and tool-ownership as a consequence of these
>'smart operating systems' and their reluctance to share their
>dirty laundry (filesystems, background processes,
>data-caching, and so on) with us - should we ask them to.

Much of the language used to promote technology mystifies it into
abstraction and is not usually helpful in bringing people closer towards a
deeper level of 'user-agency and tool-ownership'. For example 'the cloud'
literally gives us the impression of a cloud that is floating above us and
untouchable, almost godly. In reality the function is different. It is
digital data in 'physical storage' on multiple units/servers/computers
usually at various locations in the world, owned and managed by hosting
companies.

But when you say a "sense of agency/ownership is important", I cannot help
thinking of comparisons relating to land restriction and its ownership, and
privatization of our spaces. This is where issues around boundaries come to
the fore and a critique about us living in a proprietary based society,
historically, socially, culturally, psychically and technically (analogue
and digital).

If we were to take a Evgeny Morozov stance - in his eyes we are prisoners
of these laptops, tablets, phones; via surveillance, self tracking, and
gamification, and we are drowning under the weight of acceleration, through
technological determined domination.

I find the use of the term "smart operating systems" strange. There are
different ways to looking at things, and we can use other people's ideas as
a lens to bring about a different perspective. Sometimes I use George
Orwell's classic text 'Politics and the English Language' as a testing
ground and thoughtful barometer to see what something can look like under
its critically informed, no nonsense metering. From this standpoint the
term "smart operating systems" looks like a euphemism or feels like
doublespeak, when really it could lean more towards 'unsmart' as we become
more needy of technology but not able to delve into its structures and
frameworks, break away from its protocols. Perhaps we are "human operating
systems" being engineered by the technology.

What do you think?-)

Wishing you well.

marc

On 21 October 2015 at 23:15, Dave Young  wrote:

> Hi Marc and all,
>
> Thanks for the quote & question! To draw a minor correlation between my
> text and this Illich quote – Illich wrote Tools for Conviviality in the
> early 1970s, the same time the first GUI (Xerox Alto, later Star OS)
> operating system was being developed. So it's interesting to think that,
> while he writes at a time not too long ago but before even the personal
> computer and the GUI, his comments are very easily read within the
> present context where mass production quickly brings to mind the
> manufacturing of information. His ideas about isolationism, destruction
> of 'community' and relentless individuation recur frequently in
> contemporary net criticism, and his declaration that “corporate
> endeavours which thus threaten society cannot be tolerated” is
> especially resonant these days, with Google's rebranding etc.
>
> I think the shell metaphor is also quite fitting. What I wanted to get
> at in the text was that any interface acts as an enclosure: it presents
> options to the user, but in the end these parameters are designed and
> constrained - some possibilities of user-responses/interactions must be
> omitted, and we shouldn't readily consider these omissions to be inert
> gestures but moments where interaction is governed. I think the
> interfaces of Android, iOS/OSX, and Windows have been moving towards
> what Illich might have considered a “man-made shell” for quite some time
> already - our shifting perspective on the filesystem is to me emblematic
> of this. The more we find ourselves within this shell, perhaps the less
> we consider our devices (laptops, tablets, phones, etc) as tools? I have
> the impression that, when it comes to tool-use, a sense of
> agency/ownership is important. I think we are really losing the
> entitlements that come with user-agency and tool-ownership as a
> consequence of these 'smart operating systems' and their reluctance to
> share their dirty laundry (filesystems, background processes,
> data-caching, and so on) with us - should we ask them to.
>
> Regards,
> Dave
>
> On 21/10/15 12:26, marc garrett wrote:
> > Hi Dave,
> >
> > I've been reading your article 'Know Your Filesystem (and how it affects
> > you)', and I'd like to ask a 

Re: [NetBehaviour] Know Your Filesystem (and how it affects you)

2015-10-21 Thread Dave Young
Hi Marc and all,

Thanks for the quote & question! To draw a minor correlation between my
text and this Illich quote – Illich wrote Tools for Conviviality in the
early 1970s, the same time the first GUI (Xerox Alto, later Star OS)
operating system was being developed. So it's interesting to think that,
while he writes at a time not too long ago but before even the personal
computer and the GUI, his comments are very easily read within the
present context where mass production quickly brings to mind the
manufacturing of information. His ideas about isolationism, destruction
of 'community' and relentless individuation recur frequently in
contemporary net criticism, and his declaration that “corporate
endeavours which thus threaten society cannot be tolerated” is
especially resonant these days, with Google's rebranding etc.

I think the shell metaphor is also quite fitting. What I wanted to get
at in the text was that any interface acts as an enclosure: it presents
options to the user, but in the end these parameters are designed and
constrained - some possibilities of user-responses/interactions must be
omitted, and we shouldn't readily consider these omissions to be inert
gestures but moments where interaction is governed. I think the
interfaces of Android, iOS/OSX, and Windows have been moving towards
what Illich might have considered a “man-made shell” for quite some time
already - our shifting perspective on the filesystem is to me emblematic
of this. The more we find ourselves within this shell, perhaps the less
we consider our devices (laptops, tablets, phones, etc) as tools? I have
the impression that, when it comes to tool-use, a sense of
agency/ownership is important. I think we are really losing the
entitlements that come with user-agency and tool-ownership as a
consequence of these 'smart operating systems' and their reluctance to
share their dirty laundry (filesystems, background processes,
data-caching, and so on) with us - should we ask them to.

Regards,
Dave

On 21/10/15 12:26, marc garrett wrote:
> Hi Dave,
> 
> I've been reading your article 'Know Your Filesystem (and how it affects
> you)', and I'd like to ask a question...
> 
> The article reminds me Ivan Illich's 'Tools for Conviviality'...
> 
> In his book, he says "Society can be destroyed when further growth of
> mass production renders the milieu hostile, when it extinguishes the
> free use of the natural abilities of society's members, when it isolates
> people from each other and locks them into a man-made shell, when it
> undermines the texture of community by promoting extreme social
> polarization and splintering specialization, or when cancerous
> acceleration enforces social change at a rate that rules out legal,
> cultural, and political precedents as formal guidelines to present
> behavior. Corporate endeavors which thus threaten society cannot be
> tolerated. At this point it becomes irrelevant whether an enterprise is
> nominally owned by individuals, corporations, or the slate, because no
> form of management can make such fundamental destruction serve a social
> purpose."
> 
> Now, when he says "locks them into a man-made shell" -- it kind of feels
> similar to your own concerns relating to how the filesystem mediates our
> everyday use of computer interfaces and shape our interactions with our
> data and digital tools.
> 
> Do you see a connection between Illich's past, analogue perspective, and
> your own computer orientated position on the matter?
> 
> Thanks Dave ;-)
> 
> wishing you well.
> 
> marc
> 
> Hey!!! In fact, anyone is welcome to join in with these public
> discussions...
> 
> On 21 October 2015 at 11:13, furtherfield  > wrote:
> 
> Know Your Filesystem (and how it affects you)
> 
> By Dave Young.
> 
> Dave Young writes about the context of Localhost: RWX, a symposium
> and worksession at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop from 29-31 October
> 2015. He explores how the filesystem mediates our everyday use of
> computer interfaces, shaping our interactions with our data and
> digital tools.
> 
> 
> http://www.furtherfield.org/features/know-your-filesystem-and-how-it-affects-you
> 
> Dave Young (IE) is an artist and researcher based in Edinburgh. His
> practice follows critical research into digital culture, manifested
> through workshops, website development, and talks on subjects
> varying from cybernetics and the Cold War history of network
> technologies, to issues around copyright and open source/free culture.
> 
> He is founder of Localhost, a forum for discussing, dismantling and
> disrupting network technologies, with past events focusing on
> Google's entry into media art curation, and the role of analog radio
> as a potential commons in the digital age. He has presented
> workshops and given talks at institutions and festivals
> internationally, including at Edinburgh 

Re: [NetBehaviour] Know Your Filesystem (and how it affects you)

2015-10-21 Thread Rob Myers
On 21/10/15 03:15 PM, Dave Young wrote:
> 
> Thanks for the quote & question! To draw a minor correlation between my
> text and this Illich quote – Illich wrote Tools for Conviviality in the
> early 1970s, the same time the first GUI (Xerox Alto, later Star OS)
> operating system was being developed.

Heya.

I loved the article, really good.

Xanadu was started a decade before the Star project, and Computer
Lib/Dream Machines was published in 74. There may be something to the
idea of epochs, or at least eras. :-)

> What I wanted to get
> at in the text was that any interface acts as an enclosure: it presents
> options to the user, but in the end these parameters are designed and
> constrained - some possibilities of user-responses/interactions must be
> omitted, and we shouldn't readily consider these omissions to be inert
> gestures but moments where interaction is governed. 

Does this relate to the idea of "affordances"?

> I think the
> interfaces of Android, iOS/OSX, and Windows have been moving towards
> what Illich might have considered a “man-made shell” for quite some time
> already - our shifting perspective on the filesystem is to me emblematic
> of this. The more we find ourselves within this shell, perhaps the less
> we consider our devices (laptops, tablets, phones, etc) as tools? I have
> the impression that, when it comes to tool-use, a sense of
> agency/ownership is important. I think we are really losing the
> entitlements that come with user-agency and tool-ownership as a
> consequence of these 'smart operating systems' and their reluctance to
> share their dirty laundry (filesystems, background processes,
> data-caching, and so on) with us - should we ask them to.

As we lose the ability to exercise our freedom we also lose the
awareness that we can?

I agree very much that filesystems are a site of history and politics
and a fit subject for critique. I'm really glad to see this article and
discussion.

UNIX's file/directory system is no more "natural" than DOS/Windows'
version with the slashes going the other way. They and the desktop
file/folder metaphors contrast with other historical filesystems: BeOS's
database, VMS's versioned file system, the Lisa's search system, the
original Mac's flat list of files. It's more weird that UNIX won than
that other systems do it differently.

At the same time that apps and search are firewalling users from
filesystems more and more, Git, Urbit, IPFS, and other modern
distributed/versioned/cryptogrphically secured filesystems are putting
filesystems beyond the control of locked-down software and making them
truly distributed tools for storage and communication. Escaping the
lockdown in this way is good, at least relative to that lockdown.

On a related note, where has "View Source" gone in mobile web browsers?

- Rob.

___
NetBehaviour mailing list
NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org
http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour


[NetBehaviour] Know Your Filesystem (and how it affects you)

2015-10-21 Thread furtherfield
Know Your Filesystem (and how it affects you)

By Dave Young.

Dave Young writes about the context of Localhost: RWX, a symposium and
worksession at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop from 29-31 October 2015. He
explores how the filesystem mediates our everyday use of computer
interfaces, shaping our interactions with our data and digital tools.

http://www.furtherfield.org/features/know-your-filesystem-and-how-it-affects-you

Dave Young (IE) is an artist and researcher based in Edinburgh. His
practice follows critical research into digital culture, manifested through
workshops, website development, and talks on subjects varying from
cybernetics and the Cold War history of network technologies, to issues
around copyright and open source/free culture.

He is founder of Localhost, a forum for discussing, dismantling and
disrupting network technologies, with past events focusing on Google's
entry into media art curation, and the role of analog radio as a potential
commons in the digital age. He has presented workshops and given talks at
institutions and festivals internationally, including at Edinburgh College
of Art, V2 Rotterdam, Furtherfield, LiWoLi, and Transmediale. Localhost:
http://l-o-c-a-l-h-o-s-t.com
___
NetBehaviour mailing list
NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org
http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour

Re: [NetBehaviour] Know Your Filesystem (and how it affects you)

2015-10-21 Thread marc garrett
Hi Dave,

I've been reading your article 'Know Your Filesystem (and how it affects
you)', and I'd like to ask a question...

The article reminds me Ivan Illich's 'Tools for Conviviality'...

In his book, he says "Society can be destroyed when further growth of mass
production renders the milieu hostile, when it extinguishes the free use of
the natural abilities of society's members, when it isolates people from
each other and locks them into a man-made shell, when it undermines the
texture of community by promoting extreme social polarization and
splintering specialization, or when cancerous acceleration enforces social
change at a rate that rules out legal, cultural, and political precedents
as formal guidelines to present behavior. Corporate endeavors which thus
threaten society cannot be tolerated. At this point it becomes irrelevant
whether an enterprise is nominally owned by individuals, corporations, or
the slate, because no form of management can make such fundamental
destruction serve a social purpose."

Now, when he says "locks them into a man-made shell" -- it kind of feels
similar to your own concerns relating to how the filesystem mediates our
everyday use of computer interfaces and shape our interactions with our
data and digital tools.

Do you see a connection between Illich's past, analogue perspective, and
your own computer orientated position on the matter?

Thanks Dave ;-)

wishing you well.

marc

Hey!!! In fact, anyone is welcome to join in with these public
discussions...

On 21 October 2015 at 11:13, furtherfield  wrote:

> Know Your Filesystem (and how it affects you)
>
> By Dave Young.
>
> Dave Young writes about the context of Localhost: RWX, a symposium and
> worksession at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop from 29-31 October 2015. He
> explores how the filesystem mediates our everyday use of computer
> interfaces, shaping our interactions with our data and digital tools.
>
>
> http://www.furtherfield.org/features/know-your-filesystem-and-how-it-affects-you
>
> Dave Young (IE) is an artist and researcher based in Edinburgh. His
> practice follows critical research into digital culture, manifested through
> workshops, website development, and talks on subjects varying from
> cybernetics and the Cold War history of network technologies, to issues
> around copyright and open source/free culture.
>
> He is founder of Localhost, a forum for discussing, dismantling and
> disrupting network technologies, with past events focusing on Google's
> entry into media art curation, and the role of analog radio as a potential
> commons in the digital age. He has presented workshops and given talks at
> institutions and festivals internationally, including at Edinburgh College
> of Art, V2 Rotterdam, Furtherfield, LiWoLi, and Transmediale. Localhost:
> http://l-o-c-a-l-h-o-s-t.com
>
>
> ___
> NetBehaviour mailing list
> NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org
> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>



-- 
Marc Garrett
Co-Founder, Co-Director and main editor ofFurtherfield.

Furtherfield - A living, breathing, thriving network
http://www.furtherfield.org - for art, technology and social change since
1997

Furtherfield Gallery & Commons,
Finsbury Park, London N4 2NQ
T +44(0)208 802 1301/+44(0)208 802 2827
M +44(0)7717 887923
www.furtherfield.org
___
NetBehaviour mailing list
NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org
http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour