So, after one year of read-write time about computers I thought of having a Mastodon première of The User Condition, a looong text on computer agency and behavior. Here's the link, enjoy:
https://theusercondition.computer/
Of course I'm profoundly grateful for the help that I received from all of you people here (check acknowledgements at the bottom).
Needless to say, I welcome feedback, criticism, bug/misspells reports and whatever else comes to mind :)
quick and dirty txt to
converter https://silviolorusso.github.io/txt2hackertype/
this line resonates so much with me. I've been busy with survivorship bias and hidden failure for years now. I even built my own failure archive! http://kickended.com
"Patents are a rich archive of inventions, most of which fail. Patent offices are archives of failure, of disillusion."
"[…] it is vital to remember that the great majority of things are invented, innovated, made, and used without in any way affecting how society sees itself. In fact, the problem is that when we think in ‘technology,’ we think of those things which have been so represented, giving us a very distorted and misleading impression."
Brilliant interview with David Edgerton about the concept of 'technology' in design. http://www.revistadisena.uc.cl/index.php/Disena/article/view/31435/24351
h/t @rra
Climate Anxiety Is an Overwhelmingly White Phenomenon by Sarah Jaquette Ray
'The prospect of an unlivable future has always shaped the emotional terrain for Black and brown people, whether that terrain is racism or #climate change. Climate change compounds existing structures of injustice, and those structures exacerbate climate change. Exhaustion, anger, hope—the effects of oppression and resistance are not unique to this climate moment. What *is* unique is that people who had been insulated from oppression are now waking up to the prospect of their own unlivable future.'
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-unbearable-whiteness-of-climate-anxiety
world politics, facebook
This story is starting to blow up. A fired Facebook whistleblower documented how world leaders are using fake engagement on FB to manipulate, deceive, and harass citizens.
- https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/apr/12/facebook-loophole-state-backed-manipulation
rabbit hole of the day:
the Web Dictionary of Cybernetics and Systems, http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ASC/INDEXASC.html
Take this def. of autonomy: "the condition of subordinating all changes to the maintenance of the organization. Self-asserting capacity of living systems to maintain their identity through the active compensation of deformations." (Maturana and Varela, 1979)
insightful article on millennials' "page parking" behavior (I do it too): https://www.nngroup.com/articles/multi-tab-page-parking/
Got interviewed, on among others: magic, software, 'post-digital' vs. 'new media', DIY culture & collectives, futures of art, the Crapularity, design as social experiment, dark sides of 'openness', artistic research:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42438-021-00225-9
#DIY #art #artisticresearch #FLOSS #crapularity #design #postdigital
Happy to announce 2 new PhD positions for the ERC project @securityvision : https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/vacatures/2021/q1/21-146-8574-phd-candidates-in-international-political-sociology Looking for candidates with a proven track record in research and filmmaking, interested in the politics of computer vision.
Here's a little text I wrote on the ghostly status of #design featuring Ruha Benjamin, Bruno Munari, Processing and… Slimer https://networkcultures.org/entreprecariat/ghostly-design/
Finally starting to escape the google docs lock-in: the main problem is that I have most of my slides there. But now I've reached such a level of frugality in presentation design that any software will do. The key feature for me is: smart copy paste of images. Nice to have: animated gif support. What I'm testing now is Nextcloud with Good Cloud as provider. The software they use is called Only Office and it seems decent to me…
"Non barattiamo i nostri dati per i loro servizi!"
In home page di https://repubblica.it l'imperdibile video inchiesta di chi cerca alternative ai giganti del web.
Fra gli interventi ci sono interviste a @lealternative, Stefano Quintarelli @quinta, i Fridays for Future @fffitalia, Gael Duval di e.os @gael e al sottoscritto come fondatore di https://mastodon.uno e membro dei https://devol.it
Si parla fra gli altri di #peertube, #mastodon, #devol e di #efoundation
#computers, #work, #videogames, and a bit of #linux | toots in #it & #en | he/him | #nohumans