Log: Solidarity

As AI slop begins to become omnipresent, curation and support will be more important than ever. I think we can carry this anxiety that our artistic efforts will cease to exist if we are replaced by machines.

Here is the thing though: if we collectively decide not to let that happen, it won't. If we continue to buy art and support endeavors we believe in, those endeavors can continue to be.

That's why I think that, today, it is more important than ever to support compelling independent projects and to promote them. That way, we can build the society that we want: one in which artists can thrive without having to resort to tools that go against their ethics.

Recently, I've made an effort to end many of my subscriptions, for example Spotify, and then spend that money instead on artistic, tech, or social projects that speak to me. That does limit my access to popular media, but at least I am more mindful about what I consume.

Recently, Andrea and I booked tickets to go to South Africa. In various Bantu languages, there exists the term ubuntu, which roughly translates to I am because we are. I am excited to learn more about this idea when we are there. For now, the definition I found online really speaks to me, ubuntu "encompasses the interdependence of humans on one another and the acknowledgment of one's responsibility to their fellow humans and the world around them" (Wikipedia). I think the philosophy that underpins ubuntu may be very relevant to face the questions and challenges of our times.

-Marc

Portability is a very underrated quality.

Typically, we have a set of a few tools that help us get on with our life: maybe that is a GPS, a messaging platform, a design tool, etc. When the tool we use is only available on one platform, then we are coerced into using only that platform and ceding our agency to it. When we have software that is portable, however, we are free to leave a platform and choose another. It therefore empowers the user, giving us a voice (and a choice).

Portability and compatibility tend to be the lowest of priorities for a tech company, that is unless companies find themselves obliged to build software with these two qualities in mind.

One way to make modern toolmakers prioritise portability and compatibility is by setting regulation and standards. While some argue against these type of impositions on businesses, portability and compatibility standards would also benefit companies as they would also be able to make use of the diverse tools built around these standards. However, companies would need to relinquish control, the very same control that has been taken away from users. This generates an interesting phenomenon by which adding some restrictions to what we can do when we run businesses, allows us more choice and freedom in other ways.

Another force to provoke change is through consumer demand and the market. The dominance of Internet Explorer once made it so that developers accounted only for the specifications and needs to run on Internet Explorer, making access to the internet via other browsers more difficult, and at times impossible. Internet Explorer could also leverage its dominance to set standards that permitted it to perpetuate its monopoly and, in a way, force individuals to use it. However, the growth of alternative browsers eventually forced developers to account for more than one browser. It also forced Internet Explorer to start playing nice, as it could no longer solely influence the established standards.

It might be worth asking ourselves how portable a piece of software is when we choose to use it, as well as reflect on the degree to which depending on certain software can lock us into one way of doing things or into a closed ecosystem controlled by a single vendor. And not just the software itself, but also the data it generates.

- Marc

After a week of sunny blue skies, the rain has returned and so have the clouds. As it should be, it is only early March after all.

But we had so much fun in the sun, and that is how I believe Marc and I will remember Château de Feÿ. The view over the valley, the white stone (blinding in the daylight), the soft grass, the smoke of the barbecue, the forest. Or will it be the perpetual fog of late January and the muddiness of the earth that remain?

There is a near perpetual extravagance to what goes on at Feÿ, at least at first glance. Themed parties, cyber-workshops, spontaneous art installations, ghosts and AI-oracles. And yet, the magic of the château has revealed itself to me, over time, in its quietest corners and most mundane minutes. Like sharing a cooking shift, a cup of coffee, a ride into town, a wagon on the train from Joigny. It is on that train that I have ultimately felt at home at Feÿ, leaving and returning in the company of others that have shared the experience of the château. It makes me look forward to a return, someday.

- Andrea

There are now more birds in Paramytha than when we first arrived. They sing from a scenery that is now greener due to the rains that have arrived with them and with the end of summer. The days are still warm, but the nights are fresh—now populated by new scents, awakened by the humidity that has set in.

When it rains, it pours, and that’s exactly what has happened in Limassol. During a recent, sudden thunderstorm, a tornado was spotted near the city. All the while, the air has been heavy with dust and particles swept up from the Sahara. Coughing, cold, soaked, it has been hard to not feel like Cyprus is testing me. Every time I try to crawl out of sickness, weariness, stress, there is a new challenge to face.

But this post is not really about that. Not directly. It is about the day after the storm, when I headed out to the local taverna for a Halloumi wrap. Milos Taverna was a bit emptier than usual, the lights dimmer. The two men who seem to run the place were hard at work in back room. Something seemed off.

It turned out that the thunderstorm and wind had produced leaks, flooding parts of the taverna and shutting them down for the day. But even so, they insisted on making me something. There was a bit of dry charcoal leftover, after all!

That small act of kindness, despite the big headache they were dealing with, really touched me. I felt guilty too, after all, running a business is tough. I didn’t want to put them through more trouble, and I wondered how I could tip them as a thank you. But when it came time to pay, the owner handed me the pita and told me it was on the house.

It seems like these past few days after the rain, I notice glints and glimmers of this sort of kindness all around. A kind word from an old professor, genuine curiosity about my work from a stranger, a joke from the barista at the usual café.

In spite of winds, dust storms, viruses, and the weight of a day like today, glimmers of kindness persist and remind me of the things that are worth nurturing and protecting.

- Andrea

One of the most beautiful ideas behind the original Unix, that I think has unfortunately gotten lost and is now underrated, is the idea of a form of collective computing. People would gather as a group and collectively build tools. The way Dennis Ritchie described it:

"What we wanted to preserve was not just a good environment in which to do programming, but a system around which a fellowship could form. We knew from experience that the essence of communal computing, as supplied by remote-access, time-shared machines, is not just to type programs into a terminal instead of a keypunch, but to encourage close communication."

Using a collection of simple tools, users would then be able to bring these together on time-shared machines and build solutions to meet the needs of their communities.

Another obvious advantage to collectively owned computers is that you retain ownership from the bigger companies, while at the same time still unlock better optimization permitted by scale. For instance, these collective computers can live in geographically advantageous regions. For example, Solar Protocol directs users to whichever server has the most sunlight.

There are a lot of advantages to empowering users to fix issues themselves, rather than someone fixing their problems for them. I wrote about it extensively in my essay The Curse of Convenience. I also see with the new LLM models a resurgence of this idea in Maggie Appleton's essay about home-cooked software. Personally, I am skeptical that LLM's will enable this revolution, but I think her essay is still worth a read!

Today, there is a communal computing system that exists, it is the SDF. It has been around since the 1987, and it is definitely marketed towards a technical audience. It hosts a set of collective computers that any member can use for any purpose (within reason). With it, people have set up a Lemmy instance and a Mastodon instance. It also comes with a free email account and a shell you can SSH into and do any kind of programming that you want.

Personally, I use SDF to host my notes with git. Doing that was as simple as ssh user@tty.sdf.org -t mkdir notes && cd notes && git init. Once done, I am able to access these notes from my phone or my laptop, wherever I happen to be. To clone it locally, I just run git clone user@tty.sdf.org:~/notes. I also hang out at their Lemmy instance.

- Marc