>>
>>Remember through all the smoke and mirrors, that originally Kelley was
>>on a rant over geeks, hackers and cyberspace.
excuse me chuck, but if you could bother yourself to read what i've typed, my rant was not *against* geeks but against an argument that they are 1. generous and that we should thank them for distributing all that free code [0] and 2. that the open source movement was an unproblematic indicator of that generosity, portrayed rather unidimensionally and 3. about arguments here that open source is the fulcrum of some radical change in politics born of the unique social organization of work in the OSM.
that was what i was ON about. it had nothing to do with hostility to geeks, hackers or cyberspace. i am pretty geeky myself, but i'm many other things, include kinda soccer mom housewifey, tomboyish as keachie always imagined and a real femme as frances once told me, an academic/intellectual, a sociologists, and a snit. i date a geek and someone who, while not proficient coding hacker, is certainly a hacker in many respects otherwise. my being on is THEORETICAL in its objection, an objection born of mostly watching and listening to and reading geeks, hackers talk about politics and their political inclinations. it is also an aobjection born of reading lefties regarding the nature of osm and what it might mean and stand for and become.
i see no connection between their work environment and their politics. in fact i read more often than not, a social darwinism kind of politics born of their work environment and disgust for losers who don't get down in the trenches like they do and learn all that there is to learn and do with code and so forth. i see a group of people who often blame microsoft's success ON lusers who don't know better. i see that kind of social analysis of why microsoft is successful as fundamentally ignorant and hostile to ordinary people. no one blames the power of automobilie companies on the ignorance of consumers in the same sort of way.
>> My suggestion was that
>>any one interested in that world should get an open source OS, install
>>it in a throw away box, and see for themselves what all the noise is
>>about. Consider it field work.
the day that you do all the it takes to be in the nitty gritty swing of things regarding sociology instead of reading soc101 about norms and then think you know what is going, on, is the day that i will bother to take you seriously.
and finally, you know nothing about me or what i do or know, so i'd suggest that you think long and hard before you assume i'm incapable of what you assume i'm ingnorant of. you know no such thing. your assumption that i am and the assumption of others in that regard is highly problematic.
i work 70 hours a week, raise a kid, try to have a relationship, and work on a dissertation in my spare time. i am not unlike a lot of other people who work long hours and juggle work with family, friends, and school. you might consider that you have a unique life and ability to do the things that you do and that you should examine the reasons why you have that privilege of time and others don't. that's where some of the problems lie. once you can do that chuck, you might have some compassion for other people and you won't end up personifying tom mackey's portrayal.
kelley