On Fri, 04 May 2001 12:24:36 -0400, Kelley Walker wrote: > >> A list member is (presumably) part of the community; Joe User, on >> the other hand, isn't. Often, these Joe Users aren't receptive to >> just being pointed to the relevant information; they need to be >> walked through it. Occasionally, and this is what gets up the nose >> of many technically savvy people, they *demand* to be walked >> through it. > > i think geekazoids ought to take responsibility for participating > in the creation of a culture in which people feel they can't > possibly do it themselves. as much as i happen to agree with the concept that we are responsible for the society in which we live, and that we perpetuate it with our choices (or non-choices), i agree with matt here (surprise, surprise). you keep overlooking some really important components... > shall i tell you about my high school computer course some more. > were those boys/men who treated me as a dumb bimbo blonde at all at > fault for treating me as if i didn't belong there? yes, *but,* i would contend that they were as scared of you as you were "scared" of computers. you invaded their haven (good for you), you should expect that there are costs to that... > geek culture used to--i think that's changing--valorize a kind of > separatism , a kind of nietzschean transvaluation of values that > turns out to be individualist to its core in many ways, despite the > patina of communitarianism. somehow, i always get the feeling that we are defining individualism differently. lots of time when you are observing individualism in "geeks," what you are seeing is their anti-social tendencies. one could argue that this tendency has been foisted upon them, but i think by the time one goes geek, they really choose that degree of anti- social behavior. that does *not* mean that geeks are anti-social. they aren't. they are just anti-social in conventional modes of social behavior. since you're sharing, i'll make the point: last year, i went to defcon, the ietf meeting in pittsburgh and that political convention in philly back-to-back over a period of eight days. i was only at defcon for two days, and i only went because i had said i would. i had to give a presentation before my working group at the ietf, so i couldn't hang around. so i didn't socialize. to be honest, i spent most of my time in vegas preparing for my presentation in pittsburgh, but i heard a few lectures and met a few people (phatal being the key one). after defcon was over, i got a few emails criticizing my anti-social behavior, which i thought kinda interesting. geeks want to hand with eople they think they can learn something from. they want to associate with people they see like themselves. it's just everyone else they avoid. their "individualism" reflects that dichotomy. so does their "communitarianism." > frankly, i find the tendency to individualize the whole thing as if > individuals who don't "get it" are morally bankrupt pretty damn > ridiculous for lefties who are supposed to have some sort of > ability to provide _structural_ explanations for social phenomena. well, if you think of geekism as an offshoot of the "science revolution," you will understand. since the advent of the bomb, society has pulled scientists (and it should be self-evident that i am thinking of physical scientists) into the public debate, looked to them for answers, and *some* scientists have responded. not all, but some. same thing is true of hackers. indeed, the transition from the science community to the hacker community is quite gentle; the terminology may not be the same, but it is comfortable, nonetheless. On Fri, 4 May 2001 18:08:05 -0400, Doug Henwood wrote: > >>> So how do the developers support themselves? Do they have >>> day jobs? >> >> Yes. Sometimes those day jobs are working on free software, >> either for internal consumption or for clients. Say the company >> I work for need a Frobnitz added to the gcc compiler in order to >> do some task or other. I get paid by my company to add the >> Frobnitz for our internal business reasons and then contribute >> the changes back to the maintainers who can then incorporate >> them into a future gcc distro. My company has gotten what it >> needs, I've gotten paid, and the gcc user community has a new >> feature. This is how most of this stuff gets done. > > So it's not much of a model for a better society on any large scale > then, is it? no more than the community at los alamos was (or is). while i think there is a (human) tendency to universalize your own experience, i also think that -- at least in america -- society looks to emulate the latest, greatest communities for whatever reason. > Not that I think it's a bad way of dealing with the present, but > it's basically free riding on other people's resources, no? not if they are freely given. the ietf is a long-standing community that really should be studied... ac ''' (0 0) ----oOO----(_)---------- | the geek shall | | inherit the earth | -----------------oOO---- |__|__| || || ooO Ooo ------------------------------------------------------------ FREE EMAIL from AUSI at http://ausi.com