• [[open letter to the agora]]
• how does it feel to do fractal writing?

2023-04-10

So. This stuff about [[technological determinism]] is very interesting in the Fuchs book. Makes me think about how all the types of tech that I'm interested in come firmly with leftist social relations attached to them. e.g. libre software. Community broadband. Data commons. Without the modifiers, they're just technologies. I think this is important.

I feel that perhaps ICT4S has been quite deterministic in general. Divorcing the technology from the social relations? Perhaps not. Definitely worth exploring.

Governable stacks. Another one. I wonder if you could subsume all of the modifiers into simply 'ecosocialist'. Intersting. Hmm yes, very interesting. They all kind of amount to the same thing.

Agency, social justice, climate justice. Actually they're all missing that last one. They in fact tend to refer more to that first one - agency.

• Community / Commons / Libre / Governable = Agency
• Green / 4S / sustainable = Planetary awareness

So my research is about a merging of those strands perhaps, so in a sense you could potentially just use ecosocialist as the modifier. Maybe not in practice as it might not be as snappy. But in theory, yes.

Federated social media. Kind of about agency, at the nub of it. Platform socialism. Platform coops etc.

So I'm interested in those things where there is at least one of the 3 aspects (agency, planetary boundaries, social equity) and evaluating and filling in the other section. I'm looking at both socialist ICT and green/sustainable ICT and finding the gaps in both of them.

In theory the modifier of 'ecosocialist' is simply ramping up of the 'sustainable development' modifier, as SD purports to be about both social and environmental issues. But in reality it's more than that.

• Monday, 04/10/2023 ** 15:47 Another journal entry to feed to my future search engine. ** 15:47 Through working really fast - the most important distinction in a product isn't whether it uses CSS or JS for events or whether it's hyper optimized and performant or whatever.

99% of what matters is whether the code works or not.

Does the product accomplish its goal?

If not, we can delete and rewrite. The code was quick and sloppy anyways. if so, we can preserve the same interface and refactor the interior. The user should notice performance improvements and consistencies and have a slightly better experience using the platform after this. These benefits are so marginal, though, that they're a bit masturbatory - unless code has to be reused and redesigned extensively, the complexity just isn't worth incurring. ** 16:00

Did not think gym withdrawal would feel this bad. My arms ache. I can feel my shoulders shrinking. It's hard to ignore the discomfort. I've spent too much time on Instagram filling in the endorphins. Time to perfect body weight exercises until I find a gym subscription.

Finding it harder to work out of cafes than at home now. I'm so happy with my home environment that I feel comfortable and focused working there. There are no longer any roommates, bad heating, reparis that need to be made, creaky floors, etc. to distract me. Cafes are full of people - people to interact with, people to talk to and spend time with. Cafes are for writing and creative work. The home and the office are for deep, focused work.

Having a big room - without a clear desk - helps demonstrably. The laptop is the work surface, and the room can be rearranged to sit wherever is most comfortable to work. The bed is small and out of the way, making work inconvenient. Having the bed, the kitchen and hte bathroom out of sight while working helps reserve dedicated time for focused work. I'm really impressed by how well I can concentrate.

A studio apartment is for me then. ** 17:17 I want to be able to describe a feeling and have the user interface change in respond to the feeling; the bubbles get rounder the more relaxed we get, the colors more vibrant - or the font more stiff and formal, the corners sharper and the padding decreased. What a brilliant brand design tool - to describe what kind of interface you want and just make it! ** 17:20 The dream apartment is a huge studio with bright windows and a single room for living and working and sleeping. The kitchen and bathroom are small and out of the way. The room is configurable, the furniture can be moved, and anything creative can be made in the center. I want a beautiful workshop with the desk right in the middle.