Alex Schroeder

Alex Schroeder: An interesting question. I think Community Wiki only reflects a small part of what I’m interested in and therefore looking at my activity here is misleading. Trying to brainstorm: I like to play role-playing games and I’m interested in mapping programs that generate maps, and programs that allow me to modify maps without being an artist. I’d also like to be an artist. I’d love to be good at ink wash painting. I’d love to play a simple instrument like the recorder. I’m also interested in programs that generate texts to use for play, often driven by random tables because I think the neural networks currently en vogue don’t scale for single person endeavours. As a programmer at the office, I’m interested in why we keep writing software that I can barely understand. What drives this complexity? What drives customer wish-lists? What drives developer fashions? Why is capitalism the root of all evil? As a programmer at home, I’m interested in how I can write programs that are easy for me to come back to in a year, in two years, in five years. How to write programs that attract somebody else to help me out. How to talk about my programs such that other people see what’s great about them, such that they use them, and contribute towards them, but sharing my values regarding complexity and longevity. How to make sure that my works survive me. How social media works: what kinds of messages make people feel good. How to learn – and how to teach others – not to be a ReplyGuy?, not to be SeaLioning?, how to DeColonise? my writing, the intricacies of muting, blocking, archiving and expiry – I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of the idea of RecordKeepers?, see 2017-04-27 Record Keeping, a blog post that I keep linking! And thus, the design of social media, the filter algorithms that make them addictive, that encourage bubble formation, the drift towards stupidity online (NationalSocialism?, ProudBoys?, TeaParty?, InvoluntaryCelibacy?, AntiVaccination?, UrFascism?, and so on)… the link from these things to politics is important for our future and yet another symptom of our inability to deal with systemic problems such as GlobalWarming. I’m writing WikiLinks? for all these political topics not because I want to discuss the actual topics but because I feel I need to better understand them as symptoms of underlying social, political, or even economic issues. And in a way I wonder how we can talk about all these things with our friends, our class mates, our family – our community. Community Wiki.

Anyway, of all of these things, I don’t really see too much on Community Wiki, but this is why I care about Community Wiki. As you can see, I’m actually not all that interested in wikis except as a communication tool that encourages collaboration, mutual ownership. Wiki is praxis. Wiki is – or can be – an illustration of simple software design, of simple user interface design. I also don’t care too much about web other than that it serves as an example of SurveillanceCapitalism?, of CompoundingComplexity?, of RegulatoryCapture? (of the W3C), of MonopolyFormation? (of the browser market), or about Gemini other than that it serves as a counter to all of this. For me, Gemini is praxis. It is the actual doing, the making of a point.

But other than that, there’s also the personal. The love of my life, pictures of flowers, of nature, of hikes… My social media feed @kensanata has plenty of pictures, of tidbits of my personal life, which serves as a grounding, as an opportunity to connect on an emotional level (I hope!), and that is also important. Where does that fit in, in the context of community building?

As you can see from all the above, I have no idea what to say. Is this “taking one step further back?” I’d say I’m not ready to write “the” manifesto. What would it be like, except something obvious like “don’t take your freedom for granted!” or similar. The SmolNet is simply a meme, WordMagic – a word to focus the attention on something I care about, but … I’m not ready to write something like the Agile Manifesto and work on it. A SimpleSystemsManifesto would be a fun page to write, but also quickly forgotten, I fear. I don’t remember any manifestos except for “Workers of the world, unite!”

“People of the world, unite! – Community Wiki” 😃

Anyway, I’m not sure how to move forward from here. Would picking one element and turning it into a writing project be beneficial? Perhaps? At the same time, motivation and enthusiasm is something that cannot be commanded, or even wished for.

So here’s the alternative: I wrote a long StreamOfConsciousness statement about all the things I’m interested in at the moment, and if anything speaks to you, start that page and chances are I’ll weigh in. Or write a similar exposition and allow me and others to find common grounds.

DavidCary: Thank you for keeping the CommunityWiki online.

TimurIsmagilov: Found this thing in my GitHub feed, looks neat: https://github.com/kensanata/text-mapper

TimurIsmagilov: I do not play Tabletop RPGs but it’s quite likely that I will at some point. I like the æsthetics though.