Open Source Projects and Poisonous People

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F-3E8pyjFo

So inspiring talk. Open_Sailing has a lot to learn from that way of looking at things.
Ben Collins-Sussman & Brian W. Fitzpatrick Google July 26, 2007

The talk is expanded in this book : http://producingoss.com/

Get the pdf of this particular talk.

Thanks to Juliana for the link via FB.

Conceptual chat - Open_Politics Lab Brasil

< Jorge Guberte >
As an effort to achieve a feasible personal concept of the Open_Politics lab, me and a friend had this chat.
I'm naturally immersed in brazilian politics, as i live in Brazil, so it was somewhat the main focus of the conversation.
Hopefully it'll open the curtains for me to further develop some concepts that i have in mind right now, and that aren't quite well formed yet.

P is Paulo - my friend - and J. is me.

P: Voting sounds like an idea, but the population needs to produce great candidates.

J.: Do you have a political view? Anarquist, Libertarian, etc?

P.: I'm Green. And Libertarian, i suppose.

J.: Cool. I like the pirate party, but i hate parties. I hate the system that's established.

P.: I think i'm deeply anarchistic, but i'm a bit too vicious to act like one openly. I want to pervert the system, and change it s-l-o-w-l-y. I hate violence and radical changes; i believe people only learn if they want, can't force it . So, it is fostering existing forces, focusing

J.: Even if voting is mandatory [it is in Brazil] , i don't go. I'd rather pay the fine than vote

P.: Hey, i'm really sorry, but I really dont know anything about politics in brasil. It would take me ages to know national politics, no ?

J: I'll explain in a nutshell

P.:Ok, go for it.

J: We pay one of the higher taxes in the world, and we get a crappy public service. Why? because the government is so pathetic and uneffective to handle public services. Why else? because the politicians that are elected steal all the money that was supposed to go back to the population, as services.

The Economit published a good article about it too: http://www.economist.com/world/americas/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13998624

P.: I don't mind if they have a good time with your money, if in return they give you a good service.

J: exactly, i wouldn't mind either

P.:: But as you said, public service is crap, so their life should resemble or depend on this same public service. What solution do you think of ? Better public services OR worst lifestyle for them ?

J: good question

P: better public services right ? If they are fat, it is their problem. I believe people can coordinate the state from more local initiatives, bottom up. So i rather feed ground up initiative, rather than fighting the fat politic bastards.

J: Horizontally in some decades. Or modularly, organically.

P: They live in a different world, they don't understand what we are talking about, so I wouldn't involve them, unless they decide to support.

J.: If we put effort on them, we lose the focus. Why put effort in something not benefical?

P: That's my point of view. Fighting against politics is loss of time; finding solutions that short circuit their authority is more productive, like inventing our own economies and technologies.

J.: Then theirs become obsolete.

P.: we dont fight them, we make them redundant. That's my opinion on the political context you describe. Activist becomes avery undirect activity. It is not activist against the politics, it is activist towards a vision, that can bring in something better than what politic scene offers, as a lifestyle.

J: Do you think the activists become leaders - not government leaders, but local leaders - as the subsystem evolves?

P.: I hope not...i hope there is a position of leadership that people are able not to be attached to, not be called by your function, be called by your name, as you are a human. Maybe the leadership can be circulated depending on the issue that needs solving. So I'm talking about atomising leadership to the specialist function. As far as I know this is called Adhocracy. I like the model of Object Oriented Politics  (Bruno Latour 2006) too.

Human ecologies

Adam Weymouth is joining the project, covering the human ecology aspect "field" sociology.

He's explainign even more in the freshly opened LAB 9. OPEN_POLITICS

Adam proposes to :

-

- Documenting the journey - exploring how communtiy builds along the journey, and how people's awareness of each other and of their environment alters. This could be used to emphasise the importance of open sailing in not just sustainable living through good applications of science and resources, but by building a strong community, which is, i believe, at the base of holistic practice.

-

- I wrote my Masters dissertation on looking at the links between protest walks and pilgrimage. Looking at the importance of the journey for people, at nomadic lifestyles, and of the spiritual importance of undertaking journeys. This project seems like a great way to extend my research.

-

- Developing some sort of outreach programme for the communities that we're passing through - not just in the cities but the villages also. Presumably you'll be passing a huge array of diverse communites - have you thought about how to talk to people about what you're up to/ get them involved and interested? I did an 80 mile walk across London last summer as part of the Climate Caravan - I found it was the best thing I've done to engage with people about issues we wanted to discuss, because we are coming to them, and getting involved in their communites. This seems to be the same, on an even bigger and more visual scale.

-

- Exploring ways for us to work as a community on board - modalities of socialising.

Remember Biosphere 2?

As a child my dream was to become an astronaut. Until it dawned on me that with my congenital heart defect plus being slightly claustrophobic this was not likely going to happen. What remained was a fascination for exploring outer space, the dream of one day being able to colonize distant planets and re-creating Earth under new (and hopefully improved) circumstances. I was sure that if I could, I would be one of the first ones to go.

"Aerial view of Biosphere 2 in the Arizona desert"


A project that truly awed me at that time was the Biosphere 2, a giant man-made enclosed ecosystem completely sealed off from its surroundings. Two "closed bubble" missions were carried out, the first lasting from 1991-93 with a crew of 8 people sealed inside; the second, starting in 1994, had to be broken off prematurely due to internal quarrels about the project's funding and the direction in which research was going. I remember seeing images of pale, thin scientists being ushered out of the gigantic complex by US Federal Marshals. All in all, Biospehere 2 was considered to be a tremendous flop. Both Missions had trouble regulating the oxygen levels inside the sealed structure. Animals died or failed to reproduce while one ant species which was accidentally locked in, became too dominant.

Now, more than 15 years later, the structure still stands, and is a research site under the management of the University of Arizona. Wired Science has recently launched some interesting articles, which sum up the problems and points out that there actually were valubale papers written and insights gained from this large scale, scientific, social and psychological experiment.

read more here: wired1, wired2, wikipedia

"inside Biosphere 2"


images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons