git ssb

%hiYiIWluwlGJWvyEh9Ia3LHX/TQagtUvKaaXCTs/u6Q=.sha256

{
  "previous": "%jNhP1vVf9DhWKR6qHiT9EBax0dsnOkuo/YixT6NWSIc=.sha256",
  "author": "@/02iw6SFEPIHl8nMkYSwcCgRWxiG6VP547Wcp1NW8Bo=.ed25519",
  "sequence": 2397,
  "timestamp": 1455591796568,
  "hash": "sha256",
  "content": {
    "type": "post",
    "text": "...continuing from %jNhP1vVf9DhWKR6qHiT9EBax0dsnOkuo/YixT6NWSIc=.sha256\n\n## culture\n\n**tl;dr:** *open broadcast, unified feed, and silence-implies-consensus have bad asymptotic outcomes. patchwork as a social space where users are also developers and experimental subjects ought to engage with this, not as something to solve, but as limits to acknowledge and work with and around.*\n\n----\n\n> Paraphrasing Twitter user @bad_dominicana: We love analysis that critiques folks OUT there but what about folks in here?\n\n--[Sydette Harry](https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/ouroboros-outtakes-the-circle-was-never-unbroken)\n\n### \"silence implies consent\"\n\nit's an oft-unspoken tenet in western cultures that \"silence implies consent\" or assent.  thankfully at the time this post is happening, that tenet is being dismantled in so many contexts, from [sex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_Means_Yes) to [transnational privacy/data sovereignty](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/10/fallout-from-eu-us-safe-harbour-ruling-will-be-dramatic-and-far-reaching/). if you're inhabiting the same spacetime as this post, maybe you already have trouble relating to this conception of consent.\n\nwhat happens when silence implies consent? at best, [long-lived echo chambers](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2013/09/03/how-twitter-makes-the-political-echo-chamber-worse/). [empty halls of government where bills are passed without oversight](http://www.wsj.com/video/senate-passes-border-bill-in-an-empty-room/5282DF37-48C3-47F3-A13F-E1C07B41D87D.html). [binding arbitration clauses](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/business/dealbook/arbitration-everywhere-stacking-the-deck-of-justice.html), snuck into ponderous terms-of-use contracts. at worst, this norm leads to dire long-term effects.\n\nanglosphere twitter, like other broadcast fora (hi blogosphere!), invariably emerges as a take-it-or-leave-it space populated by \"thoughtleaders\" (ugh, vom) where the loudest (the most frequently posting), and most charismatic (read: represent the opinions of a populous, strongly opinionated group) shape or pressure people's views, and where conflict, criticism, and harassment go on in the same space as empathy, reporting, and exploration. is it any surprise that the space twitter technologically frames and establishes leads to one where pundits, politicians, mobs, dogpiles, doxers, stalkers, and harassers erupt?  talk about the perfect place for a [dark triad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_triad) high scorer to thrive at the expense of everyone else.\n\npatchwork's cultural norms, though nascent, seem pointed in the same direction. questions you can ask to suss this out:\n\n- if no one says \"no\" to a patchwork proposal, what happens?\n- when was the last time that someone explicitly checked to see if a proposal for patchwork was a poor choice when proposing it?\n- when was the last time someone suggested that a feature not happen?\n- do you feel comfortable saying \"no\" to a patchwork feature/interface proposal, even if it affects you personally?\n- through patchwork alone, do you feel like you would have a personally safe and non-toxic way to address the above twitter social phenomena if they appeared?\n\n### consensus and deliberative democracy are centralised social systems\n\nthe tired western (masculine?) notion that all we need is \"enough public debate\" to hash it all out (lol cryptopuns), that there is some single best opinion that will constitute an eventual consensus, is [just so fundamentally broke](%mipBeHFHxYcCXpwso/cRnAwc3Fz3YHa+sK2khIZVH6E=.sha256) it's crazy. everyone debating and grandstanding and smarming until they're completely exhausted and can just barely stand each other is the social equivalent of the heat-death of the universe--all ineffectual twitching. no motion. no actual communication.\n\nthe energy spent arguing with people to define a unified direction, the emotional labour obligate under a \"silence implies consent\" culture, is better spent advancing intersectionally, i.e., along possibly orthogonal lines that help people in important ways not necessarily visible to even a plurality (because the populations aren't aggregated into one group!), ways and directions that shouldn't be made to wait for establishment through an arduous process of consensus global to some domain.\n\nall of this might sound tangential or far-off to patchwork now, but i wouldn't bring it up if i didn't feel it on the horizon. and in the end, you just can't ignore these issues or separate them from the technology. every technology constitutes and produces a set of cultural opinions and practices. just ask [ursula franklin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_Franklin):\n\n> Franklin argues that in modern society, control-related and prescriptive technologies are dominant. \"When work is organized as a sequence of separately executable steps, the control over the work moves to the organizer, the boss or manager,\" she writes. \"In political terms, prescriptive technologies are designs for compliance.\"[69] For Franklin, workers accustomed to following prescriptive rules become used to seeing external control and internal compliance as normal and necessary. They also come to believe that there is only one prescribed way of performing a wide variety of tasks. \"While we should not forget that these prescriptive technologies are often exceedingly effective and efficient, they come with an enormous social mortgage. The mortgage means that we live in a culture of compliance, that we are ever more conditioned to accept orthodoxy as normal, and to accept that there is only one way of doing 'it'.\"[70]\n\nthe short of it is this: it's not just technology that has to be decentralised. the culture has to be decentralised too. for ssb, that means less twitter feed, more space exploration.\n\nthis doesn't address questions of feasibility in continuing development right here, right now, tho.\n",
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