230118-folkcraft

for the last couple years i've been slowly refining a collection of ideas embodying the whimsical term "computer folkcraft." it's perhaps a mix of permacomputing [web] and anarchism and appropriate technology and plain old antiquated "computer literacy," but the "folkcraft" aspect energizes this combination: common people and artistry.

despite numerous conversations and scribblings i hadn't spend much time investigating the potential origins of my, uhm, quest (and its accompanying obsessions and ideologies.) a fellow traveller writes perceptively:

"From time to time, certain small groups of tech-savvy people happen to grow up in the same place and at the same time as certain powerful new technologies. Because of this unique background, these people - and these people alone - are able to very clearly perceive visions of the future which are both glorious and 100% technically feasible, the technical feasibility being something that they feel in their bones by virtue of direct experience, or at least direct observation. Those people therefore mistake these visions for being not just compelling but actually being inevitable, for being the obviously, undeniably natural and pre-destined state of the world, for being exactly what everybody else would want too, if only they understood things properly! But these futures aren't inevitable, they're actually mostly wishful thinking and they simply don't come to pass."

• solderpunk, Orphans of Netscape [web]

this reckoning can also be liberatory? in that disappointment is real but perhaps the secret knowledge was actually just circumstantial.

i think this was what i needed to understand in order to move forward.

tehn@nnnnnnnn.co