Sarah Drinkwater
@sarahdrinkwater
Knowledge beachcomber interested in the ownership economy, flourishing communities, ecosystem building, magic, and knowledge as an end to itself.
Sarah Drinkwater
Publishing and
Alternative to What? | Thomas Frank
thebaffler.com
late stage capitalism and “Alternative”
the patina of daring had begun to wear thin on the eighties’ chosen crop of celebrity-rebels. Entire new lines of insolent shoes would have to be designed and marketed; entire new looks and emblems of protest would have to be found somewhere. Consumerism’s traditional claim to be the spokesman for our inchoate disgust with consumerism was hemorrhaging credibility, and independent rock, with its Jacobin ‘authenticity’ obsession, had just the things capital required.
Out went the call for an “alternative” from a thousand executive suites, and overnight everyone even remotely associated with independent rock in Seattle—and Minneapolis, Chapel Hill, Champaign, Lawrence, and finally Chicago—found themselves the recipients of unsolicited corporate attention
Collective genius and Self-fashioning
ON EMOTION, FAITH AND DIRECTION - It is the haunted intersection of technology and the liberal arts. And it’s finally a hill I am willing to die on… I think there’s a hidden power in reaching something you’re willing to fail with. I’ve never seen that written about. But I’ve reached it, and that feels like a new type of signal to me.
ON NY SCENIUS -
NYC has produced really great technology wins, yes. But it has failed to create a win that truly structures the surrounding NYC technology scene.
By this I mean a consumer facing win, where technology is at the center, instead of the related industry pulls around it. NYC tech is often defined by our relationship to other industries, as we have such a diverse business ecosystem that holds the promise of our melting pot. Finance, retail, real estate, music, consulting, the list goes on.
But the harsh reality is this — Tumblr didn’t do what it needed to do, FourSquare didn’t do what it needed to do, Giphy didn’t do what it needed to do, WeWork is a failure, BlueApron is a failure…
And now the scene has grown as a function of Google owning half of Chelsea and several Facebook buildings. But WHO ARE WEEEEEEEEEEEE
The first consumer technology win, born and raised in NYC will get to actually determine that. The same way Google and Facebook have in the broader valley. I’ve believed this since 2016 when I started working at Rough Draft Ventures, and continually forced the issue in 2017 when I moved to NYC after school despite being told it would ruin my career to not go to SF.
Recently Verci launched a campaign about powerful innovations in cultural hubs, and the vision of their Soho co-working space for NYC Tech. While I like Verci, I do think it misses some pretty core things. They point to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and Google at Stanford…
I would argue that Kennedy is a sort of anti-environment. Similar to Los Almos… it’s the isolation of incredible people towards a superhuman mission. Google at Stanford is an interesting reference as well. While I wouldn’t call Stanford an anti-environment, universities do hold a clear inner-outer dynamic through campus culture that I think is really unique. And calls to mind Campus Complex.
What is clear is the shared vision for NYC Tech to be something more. Something new. Something equally ambitious. And there are projects ranging from Verci to Terminal to WeBuildOurIdeas, that are all stoking the communal fire. I think these will actually all come together in unique ways to both collaborate and challenge each other in 2024.
Open Source Software and Collective ownership, Coops, and User Owned Platforms
I would argue that this is roughly the state of "open source" today. It is the modern software developer’s marmelade, with the OSI as our Konfitürenverordnung, continuing to aggressively enforce a phrase that has since evolved in the popular vernacular.
"open source" is not the logical negation of "closed source"
Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement.
Now that Open Source is heavily depended on by nearly every commercial company, we’re running into sustainability and maintainability problems. These are problems that really didn’t exist at scale before. A very famous recent example of this is the XZ Utils backdoor exploit, where an open source maintainer accepted a subtle but significant compromise from a bad actor, partially due to burnout and harassment of the maintainer.
However, I see this in nearly every maintainer that I talk to. It’s almost impossible to make money by writing and maintaining Open Source software, due to several factors. Everyone wants and expects free shit, and nobody feels that they need to support the people making this all possible.
The strange new truth is that most open source developers and maintainers are now patronized by large corporations.
What would be more ideal is to have not one company paying each developer, which is subject to the whims of corporate KPIs and management changes, but instead to have thousands of companies pay a very small amount to professional maintainers.
The main problem is that there is no good way to do this currently. There is little to no incentive for companies to do this and there are few ways to aggregate and disperse such funding.
The second growing problem in the Open Source ecosystem is the problem of the new generation of Commercial Open Source.
Developers have now been growing up for decades loving Open Source and open communities, and when they start companies and projects, by default they want them to be open. However, there are corporate sustainability issues with Open Source, just as there are with individual maintainer. Somewhat ironically, The Man is now using Open Source licenses to stick it to the developer!
Worldbuilding and
Welf's Garden - Welf's Garden
welf.co
Just a lovely personal site - copywriter I want to remember.
The accumulated fruits of human agency and creative problem-solving are so ubiquitous today—in the form of agriculture and modern medicine, electricity and air conditioning, Uber and Amazon, Google and iPhones, widespread literacy and constitutional government, bank loans and credit cards, Zoom and Facebook—that we tend to assume them as the... See more
Gena Gorlin • Death is the default
Why new VC funds offer the greatest opportunities in Venture Capital
Francesco Perticarariblog.francescoperticarari.com
Status Signaling and why curation...
Just proved the thesis of this piece - on the endless selfish human desire to signal - in adding this to my sublime nail painting emoji