Sixian

Given the degree of brokenness of the broken world (and the expense of fixing it), we need all maintainers to apply their diverse disciplinary methods and practical skills to the collective project of repair.

There is a new profession of trail blazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record.

i am very grateful everyone who came to my talk at fwb fest and those who helped me out with it recently. in some ways this talk took 6 years to put together. the basic theory of "lifestyles," identity, and brands was there by 2016, but i was missing a strong notion of culture

Developing a point of view is a long journey, and it’s not easy. But it’s a more forgiving path than specializing.

History books are ink on paper. They are linear narratives with beginning and ends. They are stories created from archival documents and from other books. Network culture, not really into that. Network culture differs from literary culture in a great many ways. And step one is that the operating system is an unquestioned given. The first thing you... See more

In his book The Container Principle, author Alexander Klose writes that “it is, above all, this image of a frictionless, well-ordered organization through standardized containers that makes containers so attractive as a structural metaphor. It evokes the image of a neutral medium, a pure movement of units of information, production, and consumption... See more

Thus, “the moments of sensual pleasure in the idea, the voice, the instrument are made into fetishes and torn away from any functions which could give them meaning.”They exemplify what media theorist David Cecchetto, building on the work of John Durham Peters, calls “incommunication”: the process by which the impossibility of true communication... See more

I learned this from Brad Fitzpatrick's design for LiveJournal, which allows user to list their own interests. LiveJournal makes absolutely no attempt to enforce solidarity or a thesaurus or a minimal set of terms, no check-box, no drop-box, just free-text typing. Some people say they're interested in movies. Some people say they're interested in... See more