<nettime> Nettime Listening Post

[Louis Rawlins via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

Wow. Thank you to David and everybody you met, and to paul for bringing
this post back up:

Time Passed and Something Happened
> A Brief Report from the Nettime Listening Post-


I've been necessarily out-of-touch to tend to my health Even so, I do not
consider myself a frequent contributor by any means. However, there are a
couple of notes I wanted to tag onto, since global dialogue is why I'm
here. (!)


Am 19.02.24 um 03:00 schrieb paul van der walt <paul@denknerd.org> via
nettime-l:

> 5. Its surprising just how many people present declared themselves too
> intimidated to join the on-line discussions but were articulate and
> insightful in the meeting.
>
> That's a shame, but i can understand the dynamic.  I don't have better
> suggestions at this time than to say: feel welcome to post your thoughts,
> musings, etc.  The other mods and i intend to uphold a civil standard of
> communications, and well, here i am saying things, i have no special
> qualifications to do so!  It can feel intimidating for sure, but we will
> all be enriched by hearing more/different voices!
>

If you're reading me and you're feeling intimidated. I feel you. It's real.
And it can be strong.

I came online in the early nineties, when I was about 14 years old. Much of
my young life was spent moving to-and-from doctor's offices, so being
online felt "safe" even if I didn't have much to say, at first. My
communication with folks began with a handful of small groups where I felt
comfortable typing and exchanging thoughts before I ever posted to the vast
arena that is Usenet or any mailing list.

Much later, as iPhones and social media loomed large, I started corporate
work and I also began to back off with my own participation, until about
2014 - 2018 when I generally stopped participating online because I could
feel a shitshow was brewing. Too many networks. Too many social demands
from people and workplaces. I didn't want to feel under the gun to keep up
with people and conform all the time. By that point, I'd been "captured" by
networks like Slack, Meetup and LinkedIn as places where I sought and found
work (aka, a way to feed myself and support my family).

Around 2021, I noticed a pretty tremendous shift in my desire and
willingness to share ideas online, even at work. That year, this post came
out from Matt Taibbi posted an interview with Martin Gurri, who wrote the
book "Revolt of the Public" discussion self-censorships and how states
harness that in the everyday – I've probably already shared it on this list:
https://www.racket.news/p/interview-with-martin-gurri-a-short

At the time I worked as a designer building pharma supply chain software.
Within the company, we had threads and conversations happening through
major pharmaceutical companies, Salesforce, Figma and all sorts of "name"
brands without our company being a household name. The pressure to "keep to
the script" and not stray from the company line became *very strong.*

I do not see that sentiment or that pressure going away – especially for
folks working with, inside, and around technology – any time soon. There's
a great deal of perceived pressure with recent lay-offs that are likely to
continue for the rest of the decade and just a general uncertainty globally
about "who ought to own what" as our capitalist reality makes another death
rattle and we find ourselves collectively unable to imagine a different way
of living.

I feel Brian Holmes and others have touched on this, but connection is
important to healing. Finding new ways of living. The catch, of course, is
that healing tends to happen in its own time.

This week, I was reading a transcript about ambiguous loss with Pauline
Boss. Krista Tippett is the interviewer.

The interview was framed that we, as a global culture (whatever that
means), have lost a great deal in terms of routine, people we love, and
possibly even places we love, and it's difficult to put these events in
perspective if we're always trying "close the loop" like every life event
is a bullet item inspired by David Allen's *Getting Things Done* time
management system.

This transcript, "Navigating Loss Without Closure," has been resonating
with everything I see lately, so my advanced apologies if it feels like
unnecessary colorization to the comfort / intimidation felt about posting
to the nettime mailing list:
https://onbeing.org/programs/pauline-boss-navigating-loss-without-closure/

In the transcript the, Pauline Boss is speaking about Elizabeth
Kübler-Ross's stages of grief:

"Today, the new research in grief and loss does not recommend linear
stages. We like linear stages, though. The news media really likes it
because, in fact, it has an ending. It has a finite end. If you start with
stage one, and you move on through stage five, you’re done. ...

Well, we now know that this is not true and that human beings live with
grief and, in fact, are able to live with grief. They don’t have to get
over it. They don’t obsess with it five years down the road, but they
occasionally remember and are sad.... And this is normal. ... They’re
grieving. This should be normalized. Sadness is treated with human
connection."

This may be common knowledge to many on the list – or maybe not – but I add
it as a reminder that we can indeed keep working through things together
and not necessarily have to arrive at a destination. When we pause, we are
at a destination, and then we move on to the next.


> One important proposal was to invite and support a number of guest
> editors from different demographics who might introduce new threads and
> different voices.
>
> An excellent idea.
>

I'd like to suggest we also consider *geographics.*

Where folks are from is definitely part of the story, but I feel like I'm
missing a ton of on-the-ground stories that are made
that-much-more-interesting when filtered through the demographic lens of
natives / expats / nomads.



> > 6. the old boys [...] might be quietly shuffled off to some nettime
> equivalent of ?sheltered accommodation?.
>
> Haha!  I'm all about lawn bowls in the sun, sign me up!  Although i likely
> haven't earned my spot aboard that particular bus by a long shot yet ?
>

Adding the full quote, because I think it's hilarious and well-founded:

Am 15.02.24 um 17:39 schrieb David Garcia <
> d.garcia@new-tactical-research.co.uk> via nettime-l:
> 6.      A number of the women present got stuck in to addressing the
> question
> of limited inclusivity head on and events took a humorous turn by
> suggesting that the old boys (some of whom they were quite fond of)
> might be quietly shuffled off to some nettime equivalent of ?sheltered
> accommodation?.


I'm curious these days, what elder-ship looks like.

It's become clear to me that in the rush to retire and house people as they
age, we're cutting ourselves off from a rich history. This is not a
criticism to the suggestion, but rather a request to widen the dialogue. I
know we have a pretty broad tapestry of old heads on nettime, so maybe
there are thoughts on what's expected in terms of contribution. Anarchic
democracy feels difficult in that regard, but hey.


> 10. Speaking of ?Tactical Archives? we were keen to discuss how better
> use could be made of the extensive and rich nettime archive. And in that
> regard we were joined on-line by Michael Dieter, Mark Tuters and David
> Gauthier all three researchers had written a significant journal article on
> the importance of mailing lists based on dialogues with list editors at the
> time including Melinda Rackham for empyre and Andreas Broeckmann for
> Spectre... Their declared aim is ?to both introduce these lists to the
> emerging field of internet history and scope out medium-specific methods
> that take the measure of concepts, discourses, cohorts, and events that
> have taken place through them over time.? (quote from the abstract)
>
> That's of particular interest to me.  I'd be interested to learn more
> about what experts could/would do with such rich and longitudinal archives
> indeed.  If nothing else my personal commitment as long as i am involved
> here is to ensure safekeeping of the existing archives as they are (both
> raw and processed to HTML for presentation).  This reminds me that i should
> follow up with Ted about gathering some supplementary files from 2001...
> But yes, keen to think about new/engaging ways of presenting the historical
> threads.  I don't doubt that there could be a lot of cool things one could
> do to present them or draw insights, make them navigable, etc.!
>

This may not be the appropriate place, but does anyone have any idea about
formatting on nettime these days? I'm unclear if it's was "always like
this" (<-- those a double-quote marks) but I recently saw a post
about Yūgen (<-- that's a bar over the lowercase "u") and wondered if we
maybe aren't doing ourselves a long-term disservice by restricting the
character set we are storing on the list.

(It may be my service filtering it, but I'm just rocking GMail with nothing
fancy.)


Am 15.02.24 um 17:39 schrieb David Garcia <
> d.garcia@new-tactical-research.co.uk> via nettime-l:
> 13.     I was worried that in setting aside 3 hours for the meeting we were
> biting off more that we could chew. I needn't have worried the
> conversation never flagged. And like all the best meetings ?time passed
> and something happened.? See you in Amsterdam.


Super exciting! :D

Thank you again David and everybody who got to be a part.

Peace,  Louis
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