We’re also steadily blogging over on the indyish blog, so that’s where we are when we’re not here and you’re missing us. That blog is finding it’s voices, and finding a balance between event posting and arts and network thinking, and because of my recent time spent working/thinking on this it’s more clear to me then ever what it is about Open Journal that is still essential to me as a communicating space.

this is the spot for unpacking and playing with thought on communication. for me, aside from being a space where i collect quotes and snipits that resonate with me in odd ways on the subject of open communication and the kind of bias and things that affect it, Open Journal is a space for personalized theory; for theory that often begins with subjective experience and feeling, and throws out spider lines and rhymes and emotionalpolitical trajectories from there. I have been very fortunate to have connected with writers over the years who have spent some of their time and energy here, sharing this space with us, doing there own throwing and stitching and weaving. Neil Balan has been our anchor on Open of late, and I’m endlessly relentlessly grateful for all the ways he’s flooded light on ideas I love, and shaken dust and doubt from my own writing, and brought his big brain to bare on questions of open source, opposition and community.

I’ve often said that we will not apologize for times when Open lies fallow, because I think the point of something called Open is that it will be loud or quiet when it’s inhabitants (permanent or nomadic) see fit. But I do wish I could be here fueling this fire all the time, and drawing new people into our conversation. Part of me wishes I could have turned this space into a thriving hotbed of debates, articles, interviews, reviews, etc, and maybe that is still in our future, but if it is it won’t be because I’ve suddenly become a person who meticulously manages and cultivates the space. There is a common personality base to both Indyish and Open, and they are both expressions of a way I want to (and maybe need to) work, and I don’t think that that is likely to change. Both are based on this feeling I have that it must be possible to work with other people to make great things while still being completely self-directed and self motivated. I know that I am like this: I will take on monstrously complex, or time consuming tasks and I will finish them successfully on my own if need be and not fuss too much if they never really get seen. I am very independent when I see something I need to do. I might be happier working on it with others, but only if they want to be there for their own reasons, and if they don’t come out of the woodwork then I am happy working wildly hard on hard things on my own. I do things almost because I can’t help it, and, as Elran knows very well, there isn’t much that can be done to dissuade me from attempting something once I have imagined it and imagined a way that it might be possible. In this context, the existence of Open Journal makes me feel … safe maybe is the best word, because it means there is a space that is always open to big, half baked, twisty, working-on-them thoughts. It is a relief to have a space to publish that is not dependent on someone else giving me permission, and I think that is the greatest gift that the blogosphere gives to writers (and that el has given to me in making me these spaces). I haven’t always done the best job maybe of cultivating this space so that it feels welcoming to others, I have been a fretful and improvisatory Editor, trying to make up rules and guidelines to test them out to see what flies. I treat this all like an experiment sometimes, because I always wonder if there might be new ways to do things like run a Journal, but experiment isn’t necessarily the best way to build systems and relationships that are stable. Still, there’s something about this experiment that I find deeply appealing and satisfying, and reliable in a not-totally stable but still good kind of way, and I am thankful to all those people who have invented this space with me and who will pop up in the future to help us continue to figure it out. I know that I’ll continue to be here with new ideas and bursts of energy and time, and to read the things my co-authors put here with glee at all they have to teach me, and I have comfortable faith that brilliant folks like Neil and OneNeck (only completely unique and not like these old wizened Open Journal pro’s at all, but brilliant in their own ways) will find their way towards surprising me and helping Open grow.

But ahh, there’s so much more that needs to be done to finish following through on the things we want to do with the fall out from that Indyish weekend- we have all these videos that were made that still need to go online, and i want to feature each poster that was submitted in a gallery of some sort, and there are still stories to tell about the people who cropped up from outta nowhere and who i realize now are just more of my friendly neighbors. Montreal is all full of neighbors. And after our weekend of indyish encounters, there are more people to wave at in the street now, and more new friends when out at shows, and this feeling, for me, of a buzzing, interlinking, living network thing that i get to be a part of makes my guilt at all the things i haven’t yet followed through on feel manageable. Manageable enough to spend some time over here on Open today, thinking about how the websites are such cool quiet spaces. So different from street fests like the one fulfilling St.Laurent this weekend. So quiet that it’s difficult to remember that we encounter more people here everyday then we do out on the streets of the city on regular days. It’s a funny media that way- constantly live to other people’s unique experiences of it, but still it feels so personal and private even. The web simultaneously wants us to whisper and confess our secrets to it, and to publish very public arguments and manifestos on it, and it’s those and other contradictory pulls that we explore here on Open Journal.

If you’re self-motivated in some way that’s like the way I describe, if you’re interested in co-authoring this space with us for a while, in theorizing and emoting and gathering bits of news and quotes, or in drawing or painting some of your own ideas about the airy fairy and concrete things that are involved in communication in our ragged, electrified and odd but, I hope, still hopeful world, then write to me and let me know. I’d love to have you.
cheers,
Risa

This position involves working closely with web programmers and independent artists in a hospitable, creative, and generally open source environment. Very fun learning experience.

Tasks include general communications and PR, event organization, and selling monthly advertising. And we’re open to new ideas.

The position is unpaid, unfortunately. But with a 25% commission on ads sold there really is some profit potential here for the right person. As site traffic goes up, ads can be sold for more, and there’s tons of space for them. (Also, if interested, you could have your own Indyish artist account, which means you could promote and sell your own work through the site, and, like all Indyish artists, make over 95% from your sales.)

This marketing position would last throughout the summer, and could turn into a regular gig. The hours are flexible, but we’re looking for someone to commit at least 10 hours a week (more is better- heck, move in). This position is based in the Mile End/ Plateau neighborhood of Montreal. Telecommuting is a possibility.

We are open to working with a person of any age, and experience is not necessarily a pre-requisite. We’re looking for smarts, self-motivation, and excitement about the project and the artists already involved.

To apply, check out the site then send email and resume to me, risa AT indyish.com

Interviews will take place last week of May/first week of June.

Thanks so much for your time everyone!!

Stay tuned for more Indyish news as this puppy starts to kick,
Cheers!
Risa, Elran and
the Indyish.

Anyway, OpenJournal began as a grand idea that we did not have the technology or time for, and it’s been through several identity crises, but all the while we’ve been here in Montreal, and the people who write for us abroad are all connected to us by the time we spent here together. And so somehow, as a base quantity, the dreamy meta-place of all our imaginary Montreals defines us. It’s in that spirt that the MOntreal has been added to the domain name. We do not make any claims to sum up or speak for the city, we just live here. And in a way, when you’re here on our site, it’s like you’re living here for a bit too. You are literally subject to our laws, and you’re letting us print our ramblings on your eyes, so you’re getting steeped in our culture slowly but surely (watchout:).

One last word on the new domain name and then i’ll stop making such a huff: we went with the .com. There were opinions voiced about the corporateness of that, and how much nicer .org sounds, and in an emotional way I agree, but.. and i hope this but doesn’t sound too conniving, but… it’s just harder for a non-.com to get ranked. There’s a bias there, i guess, in the search engines. Or maybe it’s just a side-effect of the fact that people remember .com as a default. When it’s something else they don’t remember which one (org? net? ca? what?). And I do want this site to be easy to find and use, but also, i think if dot com is the default, then the onus is just on us to redefine what the dot com means, to get in there and own it and play with it and test it’s edges, and even push on what that abbreviation could be, because who says it has to begin and end with Company?. what about community, or communist, or comingling, or combed, or come on, or complete me? anyway, that’s the thinking.

cheers!

This is the all-haiku site she does with a friend, check it out. Also- look for her in each issue of Worn, laying down some fine fashion haikus. Thanks go to Serah, Worn boss lady and Open editor, for e-introducing us.
keep well loves, r.

One Neck Hates You is the work of Edinburgh based comix artist and illustrator Iain Laurie. When not working on his childish, seedy little drawings he enjoys watching the Chevy Chase film “Fletch” on a loop and solving crimes with a supernatural element.

“Here’s a wee xmas card to you and all at Open.
Seasons best from the Neck.”

by Risa Dickens.

Part 1.
Editing Openness: Lessons from Open Source.

I’m really glad Christian drew the issue of edited openness into the comments about space and scale which followed his recent post from Yellowknife.
Personally, I think a lot about how public spaces can become healthy ecosystems, instead of slipping towards inequality or control. I am half of the team that’s spent the past month building Indyish, and some of every day for the past two years building Open. And I am the one who most often edits our Openness.

Building Open is an idea that bumps up against every one else’s ideas about what Openness is or should be. Building this site and evolving it has challenged my own thinking-through of the processes developed in the open source community (the subject of my MA thesis, still in draft form). And that was sort of the original intention.

Often, questions ethical and practical that I’ve encountered here have sent me back to open source, looking for suggestions.

Open source development has played out in as many different ways as there are different, successful open source companies. For Open Journal I have been following the templates created by Open Source leaders like Linus Torvalds- the genius coder and “benevolent dictator for life” behind Linux, the kernel of the central open source operating system. (Linux sits at the heart of most open source-enabled innovations, including the Apache servers that run most of the Internet and the small computers that coordinate the self assembly of the floating blimps in Julien’s arty robotics.)

The collaborative process that built Linux is layered and complex now, but it still boils down to this:

Anyone is welcome to submit bits that they think will work. Linus Torvalds, recognized for having built the entire first draft of the kernel on his own, and for having made a beautiful and smart thing, has final say on what goes in and what doesn’t, and what needs fixing for it to work.

Decisions are resolved pragmatically- does this work well, logically, efficiently, does it work well over time, does it scale, does it allow for and enable growth..?

If a contributor fundamentally disagrees with the decisions being made by Torvalds, they are welcome to attempt to fork the code. “Forking” is to take all the openly available material from the Linux code (which is all the Linux code) and build it in whatever new direction you like, and see if you can get people to work on it with you. Forking is an essential function in the ecosystem that is Open Source. And it’s something we’re open to as well, because our interest is always in building and being part of healthy ecosystems.

The importance of the right to fork makes sense when you think about the open source system on an extra-large scale. (And thanks again the Christian, for drawing our attention to differences in scale.)

Thinking about open source requires a kind of sliding scale- one that can see the individual creative spark alongside the enormity of the network.

Open source is bigger than any one project, (and many projects, like operating systems, are massive in size); it’s bigger than giant networks of projects like Sourceforge; bigger than the legal and business realms of open source and things like Creative Commons; bigger than it’s subtle role in enormous battles like the ones playing out in the music and motion picture industries. Open source is big, and so this question about scale is huge because it points to how hard it’s going to be to build things that will survive the size of the open source network. Not to mention how hard it can be to know which directions will prove right in the long run.

Will a choice continue to seem smart as it gets applied to increasingly various scenarios, in all kinds of chaotic and tugging contexts? Will a system stay quick and light across the infinite variations of software and hardware?

Will an idea that seems brilliant to me in my bubble of books continue to be meaningful when it’s read against knowledge from other disciplines? Or will I then hear in it what I couldn’t before: the repetition of super-sized buzz words, beneath which I have hidden my secret confusion.

Sometimes I think people do this: bury big haunting questions in fascinating twists of words.
Sometimes I think this is the result of individuals or groups believing they should build an operating-system-sized theory on their own.
Challenging this misconception is, in part, the idea behind OpenJournal.

Part 2:
Our Working Philosophy.

As I wrote in the copy for Indyish, I’m interested in editors. I think everyone needs an editor- every idea needs to get shaken up by other perspectives and also needs to get reworked a few times by its original fashioner. Good, complex things don’t get built by one person in one try. As Torvalds pointed out, it generally takes one set of eyes to see the spark of a new idea, or to correctly identify the crux of a problem that needs solving, and another set of eyes to solve it. An organized but open network is necessary to connect the eyes and minds that together can solve problems. People, I think, flip back and forth between both sides of this job all the time, but wherever they are on that road they still need those other perspectives to bounce off of.

I want Open to provide the time and space for theories to be considered, tempered, and reworked. And I want the people behind Open to get to play whatever useful role we can in that process. And if at any time someone would like to fork the theory we’re working on, or would like to post an unedited version of their writing on their own website, or would like the entire history of the edits we’ve made together to be published alongside their final version, then Open would be super into that.

Part 3:
Why Edit?

Because we are trying to bring out the best in each other’s theory and writing.

Open is not just a blog- it’s not a group diary where anything goes. If there were no spaces like that- if it were impossible to get access to your own space for publishing on the web- then we would have felt the need to provide that. But Blogger, Myspace, and the Mac version of blogging tools – not to mention free and open source systems like Wordpress- answer that need bountifully.

So instead, at Open, we’re building theory collaboratively. And a project that big needs a project manager. And that’s been me.

Part 4.
The Flaw in Systems.

I stand by my edits and by the careful and continuously evolving thought that’s gone into Open so far. And in general, people seem to find the fact that an editor will look at their work to be quite reassuring- it allows them to take chances. And we love that. But it means that there’s always more editing to be done. And so it seems there’s a flaw in the system. And it’s a flaw linux encountered eventually as well.

Linus Torvalds is fricken smart but he isn’t perfect. (nobody is, hence the title of my thesis: “no one knows everything.”) At one point in the now-nearly-mythic linux history, Torvalds made some mistakes and got tired and defensive.

But actually, maybe this wasn’t a flaw. Maybe it was just the rumblings of a system getting bigger and approaching a phase transition. And maybe we’ve reached this kind of a stage with Open as well.

Meanwhile back at the ranch we’re in madcap mode eating too much pizza, schemeing, and making phone calls and maps for www.indyish.com. Indyish is a network of independent artists. It’s a store, and it’s a network for mutual support and communication between makers and customers- so we can do better, cooler projects, and have a venue to put the product of these creative equations out in the public gaze and up for sale.

That’s all I’m going to say for now, as I am sleepy. Check back soon for more updates and excitement.
keep well,
Risa

We’re still taking people on, but there’s one less poetry-literary-theorist spot left to be filled.
It turns out Yohei and I bumped around the old grey buildings of McGill together for a few years, back when both of us were wide-eyed and busy undergraduates. We were even in classes together, although Yohei remembers this better then I. I have a whole fuzzy realm full of McGill faces in my brain, and Yohei’s glasses and serious gaze are certainly in there, but for the most part, those large McGill classes are a blur. In crowds I seem to see the few people I already know in technicolour. Other potentially interesting faces are quite dim.
Yohei’s face would have, in all likelihood, stayed dim if I hadn’t been out here in public with Open, and if he hadn’t been out looking around to find us, or if he hadn’t been awesome enough to jump in when we threw up our call for contributing editors. There are strange old links being remade all the time.
But don’t worry, I didn’t choose to welcome him on board just because we share an alma mater- you can’t trust someone just because they’ve haunted the same halls. No, what won me over was the small collection of thoughts and observations about the whole feeling of homesickness that he sent me along with his introduction/application. Especially fun was finding out that we had both stumbled on the strangeness of the French verb “Missing” and stopped to write something down about it.

“Homesick”
by Yohei, originally published on The Red Line Review.

Cliche or thoughtless counterintuitive logic seems to intrude on an otherwise pretty Kings of Convenience song, “Homesick.” At first blush, there is something off about the song’s sense of causality. :

Homesick,
‘cuz I no longer know
where home is.

It hardly needs pointing out that one’s homesickness is contingent on a strong notion of home, on knowing where home is.

One needs a home first,
toward which longing can be directed,
to be sick for.

Homesickness, as we might imagine it, thus matches particularly well with the French verb
manquer
and the syntactical reorganization the verb requires,
for both emphasize the central source from which homesickness originates and pulls.
The object or site of remembrance takes priority over the subject: Tu
me manques.

The state of homesickness is often suggestive of

spatial remove,

in contrast to a related
kind of
anxious
remembering,
the act of nostalgia which implies a

temporal distance.

In addition to their common reliance on the enduring nature of memory, however, nostalgia was originally synonymous with homesickness: “acute longing for familiar surroundings, especially regarded as a medical condition; homesickness.” Such a definition allows, then, we can assume, that homesickness, like nostalgia, most likely involves some degree of idealization. One remembers familiarity, perhaps at the expense of home as it really is:

when away at summer camp for the first time, one hardly remembers Dad’s austerity or Mom’s temper; rather,
one extrapolates from frozen, quotidian happy moments —
what Virginia Woolf called moments of non-being– a
more or less
complete picture of home.

Homesickness and nostalgia also leave open
the possibility that one’s pang for a sense of familiarity
need not be for home at all,
but simply familiarity itself, imagined (deja vu)
or real.

One can be nowhere near home as long as the surroundings effect intimacy.
And in fact, one can feel familiarity not only from the truly familiar,
but from the comfort provided by one’s mistaken sense
of forgotten familiarity:
thinking that someplace was once familiar and now forgotten
when in fact it is — and has always been — entirely foreign:

“I would define nostalgia as an affection or desire, not for what one remembers, but for what one feels one has forgotten….Nostalgia in this sense is… well-known in a number of contexts. In a relatively bald form, for instance, it is often used by advertisers. (The television campaign that urged viewers to ‘Come
back to Jamaica’ was clearly not aimed at native Jamaicans, nor even at those who had ever visited.) In a more complex form the implication of forgotten knowledge is typical not only of Virgil but of what we call “the classics” in general.”

Erik Gray, Nostalgia, the Classics, and the Intimations Ode: Wordsworth’s
Forgotten Education (Philological Quarterly: Spring 2001.Vol. 80.2)

A false forgotten familiarity — that is to say, complete unfamiliarity —
merges into familiarity in homesickness and nostalgia;
we might be reminded of Freud’s discussion of the uncanny.
Unheimlich, in literal translation denotes the opposite of heimlich;
unheimlich is “unhomely,” frightening, and novel,
heimlich: “homely.”
Yet, as Freud comments, the uncanny absorbs both contradictory definitions:
the uncanny is “the notion of the hidden and the dangerous” (unheimlich)
but precisely so only because it is
also familiar.

“German usage allows the familiar (das Heimliche, the’ homely’) to switch to its opposite, the uncanny (das Unheimliche, the ‘unhomely’) for this uncanny element is actually nothing new or strange, but something that was long familiar to the psyche and was estranged from it only through being repressed.”

The Uncanny, trans.
David McLintock.

Homesickness, like nostalgia, then, might actually require not knowing where home is.
Familiarity and unfamiliarity — and home or some specter of it — are closely related.
Homesickness does not need to focus its desire on home
so much as something, perhaps home, that is felt to be missed:
either because it has simply become strange
and unfamiliar or because it seems
forgotten,
even if it was never experienced or remembered in the first place.

to read my ideas about ‘manquer’, you’ll have to read this piece, originally published in the Duck and Herring Summer Pocket Field Guide, called “Language Lesson 1″

I think the most interesting theories don’t come from the academy, but are observations and bold claims made in daily life, transcribed and disseminated by systems like the academy. And I think theories develop by being talked about, looked at, and generally opened up. Something as complex as theory will only really be done well by by an open-source type system where contributing craftspeople challenge out eachother’s biases and bugs.

If you’re interested enough in writing for our audience, and in working on this with us, to mentally commit to making at least one contribution a week then you should send me (your editor in chief and benevolent dictator) an email with an introduction and maybe a few article ideas and a sample of your work. We’re looking for eye-opening perspectives and enjoyable writing styles.

We are not just looking for writers, though. We’d also like to be posting comics and other drawings and photography as well. But remember: we’re looking for contributing editors. People who can produce material regularly and who are interested in taking on a little more responsibility as the project evolves. If that’s not you, then just submit your brilliant work and don’t worry about applying for this uber elite, crime-fighting, madly-theorizing team.

In return for the brilliance and self-motivated labour of contributing editors we can offer a lifetime of fame and glory, the satisfaction of a job well-done, our collective literary and high-tech skills for whatever other projects you’d like to embark on, and 98% of the ad revenue generated by your posts. Right now, that’s not a lot. But there is money-making potential here for people who are willing to write up their thoughts and give it a shot.

The more good stuff we post, the more people will come, and get inspired by your big ideas, and also click on your ads.

So if you’re in, email your goods and an introduction to : risa @ open . touchbasic . com

Thanks, you rock.
Risa

Media theory so often seems to come down to the question of balancing out against one-sidedness in communication. And the open source process seemed to have evolved attitudes and mechanisms that were successful in the creation of really complex new knowledge.

Because open source is able to sit on both sides of a traditional problem- the contradiction between opening yourself up to change and protecting yourself against distortion (bad change):
1. by opening up the source code you create a rigorous environment where assumptions and biases which are built into the construction of software (or any organizational structure) can be seen by other eyes. Other perspectives.
2. by protecting to right to fork the development of open source software (literally forking the group) the original idea can be protected against distortion; or better or complementary versions of ideas can be allowed to emerge out of the new group.
Open source code creates a fundamental twist in traditional ideas about competition, and here we could talk about the Cultural Commons, if we wanted.

But specifically, open source creates a wider understanding of the difficult process of collaboration on complex ideas, and these were principles I wanted to see explored in academic knowledge construction.
Open Journal aims to open up for discussion cultural codes and processes, and to expose media theory’s complex architecture of good ideas and biases to the challenging waters of open discussion. We wanted to speak academically without confirming in our language an ivory tower.
we wanted an academic journal with a much wider idea about where media theory could come from. We wanted to include photography, drawing, poetry, and fiction along with articles and essays, and we wanted to publish these in a space where readers could expand and critique them.
Because of this desire we’ve moved increasingly toward blogging softwares and tools-
bc blogging was evolving at this same time into a democratic, open environment and developing tools and plugins that often met our needs.

Then we added phpbb. In both cases we use the software a little differently. The comments on wordpress are more like footnotes or diverging arguments and the posts in the forum make it more like an expanding catalog of notes and observations which can be expanded upon and drawn onto the front page of Open.

We also wanted the forums to be a resource for other projects and collectives. Instead of having their own whole forum they were welcome, if they liked, to have a branch in ours. The benefit of this, besides not having to worry about the technology, was that they could open themselves up to other audiences and could insert themselves into other debates or projects. Open is interested in the fact that most people have a surprising array of interests and abilities. Humans aren’t machines designed with one purpose, we are endlessly creative and changing.
Software- like all media- can either be another layer of rigid structures telling us who we are and what we should think and how tasks should be completed, or it can be something else. Open source is the field for the creation of that something else over time, and on Open Journal we’re exploring the theoretical potential in that.

When we started Open it seemed as though there was a great deal of writing on the web about napster, the kazaa network, friendster, or blogs, or even email, or instant messaging; lots of writing about these different little manifestations of the complex idea about interconnection and open-ness that had produced the web, but we wanted to see more exploration of the theoretical, historical base for the whole ‘internet’ project itself: The Hacker culture, the homebrew club, the idea of the people’s machine, the Whole World Catalogue, the architechture of the research buildings at RAND…all of these were interesting instances of some new ideas, and i wanted to look at the relationships between these projects and ideas and the evolving politics and economics of open source.
There was a great deal of writing in communication theory about the distortions that become part of communication between individuals. Studying media draws your attention to the fragmentation that can still exist in a widely networked world if people are only connecting with people who hear their information through the same networks, or only opening up to people who confirm what you already think and believe.
When you study communications you can come to feel that a ‘perfect’ communication system, if such a thing were possible, would make peace and good choices possible. With Open Journal and “No One Knows Everything” I want to consider the way ‘open source communication’ – the whole wide, long, distributed, chaotic, disjointed field of open software development and open idea exchange that is taking place in digital spaces where the information becomes endlessly reproducible- the way this process can continue to interact with monopolies of knowledge in all kinds of different fields.
In forest management, and in international policy, and in creative writing, and in computer science the wells of domain-specific knowledge are so deep that it can become difficult to communicate with individuals from other knowledge domains who speak a different technical language. “Specialized skill in language creates a monopoly of knowledge that will eventually be brought down by force.” In response to the dangers of specialization, Innis and others suggest interdisciplinarity, and this is what Open Journal is after.
Innis- periodicals, journals, university- any media that combats the tendency towards one-sidedness- should be useful in producing a balanced and healthy society. One which avoids producing or perpetuating systems that create disequilibrium and inequality, either in the economic status of citizens, or in the health of the environment where they live, or in the range of choices they feel they have for their futures.
I began my thesis curious about the history of open source, which opened out into a larger curiosity about the effect of the cold war, and the world wars on our understanding of communication. And with deep reading in some of the under-studied bits of Innis’s writing I got interested in tracing connections between his histories of monopolies of knowledge and biases of communication, and more recent developments in civilizational crisis and monopolies of knowledge.
Interpersonal systems are affected by the technological systems they make use of. Stanley Deetz and Habermas talk about “strategically distorted communication.”
The Success of Open Source read against Innis’s histories of monopolies of knowledge suggests that blinkered, monopolized communication, communication that’s forced to find routes around proprietary knowledge, slows the process of coming toward a wider agreement and better systems. In the worst case, knowledge monopolies reify into such rigid structures that they are brought down by force rather then by a natural balancing out.

By contributing whole systems for coordination, collaboration, networking, media sharing, etc, the “free software movement” not only expands the cooperative feeling of the early hacker days but offers tools that increase the field of possible choices and ideas for not-so-monied individuals and organizations.

With Open Journal I want to keep exploring this idea, and drawing the open source rhetoric and logic into other conversations. At very least into the discourse of media studies, where so much emphasis can be placed on instances when the ideals of good communication fail, instead of on the systems and process that are successful.

The thing about open source software (and media generally) is that it needs to be looked at from very close up- at the level of the code itself, how the layers of software interact, what good protocols are for communication- and from very far away- how the software and the process for producing it interacts with the wider culture and processes of collaboration. This is the work that my own thesis is a small part of.

some places we can juxtapose open source history with the history of other networks:
-the making of the oed
-asquith and torvalds- parliamentary tactics for coming toward agreement
the northcliffe press and microsoft- the danger of monopoly
-conferences, universities (”we are collectively, what’s wrong with the university” Innis to the assembled presidents..)

the relationship between the university culture and government and corporate culture during the early development of unix and the tc-icp protocol, Paul Baran and the idea of Digital.
the unfolding learning process the idea of open source had undergone. How this environment because a recursive algorithm for system innovation. One of the most interesting examples of successful open source behavior and governance is in Linux and it’s leader or ‘benevolent dictator’ Torvalds. Access to source code creates this recursive possibility, but it’s indivduals who understand that potential who make it meaningful. So the way we think, and the way domains like psychology approach the question of knowledge and change defense mechanisms and hospitality all can benefit from open source theory.
-and interestingly, so can our understanding of the universe. the behavior of networks in nature. Microsoft, Bose-Einstein

In all of these places- Opening up information is a pragmatic and political act that resists the formations of monopolies which are threatening to civilization.
–
ways we use our website (little features of our ongoing attempt at open-ness):
- we open with a photograph of us- i have some ego-guilt about this, but when i think about it objectively i do think it’s important to open a website with human faces. i think the fundamental fact of the collaboration between art and science, guy and girl, writing and code that this photo represents is pretty key to the way we understand ‘open-ness on our site. In part, we are open sourceing ourselves with all our websites.
-we offer some key use information along the top, (submit, why ads, forum, blogs, about)
- and then show the categories of topics along the side. these are general fields of inquiry and often we’ll post entries in different categories so that you can come across ideas in different contexts.
-below the categories we added our flickr feed- the idea of sharing photos publicly in the flickr way works well for us, and allows us to publish photos by different authors, and to easily update the look of our site.
right now we’re featuring a series of graffiti photographs bc i’m interested in the way that writing on public space reclaims it, makes an argument about who owns property and who is allowed to communicate. In a way, I think open source and graffitti share a politics of access.
-below that you’ll find some of our google ads. and up at the top and in the forums you’ll find explorations of the ethics of including ads. I argue that we are open, in this way, to other ideas of the good, other attempts to be of value, and other interpretations of our audience and their desires, and bc they are chosen by Google’s content algorithms, they also suggest alternate interpretations of our site.
we’re going to need some income to survive, but sometimes they still make me uncomfortable.
-at the bottom you can get our rss feeds, check that our xhtml and css is valid and find out our page rank. elran works on keeping out site valid and optimized.
From the back end of wordpress we add keywords for the search engines, and technorati tags for the bloggers. we are trying to be accessible in different contexts and from different points of access.
- at the top right you’ll find our different css options for viewing. We started this because my gramps mentionned he found the site impossible to read due to his colour-blindness.
-then we have the big css button to participate in the donation forum, and the paypal donate button underneath- started for books to indonesia.
-then we have the forum feeds- we wanted to increase the feeling of interesting things to read changing all the time. the forums are active at different times, but we always use them for ourselves as a way of cataloguing interesting, open-related information.
-and then our google search,
-and then what i think of as our lamp stack buttons- though they also feature open office and firefox.
-Off the front page, in links- our logo and Ecosystem blog network.
-archive: heat map- again, just to offer different ways of moving around the material on our site

Things we’d still like to do (code hacks and life hacks):
-switch to a wordpress template that automatically adjusts the length of the page to the contents.
-add a page featuring our contributing editors.
-systematize what can be done by the editors- be better at delegating in an organized way.
-continue to improve the design. get into 9rules Network.
-add “most recently edited” and “most recently commented on” feeds to front page.