JI @jine@sonomu.club

life = 1 damn thing after another
…
Money is bloodsucking-bloodsuckled
Life
it breeds

Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, “Cosmic Chemistry” https://allpoetry.com/Cosmic-Chemistry-

📄 Samir Bhowmik, The Battery is the Message. Media Archaeology as an Energy Art Practice, 2019 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1075&context=cpo

“Despite over decades of research, they remain assemblages of messy chemicals, hazardous, black-boxed and subject to thermal runaways. Batteries are designed today as not meant to be replaced. While scholars and industry stay obsessed with interfaces, software and processor speed, the engine that drives the heart of communications remains an unexplored and dangerous territory.”

• “The geek ideal of openness and a moral-technical order (…) was forged in the era of open systems; without this concrete historical conception of how to maintain openness in technical and moral terms, the recursive public of geeks would be just another hierarchical closed organization …”

Still relevant, I think.

Some bits from part II:
• “UNIX was, by 1980, without a doubt the most widely and deeply understood trade secret in computing history.”
• “… sharing produces its own kind of order: operating systems and social systems.”
• “… being ‘open’ is perhaps the most complex component of Free Software. It is never quite clear whether being open is a means or an end.”

I really recommend “Two Bits” by Christopher Kelty (thanks to @rra who recommended it before) for stepping into the history of Source Code and the pedagogical and socio-political implications, especially to non-techie persons.

Unfortunately, it’s not Open Access, but you can find the introduction here: https://read.dukeupress.edu/books/book/1136/Two-BitsThe-Cultural-Significance-of-Free-Software

One important aspect for me: The parallel development of UNIX and photocopying.

Free printable pattern for a cell phone cross bag by sewingmellow 소잉멜로우 – https://blog.naver.com/sewingmellow/221979508862

The story is from 1926. McKenzie Wark also mentions it in “Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene” (2015). An extract with the relevant passage is here:
📄 McKenzie Wark, Climate Science as Sensory Infrastructure, 2014 – https://www.thewhitereview.org/feature/climate-science-as-sensory-infrastructure/

There is also an adaptation (from 1967) by Ukrainian-Russian filmmaker Larisa Shepitko.

Platonov. In “The Motherland of Electricity” (Родина электричества) the protagonist who studies electrical engineering & works at a municipal power plant goes to Wertschowka, a remote village, to help the people with building a system for irrigation. The generator is an old motorcycle (from British troops?), fuel is alcohol made from corn, paddlewheels are cut out of the motorcycle’s enclosure & a tin roof. The engineer, the village council (сельсове́т) & an old peasant work together.

@edsu

Would broaden the search to include fiction in general. And definitely add some of Andrej Platonov’s writings.