[-empyre-] comments welcome

[marc garrett]

Hi Adam,

 >I'd welcome any help strengthening this book.

I intend to view but there seems to a problem with your server at the 
moment...

Anyway - Love the passion behind Floss Manuels...

As Rob Myers said in a review of the project on Furtherfield in 2008 "it 
is a matter of freedom, not price. Like freedom of speech or freedom of 
the press the freedom to use software is important for a free society." 
http://www.furtherfield.org/reviews/floss-manuals

I have been on your mailing list for a few years now, lurking and 
reading the constant dialogue by the many on there.

Recently, I have been thinking about 'subtle' and 'animistic' forms of 
power. Where ecologies of freedom can adapt and find grounded values 
beyond hegemonic means. For me, this relates to people inhabiting 
environments, where human agency explores possibilities of recliaming a 
social meaning (together) through shared processes and regular skill 
exchange. And even though this is prevalant in grass roots culture and 
free and open source culture, it is interesting to ask what this need 
is. I feel it goes deeper than technology and even politics; that 
technology and politics are both tools for implimenting certain aspects 
of these needs, but do not necessarily pull us straight into the crux of 
the finer nuances of what is being asked emotionally, psychologically 
and culturally.

So when I say 'subtle', I mean a gradual encompassing of a shared set of 
meanings, being defined through lived practices by those who wish to dig 
deeper through situations of ritualizing their activities, sources and 
powers. Thus, initiating a grounded experience where the meaning is not 
just practical, but is also productive due to the ecologies being 
redefined in imaginative ways that connect profoundly to communal 
peer-ownership.

Yet, even this is not enough. For what I am trying to get at here seems 
to question many aspects of post-modern culture as well as 
hyper-capitalism, and even faith in networked culture. This voyage into 
reshaping particular fundementals of technology, peer 2 peer culture, 
and social mutualism, must have an inner 'current', other than the 
electricity being used up. What are the values being sought after which 
say more than the word 'freedom', and if we take away the technology 
binding us together here, what can we build where its equivilant can be 
flourish?

What do you reckon?

Wishing you well.

marc


> hi,
>
> I'm putting together a book on Federated Publishing which is a version 
> of Open Publishing focused on open production as well as open 
> distribution. Federated Publishing takes free software principles of 
> federated software and applies them to book production.
>
> The text is here for your reading, comment, and improvements:
> http://booki.flossmanuals.net/a-webpage-is-a-book/_edit/
>
> I'd welcome any help strengthening this book. Although its a public 
> document already I will 'push it out the door' Feb 3 as an initial 
> beta release.
>
> adam
>
>
>


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