David Garcia via Nettime-tmp on Mon, 17 Jul 2023 10:36:54 +0200 (CEST)


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Re: <nettime> Summary of today's meeting

This kind of meta discussion is a bit risky for our shared mental health as it can suggest we have nothing ourselves to talk about.
But just sometimes at key moments (like now) it is necessary. And its part of an urgent wider discussion about how to manage disagreement that does not suppress essential grit and friction. And is able to cope with the recognition that disagreement is always, by definition, 'disagreeable' whilst still mitigates the chances of implosion or forking. That encourages people to "stay in the room" and keep the conversation moving. This I guess is maybe what skilled moderation (and politics) manages and has important implications that go way beyond nettime.
In this regard I have found Teresa Bejan's book "mere civility" a very useful contribution to this discussion. It recognises how important and difficult these issues are to tackle whilst drawing on histories that go back to the killing fields of the reformation and the religious wars. And offers possible modes of communication that give a direction of travel that avoid sliding into comforting liberal nostrums. 

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674545496

David Garcia


On 2023-07-16 02:51, Joseph Rabie via Nettime-tmp wrote:

Hi John, Michaël & all,

What I remember about the Well (and other similar spaces), was how a
discussion could spin out really long threads, mostly politely,
sometimes with anger, but where people were not afraid of using irony
or sarcasm on occasion. There was an ethic of debate, a generally safe
place where one could disagree fruitfully.

In today's most divisive of times, things (on social media and
elsewhere) have become horribly exacerbated. Some people are
deliberately abusive, in order to stake out their claim to whatever
particular brand of domination drives them. Other people prefer to
censure themselves or remain silent, rather than risk being construed
as being abusive or suffering backlash, in spaces perceived as being
unsafe.

The truth be told, Nettime has become a very quiet place over the past
years, where discussion has been mostly sporadic. Yet the endorsements
that Nettime has been receiving from so many people, over this period
of its current "remaking", are deeply moving. Nettime deserves a
renaissance in which we really start talking to one another again,
disagreeing if need be, in a spirit of constructive decency.

This comes with the urgency of a world which is in terrible need of
"remaking", whose "leaders" have no greater horizon than "business as
usual". Nettime is a haven where there is so much collective
intelligence that can be applied to that essential goal.

Best wishes -
Joe.
Le 15 juil. 2023 à 19:10, John Hopkins via Nettime-tmp <nettime-tmp@mail.ljudmila.org> a écrit : 

Hi Joe -
I joined Howard Rheingold's "Brainstorms" community about 25 years ago after I first met Howard when he was in Helsinki on a lecture tour and I was teaching (netculture) at the Media Lab at what is now Aalto University. Brainstorms grew out of the WELL scene (for those who don't know, WELL stood for Whole Earth 'Lectric Link ... it was part of Stewart Brand's Whole Earth 'movement'). Howard was then a journalist writing about Silicon Valley.
Brainstorms, which merged with MetaNetwork to become BSMN a few years back, was much larger than it is now, but there are still a few hundred folks on there on a more-or-less daily basis. It's been running on a Caucus instance for the 28 years or so that it's been in existence. Essentially no moderation, but it is remarkably civilized and community-oriented (with users distributed across maybe 
30-40 countries or so).
There are regular f2f conclaves when folks are in geographic proximity. 

...
Cheers,

John

On 7/15/23 4:09 AM, Joseph Rabie via Nettime-tmp wrote:
In the late nineties, I was a member of the Well. This could be accessed by a text client, or a web interface, which is what I used. As an example of an 
online forum, it was a flourishing, exuberant space, with many active
conversations going on simultaneously in many subjects. The forum format worked very well, it was civilised and convivial, and I miss it. Members in 
the San Francisco area got together on occasion.
Are there other people on Nettime who used the Well, or similar spaces? 

--
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