[PLUG-TALK] Of bricolage and Linux

Paul Heinlein heinlein at attbi.com
Fri Nov 15 03:33:32 UTC 2002


My wife is an OSU alumna, and a couple times a year we receive a copy
of _CLA ALUM_, the PR magazine the OSU College of Liberal Arts sends
to its alumni.

The issue she received today has an (overly fawning) article about 
Prof. Rich Mitchell and his study of survivalists, _Dancing at 
Armageddon: Survivalism and Chaos in Modern Times_.

    "When the world becomes shrink-wrapped and ready-made and so 
    commodified that all our opportunities to provide input are 
    removed, there's a gap, a sense of loneliness between who we are 
    and what we are capable of," said Mitchell.

    For survivalists, one of the most fundamental ways of resisting 
    this is by taking control of their means of existence. It is an 
    idea that emerges in Mitchell's book as the notion of _bricolage_. 
    A word with French roots, bricolage is a term for any activity 
    that might best be thought of as "tinkering"....

    Mitchell doesn't pretend to try to predict the direction 
    survivalism will take as we enter the new century. He is content 
    with the knowledge that suvivalism will continue to persist as a 
    response and antidote to the soul-numbing reality of what he likes 
    to call, "Planet Microsoft."

Hmm. Are Linux, the *BSDs, GNU software, etc. just the digital 
equivalents of survivalism? I guess so, if part of their allure is the 
opportunities for tinkering they provide and the fairly explicit 
anti-consumerism they represent. At least, that's part of the allure 
for me. (Yeah, yeah, I like the stability and security, too...)

I don't have much interest in three-bean soup, wood piles, and
orienteering, and I have a gut-level abhorence to the racism and
anti-Semitism that mark the fringes of the survivalist movement -- as
I hate the vitriol that passes as 'advocacy' among Linux bigots -- but
I guess I share a certain focus "on information and understanding"
Mitchell finds among the survivalists.

--Paul "Digital Survivalist" Heinlein <heinlein at attbi.com>






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