[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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