[57north-discuss] New Semantic MediaWiki for 57North

[Tony Travis]

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On 13/01/15 10:50, Dave Hibberd wrote:
> If we keep discussing semantics (get it?), we'll get nowhere, so
> I'm pulling this back out to some more broad points that may be
> worth considering before we all fall out over the mailing list
> again. [...] Is it worth the space adopting hackr, or something
> similar, to run essential services on? Coming to Tony's point on
> democratising IT - maybe we could have a dedicated server that both
> gives our memberbase value and runs the vital services.
> Implementation is a separate discussion for further down the road.
> [...]

Hi, Hx.

Thanks for bringing the issue of democratising IT up again. I guess
our Hackspace is just a microcosm of society in general, where some
people like to be in control and others rail against it. I've been
involved in the eternal struggle against 'establishment' IT since I
first installed BSD4.1 on A VAX in 1984 against the wishes of DEC, who
insisted we run VMS when their engineers visited ;-)

I saw the advent of PC's, and I mean Personal Computers not just
Wintel machines, as the democratisation of IT. I thought I would be
amongst kindred spirits when I joined the Hackspace, but I feel
increasingly uneasy about our discussions about who owns what and who
controls the grandiose Space 'infrastructure'...

I was once a member of the Aberdeen Computer Users Group until I could
no longer bear the constant diatribe that the Acorn Archimedes was the
ONLY machine worth using and if you didn't agree with that opinion
then you were obviously an idiot. The Hackspace is not quite such a
single-platform enclave, but I sense similar criticisms about not
using BSD or Debian as my OS of choice or encrypting everything I
write in case the NSA read it: I'm not doing anything wrong, so I
don't care if they do.

I've just watched the Mc.Fly talk that Tom posted to the list and
found it quite interesting. I agree with most of it, but I couldn't
help thinking about the Novel "I'm a PC..." ad. and spoofs of it. In
particular, the "I'm *NOT* Linux" rant from "I'm BSD" (and completely
different to Linux, which is true because the KERNELS are different,
but the userland is GNU in both cases). That lead me to look for a
humourous picture of said "I'm BSD" to poke fun at my BSD advocate
friends - In a spirit of good humour, I hasten to add.

I wanted to compare it to my (internal) picture of "I'm Linux": A
well-spoken and intelligent girl who helps the other two understand
the advantages of linux:

  http://i.ytimg.com/vi/g-vHrS4s14Q/0.jpg

Call me naive, but I was absolutely SHOCKED by the images of "I'm
BSD": A latex-clad girl demon (do your own Google image search). That
got me thinking about the difference in perspective that most people
from my peer-group (60-year-old ageing hippies) have about gender
equality and WTF am I doing in the Hackspace? As I'm sure some of you
Ubuntu critics will point out, Canonical (the company who finance
Ubuntu development) are by no means a model example of how things
should be done in an ideal world. However, my earliest critics of me
adopting Ubuntu (on a Power-PC Mac) told me that I liked it because it
was a 'Hippie' OS :-)

HOWEVER, Canonical/Ubuntu have made the largest impact towards
bringing Linux to the desktop for 'ordinary' users and the underlying
ethos of Ubuntu development (apart from the now changed flirt with
Amazon) is that Ubuntu is "Linux for human beings". I hoped that we in
the Space might be able to help people learn how to use Ubuntu in
particular and realise that there is a who multiverse of software out
there that M$ do not control. To me, this is an important aspect of
democratising IT. Of course, it should go hand-in-hand with building
our own infrastructure and showing others, as well as learning from
others, how to do that.

Thanks for posting the link to Mc.Fly's talk, Tom - It was very good!

Bye,

  Tony.

[p.s. Posted from my University email because UKFSN let me down and I
couldn't login to the Space to change my profile beck to use my Minke
Informatics email again now that I've changed ISP to BT. Got into
Hackhub now and will change it]

- --
Dr. A.J.Travis, University of Aberdeen, Institute of Biological and
Environmental Sciences, Cruickshank Building, St. Machar Drive, Aberdeen
AB24 3UU, Scotland, UK. tel +44(0)1224 272700, fax +44 (0)1224 272 396
http://www.abdn.ac.uk, mailto:tony.travis at abdn.ac.uk, skype:ajtravis
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