The Art of Loving (1)

I just read an article on the New Statesmen website which is about The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm: How we forgot the art of loving. I think it’s fair to say the central argument of the article is that a lot of the problems in modern British society find their root in our over zealous acceptance of capitalism and materialism: more people should read Fromm and remember how to love instead. (Something along those lines).

I found it funny though, given the context of the article, that the author chose, as a measure of how close a couple is, is whether they have a joint bank account or not!

While Fromm’s five types of love continue to decline, forms of pseudo-love abound. What Fromm called “egoisme a deux“, in which two self-centred people come together in marriage or partnership to escape loneliness, but never arrive at a “central relationship”, is clearly thriving in a country where more than a third of cohabiting and married couples keep separate bank accounts.

I found it funny, anyway.

Intermediate Technology and the OLPC

I wonder if Nicholas Negroponte, or any of the other people involved with the OLPC, have ever read E.F. Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful, as one of the central ideas in the book epitomises the approach to design that is represented in this little laptop.

Schumacher argues that trying to aid the economy of a third-world nation by implanting all of the latest, greatest, and most expensive technologies directly into an economy that is not capable of sustaining this kind of development long term is doomed to failure. Instead he advocates the use of intermediate technologies: technologies that apply modern knowledge to design systems suitable for a country’s current state of development and use minimal capital – in this way they help to push a country further up the ladder of development (to borrow a phrase from Jeffrey Sachs) in a sustainable manner.

I’m no economist, and my current grasp of the material in this book is limited – despite its very readable nature – but it seems to me this is exactly what the OLPC delivers: modern technology in a form designed from the ground up to be applicable and useful in the particular set of circumstances developing nations find themselves in.

What’s even more relevant to the discussion of the OLPC and Small Is Beautiful is that Schumacher talks about three factors which are vital with respect to the sustainability of development: education, organisation and discipline. The OLPC’s explicit goal of furthering education in developing nations is noble and I believe (this is based purely on belief, I have no real evidence to back this up) that it can make a significant impact due to the way it provides access to such a wealth of material, and the way in which it encourages and enables co-operation – all of which is of course founded in the free/open source ideas that formed the basis for much of its development.

This book, and several others that I have read lately, all fall under my loose definition of free culture: to me it goes beyond licensing and extends to a whole way of living and thinking – am I the only one that thinks like this? I’ll blog more about the other books I’ve read lately that are along a similar track.

Spark of Grace

Just finished digitising this book. It’s available under a verbatim license and is an interesting read. Get it as either PDF or ODT.

Summer Reading

Today I thought I might suggest a little bit of summer reading, now the good weather has finally arrived in the UK! Some are a little off the beaten track, with less explicit links to free software; all of them, in my opinion, will be of interest to anybody visiting this website. So, read the list, pay a visit to Amazon and grab the nearest bottle of sun cream!

Understanding Media

I’ve just started reading Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan, and while the first chapter was interesting, the second seems to have gone off the rails. In the spirit of Deschooling Society, which I read a few weeks ago, I’d like to ask someone to get in touch with me to talk about Understanding Media; maybe you’re an expert on the book, or teach a class, or are in a class which features this book, what ever you do I’d love to hear from you about this!

Either e-mail me (it’s at the bottom of this page), or leave a comment to this post, and you can help me to figure out this book.

The Old Man and the Sea

Another book; it was only a short one, but honestly, I understand why Hemingway won the Nobel Prize for it.

I’m not sure what to say about it: the story is that an old, impoverished fisherman has failed to catch a fish for 84 days, and on the 85th decides to try and change his luck by going a long way out; a fish bites and it takes him the better part of three days to finally land it, almost killing himself in the process. Apparently there are a number of interpretations in existence, but regardless of how you feel about any of these I think it’s undeniably an unforgettable and thoroughly enjoyable read.

I’ve yet to start another book, though perhaps later. I do, however, have a long list of things to finish in the meantime, so perhaps I should direct my focus at those:

• Tidy up the code for this theme and consider the suggested improvements and how best to implement them
• Finish the other theme/website I’m working on which I’m actually going to be paid for (Delayed: Just about finished my part on this, waiting for client to get back to me after they’ve been held up.)
• Do some more work on the Fedora Documentation Project – Revisor docs especially!
• Hunt down funding for Free Me and get it finished
• Write about free culture/web 2.0 in terms of Deschooling Society
• Enjoy this evening out with my friends (Done: and it rocked!)

I’m certain there are others; these are all that come to mind for the time being.

LNDLIT+

An open literary festival for London: 29th June to 13th July.

Down and Out…

…in London and Paris is the book I’ve just finished reading. It’s by George Orwell, and like everything he does is a really great read.

The book is a memoir of his experiences with poverty in varying situations: from working for next to nothing as a plongeur in Paris to living as a tramp in and around London. A few parts of the book stick in my mind:

• The priest who gave out meal vouchers under a bridge on the Thames, without waiting or expecting to be thanked; the response of one of the tramps was brilliant: “That f***** won’t ever make a bishop”, or words to that effect.
• A fellow tramp called Bozo, who made it clear to Orwell that being a tramp doesn’t mean that is all you can think about: his mind always remained free by taking an interest in the stars and in politics.
• The descriptions of the times he went without food for several days at a time, most often in Paris while in between work.

I’ll look up quotes to go with these sections at some point (It seems like I have a long list of things to do, I’ll have to get to some of them tomorrow). I’m now reading The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway – thoroughly enjoying it so far.

Deschooling Society cont.

Today I finished reading Deschooling Society, and although I haven’t quite managed to understand all of it, I understood enough to realise that it’s something I want to read again. I also realised that I was right: the parallels with free software/culture are enormous, so much so that I wonder if RMS has read it? I hope so, because I think he would like it, and take great pride that in many ways what Illich dreamed of is now a growing reality thanks to the free software movement.

There are of course threats to this growing reality, and I hope somebody will write a piece setting Web 2.0/free culture in the context of Deschooling Society (the good and the bad); maybe I will even do this, once I feel confident I have a better grasp of the entire book! One point I will quickly mention now: reading this book has put me off Facebook – in fact, I’m thinking of disabling (because they won’t let me delete!) my account, but will wait until I’m sure I’m not just over reacting.

A few unrelated things:

• I did some work on the Fedora docs yesterday, should be ready to hit the user guide soon
• Realised that Jamendo now insists on Bittorrent/emule for downloads, which don’t work for me because my ISP throttles At least I can still embed a playable widget.
• Off to London tomorrow for Wimbledon (hope the weather is OK!) and then CC-Salon on Thursday – still need to figure out what I’m going to say…

Deschooling Society

A new category – reading It’s a simple one: I’ll post whatever I’m currently reading, and maybe what I thought of it once I’ve finished!

Today I started Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich, thanks to a post on openDemocracy. It’s quite heavy going so far, but I think that’s just getting used to a new author/context etc. From all I’ve read about the book from various sources it should be a great read, with many parallels to the free culture community.

It’s quite common for me to be reading more than one book at a time, and right now that’s true. I’m also reading Christian Theology: An Introduction by Alistair McGrath and Code V2 by Lawrence Lessig; these two seem to have taken a back seat lately.