Eu tenho uma coleção de bookmarks aguardando leitura aqui no meu firefox. Hoje resolvi passar alguns (de vez em quando eu começo a ler alguns deles) e achei um artigo bem interessante:
Linux for Theatre Makers: Embodiment and *nix modus operandi
Alguns trechos que chamaram minha atenção:
My central thread in this text is the Linux computer operating system(OS) and more specifically the use of the command-line interface within this OS and its relationship to embodiment.
(...)
When I first discovered the power to delete the file in my OpenBSD terminal that the OSX finder could not trash I felt was no longer a prisoner inside my machine, only possessing knowledge of a GUI, I was formerly stuck in a holding pattern. Using *nix you keep moving all the time, discovering always new executable codes sensitive to commands.
In the shell I find a marvelous mess of constellations, nebulae, interstellar gaps, awesome gullies, that provokes in me an indescribable sense of vertigo, as if I am hanging from earth upside down on the brink of infinite space, with terrestrial gravity still holding me by the heels but about to release me any moment. An example is /dev/null - a special *nix file where you pipe your unwanted data flow through this output. When I first experienced viewing data disappearing into this file, I immediately had an epiphany about the black hole and how the theory of the event horizon might function in an every day context.
(...)
It is easy to assume that source code is equivalent to bones and oper- able binaries to flesh; or the kernel as fundament, and file structure as slough. I would rather argue for a system of cubist plateaus of intersecting information regimes, with vectors / commands operating among them. In this sense it is information that is immanent within the operating system, not any particular plateau-architecture."
(...) according to Nielsen & Gentner if people opt for the GUI it ultimately limits human communication and even our ability to imagine the intangible,
"The see and point principal states that users interact with the computer by pointing at the objects they can see on the screen. It's as if we have thrown away a million years of evolution, lost our facility with expressive language, and have been reduced to point at objects in the immediate environment. Mouse buttons and modifier keys give us a vocabulary equivalent to a few different grunts. We have lost all the power of language, and can no longer talk about objects that are not immediately visible..."
(...)
After about three years of listening to the multiple and vexed opinions about what Linux distribution to actually use, in general most people tried to protect me from installing Gentoo Linux, which arguably, brings one closer to understanding the OS intimately, than most other distributions (that is, apart from Linux-from-Scratch). Eventually the installation, even with experienced support people guiding me, felt similar to that of a rite-of-passage.
[olha os mitos aí]
(...)
In the wake of increased computational usage, it is important moment for people to want to continue to actively reinvent language. Yet even in spite of their severity, computer languages have caused a tremendous creativity because there was, so far, no power to discipline them, as Sondheim has noticed 'for some of us, linux _has_ changed the language'.
(...)
As Harwood comments 'It seems software exists in some form of invisible shadow world of procedure...Software is establishing models by which things are done yet, like believing the objectivity of maps, we forget that software is derived from certain cultural, historical and economic trajectories.'
E aí fui ver quem escreveu, é uma das meninas do /etc, o que me lembra de contar que ontem fui à casinha trocar a idéia com a Donna, menina dos Gender Changers que tá fazendo uma residência descêntrica, também envolvida com o /etc. Cheguei no meio da tarde, com sono e fome, a gente foi almoçar na padaria ali na frente da casinha. Salsaman, desenvolvedor do Lives que tá hospedado na casinha desde que veio pro Fisl, tava junto, além de Maria_Lu e Marcita. Voltamos pra casinha, e o movimento tava lento. A galera foi chegando aos poucos, e com algum atraso rolou uma apresentação da Donna, contou de ascii, genderchangers, /etc, de participação em eventos, das oficinas de gênero e tecnologia. Não ouvi toda a apresentação porque ao mesmo tempo eu tava lá atrás extraindo o áudio das mini-DVs do diálogo na casinha com o novaes (e rolou!). Depois rolou sessão do Feminism Speak Up!, que eu ainda não tinha assistido. Belo vídeo, parabéns à Valentina e sua galera. Aí o pessoal debateu mais um pouco e foi saindo. Fiquei ainda uma meia hora conversando com a Donna, mostrei umas fotinhos de MetaReciclagem, trocamos idéia sobre um monte de assuntos interessantes em tempo reduzidíssimo. Um dia eu encontro com ela em Amsterdam pra conversar mais ;)
