TL;DR:  I’ll probably show up at stammtisch a little early today, say 8pm or so. People still in town after the CCC are encouraged to come by! Hope to see you all for another drink before you sail off to your various hacker lairs. http://bit.ly/buchhandlung

Well, #28c3 has come and gone.

I’m not sure how it happened, but after all these years on the internet, It looks like I’ve somehow become a blogger.

I never really wanted to be a blogger, after all the most exciting thing about the Internet has always been the ability for users to interact on neutral turf. Yet, the web, even when it has social features, is always home-court for somebody or another.

The definitive technology of the Internet to me was always UseNet, a worldwide distributed discussion system, and this was where I first began to express and discuss political issues, where the worlds of political activism and media art intersected with my life as a computer programmer, and drew me into ideas and projects and communities I would otherwise have had no connection with.

I didn’t start out thinking about what I was doing as “publishing” so much as fishing, posting not so much so people would read my texts, but so people would respond to them. Their responses give me new ideas, insights, and more leads to better understand these topics I could now begin to access, byway of the Internet.

UseNet was an ongoing multiparty dialogue.

When people started blogging I couldn’t see the point. Why post something on just one website, instead of millions of news servers all around the world? Why force people to use dodgy webforms to leave comments, instead of slick news reading software? It seems so retrograde, so hierarchical, privileging one writer as the blog’s “author” with everyone else reduced to “commentators,” under the tyrannical moderation of the blogger, meaning that the presence of opposing views, that made UseNet groups so vibrant, was absent.

A personal website seemed to me no more useful than as an elaborate .plan file, a kind of online brochure, good for a CV and Contact info, maybe even a archive of what you had really posted online (meaning on UseNet), but certainly no way to reach any community.

Sadly, UseNet has become increasingly obscure, for reasons that I have discussed at length, as part of the Capital-financed enclosure of the peer-to-peer Internet with centrally controlled client-server technologies.

As a result for years I’ve been lost in wilderness, making my contributions on web-boards like Autonomedia’s InterActivist, mailing lists, etc, and even *gasp* “Social Media,” Eventually being published by Mute Magazine, and other websites, leading to the Telekommunist Manifesto being released by the Institute for Network Cultures.

In an effort to co-ordinate my use of these disparate platforms, somehow a blog emerged.

So here we are. I’ve accidentally become a blogger.

Last week the #28c3 occurred in Berlin, and it served as the point of departure for the last  six texts that I’ve written. For completeness, I’ve collected links to all of them below.

• Nobody Goes There Anymore, It’s Too Crowded! | http://wp.me/p24fq

When a place becomes too crowded, things like getting in, getting a table, getting service, etc, become more competitive and thereby difficult. Some of the original regulars become crowded out and stop going, eventually the others stop too, “because nobody goes there anymore.”

• The Suck Principle | http://wp.me/p24fqL-qo

Only places that suck can really have a continuous community, because if nothing about the place sucks, it will attract more and more people until it sucks because of crowding. So if you want a continuous, closely knit community, something about the venue or event must suck, your only choice is what should suck or how it should suck.

• Exceptionalism and The Internet Surveillance Industry | http://wp.me/p24fqL-r1

Expressing outrage that enemies of the US and it’s allies are using the technology being developed by the west also seems misplaced, and rests on regressive exceptionalist view that privileges western states as being somehow noble enough to be trusted with the ability to survey their citizens, but  not sinister foreign powers.

•  Capital and The War on General Computing | http://wp.me/p24fqL-rg

It is not ignorance, nor even genuinely the needs of law enforcement that is driving the war against general computing and a general network. It’s too simple to understand this war as simply tyrannical law enforcers and paranoid music execs duping clueless legislatures into locking-down cyberspace to save Lady Gaga and Katy Perry. Rather this war is simply a consequence of the fact that our technology industry is funded by finance capital, and finance capital requires profit as a return.

• There Is No A List | http://wp.me/p24fqL-rC

Certainly the freedom-loving free markets will punish peddlers of tyranny and domination! No doubt ethically minded investors will move their investments to the virtuous firms of list A, leaving the B listers starved of Capital. Justice conscious consumers will immediately dump B’s products and take up the A list! Politicians, eager to please their constituents,  will kick the B listers to the curb and shower the A listers with all the lucrative governments lucre. The sinister B-list companies will collapse and the bold and brave A listers will take their market share and refuse to implement censorious or freedom-denying features into their products, and certainly not enable sinister foreign powers to oppresses their people. Cackling foreign despots and their bumbling mad scientists are now foiled for good by the freedom loving actors on the glorious free market system!

• Class Struggle Among Cyborgs | http://wp.me/p24fqL-rN

 So long as we have an economic system that allows an owner/lender class to exploit a worker/borrower class, we will have communications systems and social institutions that are controlled of the owner/lender classes and structured in their interests, and against the interests of the worker/borrower class, for the simply reason that since the owner/lender class will aways be able to retain earnings and accumulate while the worker/borrower class can only earn enough to service their bills and debt.

I’ll be at Buchhandlung as usual this evening, all are welcome to come along for a drink.

In my text last week I discussed the fact that increased competition for tickets at the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin will ultimately result in a less closely bound community with less diversity and a more transient body of attendees[1]

Of course, this is not a unique case, the phenomenon of crowding out is well know to most people, from bars and nightclubs that “used to be cool” but are now “too popular,” to gentrified neighbourhoods, made cool my pioneering residence introducing art and culture to formerly derelict spaces only to wind up pushed out by rising rents they can no-longer afford.

The fact is; to avoid one paradox, you need another.

Yogi Berra’s paradoxical crowding out principle, famously expressed as “no one goes there anymore, it’s too crowded” can only have another as an antidote, “for anyplace to stay cool it has to suck.”

The Suck Principle.

Only places that suck can really have a continuous community, because if nothing about the place sucks, it will attract more and more people until it sucks because of crowding. So if you want a continuous, closely knit community, something about the venue or event must suck, your only choice is what should suck or how it should suck.

Ideally, it should suck in a way that will discourage transients, but yet be easily adaptable-to by regulars. In other words,  it should suck in away that discourages attendees with little or no commitment to the community, but doesn’t really bother committed members.

For instance, when I’m choosing a bar to hang out in a new city there are two things I look for. The first is that prices, while not being really high, are also not the lowest around. This means that no one is hanging out there just because of low prices, but because they like that bar. The second is inattentive service. This means that transients will feel underserved and likely move on to a different bar, whereas regulars will get to know the bar staff, and get to know how to get attention.

Would I prefer a bar with cheap drinks and great service? Maybe. But the point is, so would many other people, and I prefer bars that are not too crowded, and therefore apply the Suck Principle and find bars that suck in the way that doesn’t bother me.

Now a congress like  Chaos Communication Congress is not bar, but yet perhaps we can use the Suck Principle to find some solutions for the issues discussed last week.

Change The Venue.

That would kinda suck. I’ve grown attached to having the CCC at the BCC. Don’t get me wrong, Alexanderplatz is a hole. More an urban obstacle than a central square, it’s not exactly the most charming part of Berlin. Yet, what it is, is Central and easily accessible. Making it less accessible would suck, but not in a principled way, transients and regulars would be equally inconvenienced, thus there is no community building suck here. Also, it would move the conference away from C-Base, a frequent hangout for local hackers, so a change of venue would likely suck more for regulars, inverting the principle. Pass.

Make Tickets Harder To Get

Instead of selling them on-line, sell them through local and international hacker spaces. Sure, that would suck for e-commerce fans or people in remote locations, since you couldn’t just click-though. You would need to visit your local hacker space and pick them up, but that would only suck if you weren’t otherwise going to visit your local hacker space. Some tickets could still be sold online, just not all of them. This sucks in a perfectly principled way, since it exactly sucks in way that wouldn’t really bother regular community members who would be passing by their local hacker space in any case.

Sell Options For Next Year

One way to encourage continuity is to sell options for tickets for the next congress. Transient visitors with little commitment to the community are unlikely to want these, since they would not be sure they would attend next year, but regular attendees, especially locals, would snap these up, since it’s pretty certain that they will plan to attend the following year. Having to be there at the previous congress would suck for transients, but not for regulars. For me personally, this would work really well.

I hope the Congress organizers consider keeping the current venue and trying the other two ideas, it would be really sad to see the congress community fracture and dissipate, and for the second year in a row many local hackers who have been attending for many years have been unable to get tickets, and that sucks in entirely the wrong way.

However, Cafe Buchhandlung[2] sucks in entirely the correct way, and that’s why ,in its 8th year, Stammtisch has remained not overcrowded, with plenty of space for all. I’ll be there tonight by 9pm as usual. See you there. If any are in town early for the Congress, feel free to drop by and say hi.

[1] http://wp.me/p24fqL-6

[2] http://bit.ly/buchhandlung