I finally got around to signing all the keys that I exchanged while I was in the Netherlands. Seth wrote a nifty script so that I was able to do the whole deal with one command, which was nice. One of these days I need to really write about my ethnographic experiences with key signing. If there is one purely non-technical event that makes a Unix geek full of glee and joy, it is the key signing event. If you ever encounter a sad Unix geek and want to immediately bring some cheer into their lives, just break the emergency glass and aks them: “want to exchange keys?” and it will produce an effect that no anti-depressent or recreation drug could ever produce.

Today Seth and I also recommenced our weekly “Unix” and networking lesson and I have to say that he is one fine, fine, fine, fine, I do mean, fine teacher. I learned, at least conceptually, about IP assignment, dhcp, static vs. dynamic and public vs. private IP addresses as well as some other things about netmask, routing, and routing table. He makes it seem like the whole world of networking is so, so, so straightforward. If only everything could be presented so clearly…

Speaking of Unix, I never told people about the funny Debian joke that I told at the 4S paper presentation last weekend in Milwaukee . So, the paper went well mostly because I am no longer really nervous at public speaking and in fact kinda enjoy it as it is a good venue for telling jokes. So, at the end of the talk, someone ask me whether Debian developers “really get” by participating in Debian as I sort of argued that part of the devotion can be explained by the fact that Debian developers receive and get all sorts of material and immaterial things through sustained participation. To answer, I could not help but blurt out: “wow, do they get?!!!? Well, we all get through Debian, we apt-get.” Of course I was like one of two people there who got the joke but I could not help laughing at my albeit very corny joke. But there is a real sort of crazy sensation of pleasure when I run apt-get install. It is a bit like magic and I can’t help but feel a burst of amazement and joy. Perhaps this is what folks feel during key signing??

This weekend has been a true goouuuuuuuuulash of intermingling with Debianistas and there is just more in store for me as I am off to Utrecht for a general Debian gathering and then I get to interview another Debian developer tomorrow who grew up on a farm (where we will be doing the interview). He will be my representative “farm-boy-developer.” : )

Just when I think I am sick of hearing someone’s “programming life history” (we had a Sinclair… Atari, Apple II-e, Basic, BBS, blah blah), I am re-animated by the stories and perspectives I hear. And of course, I learn really cool stuff whether it is some new webite, blog, or piece of writing. I am quite excited to read this one on programming called the the programmer’s stone.

I am amassing quite the collection of writings on and by hackers on programming, hackers, UNIX, etc and I think I should compile the list and stick it on my website. Hmmm, a good project for when I return…

Well, gotta catch another train…..

I had yet to meet someone with my name, Biella, surprisingly till last night at a Hippiesfromhell (a Dutch hacker group) mega-movie gathering, which was held at Yella’s house. When I first saw the name Yella on the hfh mailing list, I thought, “wow, that sounds a lot like ‘Biella’ only with a Y”. And funny enough, Yella is the structural equivalent of Biella in that it is short for Gabriella (as is Biella). Yella’s parents had heard “Yella” in Belgium and liked it much in the same way that my parents liked Biella over Gabriella when they heard my sister Sylvia christened me with it when I was brought home from the hospital back in 1973.

More than any other day here, I was surrounded by techie-types, programmers, and hackers, starting with a lovely bike ride down the Amstel river with Jim Mintha , a Debian developer who was a gracious host and a great interviewee and then ended the day at Yella and Hanno’s home to watch three really excellent movies all of which had to do with the question of selfhood, friendships, and reality online.

What was it like to spend a day with “the geeks” here in the Netherlands vs. my time with the geeks over in the US and Canada? Well, for the sake of shortness and linguistic play, I think the Yella Vs Biella naming schema is a good metaphor to think about the differences and similarities. Yella is certainly not Biella, yet there is a structural equivalence between the two. They are both shorthand for Gabriella and when anyone said “Yella”, I sort of had to think twice to see whether they were addressing the evening

Lately I have been spending a lot of time on IRC (Internet Relay Chat) mostly talking with my friends that I have met during my recent travels. I have enjoyed it tremendously, in part because I have been able to maintain and deepen certain relationships but also there is just something about the medium itself that I really love. I was not sure how deep my relationship to IRC ran until about a week ago when something happened to me before I feel asleep that revealed that IRC has had a huge impact on my psyche So, often before I go to bed, my mind just wanders into this space of special imagery in which fond memories will just randomly appear. Basically any moment that I hold a special fondness for might pop up during this period of limbo before I fall asleep. So, the other night, my IRC GUI client just made a cameo appearance in my nightly field of memories and to tell you the truth, this almost jolted me out of my sleepy nebulous state with great concern. I was like “shiiit, IRC has begun to leave a serious imprint on my self.” And since I have spent a lot of time mentally digesting what it is that I love so much about irc and why so many people in the past and present fall prey “the addiction.” Below are some very unsystematic thoughts about the way I have come to think of IRC….

When I first began to think about why IRC was so compelling, my mind wandered to a set of memories that I have not thought about it a very, very long time. It took me to the endless hours I spent riding the morning school van, which I did every year for about 10 years growing up. So, starting at the age of 4 while living in San Juan, the van driver, “Ana” picked my sister and I up at 7:00 am in a banged up Dodge van that fit about 16 people. So, I don’t remember the early years too much but as I got a little older , I used to, believe it or not, *love*riding this beat up van operated by superbly cranky driver with a group of people who were not really my friends in the sweltering heat of the tropics . Caged for 1.5 hours a day in a moving vehicle was fun?? Well, what I liked about it were the conversations especially the ones in the afternoon after everyone was pumped on high doses of sugar. In the van, we had nothing else to do but sit and talk to each other and since we did this 5 days a week, the group developed a dynamic in which these crazy conversations about whatever topic would unfold. Conversation was often rowdy, playful, grotesque nearly always passionate, and meandered every direction, in part because we were all coming from different perspectives thanks to age, religious, and some class differences. None of us would probably elect to voluntarily get together and talk but the forced proximity made for some surprisingly great conversations. Some days I would sit back and chill and listen while other days, I would offer a mouthful, while other days, I would selectively interrupt with a comment here and there. The group style of conversing, the unexpected twists and turns, the multiple conversation, and the playful nature of talking all reminded me of my time on IRC.

Although everyone is usually doing something else on their computer and IRC is often used for practical stuff like organizing, software development, and user forums, IRC conversation also made me think about some other similarities beyond my personal experience riding a school van. It has most reminded me of Caribbean street or “yard culutre” which is characterized by a lot of playful and clever linguistic exchange in a space (the street, the yard, the alley) where people (primarily men) gather to basically shoot the shit and talk a lot of smack.

Though certainly this is not a really adequate historical comparison, this metaphorical comparison can yield some very interesting similarities between some types of IRC chatter and Caribbean “yard” culture and talk. Yard culture designates street or urban street culture in the Caribbean, especially the British Caribbean like Jamaica, Guyana, and Trinidad, a space and form of lived experience that has many different dimensions related to language, status, identity, politics, etc. What I am most concerned about here is the linguistic play and the space of the yard as a means to bring out some of the unique characteristics of IRC.

Present day yard culture and talk is captured nicely in this poem which I will reference in the section that follows. The structural context of yard talk goes back to colonialism and the brutal regime of slavery. Stripped of everything but their bodies, the formation of Caribbean society among slaves, indentured laborers, and their descendants grew from a heterogeneous mixing of various cultural elements based on the bare bones elements of memory and the adoption and especially dynamic refashioning of symbols and the few material resources that were available to slaves and their descendants. And the noteworthy element is that very little was materially available. Slaves were forced over across the Atlantic with materially nothing. Cultural elements were continued and refashioned though such avenues as music, talk, food, religion to produce the heterogeneous and dynamic character that now stamps Caribbean culture. The quality to readily innovate in the face of structural constraints, cultural heterogeneity, and very little access to material resources conditioned the unfolding of Caribbean cultures to be very dynamic, playful, and especially clever. Language and linguistic word play also became an important element given the constraints on bodies, spatial movement, and time that slavery forced upon people. Talk was one cultural resource that could not be stamped out by the colonial masters and thus creole dialects developed and elevated to a poetic art form. These creole dialects not only served as a form of communication and entertainment, but also played into dimensions of political resistance, if only in a lightweight and everyday ways. Creole filled with puns and riddles was a skillful means to create a new regime of meaning and story telling that was not easily accessible to colonial masters. The puns, riddles, and proverbs speed of critique of the powers that be while the act of spending hours and hours talking instead of “working” was and is a means of foot dragging that is not mere laziness but a choice not to engage in the dominant economic system of production.
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I have been at Linux World all day hanging out at the Debian booth having a great time talking to the developers. I can’t believe that this is my third Linux World here in the Bay Area. Anyway, a couple of the Debian guys were talking to me about this article by Declan M on Geeks and Activism

"Instead, technologists should be doing what comes naturally: inventing technology that outpaces the law and could even make new laws irrelevant."

Huh?? SInce when were coding and activism mutually exclusive? I don't agree with this at all, although my full will just have to wait till later. I am off to the Free Software Foundation BOF (Birds of a Feather) which is a reminder why geeks should not just use technology as a means for politics.

Last night I went to see Dogtown and the Z Boys at the Red Vic Movie House. This is the second time I have seen this documentary about the birth of the sport and culture of skating, a birth that was a messy intersection of local politics, sport predecessors, the modern artifact of plastic, aggressive and flashy personalities, environmental factors, corporate support, and a good deal of love and passion for spending endless hours on your skateboard, always in style.

This morning I decided to read some reviews of Dogtown, which were critical of Peralta for overdramatizing the “fall’ of one of the most gifted and spirited Zboys, Jay Adams. As well as for not being skeptical and objective enough about the birth of skateboarding and the corporate presence that bolstered the growth and proliferation of the sport in the 80s and through the 90s.

Despite the sentimentalism , which I guess I am a sucker for, I think the reviewer, Mark Holcomb entirely misses the boat as to what makes the movie a far more powerful rendition than his weenie journalistic perspective will allow. Even though the movie focuses a lot on the crew of young boys and teenagers from the economically disadvantaged and rough neighborhood of Venice Beach, Dogtown, the film artfully integrated the many other factors and conditions that paved the way for the new drama of skating. Dog town was an area of LA that was rough, dirty, its streets infected with socio-cultural attitude that spread to the local surf spots and eventually to the paved hills and valleys where the local kids first met to skate. Initially imitating the flow and style of surfing and even a particular surfer, Larry Bertelman skating eventually grew into its own as an identity and sport. It is as if Dogtown received a “blow” to its environment and in the process of its ruptured bleeding, skating was born. What I mean by that is that the substance and form of the Zephyr skating team was etched out of the local environment born simultaneously from two polar opposite substances, the water and concrete, fused in the middle by the community of kids that transformed the urban environment into their very own. Born and raised surfing, the Zephyr kids adopted the aesthetics of surfing placing them in skating by crouching low to the ground, cutting, and drawing lines all with deep style. The polyurethane wheel and the drought were the technological and environmental factors that ensured that skating would not be just surfing side kick but grow as its own entity that was eventually fueled by a good dose of corporate sponsorship. The pool, a very potent symbol and material artifact of upper middle class America was hijacked by the skaters as their heavenly play ground. It was the site where skaters first entered the realm of the vertical and really took “unauthorized access” to its logical conclusion.

Along with the fact that skating is just plain and simple: rad, what I find so appealing about it is is that it reclaims public (the streets) and private (pools, backyards) spaces and makes use of them in ways that were never intended. As you all know, I am pretty interested personally and academically in the question of the
commons and what can emerge if you let people create through collective stuff whether it is knoweldge, resources, or material artificats. Skating is one of those activities, like hacking, in which young males males make use of a commons through creative passionate and performative play. Of course there are serious differences between hacking and street skating but there are some ethical, political, and aesthetic parallels that are fun to think about. So, two of my favorite political slogans are basically the same except for the first word: Skating is not a crime and Coding is not a crime . Both activities albeit in distinct ways have been criminalized, in part because of that very fuzzy and hazy concept of “unauthorized access” that both worlds engage in. Skaters gain access to unauthorized “hard” spaces like concrete curbs, parks, and streets, while hackers gain access to the ephemeral space of code and the network. The law has been used to curb both activities. To stop access in the world of computers we now have the overly draconian law like the DMCA and in the world of skating, it is often illegal to skateboard in public places. There are also physical means to stop the two. With technology we have Digital Rights Management while skaters have to face the retarded skate stoppers. Hackers and skaters keep the question of legitimate access in play not through a engagement with politics but engaging in their craft.

The cultural image of the hacker and that of the skater, simultaneously inspire a good deal of loathing among conservative societal elements while the have also grown to hold a revered status as “underground” iconoclastic figures who are led by ideals of passion and freedom to pursue those things that they love. Many emerge out of a similar soci-economic milieu, that of the sterile American suburb and both choose to engage in activities that go against the grain of the isolation and boredom that can tend to characterize the ‘burbs.

Anyway, there is more to be said, but the blog is not meant to be a medium for a leangthy essay so I will leave it at that and check out the movie if you have a chance.