I think a lot about freedom these days. The whole reason I am here living here in San Francisco is to study the freedom-loving-hackers who are bringing civlization to its knees [hehe]. So, I talk about it with people, think about it, and occasionally feel it.
Lately, this feeling of freedom has come from my escapades biking whether I go on ride with friends or as I struggle to get to all the places I need to go to. I got rid of my car, luna, a 1978 yellow Toyota Celica when I moved to the Mission and have relied on my bike and/or public transportation to get around. So, in the last two days, I have been able to make it “on time” to my various meetings thanks largely the two B’s: bart and my bike.
On Tuesday I used my bike and bart to get to the east bay where I met with
Nicolas from Berkeley who is working on some really cool software to help map out the relationship between code and people and people and people on free software projects, software that was inspired by the book
Science in Action written by the wacky and loveable sociologist of science, Bruno Latour. I then rushed back to SF to work at the EFF spending my usual Tuesday nights with a group of EFF and OPG volunteers.
On Wed, I went back to Berkeley on Bart to meet an Apache and Debian developer,
David W who is an avid cyclist, lucky enough to have lived in Italy for many years to pedal around the beautiful hills of the Italian countryside. I then had to get back to SF to meet with my Chi Gong teacher to practice, talk technique, and of course Gong that Chi. I honestly did not think that I would make it in time as I got distracted on irc (surprise surprise) but I was able to pull myself just in time to pedal swiftly and make it, albeit sweaty, to his house.
Biking feels free and is a form of freedom. You freely race down the hills as fast as you can go, you can bust past cars stuck in traffic (and smile righteously), you can pick new routes. You are free to move how you would like to. To bike frees you from the headaches of tickets, gasoline, parking, insurance bills that come along with owning a car. And there is nothing like biking for days and days knowing that you got from one city to another with just your legs, some passion, and a nice piece of technology. Biking adds some freedom to the world in general, lessining the envrionmental impact on our earth and our entrenched dependance on oil which has caused one heck of a lot of violence and turmoil in our world. This sticker that I found on
laughingmeme captures the darker underbelly of our oil consumption.
Biking to commute is thus as much of a political act as voting. But unfortunately as individuals residing with a larger society, we are not entirely free to make the choice of totally relying on bikes and public transportation for our mobility. There are some serious structural constraints to “choosing” to communte soley by PT and bikes, mostly due to the spatial organization of our society that is clogged with suburbs many of which don’t have any lifelines to public transportation or only have very slow moving ones making it nearly impossible to rely on public transporation. So, if one can use a bike or public transportation, wonderful… I hope that more and more people will individually do their part and get their booty on the bike or on the train if it is so possible. Otherwise more collective, organized action is needed to make sure that structurally, people can individually have the freedom to choose to commute in a more envrionmentally sound way…..