I really can’t say what I’m dancing for joy about, but I at least want to record that I was dancing for joy on this date, so that years from now I can shake my head at how foolish and naïve I was. Sigh. The good old days…
So here is my coded joy:
314=>$; 1/3!; ls ~/rb; 
One day that’ll seem so cute.
It was well past 3AM when I finally got Spin on ICQ. He’d been on about 12 hours earlier, moaning about a headache, blurry vision… whatever, I thought, he’s just having a bad day. I ask him how he’s doing, and if he’s up to a task I’ve got on the burner, a bit impatiently.
“Heh,” he writes, “I’ve got a fever of 103, I can’t keep food down, and my head feels like it’s been split in half with a battle axe. What kind of task?”
Heh. Well…
“Peeps on the site are getting anxious to hear what the Bonn Convention really is,” I say, referring to the infamous document that everyone on DSR knew kicked off the whole asteroid piracy movement, “I think we talked about it one too many times without actually having it around.”
I could tell — really REALLY tell — that he was considering pretending that the power had gone out to his apartment. But surprisingly, instead of “Spin went offline”, I saw:
“Sure.”
And then, about an hour later, delirious with pain and suffering and a fever I’m sure could kill, he delivered to me the actual Bonn Convention, which was carefully based on a few other international treaties he dug up around the web. I don’t think we’ve ever changed the text of that document, because it contains intricacies that only a deranged mind could envision.
That, right there, is the spirit I loved about doing Dustrunners. The insane “wait, someone wants to know about XYZ… so let’s DO IT!” passion that made the show so much fun to be around in 2001. So I’ve finally brought the DustWiki back to life, and I hope that others around the web can have their own silly epiphanies.
Head on over to the site, look around, and add your own brainstorm. It’s amazing what you’ll think of, hiding in the cracks of someone else’s afterthought.
I saw on Boing Boing last night bit about a sci-fi “shared world”… which… er… is best described by the BB post:
“… a Creative Commons-licensed hard sf/post-Singularity shared world where lots of fan writers are collaborating to build a world and then write stories in it. There also seems to be some RPG adaptation activity and illustration.“
Which is, of course, a great idea (and not unlike DSR Fusion). If more of these kinds of ideas emerge, there’ll be less dependency on Star Wars, Star Trek and the other pop culture nonsense that constantly abuses us with half-hearted re-hashes.
If I weren’t already swamped with work on a few projects, I’d get around to upgrading the DSR wiki and make a proper announcement about that. Maybe next week! (ha!)
Update: Okay, I’m weak, I updated the wiki and made it live. I hate you all for forcing it on me. (I may or may not be talking to the voices in my head)
Due to a few people asking about it, my inability to blog Diggs, and also (to some degree) my PWNage by the good folks at A1TS (who really, honestly, are extremely courteous, I have to say), I’ve moved my blog over to Blogger instead. Not that I’ll be writing any more than usual. But y’know. It’s the thought that counts.
Note: This article actually originates from a K5 story I wrote, but I’m re-publishing it here for fun. Check out the K5 version for some interesting discussion in the comments.
We’re all very smart people. Some of us write operating systems, others perform beautiful ballads, some design genius web apps and others are the Shakespeares of the blogging world. Across huge distances, we co-ordinate and socialize with others just like us, and hone our craft with people we know will appreciate what we are. We’ve built brilliant and immersive walled gardens, and in them we’ll wither away in comfortable obscurity.
As diverse as it is, we all share a common culture on the internet. Experiment, open, free, extend, share … the notion behind Linux, Creative Commons, deviantART or Usenet is always the same: the more we put out there, the faster we’ll touch on that special genius we couldn’t reach alone. If information wants to be free, its rationale must be that it wants to better itself in the wild, rather than be chained to an arranged marriage between its creator and the almighty buck. We all feel it on some level, I think, and we are both impressed and upset when some company manages to turn that notion into a revenue stream. They “get it”, we know, but isn’t it almost a betrayal of our unspoken ethics?
Outside our walled gardens are maybe a dozen pristine roads, connecting our gardens to a factories in the valley below, where they turn out our ideas in perfect wrappings. The factories are run by companies who have learned the valuable truth to the internet: if you pair passion with process, you can be both efficient and great. We’re scratching the itch for thousands or millions of people around the world, and somehow we’re only peripherally aware that it’s happening. Maybe the walls to our gardens are too high, or maybe we’re just not comfortable devising roads of our own. But maybe it’s time we tried.
We are not a counter-culture, and we are not a hobbyist culture. We don’t believe Linux or Apache are frivolous wastes of time, so why do we think of bloggers as would-be pundits? The reason we don’t have music superstars in the league of the Beatles or JLo is not for lack of talent, it’s because we don’t take ourselves seriously enough to promote them that way. Our writing is more poetic than any printed book, our programs push the boundaries of software, and Diggnation is a far better tech show than anything you’ll find on satellite or cable. We have all the makings of a superculture, so why do we look for validation in the offline world?
We need to make our own roads outside the gardens. We need to define, create and implement an architecture to enhance our own culture, and to package it for ourselves first. But we need to do it in a way that stays true to our open source ethics. We always preach open standards, so let’s get our hands dirty. Let’s make an economy that only the internet could sustain. We need to define the mechanics, draft the standards, and put it in our software. It needs to be as automatic for us as copyright is for the offline world. The design of this system cannot come out of a government or a corporation, because it cannot be censorable or made for the benefit of shareholders. This is an economic model for the creators, by the creators.
We need to learn more about each other. We’re a people of limitless diversity, but we don’t exploit it. Not enough enough podcasters know where to find free/libre music; not enough writers know their mentors are so close by; not enough artists have heard of the GIMP; too many programmers are scratching the same itch, thinking there’s nothing else that needs to be done. Despite all our tools and all our connectivity, we can’t grasp collaboration outside our own circle. We need to create a common language so our communities can talk to each other as easily as they talk amongst themselves. What good is the bazaar if everyone sells the same thing? We need to put windows in our walled gardens.
We need to stop being starstruck by the offline world. We need to stop believing that a lucky few will graduate from our world to Hollywood, and that everything we enjoy now is just an amateur trial run. We need to create our own brands, our own stars, and we need to do it for ourselves, on our own terms. Let me build my evening news out of a series of stories pulled from WikiNews, Kevin Rose and Xeni Jardin. Show me the Regis Philbin of the internet world, a 7-minute daily soap, the Top 10 at 10. We don’t need NBC to promote us, we need to promote ourselves. We have the licenses, we have the technology, but we need the will. Pull the brightest minds together and make a network, where the timeslots are unlimited and innovation is embraced.
We need to pay attention to our MetaWeb. There is a huge area of online culture we’ve been too scared to traverse, but it needs to be explored and defined just like anything else. It is time to lay claim to the space between the gardens, and make the factories our serfs, instead of our masters. Some will say that this is too much, too expensive, too difficult to attempt. Look at Linux, think of its history, and ask yourself which is more unlikely. We’ve made mountains from pebbles; climbing one should be easy.
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