Substrate

This morning, the slowly-moving car crash that is my method of thinking things through served up an idea related to a previous note about consequences and boundaries.

Essentially, when we're talking about boundaries we're talking about legibility which is an important component of literacy. Literate practices involve encoding and decoding texts, and sit within an existing power dynamic. There are many forms of literate practices, which as I will keep repeating until I'm blue in the face, are dependent upon literate communities.

N.B. I extended my thinking here in Going beyond consequentialism with CSH

An intentionalist is someone who believes that moral judgement should depend on the intentions behind the action. A consequentialist is someone who believes that moral judgement should depend on the consequences of the action.

I remember being told: 'When there is agitation, look where there is no agitation.' So if you have agitation inside, then go and look at a tree. It’s not agitated. It’s doing what it needs to do. Go and watch the ants work when they’re gathering crumbs. Just look at something that’s working and let it ground you.

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Yesterday, I sent out all copies of CW-PUB-001: Field Notes on Productive Friction. I've decided that it's going to be the first zine in a three-part series, and I'm currently thinking that the second one will be entitled CW-PUB-002: Interfaces of Refusal.

Tom is currently on holiday, but I'm still sending him stuff like the above diagram as we build FIELD STATION in an intentional way. So I should say, right off the bat, that this is my view of what we're doing.

I've been collecting writing about using AI with the Viable System Model (VSM) in this Are.na collection, and published an essay entitled Governance Is Not a Dashboard. This note is an attempt to work in the open, thinking about how to apply the VSM to build a sustainable business where the "requisite variety" can, in part, be met by AI agents.

I love stuff like this that can mean different things to different people, and various things to one individual person, depending on the day / their state of mind.

Source: Are.na block · Vibes channel

After reading this, I realised that the way I organise my life is a bit like this. Really, it's about boundary-setting with yourself and others.

Sometimes it's about taking things away and setting limits; other times it's about adding something as a different option - for example, my analogue desk gives me a different thing to do in the morning rather than immediately go on a screen.

This is interesting. I experimented with bitchat when it first came out but now it looks like it's a bit more mature.

It's the kind of app we should all encourage friends and family to install, just in case. More on the Wikipedia page, including a bit of a genealogy of similar apps and how they have been used.