Comment by beepbooptheory
2 hours ago
If you are a capitalist or imperialist or whatever, its perfectly alright to oppose yourself to this. The thing I target here is this feigned confusion that these things are even applicable followed by some friendly advice on how they could have broader appeal. I just think if you aren't ignorant, than you would be engaging with it directly rather than just blustering at its very inclusion here.
Please, dissent away! I have only seen dismissal so far.
That sounds fair. I would add that it's also the duty of an organization to educate their audience about why their additional interests are relevant to the broader one that serves as its base, which the wider audience may be intrigued by already.
permacomputing.net doesn't achieve this. Again, communication isn't a one-way street.
The polarity that the upfront inclusion of their politics is obvious in the discussion here. People are either keying in on that or talking about permacomputing in general and indifferent to the group's stated politics. Are the people engaging in the former wrong for that? Tangentially, are the latter critically engaging with the subject in every aspect presented?
Is there anything provided by the website that explicitly piques their curiosity in the way that you encourage? Did the author(s) even care enough to externally link to pages that they are confident would explain what those frameworks mean in such a way that a skeptical visitor may be persuaded to figure out their relevance to permacomputing in general? If not to be entirely persuaded, but at least exit with a more cogent grasp of their own perspective on the practice?
I do like the point that you're making, I just think there's a shared responsibility in this dynamic that should be addressed. Not everyone went to a liberal arts school with a rigorous critical theory curriculum.
If your [their] politics are so important to permacomputing—something that any kind of "nerd" ought to be able to participate in—then you [they] should be able to explain why that is the case. Explain why as effortlessly as said politics are introduced and as fluently as they disappear from the foreground in deference to a rhetoric that positions them as a reliable source about the subject.
Feigning confusion in opposition to a thing that may be valid isn't any less vain than feigning shock that valid opposition exists. Insularity begets them both.