anti-capitalism, while a bit strange a lable, is something I can sympathize with. But once we are talking anarchism and (intersectional) feminism in a computing context, I am definitely out. I miss the time when computing was a lot less political. It was nice hacking on projects without having to identify with something totally unrelated, or being forced to support idiologies just to be a part of it.

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tolerance 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> I miss the time when computing was a lot less political.

Whether such a time ever existed is debatable.

Here's a test. Define the period that you're imagining. Then investigate this period as a point in the history of computing with its broader sociopolitical contexts.

Somewhere in the midst of that milieu I reckon or the politics you're likely to be fond to mix with your tech projects.

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colechristensen 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Most "conservative" opinions are basically "I miss when I was young and wasn't aware of all of the stuff happening around me and want modern reality to be like my incorrect perception of how things were in my youth"

	▲	tolerance 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		That was the direction I was going to head in first before I was less confident in my assumption of the parent commenter's age based on their username. It's a good direction to take and adds in the possibility, for example, that one may investigate the past and find themselves unintentionally and retroactively complicit in everything between the atomic bomb to US intervention in Libya. And now I'm curious about the likelihood of a youth who will know no age better than our present, in the future. You might like this thread from earlier this year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46505934
	▲	rapnie 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Yes, that is a more honest assessment than longing for the time "when computing was much less political". It simply wasn't, and not recognizing that leads directly to the mess we have today and onwards towards bleak future.
	▲	lynx97 an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		That is quite a condescending take. I get that you are extrapolating from my post that I might be conservative. That needs more nuance, but I get it. But to assume I always was, and used to be ignorant, is too far reaching. In fact, I used to be a lot more progressive in the past.

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boudin 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The web originally was way closer to anarchism and I really miss that. It was a cluster of self-organising communities, little to no intervention from the state, a lot was not profit driven. Same with IRC.

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colechristensen 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The web was invented at CERN and spread through universities and got taken up by nerds. It could not possibly have been more state sponsored.

	▲	boudin 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		And the Internet was state sponsored too, at the time though it was not even legal to create communication networks in a lot of countries. But that's the premises But what it gave birth to was a form of anarchy. One doesn't go against the other, the same way a political regime can change within a country.

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hyperjeff 31 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

clearly not a reader of Mondo 2000 back in the day. i do miss real hacker culture.

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tenuousemphasis 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If you at all understood any of those three things you would know that they are all closely related.

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atoav 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

IMO it depends very much on how those positions are being forced on those attending. Since this is about permacomputing I suspect not all that much.

In my experience these self-given-labels just express the views of some founding members and are often used to clarify who they do not want (capitalist, misogynist authoritarians) and who is welcome (left leaning people, women, people who know how to treat women, people who can respect flat hierarchies).

I find it a bit edgy to self label an encouraging like that, instead of explaining the meat of it (we are anticapitalist, because..., we are feminist, so women are welcome, we are anarchist, so our organization is structured with a flat hierarchy). Since it is an anarchist space, that is anti-authoritarian you probably won't find much indoctrination.

	▲	tolerance an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> In my experience these self-given-labels just express the views of some founding members and are often used to clarify who they do not want [...] and who is welcome [...] This is where I think the problem is. Once you start appending political identifiers then the purpose of an organization becomes more than just about X, but X according to certain values to the exclusion of others. There's nothing wrong with that but I could see how it can be viewed as disingenuous when it's insinuated that the organization is more open/general than it is apparent.