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Special Topics in Graphic Design: Design Spring 2018

Syllabus 2

Reading 1 7 The GNU Manifesto Open Source Design Manifesto Open Source Design is now Open Design On Being a Unicorn: The Case for User-Involvement in F/LOSS Designing Open Source This is the First Day of my Life The Problem With Open Source Design

Reading 2 17 The Cathedral and the Bazaar

Reading 3 36 Autoprogettazione? Designer as Author Utopia is No Place

Reading 4 47 Counterculture & Anti-Design: Postmodern Appropriations of Utopia The Global Style: Modernist after Postmodernism Beyond the New: A Search For Ideals In Design The Whole Earth Catalog

Reading 5 58 Vernacular: How Buildings Learn from Each Other Hacking Clothing: An Interview with Susan Spencer Friendlier Forks Specimen

Reading 6 82 Awkward Gestures In Defense of the Cultural Commons Open Source as Culture/Culture as Open Source In Practice: RestructWeb

Reading 7 91 Giving Things Away is Hard Work: Three Creative Commons Case Studies An Authentic Commons is not a Temporary Affair Oxygen’s Project Coordinator Nuno Pinheiro Interview Making the Switch

Reading 8 103 Indigenous Domain: Pilgrims, Permaculture, and

1 Special Topics in Graphic Design: Open Source Design

GD 399.01 abandon whatever methods we have covered. I do Fridays not aim to proselytize. My main desire for you is 9:00am–3:00pm not to replicate my ideas and practices and beliefs, 3 Credits but come up with your own methodologies and BR206 systems and aesthetics that make sense based on your thoughts or understanding. Everything I will Kristian Bjørnard present is in the service of you coming up with [email protected] your own philosophy of Free/Libre/Open Source 507-301-8402 design and your own methodologies for your design practice. Office: BR309A Office Hours: Requirements Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays / 9:00am–5:00pm — Regular Attendance. Fridays / 3:30–5:00pm — Successful completion of all projects on the due (& by appointment) date(s). ://github.com/gd399-osd — Class participation. I will do my best to respond to your within 24 hours. — Completing readings and participating in discussions. Catalog Description — You should be doing at least 3 additional hours Special topics courses are developed to cover emerg- of work outside of class each week … ing issues or specialized content not offered as part of the core curriculum. These courses, typically not Attendance offered continuously in the department, provide Attendance and participation is mandatory. Arrive students and faculty the opportunity to explore on time to the start of each class and after each new content and course formats such as working break. Students who have the equivalent of more with community partners or corporate clients. than 3 absences are no longer eligible to earn credit for the course. Topic: Open Source Design. Irregular attendance or habitual tardi- This course introduces various facets of Free/Libre/ ness will lead to lower grades and, ultimately, to Open Source and demonstrates how its principles probation or dismissal. In the case of extended and philosophies can be applied within the visual illness or other legitimate absences that may keep design field. Students become familiar with history, the students from attending a class for more than trends, theories, and ideologies, along with practi- three meetings, students must contact the Student cal design needs. The main outcome for this course Development Specialist in the Division of Student will be a book and website the students will collab- Affairs so that instructors can be notified. orate on creating using all F/LOS content, tools, etc. If you miss a class, check the course web- documenting the term’s investigations. site (Canvas, or even better our class GitHub repo). Info will be posted each week on what we discussed Course Structure & Objectives and instructions, files, and readings that might be I’ll be presenting my ideas, philosophies, and work- needed. If you have additional questions please con- ing methods to you over the course of the term tact me immediately; don’t wait until the next week. (along with the work of other designers and think- You will still be expected to present or be prepared ers). You’ll be made to work in some of the ways I’ve for the following class after any absence. found useful in regards to how I think about “Free/ It is also important you show up to class on Libre/Open Source” in my design practice (this is time and prepared. We’ve got a lot to cover and it sort of a new interest of mine, so mostly there will sets the whole class behind when any of you shows be outside information, speakers, readings, etc. and up late. However, being late — even 2 hours late — is then just in and out of class experimenting). While favorable to not coming at all. I ask that you honestly and non-judgementally try these out, once the class is over you are free to Syllabus

2 https://github.com/gd399-osd Participation Materials You are expected to take an active part in this — A reliable way to transport and backup digital class. Come prepared to discuss readings and the works; strengths and weaknesses of your classmates work — Other materials may come up, I don’t foresee a (as well as your own). You are expected to offer, as lot of materials being required… well as accept, constructive criticism. The ability to effectively articulate and explain your ideas and Due Dates design decisions is a critical skill that you must All projects are due at the START of class on the develop. Treat your classmates professionally at all assigned due date. Projects turned in after that will times. We will have some sort of critique almost not be accepted. I repeat: Late projects will not be every class period and when we are not lecturing/ accepted. This means you will earn a zero for a late critiquing/doing demos you will be expected to project. If you will be unavailable on a due date work on the current project/experiment in class. make arrangements to turn it in early or by This allows you the benefit of real time feedback during that class period. You are responsible for from both your peers and your instructor. Take turning in work on time regardless of attendance. advantage of your class time; the constant inter- Do keep in mind that something is better than change of ideas leads to better, stronger design nothing, so if you aren’t finished at least bring what solutions (& a better understanding of our world). you have so far to critique. In the case of school closing, projects will be due at the start of our next Technology Statement regularly scheduled class meeting. This course will use F/LOS tools. Nothing from Adobe, no other propietary or , etc. Grades will be allowed for the creation of projects, experi- Merely completing a project is absolutely not a ments, and new tools in our class setting. guarantee of a passing grade! You will eventually be hired based on your portfolio which art direc- In-class Technology Use tors will review and compare to other designer’s During class hours, please don’t chat online, send/ they’ve seen before hiring someone. Your ability check messages on phones/, check emails, to set yourself apart in concept and execution will communicate or browse content on social media determine your success in this field both academ- networks, nor browse the web for content that does ically and in the real world, so let’s practice that not relate directly to class. Please stow cell phones now. Be bold. Don’t be afraid of “failing” a project; out of sight! Failure to comply with this rule may be afraid of just unenthusiastically completing result in deductions from your final grade. the bare minimum requirements of a project. Your grade for the term will be an assessment of Complaints how completely you have explored your ideas, Students are encouraged to discuss complaints and researched each project, the success of the design concerns regarding a class, project or grade with me in solving the various assigned problems, unique- first, during my office hours or at a time chosen by ness, embracing of F/LOS, CRAFT and presentation. our mutual consent. Issues that students do not find to be resolved should then be reported to the Depart- A+ A A- Superior ment Chair (Brockett Horne, [email protected]). B+ B B- Above Average C+ C C- Average Readings D+ D D- Below Average The readings for this course are all in this booklet or F Failure else will be provided as links for reading online. We will have in class discussions each week following Plus or minus may be used. However, for purposes a reading. The readings will also be helpful in the of obtaining a quality point average, each grade formulating of your own opinions and ideas around category is assigned the following quality points: F/LOS as it pertains to design. They should also influ- A = 4 / B = 3 / C = 2 / D = 1 / F = 0 ence the Free/Libre/Open Source design decisions you are making on other projects through the term (For more information see the Statement of Aca- (and hopefully beyond). There is a sizeable amount demic Standards in the Student Handbook.) of reading, but nothing is too complicated or crazy.

It is all in service of us thinking hard, researching, — Class participation is paramount & should show Syllabus and experimenting. marked progress in the student’s ability to talk about design intelligently & constructively.

3 — Punctuality & participation to discussions, — The freedom to run a program, for any purpose; exercises, and any forms of critique will have an — The freedom to study how a program works and impact on the grade for each project. adapt it to a person’s needs. Access to the source — Work lost due to technological problems will code is a precondition for this; be considered late. It is important to get in — The freedom to redistribute copies so that you the habit of backing up & duplicating files. can help your neighbour; and Technical trouble is not a valid excuse for — The freedom to improve a program and release missing a deadline — neither academically or your improvements to the public, so that the professionally. whole community benefits. Access to the source code is a precondition for this. Hints for Success Attend class regularly and on time, meet dead- F/LOSS Daily. lines, take thorough notes, participate in class Create work w/ the F/LOS tools, , and discussions and critiques, show a strong sense of ideologies we’ve found this term. Document every- concept and design. Do your absolute best on each thing you uncover, make, etc. Is making harder or project and push yourself to do even better on the easier? Do you feel free-er or more limited? Does next project. Strive to be perfect in both concept version control change how you design? what else and craft. Do more than is asked for. Be inventive! can this class allow us to test, try, hypothesize Think! Experiment! Try new things! Bring a about, etc.? positive, enthusiastic, open mind to class. Take https://github.com/gd399-osd advantage of opportunities to be responsible for An Interview. your own education! Find someone in the F/LOS world that you’re drawn to. Try reaching out to them. Ask them questions. Hints For Failure How can understanding their what/why/hows Don’t come to class. Don’t complete the projects to related to F/LOS benefit your practice and under- the absolute best of your ability. Disrupt class often standing of visual design? with snide and personal insults directed at stu- dent’s work or at them personally. Don’t participate The Libre Designer in class critiques. Don’t ask questions when you (F/LOS Design Writing Research) have questions and need clarification. Decide you’re We’re making a publication as a class. We will not responsible for your own education and expect spend some time discussing the spec-ing of a me to somehow pour the information and practice “F/LOS” printing project. We can also investigate into your brain. digital publishing, and how we might make more open choices there as well. You each will need to Projects research something of your choosing related to F/LOS and design (it can be something related Where to Find F/LOSS. to content and ideas we’ve already discussed in Find an open source project or tool. What does it class, be an extension of an earlier project, or be do? What proprietary thing might it replace? Does something totally new that you are particularly it appear to be better or worse than its proprietary interested in). Research, write, and then design a counterpart. Discuss. As the term goes on we’ll 1000–2000 word essay on the experiments you’ve collect (and keep collecting) a list of resources and been making over the term or what F/LOS means tools... in regards to your graphic design practice (you can write even more if you desire, but not less please How does a Designer fit into F/LOS? get me at least 1000 words; that isn’t much). I’ll Find an open source project or tool. Figure out how give you page size constraints (everyone will get to participate in the community around that. Can the same page sizes, and these will be based on our you find a bug to file an issue for? how do you get production research, what we can easily produce on IRC and talk to the developers? Can you design ourselves, etc.), and then you can do whatever you something for it? fix something in its source code? want within those constraints that helps to illus- Spend some time getting involved. trate and iterate your written ideas. You must use F/LOS art, fonts, etc. And, all the content we pro- The Four Freedoms. duce for this will be licensed so that other can use Can we build a design exercises/deisgn thinking it in the future. Our publication will embody the around this? ideals. As long as you adhere to the content request is about protecting four user and the page and other print constraints as they

Syllabus freedoms: arrive, this is basically a wide open assignment.

4 I have a general idea/plan that revolves Project Epilogue around attempting to document everything we’ve Provided projects allow exploration into how done in the course. We’d try to collect all our “Free/Libre Open Source” and “graphic design” fit outputs, all our conversations, all our visitor’s together without prescribing too many of forms or thoughts, and then your final works and writ- solutions. The choices are yours to make. Let me ings. This means that we need to do a good job of know if you have any questions or concerns. You documenting everything as we go. It also means we have my permission to fail. No one learns anything might need to record and transcribe some things — just trying safe, easy stuff. Be bold. Be weird. Be lectures, discussions, etc. — as we go too. We should critical. Be speculative. also discuss if this should have a web component? — Work on it from wk09 Mar 16 to wk16 May 4 — Due @ second to last week of term (wk 15, April 27). We’ll spend the last two classes getting our publication ready for print and the web.

ACADEMIC POLICY STATEMENTS MICA’s full academic policies and procedures can be found in MICA’s Academic Bulletin: http://www.mica.edu/Programs_of_Study/Academic_Bulletin.html

Americans with Disabilities Act — Consequences: When an instructor has harassment. If you have encountered sexual Any student who may need an accommodation evidence that a student has plagiarized work harassment/misconduct/assault, please know based on the potential impact of a disability submitted for course credit, the instructor that there are multiple ways to report it and should contact the Learning Resource Center at will confront the student and impose penal- you are encouraged to do so (www.mica.edu/ 410-225-2416, in Bunting 458, to establish eligibility ties that may include failing the course. In the equal_opportunity). Additionally, in order to and coordinate reasonable accommodations. case of a serious violation or repeated infrac- meet our commitments to equity and to comply tions from the same student, the instructor with Title IX of the Education Amendments of Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) will report the infractions to the department 1972 and guidance from the Office for Civil Rights, Students are responsible to follow health and chair or program director. Depending on the faculty and staff members are required to report safety guidelines relevant to their individual activ- circumstances of the case, the department disclosures of sexual violence made to them by ities, processes, and to review MICA’s Emergency chair or program director may then report the students, except when prior notice regarding a Action Plan and attend EHS training. Students are student to the appropriate dean or provost, specific classroom assignment or discussion is pro- required to purchase personal protection equip- who may choose to impose further penalties, vided. If you require academic accommodations ment appropriate for their major or class. Those including expulsion. due to an incident involving sexual harassment or students who do not have the proper personal — Appeal Process: Students who are penalized by discrimination, please contact Student Affairs at protection equipment will not be permitted to an instructor or department for committing 410.225.2422 or Human Resources at 410.225.2363. attend class until safe measures and personal plagiarism have the right to appeal the charge protection are in place. and penalties that ensue. Within three weeks Students with Extended Illness or of institutional action, the student must Cause for Legitimate Absence Plagiarism submit a letter of appeal to the department In the case of extended illness or other absences Each discipline within the arts has specific chairperson or program director, or relevant that may keep the student from attending a class and appropriate means for students to cite or dean or provost related to the course for for more than three meetings, undergraduate acknowledge sources and the ideas and material which actions were taken. The academic students must contact the Student Development of others used in their own work. Students have officer will assign three members of the Specialist in the Division of Student Affairs. The the responsibility to become familiar with such relevant department/division to serve on a Student Development Specialist will then work processes and to carefully follow their use in review panel. The panel will meet with the with the student to determine the cause and developing original work. student and the instructor of record and will appropriateness of the absences and subsequently — Policy: MICA will not tolerate plagiarism, review all relevant and available materials. notify instructors as necessary. Graduate students which is defined as claiming authorship of, or The panel will determine whether or not to must contact the instructor, program director, using someone else’s ideas or work without confirm the charge and penalties. The findings and the Office of Graduate Studies. Students in proper acknowledgment. Without proper of the panel are final. The panel will notify art education or professional studies programs attribution, a student may NOT replicate the instructor, the chairperson, division, the must contact the Dean for the Center for Art another’s work, paraphrase another’s ideas, or student, and the Office of Academic Affairs of Education or the Associate Dean for Open Studies, appropriate images in a manner that violates their findings and any recommendations for respectively. The appropriate administrator will the specific rules against plagiarism in the change in penalties. facilitate a conversation with relevant faculty to student’s department. In addition, students determine whether the student can achieve satis- may not submit the same work for credit in Title IX Notification factory academic progress, which is ultimately at more than one course without the explicit Maryland Institute College of Art seeks to provide the sole discretion of the faculty member. approval of all of the instructors of the an educational environment based on mutual courses involved. respect that is free from discrimination and 5 “We design to open all sorts of possibilities possibilities of sorts all open to “We design a given group of people.” of group a given for future preferable a define collectively 6 Speculative Everything Ch1,p.6, Speculative to be discussed, debated, and used to to used and debated, discussed, be to Dunne +Raby Dunne & Candy Stuart from adapted /Chart Raby Readings The Present Probable Plausible Possible , by Dunne + Dunne , by as design, or understood as possible! as (see or understood design, as even is what understood outward expand the of just realm even the into maybe and shoot for the hope we I’d can land, can Utopia is No PlaceUtopia is When you think about where work your about When you think possible. I think Design can be used to help to used be can Design possible. Ithink preferably and chart, sidepositive of the into the Plausible areas over probable, the Plausible the areas into A goal area to inhabit for inhabit to area A goal interesting works … works interesting ) + - The Future The GNU Manifesto name completion perhaps, terminal-independent BY display support, and perhaps eventually a Lisp- based system through which several LISP R1 The GNU Manifesto was written by Richard Stallman programs and ordinary programs can share a in 1985 to ask for support in developing the GNU screen. Both C and LISP will be available as system . Part of the text was taken from programming languages. We will try to support the original announcement of 1983. Through UUCP, MIT Chaosnet, and protocols for 1987, it was updated in minor ways to account for communication. developments; since then, it seems best to leave it GNU is aimed initially at machines in the unchanged. 68000/16000 class with virtual memory, because Since that time, we have learned about they are the easiest machines to make it run on. certain common misunderstandings that different The extra effort to make it run on smaller machines wording could help avoid. Footnotes added since will be left to someone who wants to use it on them. 1993 help clarify these points. To avoid horrible confusion, please pro- If you want to install the GNU/ nounce the g in the word “GNU” when it is the name system, we recommend you use one of the 100% of this project. free software GNU/Linux distributions. For how to contribute, see http://www.gnu.org/help. Why I Must Write GNU The GNU Project is part of the Free Soft- I consider that the Golden Rule requires that if I like ware Movement, a campaign for freedom for users a program I must share it with other people who of software. It is a mistake to associate GNU with like it. Software sellers want to divide the users and the term “open source” — that term was coined in conquer them, making each user agree not to share 1998 by people who disagree with the Free Software with others. I refuse to break solidarity with other Movement’s ethical values. They use it to promote users in this way. I cannot in good conscience sign an amoral approach to the same field. a nondisclosure agreement or a agreement. For years I worked within the Artificial What’s GNU? Gnu’s Not Unix! Intelligence Lab to resist such tendencies and other GNU, which stands for Gnu’s Not Unix, is the name inhospitalities, but eventually they had gone too for the complete Unix-compatible software system far: I could not remain in an institution where such which I am writing so that I can give it away free to things are done for me against my will. everyone who can use it.1 Several other volunteers So that I can continue to use computers are helping me. Contributions of time, money, without dishonor, I have decided to put together a programs and equipment are greatly needed. sufficient body of free software so that I will be able So far we have an text editor with to get along without any software that is not free. I LISP for writing editor commands, a source level have resigned from the AI Lab to deny MIT any legal debugger, a yacc-compatible parser generator, a excuse to prevent me from giving GNU away.2 linker, and around 35 utilities. A shell (command interpreter) is nearly completed. A new portable Why GNU Will Be Compatible with Unix optimizing C compiler has compiled itself and may Unix is not my ideal system, but it is not too bad. The be released this year. An initial kernel exists but essential features of Unix seem to be good ones, and many more features are needed to emulate Unix. I think I can fill in what Unix lacks without spoiling When the kernel and compiler are finished, it will them. And a system compatible with Unix would be be possible to distribute a GNU system suitable for convenient for many other people to adopt. program development. We will use TeX as our text formatter, but an nroff is being worked on. We will How GNU Will Be Available use the free, portable as well. GNU is not in the . Everyone will be After this we will add a portable Common Lisp, an permitted to modify and redistribute GNU, but no

Empire game, a spreadsheet, and hundreds of other distributor will be allowed to restrict its further FoundationReading 01/19 1: things, plus online documentation. We hope to redistribution. That is to say, proprietary modifica- supply, eventually, everything useful that normally tions will not be allowed. I want to make sure that comes with a Unix system, and more. all versions of GNU remain free. GNU will be able to run Unix programs, but will not be identical to Unix. We will make Why Many Other Programmers Want to Help all improvements that are convenient, based on I have found many other programmers who are our experience with other operating systems. In excited about GNU and want to help. particular, we plan to have longer file names, file Many programmers are unhappy about version numbers, a crashproof file system, file the commercialization of system software. It may

7 enable them to make more money, but it requires be high by programmers’ standards, but I’m looking them to feel in conflict with other programmers in for people for whom building community spirit is general rather than feel as comrades. The funda- as important as making money. I view this as a way mental act of friendship among programmers is the of enabling dedicated people to devote their full sharing of programs; marketing arrangements now energies to working on GNU by sparing them the typically used essentially forbid programmers to need to make a living in another way. treat others as friends. The purchaser of software must choose between friendship and obeying the Why All Users Will Benefit law. Naturally, many decide that friendship is more Once GNU is written, everyone will be able to obtain important. But those who believe in law often do good system software free, just like air.3 not feel at ease with either choice. They become This means much more than just saving cynical and think that programming is just a way of everyone the price of a Unix license. It means that making money. much wasteful duplication of system programming By working on and using GNU rather effort will be avoided. This effort can go instead than proprietary programs, we can be hospitable into advancing the state of the art. to everyone and obey the law. In addition, GNU Complete system sources will be available serves as an example to inspire and a banner to to everyone. As a result, a user who needs changes rally others to join us in sharing. This can give us in the system will always be free to make them a feeling of which is impossible if we use himself, or hire any available programmer or com- software that is not free. For about half the pro- pany to make them for him. Users will no longer grammers I talk to, this is an important happiness be at the mercy of one programmer or company that money cannot replace. which owns the sources and is in sole position to make changes. How You Can Contribute Schools will be able to provide a much (Nowadays, for software tasks to work on, see the High more educational environment by encouraging all Priority Projects list and the GNU Help Wanted list, the students to study and improve the system code. general task list for GNU software packages. For other ways Harvard’s computer lab used to have the policy that to help, see the guide to helping the GNU operating system.) no program could be installed on the system if its sources were not on public display, and upheld it by I am asking computer manufacturers for donations actually refusing to install certain programs. I was of machines and money. I’m asking individuals for very much inspired by this. donations of programs and work. Finally, the overhead of considering who One consequence you can expect if you owns the system software and what one is or is not donate machines is that GNU will run on them at an entitled to do with it will be lifted. early date. The machines should be complete, ready Arrangements to make people pay for to use systems, approved for use in a residential area, using a program, including licensing of copies, and not in need of sophisticated cooling or power. always incur a tremendous cost to society through I have found very many programmers the cumbersome mechanisms necessary to figure eager to contribute part-time work for GNU. For out how much (that is, which programs) a person most projects, such part-time distributed work must pay for. And only a police state can force would be very hard to coordinate; the inde- everyone to obey them. Consider a space station pendently written parts would not work together. where air must be manufactured at great cost: But for the particular task of replacing Unix, this charging each breather per liter of air may be fair, problem is absent. A complete Unix system contains but wearing the metered gas mask all day and all hundreds of utility programs, each of which is doc- night is intolerable even if everyone can afford to umented separately. Most interface specifications pay the air bill. And the TV cameras everywhere to are fixed by Unix compatibility. If each contributor see if you ever take the mask off are outrageous. It’s can write a compatible replacement for a single better to support the air plant with a head tax and Unix utility, and make it work properly in place of chuck the masks. the original on a Unix system, then these utilities Copying all or parts of a program is as will work right when put together. Even allowing natural to a programmer as breathing, and as for Murphy to create a few unexpected problems, productive. It ought to be as free. assembling these components will be a feasible task. (The kernel will require closer communication and Some Easily Rebutted Objections to GNU’s Goals will be worked on by a small, tight group.) If I get donations of money, I may be able to “Nobody will use it if it is free, because that means

Reading 1: 01/19Reading Foundation hire a few people full or part time. The salary won’t they can’t rely on any support.”

8 “You have to charge for the program to pay for really necessary to spread GNU. Why is it that free providing the support.” market advocates don’t want to let the free market decide this?5 If people would rather pay for GNU plus service than get GNU free without service, a company to “My company needs a proprietary operating system provide just service to people who have obtained to get a competitive edge.” GNU free ought to be profitable.4 We must distinguish between support GNU will remove operating system software from in the form of real programming work and mere the realm of competition. You will not be able to get handholding. The former is something one cannot an edge in this area, but neither will your com- rely on from a software vendor. If your problem is petitors be able to get an edge over you. You and not shared by enough people, the vendor will tell they will compete in other areas, while benefiting you to get lost. mutually in this one. If your business is selling If your business needs to be able to rely on an operating system, you will not like GNU, but support, the only way is to have all the necessary that’s tough on you. If your business is something sources and tools. Then you can hire any available else, GNU can save you from being pushed into the person to fix your problem; you are not at the expensive business of selling operating systems. mercy of any individual. With Unix, the price of I would like to see GNU development sources puts this out of consideration for most supported by gifts from many manufacturers and businesses. With GNU this will be easy. It is still users, reducing the cost to each.6 possible for there to be no available competent person, but this problem cannot be blamed on “Don’t programmers deserve a reward for their distribution arrangements. GNU does not eliminate creativity?” all the world’s problems, only some of them. Meanwhile, the users who know nothing If anything deserves a reward, it is social contri- about computers need handholding: doing things bution. Creativity can be a social contribution, but for them which they could easily do themselves but only in so far as society is free to use the results. If don’t know how. programmers deserve to be rewarded for creating Such services could be provided by compa- innovative programs, by the same token they nies that sell just handholding and repair service. If deserve to be punished if they restrict the use of it is true that users would rather spend money and these programs. get a product with service, they will also be willing to buy the service having got the product free. The “Shouldn’t a programmer be able to ask for a reward service companies will compete in quality and for his creativity?” price; users will not be tied to any particular one. Meanwhile, those of us who don’t need the service There is nothing wrong with wanting pay for work, should be able to use the program without paying or seeking to maximize one’s income, as long as one for the service. does not use means that are destructive. But the means customary in the field of software today are “You cannot reach many people without advertising, based on destruction. and you must charge for the program to support Extracting money from users of a program that.” by restricting their use of it is destructive because “It’s no use advertising a program people can get the restrictions reduce the amount and the ways that free.” the program can be used. This reduces the amount of wealth that humanity derives from the program. There are various forms of free or very cheap pub- When there is a deliberate choice to restrict, the licity that can be used to inform numbers of com- harmful consequences are deliberate destruction.

puter users about something like GNU. But it may The reason a good citizen does not use FoundationReading 01/19 1: be true that one can reach more microcomputer such destructive means to become wealthier is users with advertising. If this is really so, a business that, if everyone did so, we would all become poorer which advertises the service of copying and mailing from the mutual destructiveness. This is Kantian GNU for a fee ought to be successful enough to pay ethics; or, the Golden Rule. Since I do not like the for its advertising and more. This way, only the consequences that result if everyone hoards infor- users who benefit from the advertising pay for it. mation, I am required to consider it wrong for one On the other hand, if many people get to do so. Specifically, the desire to be rewarded for GNU from their friends, and such companies don’t one’s creativity does not justify depriving the world succeed, this will show that advertising was not in general of all or part of that creativity.

9 “Won’t programmers starve?” The idea of copyright did not exist in ancient times, when authors frequently copied I could answer that nobody is forced to be a other authors at length in works of nonfiction. programmer. Most of us cannot manage to get any This practice was useful, and is the only way many money for standing on the street and making faces. authors’ works have survived even in part. The But we are not, as a result, condemned to spend copyright system was created expressly for the our lives standing on the street making faces, and purpose of encouraging authorship. In the domain starving. We do something else. for which it was invented — books, which could be But that is the wrong answer because it copied economically only on a printing press — it accepts the questioner’s implicit assumption: that did little harm, and did not obstruct most of the without ownership of software, programmers individuals who read the books. cannot possibly be paid a cent. Supposedly it is all All intellectual property rights are just or nothing. licenses granted by society because it was thought, The real reason programmers will not rightly or wrongly, that society as a whole would starve is that it will still be possible for them to get benefit by granting them. But in any particular paid for programming; just not paid as much as now. situation, we have to ask: are we really better off Restricting copying is not the only basis granting such license? What kind of act are we for business in software. It is the most common licensing a person to do? basis7 because it brings in the most money. If it were The case of programs today is very differ- prohibited, or rejected by the customer, software ent from that of books a hundred years ago. The business would move to other bases of organization fact that the easiest way to copy a program is from which are now used less often. There are always one neighbor to another, the fact that a program numerous ways to organize any kind of business. has both source code and object code which are Probably programming will not be as distinct, and the fact that a program is used rather lucrative on the new basis as it is now. But that than read and enjoyed, combine to create a situ- is not an argument against the change. It is not ation in which a person who enforces a copyright considered an injustice that sales clerks make the is harming society as a whole both materially and salaries that they now do. If programmers made spiritually; in which a person should not do so the same, that would not be an injustice either. (In regardless of whether the law enables him to. practice they would still make considerably more than that.) “Competition makes things get done better.”

“Don’t people have a right to control how their The paradigm of competition is a race: by reward- creativity is used?” ing the winner, we encourage everyone to run faster. When capitalism really works this way, it “Control over the use of one’s ideas” really consti- does a good job; but its defenders are wrong in tutes control over other people’s lives; and it is assuming it always works this way. If the runners usually used to make their lives more difficult. forget why the reward is offered and become People who have studied the issue of intent on winning, no matter how, they may intellectual property rights8 carefully (such as find other strategies — such as, attacking other lawyers) say that there is no intrinsic right to runners. If the runners get into a fist fight, they intellectual property. The kinds of supposed will all finish late. intellectual property rights that the government Proprietary and secret software is the recognizes were created by specific acts of legisla- moral equivalent of runners in a fist fight. Sad to tion for specific purposes. say, the only referee we’ve got does not seem to For example, the patent system was object to fights; he just regulates them (“For every established to encourage inventors to disclose ten yards you run, you can fire one shot”). He really the details of their inventions. Its purpose was to ought to break them up, and penalize runners for help society rather than to help inventors. At the even trying to fight. time, the life span of 17 years for a patent was short compared with the rate of advance of the state “Won’t everyone stop programming without a of the art. Since patents are an issue only among monetary incentive?” manufacturers, for whom the cost and effort of a license agreement are small compared with setting Actually, many people will program with absolutely up production, the patents often do not do much no monetary incentive. Programming has an harm. They do not obstruct most individuals who irresistible fascination for some people, usually the

Reading 1: 01/19Reading Foundation use patented products. people who are best at it. There is no shortage of

10 professional musicians who keep at it even though All sorts of development can be funded they have no hope of making a living that way. with a Software Tax: But really this question, though commonly Suppose everyone who buys a computer asked, is not appropriate to the situation. Pay for has to pay x percent of the price as a software tax. programmers will not disappear, only become less. The government gives this to an agency like the NSF So the right question is, will anyone program with a to spend on software development. reduced monetary incentive? My experience shows But if the computer buyer makes a dona- that they will. tion to software development himself, he can take a For more than ten years, many of the credit against the tax. He can donate to the project world’s best programmers worked at the Artificial of his own choosing — often, chosen because he Intelligence Lab for far less money than they could hopes to use the results when it is done. He can take have had anywhere else. They got many kinds of a credit for any amount of donation up to the total nonmonetary rewards: fame and appreciation, for tax he had to pay. example. And creativity is also fun, a reward in itself. The total tax rate could be decided by a Then most of them lef t when offered a chance vote of the payers of the tax, weighted according to to do the same interesting work for a lot of money. the amount they will be taxed on. What the facts show is that people will The consequences: program for reasons other than riches; but if given — The computer-using community supports a chance to make a lot of money as well, they will software development. come to expect and demand it. Low-paying organi- — This community decides what level of support is zations do poorly in competition with high-paying needed. ones, but they do not have to do badly if the — Users who care which projects their share is high-paying ones are banned. spent on can choose this for themselves. In the long run, making programs free is a “We need the programmers desperately. If they toward the postscarcity world, where nobody demand that we stop helping our neighbors, we have will have to work very hard just to make a living. to obey.” People will be free to devote themselves to activities that are fun, such as programming, after spending You’re never so desperate that you have to obey this the necessary ten hours a week on required tasks sort of demand. Remember: millions for defense, such as legislation, family counseling, robot repair but not a cent for tribute! and asteroid prospecting. There will be no need to be able to make a living from programming. “Programmers need to make a living somehow.” We have already greatly reduced the amount of work that the whole society must do for In the short run, this is true. However, there are its actual productivity, but only a little of this has plenty of ways that programmers could make a translated itself into leisure for workers because living without selling the right to use a program. much nonproductive activity is required to accom- This way is customary now because it brings pro- pany productive activity. The main causes of this grammers and businessmen the most money, not are bureaucracy and isometric struggles against because it is the only way to make a living. It is easy competition. Free software will greatly reduce to find other ways if you want to find them. Here these drains in the area of software production. are a number of examples. We must do this, in order for technical gains in A manufacturer introducing a new com- productivity to translate into less work for us. puter will pay for the porting of operating systems onto the new hardware. 1. The wording here was careless. The intention was The sale of teaching, handholding that nobody would have to pay for permission to and maintenance services could also employ use the GNU system. But the words don’t make this

programmers. clear, and people often interpret them as saying that FoundationReading 01/19 1: People with new ideas could distribute copies of GNU should always be distributed at little programs as freeware,9 asking for donations from or no charge. That was never the intent; later on, the satisfied users, or selling handholding services. I manifesto mentions the possibility of companies have met people who are already working this way providing the service of distribution for a profit. successfully. Subsequently I have learned to distinguish carefully Users with related needs can form users’ between “free” in the sense of freedom and “free” groups, and pay dues. A group would contract with in the sense of price. Free software is software that programming companies to write programs that users have the freedom to distribute and change. the group’s members would like to use. Some users may obtain copies at no charge, while

11 others pay to obtain copies — and if the funds help Open Source Design support improving the software, so much the better. The important thing is that everyone who has a copy Manifesto has the freedom to cooperate with others in using it. BY GARTH BRAITHWAITE 2. The expression “give away” is another indication that I had not yet clearly separated the issue of price from I will: that of freedom. We now recommend avoiding this — find opportunities to design in the open expression when talking about free software. See — share my design experiences; both the good and “Confusing Words and Phrases” for more explanation. the bad 3. This is another place I failed to distinguish carefully — find time for meaningful projects between the two different meanings of “free”. The — openly participate in design discussions statement as it stands is not false — you can get — work with other designers by choice copies of GNU software at no charge, from your — improve my toolbox friends or over the net. But it does suggest the wrong idea. http://opendesign.foundation/articles/ 4. Several such companies now exist. the-open-source-design-manifesto/ 5. Although it is a charity rather than a company, the for 10 years raised most of its funds from its distribution service. You can order Open Source Design Is things from the FSF to support its work. 6. A group of computer companies pooled funds around Now Design Open 1991 to support maintenance of the GNU C Compiler. BY GARTH BRAITHWAITE 7. I think I was mistaken in saying that was the most common basis for making Thanks to some timely posts to Open Source money in software. It seems that actually the most Design’s GitHub issue on branding we decided common business model was and is development of to rethink the name of the project. Originally I custom software. That does not offer the possibility planned for the site to be a definitive guide on what of collecting rents, so the business has to keep open source design is, hence the original domain doing real work in order to keep getting income. name, opensourcedesign.is, but that has become too The custom software business would continue to limiting for the direction the project is heading. exist, more or less unchanged, in a free software Instead we are moving to a call for action: Design world. Therefore, I no longer expect that most paid Open! designopen.org programmers would earn less in a free software world. The Difference between Open Design and Open 8. In the 1980s I had not yet realized how confusing it Source Design was to speak of “the issue” of “intellectual property”. To work on open source design means to publish That term is obviously biased; more subtle is the fact creative work with an open license, giving the com- that it lumps together various disparate laws which munity a chance to reuse and rework your content raise very different issues. Nowadays I urge people in ways you may not have considered. It is also the to reject the term “intellectual property” entirely, act of contributing design work to existing open lest it lead others to suppose that those laws form source projects. Both executions of open source one coherent issue. The way to be clear is to discuss design imply that the work is open to contributions patents, copyrights, and trademarks separately. and collaboration from outside designers. See further explanation of how this term spreads Although open sourcing is great, not every confusion and bias. design can be published under an open license. 9. Subsequently we learned to distinguish between However, almost every project can be designed “free software” and “freeware”. The term “freeware” openly to some degree and usually more than we means software you are free to redistribute, but are accustomed to doing now. If it is a client project, usually you are not free to study and change the request to write a post mortem of the process. If source code, so most of it is not free software. See you have design variations that you did not ulti- “Confusing Words and Phrases” for more explanation. mately use, see if you can publish the source files so someone else might benefit from your investiga- https://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html tions. Use a public platform to broadcast progress and keep yourself accountable to the goals you’ve Copyright © 1985, 1993, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2014, set on a personal project. Put forth real effort to 2015 Free Software Foundation, Inc. designing in the open. Show your work, process,

Reading 1: 01/19Reading Foundation and mistakes. It’s good for the community, but

12 more importantly, it is good for your own personal Because, you see, it works this way: if growth as a designer to honestly track progress. you use F/LOS graphics software, standards and As an added benefit to designing in the methods in your art or design practice, chances open, it is a short leap to open source design. Put an are good you have something interesting to talk to open license on work you think could benefit others developers about. What you have to talk to them and post it publicly. about is the way you use their software. And they The removal of the term open source from want to hear it. They want the gory details about the name of Open Source Design to Design Open which specific tools and commands you use, what does not signify we are going to stop encouraging problems you have, why you use the things you use designers to open source their work, or to collabo- in your workflow. rate on open source projects. On the contrary, we As a designer or artist using F/LOSS, you’re want to encourage all designers to become familiar a bit of a unicorn. By which we mean that you’re with open source and make contributions to something kind of rare and beautiful, not often projects they care about. seen by F/LOSS developers, and perhaps even misunderstood. And as something a little out of The Call the ordinary, you’re interesting. You’ve got lots to A while ago the Open Source Design site hit the contribute, so consider joining in with the spirit front page of Designer News and the traffic spiked of the community a little and bringing your own dramatically. It was wonderful to get the exposure, expertise to the table. but ultimately I found it a little disappointing that it didn’t lead to any significant, trackable increase From Libre Graphics 1.2 in discussion. This is not merely a nice idea, it is a clarion call to shed our insecurities, pride, and par- alyzing perfectionism; to dedicate effort to helping Designing Open Source worthy causes; and to raise the quality of design and BY JON design education on the web. A call to design open. It’s great to see more designers recently embrace https://medium.com/design-open/ programming as an extension of our process open-source-design-is-now-design-open-e7005d577f6b rather than as an afterthought for someone else to execute. Today’s cutting edge products need to be designed by people who know what’s going on On being a Unicorn: under the hood; and as curious designers it’s great to have more things to learn — it stretches the the case for user-involve- brain. But there’s something missing. ment in F/LOSS The Post-Adobe era We’re learning all these new things (and — yeah As an artist or designer (or both), you use a range I went there — earning more money) through of tools in your everyday work. Even though it’s not the generosity of others. The generosity of the something you think about, you may be contribut- engineers who create tools like Ember.js, Ruby on ing to the growth of these tools without realising. Rails and CoffeeScript, the people who spend hours Every time an application crashes and you hit the writing documentation and accessible tutorials, button, giving permission for it to report, you’re and the people who answer our naïve questions on contributing a little something. But, if you’re Stack Overflow. interested, there’s more. And there’s more you can I don’t know about you, but I’m guilty of get out of it than just reliable software. forgetting about this. The only reason I’m not stuck Let’s assume that you think of yourself in Photoshop all day is the open source community. exclusively as a user of design tools. In the same We should be giving back to this community. FoundationReading 01/19 1: way you don’t offer suggestions to the company manufacturing your pencils, you don’t consider But I’m just-a-designer… letting the people making your software know what I’m quickly progressing from the stage where my you think. Ruby kills kittens to it actually being somewhat And you know what? You’re not alone. Not decent. Yours might be too. But looking at the many designers let the people behind their favou- issues lists for my favourite open source projects I rite tools know what they think. It’s not common get scared off. I profit from using these technologies for designers and artists to make their voices heard, but I don’t know where to start with fixing any of but it is useful.

13 their bugs on GitHub. First World Problem but it’s denies it himself. Anything awesome has a gesta- really frustrating. I want to give back. tion period. But we just happen to love believing in Assuming you fit the demographic I’m spontaneous creation. describing: a thankful, empathetic designer; a As to Libre Graphics, it is at the nexus of student & user of open source software; just not many exciting developments. Libre Graphics lies at ready to write code for meaty projects you probably the intersection of art and technology, science and still have valuable skills you can contribute. the humanities. And I am quite sure we will see a number of wonderful projects take flight. What we can do Applying F/LOSS principles to art and The homepage with the Web 1.0 aesthetic. The design might help us improve visual literacy, just awkward logo. The docs that would be way more as F/LOSS improves computer literacy. Applying awesome if they were responsive. We should be F/LOSS principles to art and design might help us making contributions there, whilst we benefit in better understand the knowledge present in the other areas. creative process. As designers we’ve been put off of ‘work we Not just that, I think it might help us don’t get paid for’ by clients-from-hell, 99designs & understand what it means to share. Getting artists eLance; those that don’t pay much and those that to share will be difficult, initially. Scientists have don’t have any intention of paying at all. built an economy where giving things away will But that’s not this. This is giving back to an increase their reputation, as well as the chances of ecosystem that is making our industry more excit- getting and keeping jobs. Artists, on the other hand, ing and our jobs richer & more fulfilling. We should traditionally try to earn money by selling their work. strive to give something back every time we take. Even if the production methods of art have changed radically, the art market is still built on How do we get involved? scarcity. Galleries will produce a limited number of Do we wait until people ask us for help, or proac- copies of a video or photograph even if this medium tively go on the IRC channels of projects we like and potentially allows for unlimited copying and ask if they want help? Do we trawl GitHub for ‘Docs redistribution. should have a better vertical rhythm’ issues? Do we With all the talk of sharing that comes just go for the passive-aggressive redesign & submit from the world of F/LOSS, I have never heard much a big Pull Request? about just how freaking scary it can be to share. I really don’t know. Probably a ‘polite, Sharing means giving up control. Letting go of reserved, British’ thing. But I’d love to look at lists control can be very, very difficult. like this in the future and see them full of names of Of course, it is potentially beautiful, too. designers that I recognise. Recognizing that my understanding is limited, allowing someone else to find something in my https://medium.com/words-about-design/ work that I had never seen before can be beautiful designing-open-source-e3adc220cfa7 and fulfilling. Yet, having someone reinterpret my artwork is not the same as someone coming up with a clever new use for a sorting algorithm. My art This is the first day deals with people and emotions. That is why there is the possibility for such a reinterpretation to hurt of my life me. (There’s always the option to keep something BY ERIC SCHRIJVER for myself. Assuming current copyright law, good health and some cooperation from my progeny, it The Dutch computer scientist Edgar Dijkstra will subsequently take about 130 years before it believed in first times. He thought it a contemporary lapses into the public domain.) charade to give programs version numbers. Since Anyway… Whenever something wonderful it’s possible for a program to be correct, better to takes off, it feels like a beginning. But I don’t want get them right the first time around. I don’t agree to take the idea of beginning too literally. It’s more with Edgar Dijkstra. I believe I will achieve my first like the experience opens up new possibilities. At proper column after five or six tries. the same time, it seems to make up for the hardship There is a second first time, when you experienced up to this point. finally manage to rise above the preconceptions Madonna also treats the first time as a and ideas you started your project with. Then your metaphor. She references the prototypical first project can start to work for you. time in “Like a Virgin.” Yet it’s not about the first The rumour that Bill Joy wrote the vi time, it’s about when it’s like the first time. Open

Reading 1: 01/19Reading Foundation editor in one night is persistent, even though he source developers work like Madonna. Projects

14 are well underway before they reach v1.0. This is Dashboard coming in the forthcoming release, not the first release, this is the first release that version 2.4, which you can check out from the works like the developer wanted it to initially. WordPress SVN repository. From Mr Mullenweg’s What the first attempt should have been like but own admission, it’s only about 10–20% complete, necessarily couldn’t. but you wouldn’t know that from the feedback this In fact, many projects never even reach work-in-progress is already generating. v1.0. Most things never happen. When David Bowie Coming from CivicSpace, where we had a shook the scene with his Ziggy Stardust character, beautiful website before we had working code, to he’d already had a trial run with a band called working on Flock, where the mockups never quite Arnold Corns, for which he styled a fashion designer matched the software that was released, I feel like to be the lead singer. I’ve seen enough of these fruitless cycles to take for Release early release often is a Torvalds granted that design and open source development maxim. In F/LOSS, next to the projects that take are simply incompatible, or, to be clear: the expecta- flight, we get to see all the other projects as well, tions that one has with open source software devel- the entire primordial soup. We don’t just get Ziggy opment cannot be the same expectations that one Stardust, we get Arnold Corns too. has for open source interface/interaction design. It’s a mess, frankly. This might not work From my experience, what can I say about for the Dijkstras of this world. F/LOSS encourages constructive open source UI/UX design? a mindset of bringing together disparate sources 1. Set expectations. As a designer, I’m trained to make something new. This is why artists could to take feedback and to accept as given that potentially feel at home. There’s never a clean slate people will shred my work in the interest of when you make a work of art or design. We are improving it. But I also know that there are informed by our personal history, we are informed plenty of folks who do care but simply don’t by all the other works we know. Bowie, on Ziggy, know how to provide useful feedback. It’s my said “it just seemed perfectly natural for me at the job to make it clear what kind of feedback I’m time to put together all these odds and ends of art looking for and what feedback I don’t need. It’s and culture that I really adore.” Never mind that also up to me to communicate that I reserve everything always comes from somewhere, when it the right to reject any feedback given. It’s up to starts to work together, it feels like something new. the feedback-giver to not take it personally. It feels like you’ve just begun. 2. Set deadlines. This one follows the previous point, but if you’re doing any kind of design From Libre Graphics 1.1 review, it’s pretty important to put some temporal boundaries on how long the window is open to be given feedback and how long The problem with open it will likely take to implement it. Nothing’s worse than unrequited design feedback, even if source design it’s feedback that isn’t useful. BY CHRIS MESSINA 3. Know where you’re at. My more naive self would rebel against what I’m about to propose, I’ve probably said it before, and will say it again, but there’s no way around it. If you’re acting and I’m also sure that I’m not the first, or the last to as a designer, it’s up to you to “own” the make this point, but I have yet to see an example of design process and to only ask for feedback an open source design process that has worked. when you’re clear on the kind of feedback Indeed, I’d go so far as to wager that “open you’re looking for. Open source shouldn’t be source design” is an oxymoron. Design is far too about ultimate compromise or mamby-pamby personal, and too subjective, to be given over to democratic ideals where everyone has a say. the whims and outrageous fancies of anyone with Curiosity kills plenty of cats, but consensus eyeballs in their head. is goddamn plague on most projects so get it FoundationReading 01/19 1: Call me elitist in this one aspect, but with in your head that open source is about public all due respect to code artistes, it’s quite clear demonstrations of repeated meritocratic value whether a function computes or not; the same creation and not about listening to every Tom, quantifiable measures simply do not exist for Dick and Harry that has something to spew. design and that critical lack of objective review And anyone who hasn’t proven themselves by means that design is a form of Art, and its execu- previously being raked over the coals of public tion should be treated as such. criticism and critique should be treated accord- What’s got my panties in a bunch? Well, ingly. Remember, opinions are like assholes and this screenshot depicts the new WordPress Admin vegetarians are still in the minority.

15 4. Use productive and appropriate tools. The to be overwhelmed in a sea of confusing and most aggravating aspect of participating in confounding false opportunities. the community has been their reliance 8. Be focused. This tip is twofold and builds on on Bugzilla, one of the worst possible tools for the last. You should be focused on the feedback design review and discussion. Can you believe you need, and rather than going for blanket that they still do design in ASCII art? Me advice, narrow in on specific user flows or neither. Look, when you’re doing interactive tasks. On top of that, the less certain you are design, you should try to get as close as possible about the approach you want to take or about to the target environment as possible when the appropriate solution to pursue, the smaller working and designing. Can you remember the pool of respondents you should consult the last time you used an application whose should be. This is what I mean by “be focused”: interface was made of pipes, ellipses and clever the more uncertainly in the project, the fewer uses of brackets? Neither can I. Therefore external voices you should consult, especially interfaces should be presented using tools that en masse; the further along in the project you support constructive dialogue and feedback. are, and the more certainty you have, the more Flickr is actually a great tool for this purpose, you can open it up for general feedback. Note with its Notes feature. ConceptShare is another too that people will bring their own prefer- one, developed specifically with this use case in ences, assumptions and beliefs with them, so mind. More and more Skitch and Jing are other choose your early critics wisely. tools that serve this purpose, as are screen 9. Care deeply and sacrifice nothing.This one’s capture applications like iShowU and even probably the hardest of all, and really can only Leopard’s built-in Screen Sharing application. be learned/earned over time. The role of the 5. Be clear about the problem you’re solving. designer is, against all odds, to synthesize and Nothing spells disaster for a design process to make sense of ambiguous circumstances, more than fishtailing. If you don’t know what poor or changing problem descriptions, to problems you’re trying to solve and you don’t weigh the individual needs of project sponsors, have razor-sharp focus on it, chances are you’ll of product users, or subjective tastes and of be open to whatever feedback you can get your sating the hunger of one’s own ego to produce hands on, grasping for some notion of what something better than you thought yourself the hell you should be working on. This is not capable of. And it’s nearly impossible to fake it. design, this is horseshoes and hand grenades. But the best approach seems to be to do your 6. It’s okay to not have everything figured out homework and care deeply about the work that when you embark on a project, and it’s even you’re doing and to identify with the problem okay to admit that and to embrace it. It’s wholly that you’re trying to solve. Sacrifice nothing another thing to pretend to know what you’re in the way of arriving at a solution that meets doing and then go about asking for feedback. By your highest personal criteria. It helps when its design and nature feedback is intended to you’re your own worst (best) critic, but it’s raise deltas between the perceived reality and all the more essential when you’re putting the potential reality. For feedback to be useful yourself out there for public scrutiny. If you and productive, you, as the designer, have to know that you’re not going to let yourself get stayed trained on the ultimate endpoint that away with anything, you should be able to face you’re driving towards and systematically whatever slings and arrows the outside world exhaust all possible combinations presented will heave your way, all as part of. by the feedback that will lead you to non-ideal And so we return to the case of the solutions. This is how you use feedback to whit- WordPress 2.4 Admin Dashboard. It’s unclear who tle away at an opportunity until you finally owns this project or the feedback coming in (I don’t arrive at a satisfying outcome. remember seeing a public call for comments, so 7. Existential deviation on a is certainly this must just be unsolicited feedback), but I sure okay and to be encouraged; experimentation as heck hope that whoever it is takes this current is where a lot creative ideas will come from. But round of feedback with less than a grain of salt. in the context open source feedback flows, this As far as I’m concerned (and as much as I’d like is absolutely NOT where you want to fluctuate. to affect the design process myself) WordPress Trust me, this is where design hijack takes over, deserves more time to make its case for the new and where you’ll lose your control and leverage design, and to implement closer to 70–80% of the over the direction of a project. If you hold the design before people start pontificating about how reigns tight, an open feedback process can be things should be different (or remain the same) (not

Reading 1: 01/19Reading Foundation extremely rewarding; let slip and you’re likely like any such plea will stem the onslaught).

16 With open source development, the cat is can, be open to the point of promiscuity — came as always out of the bag. As such, it keeps you honest a surprise. No quiet, reverent cathedral-building and focused on issues that people care about, even here — rather, the Linux community seemed to if they’re occasionally peripheral to the main issues resemble a great babbling bazaar of differing agen- you set out to solve. das and approaches (aptly symbolized by the Linux So the problem with open source design is archive sites, who’d take submissions from anyone) not the feedback (designers et al should be grateful out of which a coherent and stable system could when it comes) but with the ego issues that are seemingly emerge only by a succession of miracles. wrapped up in how feedback is delivered and how The fact that this bazaar style seemed it’s received. And these are ultimately social issues. to work, and work well, came as a distinct shock. The points I outlined above have as much to do with As I learned my way around, I worked hard not clear communication, acknowledgement and a Bud- just at individual projects, but also at trying to dhist-esque equanimity as with any kind of formal understand why the Linux world not only didn’t design training. If open source design is to advance, fly apart in confusion but seemed to go from and to become a dominant force in the creation of strength to strength at a speed barely imaginable exquisite software experiences and interfaces, I say to cathedral-builders. we start here. By mid-1996 I thought I was beginning to understand. Chance handed me a perfect way to https://medium.com/chris-messina/ test my theory, in the form of an open-source proj- the-problem-with-open-source-design-8b532aaa0407 ect that I could consciously try to run in the bazaar style. So I did — and it was a significant success. This is the story of that project. I’ll use it The Cathedral and the to propose some aphorisms about effective open- source development. Not all of these are things I Bazaar first learned in the Linux world, but we’ll see how R2 BY ERIC RAYMOND the Linux world gives them particular point. If I’m correct, they’ll help you understand exactly what it Linux is subversive. Who would have thought even is that makes the Linux community such a fountain five years ago (1991) that a world-class operating of good software — and, perhaps, they will help you system could coalesce as if by magic out of part- become more productive yourself. time hacking by several thousand developers scattered all over the planet, connected only by the The Must Get Through tenuous strands of the Internet? Since 1993 I’d been running the technical side of a Certainly not I. By the time Linux swam small free-access Internet service provider called onto my radar screen in early 1993, I had already Chester County InterLink (CCIL) in West Chester, been involved in Unix and open-source devel- Pennsylvania. I co-founded CCIL and wrote our opment for ten years. I was one of the first GNU unique multiuser bulletin-board software — you contributors in the mid-1980s. I had released a good can check it out by telnetting to locke.ccil.org. deal of open-source software onto the net, devel- Today it supports almost three thousand users on oping or co-developing several programs (nethack, thirty lines. The job allowed me 24-hour-a-day Emacs’s VC and GUD modes, xlife, and others) that access to the net through CCIL’s 56K line — in fact, are still in wide use today. I thought I knew how it the job practically demanded it! was done. I had gotten quite used to instant Internet Linux overturned much of what I thought email. I found having to periodically over to I knew. I had been preaching the Unix gospel of locke to check my mail annoying. What I wanted small tools, rapid prototyping and evolutionary was for my mail to be delivered on snark (my home programming for years. But I also believed there system) so that I would be notified when it arrived

was a certain critical complexity above which a and could handle it using all my local tools. Concepts 01/26 2: Reading more centralized, a priori approach was required. I The Internet’s native mail forwarding believed that the most important software (oper- protocol, SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol), ating systems and really large tools like the Emacs wouldn’t suit, because it works best when machines programming editor) needed to be built like cathe- are connected full-time, while my personal drals, carefully crafted by individual wizards or machine isn’t always on the Internet, and doesn’t small bands of mages working in splendid isolation, have a static IP address. What I needed was a with no beta to be released before its time. program that would reach out over my intermittent ’s style of development — dialup connection and pull across my mail to be release early and often, delegate everything you delivered locally. I knew such things existed, and

17 that most of them used a simple application pro- In the same spirit, I went looking for an tocol called POP (). POP is now existing POP utility that was reasonably well coded, widely supported by most common mail clients, but to use as a development base. at the time, it wasn’t built in to the mail reader I The source-sharing tradition of the Unix was using. world has always been friendly to code reuse (this I needed a POP3 client. So I went out on is why the GNU project chose Unix as a base OS, in the Internet and found one. Actually, I found three spite of serious reservations about the OS itself). or four. I used one of them for a while, but it was The Linux world has taken this tradition nearly missing what seemed an obvious feature, the ability to its technological limit; it has terabytes of open to hack the addresses on fetched mail so replies sources generally available. So spending time would work properly. looking for some else’s almost-good-enough is more The problem was this: suppose someone likely to give you good results in the Linux world named ‘joe’ on locke sent me mail. If I fetched the than anywhere else. mail to snark and then tried to reply to it, my mailer And it did for me. With those I’d found would cheerfully try to ship it to a nonexistent ‘joe’ earlier, my second search made up a total of nine on snark. Hand-editing reply addresses to tack on candidates — fetchpop, PopTart, get-mail, gwpop, <@c cil.or g> quickly got to be a serious pain. pimp, pop-perl, popc, and upop. The one I This was clearly something the computer first settled on was ‘fetchpop’ by Seung-Hong Oh. I ought to be doing for me. But none of the existing put my header-rewrite feature in it, and made vari- POP clients knew how! And this brings us to the ous other improvements which the author accepted first lesson: into his 1.9 release. A few weeks later, though, I stumbled 1. Every good work of software starts by scratching a across the code for popclient by Carl Harris, and developer’s personal itch. found I had a problem. Though fetchpop had some good original ideas in it (such as its back- Perhaps this should have been obvious (it’s ground-daemon mode), it could only handle POP3 long been proverbial that “Necessity is the mother and was rather amateurishly coded (Seung-Hong of invention”) but too often software developers was at that time a bright but inexperienced pro- spend their days grinding away for pay at programs grammer, and both traits showed). Carl’s code was they neither need nor love. But not in the Linux better, quite professional and solid, but his program world — which may explain why the average quality lacked several important and rather tricky-to-im- of software originated in the Linux community is plement fetchpop features (including those I’d so high. coded myself). So, did I immediately launch into a furious Stay or switch? If I switched, I’d be throw- whirl of coding up a brand-new POP3 client to ing away the coding I’d already done in exchange compete with the existing ones? Not on your life! I for a better development base. looked carefully at the POP utilities I had in hand, A practical motive to switch was the asking myself “Which one is closest to what I want?” presence of multiple-protocol support. POP3 is Because: the most commonly used of the post-office server protocols, but not the only one. Fetchpop and the 2. Good programmers know what to write. Great other competition didn’t do POP2, RPOP, or APOP, ones know what to rewrite (and reuse). and I was already having vague thoughts of perhaps adding IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol, the While I don’t claim to be a great program- most recently designed and most powerful post-of- mer, I try to imitate one. An important trait of the fice protocol) just for fun. great ones is constructive laziness. They know that But I had a more theoretical reason to you get an A not for effort but for results, and that think switching might be as good an idea as well, it’s almost always easier to start from a good partial something I learned long before Linux. solution than from nothing at all. Linus Torvalds, for example, didn’t actually 3. “Plan to throw one away; you will, anyhow.” (Fred try to write . Instead, he started Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month, Chapter 11) by reusing code and ideas from , a tiny Unix-like operating system for PC clones. Eventually Or, to put it another way, you often don’t all the Minix code went away or was completely really understand the problem until after the first rewritten — but while it was there, it provided time you implement a solution. The second time, scaffolding for the infant that would eventually maybe you know enough to do it right. So if you want [JB] Reading 2: 01/26 Concepts become Linux. to get it right, be ready to start over at least once .

18 Well (I told myself) the changes to fetchpop The power of this effect is easy to under- had been my first try. So I switched. estimate. In fact, pretty well all of us in the open- After I sent my first set of popclient source world drastically underestimated how well patches to Carl Harris on 25 June 1996, I found out it would scale up with number of users and against that he had basically lost interest in popclient some system complexity, until Linus Torvalds showed us time before. The code was a bit dusty, with minor differently. bugs hanging out. I had many changes to make, and In fact, I think Linus’s cleverest and most we quickly agreed that the logical thing for me to consequential hack was not the construction of do was take over the program. the itself, but rather his invention of Without my actually noticing, the project the Linux development model. When I expressed had escalated. No longer was I just contemplating this opinion in his presence once, he smiled and minor patches to an existing POP client. I took on quietly repeated something he has often said: “I’m maintaining an entire one, and there were ideas basically a very lazy person who likes to get credit bubbling in my head that I knew would probably for things other people actually do.” Lazy like a fox. lead to major changes. Or, as Robert Heinlein famously wrote of one of his In a software culture that encourages characters, too lazy to fail. code-sharing, this is a natural way for a project to In retrospect, one precedent for the meth- evolve. I was acting out this principle: ods and success of Linux can be seen in the develop- ment of the GNU Emacs LISP library and LISP code 4. If you have the right attitude, interesting problems archives. In contrast to the cathedral-building style will find you. of the Emacs C core and most other GNU tools, the evolution of the LISP code pool was fluid and very But Carl Harris’s attitude was even more user-driven. Ideas and prototype modes were often important. He understood that rewritten three or four times before reaching a stable final form. And loosely-coupled collaborations 5. When you lose interest in a program, your last duty enabled by the Internet, a la Linux, were frequent. to it is to hand it off to a competent successor. Indeed, my own most successful single hack previous to was probably Emacs VC Without ever having to discuss it, Carl and (version control) mode, a Linux-like collaboration I knew we had a common goal of having the best by email with three other people, only one of whom solution out there. The only question for either of (Richard Stallman, the author of Emacs and founder us was whether I could establish that I was a safe of the Free Software Foundation) I have met to this pair of hands. Once I did that, he acted with grace day. It was a front-end for SCCS, RCS and later CVS and dispatch. I hope I will do as well when it comes from within Emacs that offered “one-touch” version my turn. control operations. It evolved from a tiny, crude sccs.el mode somebody else had written. And the The Importance of Having Users development of VC succeeded because, unlike Emacs And so I inherited popclient. Just as importantly, itself, Emacs LISP code could go through release/ I inherited popclient’s user base. Users are won- test/improve generations very quickly. derful things to have, and not just because they The Emacs story is not unique. There have demonstrate that you’re serving a need, that you’ve been other software products with a two-level done something right. Properly cultivated, they can architecture and a two-tier user community that become co-developers. combined a cathedral-mode core and a bazaar- Another strength of the Unix tradition, mode toolbox. One such is MATLAB, a commercial one that Linux pushes to a happy extreme, is that data-analysis and visualization tool. Users of a lot of users are hackers too. Because source code MATLAB and other products with a similar struc- is available, they can be effective hackers. This can ture invariably report that the action, the ferment,

be tremendously useful for shortening debugging the innovation mostly takes place in the open part Concepts 01/26 2: Reading time. Given a bit of encouragement, your users will of the tool where a large and varied community can diagnose problems, suggest fixes, and help improve tinker with it. the code far more quickly than you could unaided. Release Early, Release Often 6. Treating your users as co-developers is your Early and frequent releases are a critical part of the least-hassle route to rapid code improvement and Linux development model. Most developers (includ- effective debugging. ing me) used to believe this was bad policy for larger than trivial projects, because early versions

19 are almost by definition buggy versions and you least, not yet) an innovative genius of design in the don’t want to wear out the patience of your users. way that, say, Richard Stallman or James Gosling (of This belief reinforced the general commit- NeWS and Java) are. Rather, Linus seems to me to be ment to a cathedral-building style of development. a genius of engineering and implementation, with If the overriding objective was for users to see as a sixth sense for avoiding bugs and development few bugs as possible, why then you’d only release dead-ends and a true knack for finding the mini- a version every six months (or less often), and mum-effort path from point A to point B. Indeed, work like a dog on debugging between releases. the whole design of Linux breathes this quality The Emacs C core was developed this way. The LISP and mirrors Linus’s essentially conservative and library, in effect, was not — because there were simplifying design approach. active LISP archives outside the FSF’s control, where So, if rapid releases and leveraging the you could go to find new and development code Internet medium to the hilt were not accidents but versions independently of Emacs’s release cycle [QR]. integral parts of Linus’s engineering-genius insight The most important of these, the Ohio into the minimum-effort path, what was he maxi- State Emacs LISP archive, anticipated the spirit and mizing? What was he cranking out of the machinery? many of the features of today’s big Linux archives. Put that way, the question answers itself. But few of us really thought very hard about what Linus was keeping his hacker/users constantly we were doing, or about what the very existence of stimulated and rewarded — stimulated by the that archive suggested about problems in the FSF’s prospect of having an ego-satisfying piece of the cathedral-building development model. I made action, rewarded by the sight of constant (even one serious attempt around 1992 to get a lot of the daily) improvement in their work. Ohio code formally merged into the official Emacs Linus was directly aiming to maximize the LISP library. I ran into political trouble and was number of person-hours thrown at debugging and largely unsuccessful. development, even at the possible cost of instability But by a year later, as Linux became in the code and user-base burnout if any serious widely visible, it was clear that something different bug proved intractable. Linus was behaving as and much healthier was going on there. Linus’s though he believed something like this: open development policy was the very opposite of cathedral-building. Linux’s Internet archives were 8. Given a large enough beta-tester and co-devel- burgeoning, multiple distributions were being oper base, almost every problem will be character- floated. And all of this was driven by an unheard-of ized quickly and the fix obvious to someone. frequency of core system releases. Linus was treating his users as co-develop- Or, less formally, “Given enough eyeballs, ers in the most effective possible way: all bugs are shallow.” I dub this: “Linus’s Law”. My original formulation was that every 7. Release early. Release often. And listen to your problem “will be transparent to somebody”. Linus customers. demurred that the person who understands and fixes the problem is not necessarily or even usually Linus’s innovation wasn’t so much in doing the person who first characterizes it. “Somebody quick-turnaround releases incorporating lots of finds the problem,” he says, “and somebody else user feedback (something like this had been Unix- understands it. And I’ll go on record as saying that world tradition for a long time), but in scaling it up finding it is the bigger challenge.” That correction is to a level of intensity that matched the complexity important; we’ll see how in the next section, when of what he was developing. In those early times we examine the practice of debugging in more (around 1991) it wasn’t unknown for him to release detail. But the key point is that both parts of the a new kernel more than once a day! Because he process (finding and fixing) tend to happen rapidly. cultivated his base of co-developers and leveraged In Linus’s Law, I think, lies the core differ- the Internet for collaboration harder than anyone ence underlying the cathedral-builder and bazaar else, this worked. styles. In the cathedral-builder view of program- But how did it work? And was it something ming, bugs and development problems are tricky, I could duplicate, or did it rely on some unique insidious, deep phenomena. It takes months of scru- genius of Linus Torvalds? tiny by a dedicated few to develop confidence that I didn’t think so. Granted, Linus is a damn you’ve winkled them all out. Thus the long release fine hacker. How many of us could engineer an intervals, and the inevitable disappointment when entire production-quality operating system kernel long-awaited releases are not perfect. from scratch? But Linux didn’t represent any awe- In the bazaar view, on the other hand, you

Reading 2: 01/26 Concepts some conceptual leap forward. Linus is not (or at assume that bugs are generally shallow phenomena

20 — or, at least, that they turn shallow pretty quickly More users find more bugs because adding when exposed to a thousand eager co-developers more users adds more different ways of stressing pounding on every single new release. Accordingly the program. This effect is amplified when the you release often in order to get more corrections, users are co-developers. Each one approaches the and as a beneficial side effect you have less to lose if task of bug characterization with a slightly differ- an occasional botch gets out the door. ent perceptual set and analytical toolkit, a different And that’s it. That’s enough. If “Linus’s angle on the problem. The “Delphi effect” seems Law” is false, then any system as complex as the to work precisely because of this variation. In the Linux kernel, being hacked over by as many hands specific context of debugging, the variation also as the that kernel was, should at some point have tends to reduce duplication of effort. collapsed under the weight of unforseen bad So adding more beta-testers may not interactions and undiscovered “deep” bugs. If it’s reduce the complexity of the current “deepest” bug true, on the other hand, it is sufficient to explain from the developer’s point of view, but it increases Linux’s relative lack of bugginess and its continuous the probability that someone’s toolkit will be uptimes spanning months or even years. matched to the problem in such a way that the bug Maybe it shouldn’t have been such a sur- is shallow to that person. prise, at that. Sociologists years ago discovered that Linus coppers his bets, too. In case there the averaged opinion of a mass of equally expert are serious bugs, Linux kernel version are num- (or equally ignorant) observers is quite a bit more bered in such a way that potential users can make reliable a predictor than the opinion of a single a choice either to run the last version designated randomly-chosen one of the observers. They called “stable” or to ride the cutting edge and risk bugs this the Delphi effect. It appears that what Linus in order to get new features. This tactic is not yet has shown is that this applies even to debugging an systematically imitated by most Linux hackers, but operating system — that the Delphi effect can tame perhaps it should be; the fact that either choice is development complexity even at the complexity available makes both more attractive.[HBS] level of an OS kernel.[CV] One special feature of the Linux situation How Many Eyeballs Tame Complexity that clearly helps along the Delphi effect is the It’s one thing to observe in the large that the bazaar fact that the contributors for any given project style greatly accelerates debugging and code are self-selected. An early respondent pointed out evolution. It’s another to understand exactly how that contributions are received not from a random and why it does so at the micro-level of day-to- sample, but from people who are interested enough day developer and tester behavior. In this section to use the software, learn about how it works, (written three years after the original paper, using attempt to find solutions to problems they encoun- insights by developers who read it and re-examined ter, and actually produce an apparently reasonable their own behavior) we’ll take a hard look at the fix. Anyone who passes all these filters is highly actual mechanisms. Non-technically inclined likely to have something useful to contribute. readers can safely skip to the next section. Linus’s Law can be rephrased as “Debug- One key to understanding is to realize ging is parallelizable.” Although debugging requires exactly why it is that the kind of bug report non– debuggers to communicate with some coordinating source-aware users normally turn in tends not developer, it doesn’t require significant coordina- to be very useful. Non–source-aware users tend tion between debuggers. Thus it doesn’t fall prey to to report only surface symptoms; they take their the same quadratic complexity and management environment for granted, so they (a) omit critical costs that make adding developers problematic. background data, and (b) seldom include a reliable In practice, the theoretical loss of effi- recipe for reproducing the bug. ciency due to duplication of work by debuggers The underlying problem here is a mis- almost never seems to be an issue in the Linux match between the tester’s and the developer’s

world. One effect of a “release early and often” mental models of the program; the tester, on the Concepts 01/26 2: Reading policy is to minimize such duplication by propagat- outside looking in, and the developer on the inside ing fed-back fixes quickly.[JH] looking out. In closed-source development they’re Brooks (the author of The Mythical Man- both stuck in these roles, and tend to talk past each Month) even made an off-hand observation related other and find each other deeply frustrating. to this: “The total cost of maintaining a widely used Open-source development breaks this program is typically 40 percent or more of the cost bind, making it far easier for tester and developer of developing it. Surprisingly this cost is strongly to develop a shared representation grounded in the affected by the number of users. More users find more actual source code and to communicate effectively bugs.” [emphasis added]. about it. Practically, there is a huge difference

21 in leverage for the developer between the kind core group, and only within that small core group of bug report that just reports externally-visible do we pay the full Brooksian overhead.[SU] symptoms and the kind that hooks directly to the There are are still more reasons that developer’s source-code–based mental representa- source-code–level bug reporting tends to be very tion of the program. efficient. They center around the fact that a single Most bugs, most of the time, are easily error can often have multiple possible symptoms, nailed given even an incomplete but suggestive manifesting differently depending on details of characterization of their error conditions at source- the user’s usage pattern and environment. Such code level. When someone among your beta-testers errors tend to be exactly the sort of complex and can point out, “there’s a boundary problem in line subtle bugs (such as dynamic-memory-manage- nnn”, or even just “under conditions X, Y, and Z, ment errors or nondeterministic interrupt-window this variable rolls over”, a quick look at the offend- artifacts) that are hardest to reproduce at will or to ing code often suffices to pin down the exact mode pin down by static analysis, and which do the most of failure and generate a fix. to create long-term problems in software. Thus, source-code awareness by both A tester who sends in a tentative source- parties greatly enhances both good communica- code–level characterization of such a multi-symp- tion and the synergy between what a beta-tester tom bug (e.g. “It looks to me like there’s a window reports and what the core developer(s) know. in the signal handling near line 1250” or “Where In turn, this means that the core developers’ are you zeroing that buffer?”) may give a developer, time tends to be well conserved, even with otherwise too close to the code to see it, the critical many collaborators. clue to a half-dozen disparate symptoms. In cases Another characteristic of the open-source like this, it may be hard or even impossible to method that conserves developer time is the know which externally-visible misbehaviour was communication structure of typical open-source caused by precisely which bug — but with frequent projects. Above I used the term “core developer”; releases, it’s unnecessary to know. Other collabora- this reflects a distinction between the project core tors will be likely to find out quickly whether their (typically quite small; a single core developer is bug has been fixed or not. In many cases, source- common, and one to three is typical) and the proj- level bug reports will cause misbehaviours to drop ect halo of beta-testers and available contributors out without ever having been attributed to any (which often numbers in the hundreds). specific fix. The fundamental problem that traditional Complex multi-symptom errors also tend software-development organization addresses is to have multiple trace paths from surface symp- Brook’s Law: “Adding more programmers to a late toms back to the actual bug. Which of the trace project makes it later.” More generally, Brooks’s Law paths a given developer or tester can chase may predicts that the complexity and communication depend on subtleties of that person’s environment, costs of a project rise with the square of the number and may well change in a not obviously determin- of developers, while work done only rises linearly. istic way over time. In effect, each developer and Brooks’s Law is founded on experience tester samples a semi-random set of the program’s that bugs tend strongly to cluster at the interfaces state space when looking for the etiology of a between code written by different people, and symptom. The more subtle and complex the bug, that communications/coordination overhead on a the less likely that skill will be able to guarantee project tends to rise with the number of interfaces the relevance of that sample. between human beings. Thus, problems scale with For simple and easily reproducible bugs, the number of communications paths between then, the accent will be on the “semi” rather than developers, which scales as the square of the the “random”; debugging skill and intimacy with humber of developers (more precisely, according the code and its architecture will matter a lot. to the formula N*(N - 1)/2 where N is the number But for complex bugs, the accent will be on the of developers). “random”. Under these circumstances many people The Brooks’s Law analysis (and the result- running traces will be much more effective than a ing fear of large numbers in development groups) few people running traces sequentially — even if rests on a hidden assummption: that the commu- the few have a much higher average skill level. nications structure of the project is necessarily a This effect will be greatly amplified if the complete graph, that everybody talks to everybody difficulty of following trace paths from different else. But on open-source projects, the halo devel- surface symptoms back to a bug varies signifi- opers work on what are in effect separable parallel cantly in a way that can’t be predicted by looking subtasks and interact with each other very little; at the symptoms. A single developer sampling

Reading 2: 01/26 Concepts code changes and bug reports stream through the those paths sequentially will be as likely to pick

22 a difficult trace path on the first try as an easy That changed, radically, when popclient one. On the other hand, suppose many people are learned how to forward fetched mail to the SMTP trying trace paths in parallel while doing rapid port. I’ll get to that in a moment. But first: I said releases. Then it is likely one of them will find the earlier that I’d decided to use this project to test my easiest path immediately, and nail the bug in a theory about what Linus Torvalds had done right. much shorter time. The project maintainer will How (you may well ask) did I do that? In these ways: see that, ship a new release, and the other people — I released early and often (almost never less running traces on the same bug will be able to stop often than every ten days; during periods of before having spent too much time on their more intense development, once a day). difficult traces.[RJ] — I grew my beta list by adding to it everyone who contacted me about fetchmail. When Is a Rose Not a Rose? — I sent chatty announcements to the beta list Having studied Linus’s behavior and formed a theory whenever I released, encouraging people to about why it was successful, I made a conscious participate. decision to test this theory on my new (admittedly — And I listened to my beta-testers, polling them much less complex and ambitious) project. about design decisions and stroking them But the first thing I did was reorganize whenever they sent in patches and feedback. and simplify popclient a lot. Carl Harris’s imple- The payoff from these simple measures was mentation was very sound, but exhibited a kind immediate. From the beginning of the project, I got of unnecessary complexity common to many C bug reports of a quality most developers would kill programmers. He treated the code as central and for, often with good fixes attached. I got thoughtful the data structures as support for the code. As a criticism, I got fan mail, I got intelligent feature result, the code was beautiful but the data struc- suggestions. Which leads to: ture design ad-hoc and rather ugly (at least by the high standards of this veteran LISP hacker). 10. If you treat your beta-testers as if they’re your I had another purpose for rewriting besides most valuable resource, they will respond by improving the code and the data structure design, becoming your most valuable resource. however. That was to evolve it into something I understood completely. It’s no fun to be responsible One interesting measure of fetchmail’s for fixing bugs in a program you don’t understand. success is the sheer size of the project beta list, For the first month or so, then, I was fetchmail-friends. At the time of latest revision of simply following out the implications of Carl’s this paper (November 2000) it has 287 members and basic design. The first serious change I made was is adding two or three a week. to add IMAP support. I did this by reorganizing the Actually, when I revised in late May 1997 I protocol machines into a generic driver and three found the list was beginning to lose members from method tables (for POP2, POP3, and IMAP). This and its high of close to 300 for an interesting reason. the previous changes illustrate a general principle Several people have asked me to unsubscribe them that’s good for programmers to keep in mind, espe- because fetchmail is working so well for them that cially in languages like C that don’t naturally do they no longer need to see the list traffic! Perhaps dynamic typing: this is part of the normal life-cycle of a mature bazaar-style project. 9. Smart data structures and dumb code works a lot better than the other way around. Popclient becomes Fetchmail The real turning point in the project was when Brooks, Chapter 9: “Show me your flow- Harry Hochheiser sent me his scratch code for chart and conceal your tables, and I shall continue forwarding mail to the client machine’s SMTP to be mystified. Show me your tables, and I won’t port. I realized almost immediately that a reliable

usually need your flowchart; it’ll be obvious.” implementation of this feature would make all the Concepts 01/26 2: Reading Allowing for thirty years of terminological/cultural other mail delivery modes next to obsolete. shift, it’s the same point. For many weeks I had been tweaking At this point (early September 1996, about fetchmail rather incrementally while feeling like six weeks from zero) I started thinking that a name the interface design was serviceable but grubby change might be in order — after all, it wasn’t just a — inelegant and with too many exiguous options POP client any more. But I hesitated, because there hanging out all over. The options to dump fetched was as yet nothing genuinely new in the design. My mail to a file or standard output particu- version of popclient had yet to develop an identity larly bothered me, but I couldn’t figure out why. of its own.

23 (If you don’t care about the technicalia of Inter- 12. Often, the most striking and innovative solutions net mail, the next two paragraphs can be safely skipped.) come from realizing that your concept of the What I saw when I thought about SMTP problem was wrong. forwarding was that popclient had been trying to do too many things. It had been designed to be both I had been trying to solve the wrong a mail transport agent (MTA) and a local delivery problem by continuing to develop popclient as a agent (MDA). With SMTP forwarding, it could get out combined MTA/MDA with all kinds of funky local of the MDA business and be a pure MTA, handing delivery modes. Fetchmail’s design needed to be off mail to other programs for local delivery just as rethought from the ground up as a pure MTA, a part does. of the normal SMTP-speaking Internet mail path. Why mess with all the complexity of When you hit a wall in development — when configuring a mail delivery agent or setting up lock- you find yourself hard put to think past the next and-append on a mailbox when port 25 is almost — it’s often time to ask not whether you’ve got guaranteed to be there on any platform with TCP/ the right answer, but whether you’re asking the right IP support in the first place? Especially when this question. Perhaps the problem needs to be reframed. means retrieved mail is guaranteed to look like Well, I had reframed my problem. Clearly, normal -initiated SMTP mail, which is really the right thing to do was (1) hack SMTP forwarding what we want anyway. support into the generic driver, (2) make it the (Back to a higher level....) default mode, and (3) eventually throw out all the other delivery modes, especially the deliver-to-file Even if you didn’t follow the preceding and deliver-to-standard-output options. technical jargon, there are several important I hesitated over step 3 for some time, fear- lessons here. First, this SMTP-forwarding concept ing to upset long-time popclient users dependent on was the biggest single payoff I got from consciously the alternate delivery mechanisms. In theory, they trying to emulate Linus’s methods. A user gave me could immediately switch to .forward files or their this terrific idea — all I had to do was understand non-sendmail equivalents to get the same effects. In the implications. practice the transition might have been messy. But when I did it, the benefits proved huge. 11. The next best thing to having good ideas is recog- The cruftiest parts of the driver code vanished. nizing good ideas from your users. Sometimes the Configuration got radically simpler — no more latter is better. grovelling around for the system MDA and user’s mailbox, no more worries about whether the Interestingly enough, you will quickly find underlying OS supports file locking. that if you are completely and self-deprecatingly Also, the only way to lose mail vanished. truthful about how much you owe other people, If you specified delivery to a file and the disk got the world at large will treat you as though you did full, your mail got lost. This can’t happen with every bit of the invention yourself and are just SMTP forwarding because your SMTP listener won’t being becomingly about your innate genius. return OK unless the message can be delivered or at We can all see how well this worked for Linus! least spooled for later delivery. (When I gave my talk at the first Perl Con- Also, performance improved (though not ference in August 1997, hacker extraordinaire Larry so you’d notice it in a single run). Another not Wall was in the front row. As I got to the last line insignificant benefit of this change was that the above he called out, religious-revival style, “Tell manual page got a lot simpler. it, tell it, brother!”. The whole audience laughed, Later, I had to bring delivery via a because they knew this had worked for the inventor user-specified local MDA back in order to allow han- of Perl, too.) dling of some obscure situations involving dynamic After a very few weeks of running the SLIP. But I found a much simpler way to do it. project in the same spirit, I began to get similar The moral? Don’t hesitate to throw away praise not just from my users but from other people superannuated features when you can do it without to whom the word leaked out. I stashed away some loss of effectiveness. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry of that email; I’ll look at it again sometime if I ever (who was an aviator and aircraft designer when he start wondering whether my life has been worth- wasn’t authoring classic children’s books) said: while :-). But there are two more fundamental, 13. “Perfection (in design) is achieved not when there non-political lessons here that are general to all is nothing more to add, but rather when there is kinds of design. nothing more to take away.” Reading 2: 01/26 Concepts

24 When your code is getting both better and probably thought it could go — and it grew into simpler, that is when you know it’s right. And in the something wonderful. In the same way (though on process, the fetchmail design acquired an identity a smaller scale), I took some ideas by Carl Harris of its own, different from the ancestral popclient. and Harry Hochheiser and pushed them hard. Nei- It was time for the name change. The new ther of us was ‘original’ in the romantic way people design looked much more like a dual of sendmail think is genius. But then, most science and engi- than the old popclient had; both are MTAs, but neering and software development isn’t done by where sendmail pushes then delivers, the new original genius, hacker mythology to the contrary. popclient pulls then delivers. So, two months off The results were pretty heady stuff all the the blocks, I renamed it fetchmail. same — in fact, just the kind of success every hacker There is a more general lesson in this lives for! And they meant I would have to set my story about how SMTP delivery came to fetchmail. standards even higher. To make fetchmail as good It is not only debugging that is parallelizable; as I now saw it could be, I’d have to write not just for development and (to a perhaps surprising extent) my own needs, but also include and support features exploration of design space is, too. When your necessary to others but outside my orbit. And do development mode is rapidly iterative, development that while keeping the program simple and robust. and enhancement may become special cases of The first and overwhelmingly most debugging — fixing ‘bugs of omission’ in the origi- important feature I wrote after realizing this was nal capabilities or concept of the software. multidrop support — the ability to fetch mail from Even at a higher level of design, it can be very mailboxes that had accumulated all mail for a valuable to have lots of co-developers random-walk- group of users, and then route each piece of mail to ing through the design space near your product. its individual recipients. Consider the way a puddle of water finds a drain, or I decided to add the multidrop support better yet how ants find food: exploration essentially partly because some users were clamoring for it, by diffusion, followed by exploitation mediated by a but mostly because I thought it would shake bugs scalable communication mechanism. This works very out of the single-drop code by forcing me to deal well; as with Harry Hochheiser and me, one of your with addressing in full generality. And so it proved. outriders may well find a huge win nearby that you Getting RFC 822 address parsing right took me a were just a little too close-focused to see. remarkably long time, not because any individual piece of it is hard but because it involved a pile of Fetchmail Grows Up interdependent and fussy details. There I was with a neat and innovative design, code But multidrop addressing turned out to be that I knew worked well because I used it every day, an excellent design decision as well. Here’s how I and a burgeoning beta list. It gradually dawned knew: on me that I was no longer engaged in a trivial personal hack that might happen to be useful to 14. Any tool should be useful in the expected way, but a few other people. I had my hands on a program that truly great tool lends itself to uses you never expected. every hacker with a Unix box and a SLIP/PPP mail connection really needs. The unexpected use for multidrop fetch- With the SMTP forwarding feature, it mail is to run mailing lists with the list kept, and pulled far enough in front of the competition to alias expansion done, on the client side of the potentially become a “category killer”, one of those Internet connection. This means someone running classic programs that fills its niche so competently a personal machine through an ISP account can that the alternatives are not just discarded but manage a mailing list without continuing access to almost forgotten. the ISP’s alias files. I think you can’t really aim or plan for a Another important change demanded by result like this. You have to get pulled into it by my beta-testers was support for 8-bit MIME (Multi-

design ideas so powerful that afterward the results purpose Internet Mail Extensions) operation. This Concepts 01/26 2: Reading just seem inevitable, natural, even foreordained. was pretty easy to do, because I had been careful to The only way to try for ideas like that is by having keep the code 8-bit clean (that is, to not press the lots of ideas — or by having the engineering eighth bit, unused in the ASCII character set, into judgment to take other peoples’ good ideas beyond service to carry information within the program). where the originators thought they could go. Not because I anticipated the demand for this Andy Tanenbaum had the original idea to feature, but rather in obedience to another rule: build a simple native Unix for IBM PCs, for use as a teaching tool (he called it Minix). Linus Torvalds 15. When writing gateway software of any kind, take pushed the Minix concept further than Andrew pains to disturb the data stream as little as possible

25 — and never throw away information unless the recipi- confusion in itself. Another is that trying to make ent forces you to! a language syntax English-like often demands that the “English” it speaks be bent seriously out of Had I not obeyed this rule, 8-bit MIME sup- shape, so much so that the superficial resemblance port would have been difficult and buggy. As it was, to natural language is as confusing as a traditional all I had to do is read the MIME standard (RFC 1652) syntax would have been. (You see this bad effect in and add a trivial bit of header-generation logic. a lot of so-called “fourth generation” and commer- Some European users bugged me into cial database-query languages.) adding an option to limit the number of messages The fetchmail control syntax seems to retrieved per session (so they can control costs from avoid these problems because the language domain their expensive phone networks). I resisted this for is extremely restricted. It’s nowhere near a gener- a long time, and I’m still not entirely happy about al-purpose language; the things it says simply are it. But if you’re writing for the world, you have to not very complicated, so there’s little potential listen to your customers — this doesn’t change just for confusion in moving mentally between a tiny because they’re not paying you in money. subset of English and the actual control language. I think there may be a broader lesson here: A Few More Lessons from Fetchmail Before we go back to general software-engineering 16. When your language is nowhere near Turing-com- issues, there are a couple more specific lessons from plete, syntactic sugar can be your friend. the fetchmail experience to ponder. Nontechnical readers can safely skip this section. Another lesson is about security by obscu- The rc (control) file syntax includes rity. Some fetchmail users asked me to change the optional ‘noise’ keywords that are entirely ignored software to store encrypted in the rc file, by the parser. The English-like syntax they allow so snoopers wouldn’t be able to casually see them. is considerably more readable than the traditional I didn’t do it, because this doesn’t actually terse keyword-value pairs you get when you strip add protection. Anyone who’s acquired permissions them all out. to read your rc file will be able to run fetchmail These started out as a late-night experi- as you anyway — and if it’s your they’re ment when I noticed how much the rc file decla- after, they’d be able to rip the necessary decoder rations were beginning to resemble an imperative out of the fetchmail code itself to get it. minilanguage. (This is also why I changed the All .fetch m ailrc password encryption original popclient “server” keyword to “poll”). would have done is give a false sense of security to It seemed to me that trying to make that people who don’t think very hard. The general rule imperative minilanguage more like English might here is: make it easier to use. Now, although I’m a con- vinced partisan of the “make it a language” school 17. A security system is only as secure as its secret. of design as exemplified by Emacs and HTML and Beware of pseudo-secrets. many database engines, I am not normally a big fan of “English-like” syntaxes. Necessary Preconditions for the Bazaar Style Traditionally programmers have tended Early reviewers and test audiences for this essay con- to favor control syntaxes that are very precise and sistently raised questions about the preconditions for compact and have no redundancy at all. This is a successful bazaar-style development, including both cultural legacy from when computing resources the qualifications of the project leader and the state were expensive, so parsing stages had to be as of code at the time one goes public and starts to try cheap and simple as possible. English, with about to build a co-developer community. 50% redundancy, looked like a very inappropriate It’s fairly clear that one cannot code from model then. the ground up in bazaar style.[IN] One can test, This is not my reason for normally avoid- debug and improve in bazaar style, but it would ing English-like syntaxes; I mention it here only to be very hard to originate a project in bazaar mode. demolish it. With cheap cycles and core, terseness Linus didn’t try it. I didn’t either. Your nascent should not be an end in itself. Nowadays it’s more developer community needs to have something important for a language to be convenient for runnable and testable to play with. humans than to be cheap for the computer. When you start community-building, what There remain, however, good reasons to you need to be able to present is a plausible promise. be wary. One is the complexity cost of the parsing Your program doesn’t have to work particularly stage — you don’t want to raise that to the point well. It can be crude, buggy, incomplete, and poorly

Reading 2: 01/26 Concepts where it’s a significant source of bugs and user documented. What it must not fail to do is (a) run,

26 and (b) convince potential co-developers that it effort will already be above that minimum. The can be evolved into something really neat in the open-source community’s internal market in foreseeable future. reputation exerts subtle pressure on people not to Linux and fetchmail both went public with launch development efforts they’re not competent strong, attractive basic designs. Many people think- to follow through on. So far this seems to have ing about the bazaar model as I have presented it worked pretty well. have correctly considered this critical, then jumped There is another kind of skill not normally from that to the conclusion that a high degree of associated with software development which I design intuition and cleverness in the project leader think is as important as design cleverness to bazaar is indispensable. projects — and it may be more important. A bazaar But Linus got his design from Unix. I got project coordinator or leader must have good mine initially from the ancestral popclient (though people and communications skills. it would later change a great deal, much more This should be obvious. In order to build proportionately speaking than has Linux). So does a development community, you need to attract the leader/coordinator for a bazaar-style effort people, interest them in what you’re doing, and really have to have exceptional design talent, or keep them happy about the amount of work they’re can he get by through leveraging the design talent doing. Technical sizzle will go a long way towards of others? accomplishing this, but it’s far from the whole story. I think it is not critical that the coordi- The personality you project matters, too. nator be able to originate designs of exceptional It is not a coincidence that Linus is a nice brilliance, but it is absolutely critical that the guy who makes people like him and want to help coordinator be able to recognize good design ideas him. It’s not a coincidence that I’m an energetic from others. extrovert who enjoys working a crowd and has Both the Linux and fetchmail projects some of the delivery and instincts of a stand-up show evidence of this. Linus, while not (as previ- comic. To make the bazaar model work, it helps ously discussed) a spectacularly original designer, enormously if you have at least a little skill at has displayed a powerful knack for recognizing charming people. good design and integrating it into the Linux kernel. And I have already described how the single most The Social Context of Open-Source Software powerful design idea in fetchmail (SMTP forward- It is truly written: the best hacks start out as per- ing) came from somebody else. sonal solutions to the author’s everyday problems, Early audiences of this essay compli- and spread because the problem turns out to be mented me by suggesting that I am prone to under- typical for a large class of users. This takes us back value design originality in bazaar projects because to the matter of rule 1, restated in a perhaps more I have a lot of it myself, and therefore take it for useful way: granted. There may be some truth to this; design (as opposed to coding or debugging) is certainly my 18. To solve an interesting problem, start by finding a strongest skill. problem that is interesting to you. But the problem with being clever and original in software design is that it gets to be a So it was with Carl Harris and the ances- habit — you start reflexively making things cute tral popclient, and so with me and fetchmail. But and complicated when you should be keeping them this has been understood for a long time. The robust and simple. I have had projects crash on me interesting point, the point that the histories of because I made this mistake, but I managed to avoid Linux and fetchmail seem to demand we focus on, this with fetchmail. is the next stage — the evolution of software in the So I believe the fetchmail project suc- presence of a large and active community of users ceeded partly because I restrained my tendency to and co-developers.

be clever; this argues (at least) against design origi- In The Mythical Man-Month, Fred Brooks Concepts 01/26 2: Reading nality being essential for successful bazaar projects. observed that programmer time is not fungible; And consider Linux. Suppose Linus Torvalds had adding developers to a late software project makes been trying to pull off fundamental innovations in it later. As we’ve seen previously, he argued that the operating system design during the development; complexity and communication costs of a project does it seem at all likely that the resulting kernel rise with the square of the number of developers, would be as stable and successful as what we have? while work done only rises linearly. Brooks’s Law A certain base level of design and coding has been widely regarded as a truism. But we’ve skill is required, of course, but I expect almost examined in this essay an number of ways in which anybody seriously thinking of launching a bazaar the process of open-source development falsifies

27 the assumptionms behind it — and, empirically, if kibitzers and co-developers. , the MIT AI Brooks’s Law were the whole picture Linux would and LCS labs, UC Berkeley — these became the home be impossible. of innovations that are legendary and still potent. Gerald Weinberg’s classic The Psychology of Linux was the first project for which a Computer Programming supplied what, in hindsight, conscious and successful effort to use the entire we can see as a vital correction to Brooks. In his world as its talent pool was made. I don’t think it’s discussion of “egoless programming”, Weinberg a coincidence that the gestation period of Linux observed that in shops where developers are not coincided with the birth of the , territorial about their code, and encourage other and that Linux left its infancy during the same people to look for bugs and potential improvements period in 1993–1994 that saw the takeoff of the ISP in it, improvement happens dramatically faster industry and the explosion of mainstream interest than elsewhere. (Recently, Kent Beck’s ‘extreme in the Internet. Linus was the first person who programming’ technique of deploying coders in learned how to play by the new rules that pervasive pairs looking over one anothers’ shoulders might be made possible. seen as an attempt to force this effect.) While cheap Internet was a necessary Weinberg’s choice of terminology has condition for the Linux model to evolve, I think it perhaps prevented his analysis from gaining the was not by itself a sufficient condition. Another acceptance it deserved — one has to smile at the vital factor was the development of a leadership thought of describing Internet hackers as “egoless”. style and set of cooperative customs that could But I think his argument looks more compelling allow developers to attract co-developers and get today than ever. maximum leverage out of the medium. The bazaar method, by harnessing the But what is this leadership style and what full power of the “egoless programming” effect, are these customs? They cannot be based on power strongly mitigates the effect of Brooks’s Law. The relationships — and even if they could be, lead- principle behind Brooks’s Law is not repealed, but ership by coercion would not produce the results given a large developer population and cheap we see. Weinberg quotes the autobiography of the communications its effects can be swamped by 19th-century Russian anarchist Pyotr Alexeyvich competing nonlinearities that are not otherwise Kropotkin’s Memoirs of a Revolutionist to good effect visible. This resembles the relationship between on this subject: Newtonian and Einsteinian physics — the older system is still valid at low energies, but if you push Having been brought up in a serf-owner’s mass and velocity high enough you get surprises family, I entered active life, like all young like nuclear explosions or Linux. men of my time, with a great deal of The history of Unix should have prepared confidence in the necessity of commanding, us for what we’re learning from Linux (and what ordering, scolding, punishing and the I’ve verified experimentally on a smaller scale by like. But when, at an early stage, I had to deliberately copying Linus’s methods[EGCS]). That manage serious enterprises and to deal is, while coding remains an essentially solitary with [free] men, and when each mistake activity, the really great hacks come from harness- would lead at once to heavy consequences, I ing the attention and brainpower of entire com- began to appreciate the difference between munities. The developer who uses only his or her acting on the principle of command and own brain in a closed project is going to fall behind discipline and acting on the principle of the developer who knows how to create an open, common understanding. The former works evolutionary context in which feedback exploring admirably in a military parade, but it is the design space, code contributions, bug-spotting, worth nothing where real life is concerned, and other improvements come from from hundreds and the aim can be achieved only through (perhaps thousands) of people. the severe effort of many converging wills. But the traditional Unix world was pre- vented from pushing this approach to the ultimate The “severe effort of many converging by several factors. One was the legal contraints wills” is precisely what a project like Linux requires of various licenses, trade secrets, and commercial — and the “principle of command” is effectively interests. Another (in hindsight) was that the impossible to apply among volunteers in the anar- Internet wasn’t yet good enough. chist’s paradise we call the Internet. To operate Before cheap Internet, there were some and compete effectively, hackers who want to lead geographically compact communities where the cul- collaborative projects have to learn how to recruit ture encouraged Weinberg’s “egoless” programming, and energize effective communities of interest

Reading 2: 01/26 Concepts and a developer could easily attract a lot of skilled in the mode vaguely suggested by Kropotkin’s

28 “principle of understanding”. They must learn to use Both the fetchmail and Linux kernel Linus’s Law.[SP] projects show that by properly rewarding the egos Earlier I referred to the “Delphi effect” as a of many other hackers, a strong developer/coordi- possible explanation for Linus’s Law. But more pow- nator can use the Internet to capture the benefits erful analogies to adaptive systems in biology and of having lots of co-developers without having a economics also irresistably suggest themselves. The project collapse into a chaotic mess. So to Brooks’s Linux world behaves in many respects like a free Law I counter-propose the following: market or an ecology, a collection of selfish agents attempting to maximize utility which in the pro- 19: Provided the development coordinator has a cess produces a self-correcting spontaneous order communications medium at least as good as the more elaborate and efficient than any amount of Internet, and knows how to lead without coercion, central planning could have achieved. Here, then, is many heads are inevitably better than one. the place to seek the “principle of understanding”. The “utility function” Linux hackers are I think the future of open-source software maximizing is not classically economic, but is will increasingly belong to people who know how the intangible of their own ego satisfaction and rep- to play Linus’s game, people who leave behind the utation among other hackers. (One may call their cathedral and embrace the bazaar. This is not to motivation “altruistic”, but this ignores the fact say that individual vision and brilliance will no that altruism is itself a form of ego satisfaction for longer matter; rather, I think that the cutting edge the altruist). Voluntary cultures that work this way of open-source software will belong to people who are not actually uncommon; one other in which start from individual vision and brilliance, then I have long participated is science fiction fandom, amplify it through the effective construction of which unlike hackerdom has long explicitly recog- voluntary communities of interest. nized “egoboo” (ego-boosting, or the enhancement Perhaps this is not only the future of open- of one’s reputation among other fans) as the basic source software. No closed-source developer can drive behind volunteer activity. match the pool of talent the Linux community can Linus, by successfully positioning himself bring to bear on a problem. Very few could afford as the gatekeeper of a project in which the develop- even to hire the more than 200 (1999: 600, 2000: 800) ment is mostly done by others, and nurturing inter- people who have contributed to fetchmail! est in the project until it became self-sustaining, Perhaps in the end the open-source has shown an acute grasp of Kropotkin’s “principle culture will triumph not because cooperation is of shared understanding”. This quasi-economic morally right or software “hoarding” is morally view of the Linux world enables us to see how that wrong (assuming you believe the latter, which nei- understanding is applied. ther Linus nor I do), but simply because the closed- We may view Linus’s method as a way to source world cannot win an evolutionary arms race create an efficient market in “egoboo” — to connect with open-source communities that can put orders the selfishness of individual hackers as firmly as of magnitude more skilled time into a problem. possible to difficult ends that can only be achieved by sustained cooperation. With the fetchmail On Management and the Maginot Line project I have shown (albeit on a smaller scale) that The original Cathedral and Bazaar paper of 1997 his methods can be duplicated with good results. ended with the vision above — that of happy Perhaps I have even done it a bit more consciously networked hordes of programmer/anarchists and systematically than he. outcompeting and overwhelming the hierarchical Many people (especially those who world of conventional closed software. politically distrust free markets) would expect a A good many skeptics weren’t convinced, culture of self-directed egoists to be fragmented, however; and the questions they raise deserve a fair territorial, wasteful, secretive, and hostile. But this engagement. Most of the objections to the bazaar

expectation is clearly falsified by (to give just one argument come down to the claim that its propo- Concepts 01/26 2: Reading example) the stunning variety, quality, and depth nents have underestimated the productivity-multi- of Linux documentation. It is a hallowed given that plying effect of conventional management. programmers hate documenting; how is it, then, Traditionally-minded software-develop- that Linux hackers generate so much documenta- ment managers often object that the casualness tion? Evidently Linux’s free market in egoboo works with which project groups form and change and better to produce virtuous, other-directed behavior dissolve in the open-source world negates a signif- than the massively-funded documentation shops of icant part of the apparent advantage of numbers commercial software producers. that the open-source community has over any single closed-source developer. They would observe

29 that in software development it is really sustained One thing many people think the tradi- effort over time and the degree to which customers tional mode buys you is somebody to hold legally can expect continuing investment in the product liable and potentially recover compensation from that matters, not just how many people have if the project goes wrong. But this is an illusion; thrown a bone in the pot and left it to simmer. most software licenses are written to disclaim even There is something to this argument, to warranty of merchantability, let alone performance be sure; in fact, I have developed the idea that — and cases of successful recovery for software non- expected future service value is the key to the performance are vanishingly rare. Even if they were economics of software production in the essay The common, feeling comforted by having somebody to Magic Cauldron. sue would be missing the point. You didn’t want to But this argument also has a major hidden be in a lawsuit; you wanted working software. problem; its implicit assumption that open-source So what is all that management overhead development cannot deliver such sustained effort. buying? In fact, there have been open-source projects that In order to understand that, we need to maintained a coherent direction and an effective understand what software development managers maintainer community over quite long periods believe they do. A woman I know who seems to be of time without the kinds of incentive structures very good at this job says software project manage- or institutional controls that conventional man- ment has five functions: agement finds essential. The development of the — To define goals and keep everybody pointed in GNU Emacs editor is an extreme and instructive the same direction example; it has absorbed the efforts of hundreds of — To monitor and make sure crucial details don’t contributors over 15 years into a unified architec- get skipped tural vision, despite high turnover and the fact that — To motivate people to do boring but necessary only one person (its author) has been continuously drudgework active during all that time. No closed-source editor — To organize the deployment of people for best has ever matched this longevity record. productivity This suggests a reason for questioning the — To marshal resources needed to sustain the advantages of conventionally-managed software project development that is independent of the rest of the Apparently worthy goals, all of these; but arguments over cathedral vs. bazaar mode. If it’s under the open-source model, and in its surround- possible for GNU Emacs to express a consistent ing social context, they can begin to seem strangely architectural vision over 15 years, or for an operat- irrelevant. We’ll take them in reverse order. ing system like Linux to do the same over 8 years of My friend reports that a lot of resource rapidly changing hardware and platform technol- marshalling is basically defensive; once you have ogy; and if (as is indeed the case) there have been your people and machines and office space, you have many well-architected open-source projects of to defend them from peer managers competing for more than 5 years duration — then we are entitled the same resources, and from higher-ups trying to to wonder what, if anything, the tremendous allocate the most efficient use of a limited pool. overhead of conventionally-managed development But open-source developers are volunteers, is actually buying us. self-selected for vwboth interest and ability to Whatever it is certainly doesn’t include contribute to the projects they work on (and this reliable execution by deadline, or on budget, or to remains generally true even when they are being all features of the specification; it’s a rare ‘managed’ paid a salary to hack open source.) The volunteer project that meets even one of these goals, let ethos tends to take care of the ‘attack’ side of alone all three. It also does not appear to be ability resource-marshalling automatically; people bring to adapt to changes in technology and economic their own resources to the table. And there is little context during the project lifetime, either; the or no need for a manager to ‘play defense’ in the open-source community has proven far more conventional sense. effective on that score (as one can readily verify, for Anyway, in a world of cheap PCs and fast example, by comparing the 30-year links, we find pretty consistently that the Internet with the short half-lives of proprietary only really limiting resource is skilled attention. networking technologies — or the cost of the 16-bit Open-source projects, when they founder, essen- to 32-bit transition in Windows with the tially never do so for want of machines or links nearly effortless upward migration of Linux during or office space; they die only when the developers the same period, not only along the Intel line of themselves lose interest. development but to more than a dozen other hard- That being the case, it’s doubly important

Reading 2: 01/26 Concepts ware platforms, including the 64-bit Alpha as well). that open-source hackers organize themselves for

30 maximum productivity by self-selection — and the creative work, is a far more effective motivator social milieu selects ruthlessly for competence. My than money alone. friend, familiar with both the open-source world Having a conventional management struc- and large closed projects, believes that open source ture solely in order to motivate, then, is probably has been successful partly because its culture good tactics but bad strategy; a short-term win, but only accepts the most talented 5% or so of the in the longer term a surer loss. programming population. She spends most of her So far, conventional development manage- time organizing the deployment of the other 95%, ment looks like a bad bet now against open source and has thus observed first-hand -known on two points (resource marshalling, organization), variance of a factor of one hundred in productivity and like it’s living on borrowed time with respect between the most able programmers and the to a third (motivation). And the poor beleaguered merely competent. conventional manager is not going to get any The size of that variance has always succour from the monitoring issue; the strongest raised an awkward question: would individual argument the open-source community has is that projects, and the field as a whole, be better off decentralized peer review trumps all the conven- without more than 50% of the least able in it? tional methods for trying to ensure that details Thoughtful managers have understood for a long don’t get slipped. time that if conventional software management’s Can we save defining goals as a justification only function were to convert the least able from a for the overhead of conventional software project net loss to a marginal win, the game might not be management? Perhaps; but to do so, we’ll need good worth the candle. reason to believe that management committees and The success of the open-source community corporate roadmaps are more successful at defining sharpens this question considerably, by providing worthy and widely shared goals than the project hard evidence that it is often cheaper and more leaders and tribal elders who fill the analogous role effective to recruit self-selected volunteers from in the open-source world. the Internet than it is to manage buildings full of That is on the face of it a pretty hard case people who would rather be doing something else. to make. And it’s not so much the open-source side Which brings us neatly to the question of of the balance (the longevity of Emacs, or Linus motivation. An equivalent and often-heard way to Torvalds’s ability to mobilize hordes of developers state my friend’s point is that traditional develop- with talk of “world domination”) that makes it ment management is a necessary compensation tough. Rather, it’s the demonstrated awfulness of for poorly motivated programmers who would not conventional mechanisms for defining the goals of otherwise turn out good work. software projects. This answer usually travels with a claim One of the best-known folk theorems of that the open-source community can only be relied software engineering is that 60% to 75% of conven- on only to do work that is ‘sexy’ or technically tional software projects either are never completed sweet; anything else will be left undone (or done or are rejected by their intended users. If that only poorly) unless it’s churned out by money-mo- range is anywhere near true (and I’ve never met a tivated cubicle peons with managers cracking manager of any experience who disputes it) then whips over them. I address the psychological and more projects than not are being aimed at goals social reasons for being skeptical of this claim in that are either (a) not realistically attainable, or (b) Homesteading the Noosphere. For present purposes, just plain wrong. however, I think it’s more interesting to point out This, more than any other problem, is the the implications of accepting it as true. reason that in today’s software engineering world If the conventional, closed-source, heav- the very phrase “management committee” is likely ily-managed style of software development is to send chills down the hearer’s spine — even (or really defended only by a sort of Maginot Line of perhaps especially) if the hearer is a manager. The

problems conducive to boredom, then it’s going to days when only programmers griped about this Concepts 01/26 2: Reading remain viable in each individual application area pattern are long past; Dilbert cartoons hang over for only so long as nobody finds those problems executives’ desks now. really interesting and nobody else finds any way Our reply, then, to the traditional software to route around them. Because the moment there development manager, is simple — if the open- is open-source competition for a ‘boring’ piece of source community has really underestimated the software, customers are going to know that it was value of conventional management, why do so many finally tackled by someone who chose that problem of you display contempt for your own process? to solve because of a fascination with the problem Once again the example of the open-source itself — which, in software as in other kinds of community sharpens this question considerably

31 — because we have fun doing what we do. Our is about to provide us with a creative play has been racking up technical, large-scale, real-world test of the bazaar market-share, and mind-share successes at an model in the commercial world. The astounding rate. We’re proving not only that we can open-source culture now faces a danger; do better software, but that joy is an asset. if Netscape’s execution doesn’t work, the Two and a half years after the first version open-source concept may be so discredited of this essay, the most radical thought I can offer to that the commercial world won’t touch it close with is no longer a vision of an open-source– again for another decade. dominated software world; that, after all, looks plausible to a lot of sober people in suits these days. On the other hand, this is also a spectacular Rather, I want to suggest what may be a opportunity. Initial reaction to the move wider lesson about software, (and probably about on Wall Street and elsewhere has been every kind of creative or professional work). Human cautiously positive. We’re being given a beings generally take pleasure in a task when it chance to prove ourselves, too. If Netscape falls in a sort of optimal-challenge zone; not so easy regains substantial market share through as to be boring, not too hard to achieve. A happy this move, it just may set off a long-overdue programmer is one who is neither underutilized nor revolution in the software industry. weighed down with ill-formulated goals and stress- ful process friction. Enjoyment predicts efficiency. The next year should be a very instructive Relating to your own work process with and interesting time. fear and loathing (even in the displaced, ironic way suggested by hanging up Dilbert cartoons) should And indeed it was. As I write in mid-2000, therefore be regarded in itself as a sign that the the development of what was later named Mozilla process has failed. Joy, humor, and playfulness are has been only a qualified success. It achieved indeed assets; it was not mainly for the alliteration Netscape’s original goal, which was to deny Micro- that I wrote of “happy hordes” above, and it is soft a monopoly lock on the browser market. It has no mere joke that the Linux mascot is a cuddly, also achieved some dramatic successes (notably neotenous penguin. the release of the next-generation Gecko rendering It may well turn out that one of the most engine). important effects of open source’s success will be to However, it has not yet garnered the teach us that play is the most economically efficient massive development effort from outside Netscape mode of creative work. that the Mozilla founders had originally hoped for. The problem here seems to be that for a long Epilog: Netscape Embraces the Bazaar time the Mozilla distribution actually broke one of It’s a strange feeling to realize you’re helping make the basic rules of the bazaar model; it didn’t ship history.... with something potential contributors could easily On January 22 1998, approximately run and see working. (Until more than a year after seven months after I first published The Cathe- release, building Mozilla from source required a dral and the Bazaar, Netscape Communications, license for the proprietary Motif library.) Inc. announced plans to give away the source Most negatively (from the point of view of for . I had had no clue the outside world) the Mozilla group didn’t ship a this was going to happen before the day of the production-quality browser for two and a half years announcement. after the project launch — and in 1999 one of the Eric Hahn, executive vice president and project’s principals caused a bit of a sensation by chief technology officer at Netscape, emailed me resigning, complaining of poor management and shortly afterwards as follows: “On behalf of every- missed opportunities. “Open source,” he correctly one at Netscape, I want to thank you for helping us observed, “is not magic pixie dust.” get to this point in the first place. Your thinking And indeed it is not. The long-term and writings were fundamental inspirations to our prognosis for Mozilla looks dramatically better decision.” now (in November 2000) than it did at the time of The following week I flew out to Silicon Jamie Zawinski’s resignation letter — in the last Valley at Netscape’s invitation for a day-long few weeks the nightly releases have finally passed strategy conference (on 4 Feb 1998) with some the critical threshold to production usability. But of their top executives and technical people. We Jamie was right to point out that going open will designed Netscape’s source-release strategy and not necessarily save an existing project that suffers license together. from ill-defined goals or spaghetti code or any of the

Reading 2: 01/26 Concepts A few days later I wrote the following: software engineering’s other chronic ills. Mozilla

32 has managed to provide an example simultaneously vulnerability to bugs scales with the square of team size, but of how open source can succeed and how it could fail. that the costs from duplicated work are nevertheless a special In the mean time, however, the open- case that scales more slowly. It’s not hard to develop plausible source idea has scored successes and found backers reasons for this, starting with the undoubted fact that it is elsewhere. Since the Netscape release we’ve seen much easier to agree on functional boundaries between differ- a tremendous explosion of interest in the open- ent developers’ code that will prevent duplication of effort than source development model, a trend both driven by it is to prevent the kinds of unplanned bad interactions across and driving the continuing success of the Linux the whole system that underly most bugs. operating system. The trend Mozilla touched off is The combination of Linus’s Law and Hasler’s Law continuing at an accelerating rate. suggests that there are actually three critical size regimes in software projects. On small projects (I would say one to at most [JB] In Programing Pearls, the noted computer-science aphorist three developers) no management structure more elaborate Jon Bentley comments on Brooks’s observation with “If you than picking a lead programmer is needed. And there is some plan to throw one away, you will throw away two.”. He is almost intermediate range above that in which the cost of traditional certainly right. The point of Brooks’s observation, and Bentley’s, management is relatively low, so its benefits from avoiding isn’t merely that you should expect first attempt to be wrong, duplication of effort, bug-tracking, and pushing to see that it’s that starting over with the right idea is usually more details are not overlooked actually net out positive. effective than trying to salvage a mess. Above that, however, the combination of Linus’s Law and Hasler’s Law suggests there is a large-project range in [QR] Examples of successful open-source, bazaar development which the costs and problems of traditional management rise predating the Internet explosion and unrelated to the Unix much faster than the expected cost from duplication of effort. and Internet traditions have existed. The development of the Not the least of these costs is a structural inability to harness info-Zip compression utility during 1990–x1992, primarily for the many-eyeballs effect, which (as we’ve seen) seems to do a DOS machines, was one such example. Another was the RBBS much better job than traditional management at making sure (again for DOS), which began in 1983 and bugs and details are not overlooked. Thus, in the large-project developed a sufficiently strong community that there have been case, the combination of these laws effectively drives the net fairly regular releases up to the present (mid-1999) despite the payoff of traditional management to zero. huge technical advantages of Internet mail and file-sharing over local BBSs. While the info-Zip community relied to some [HBS] The split between Linux’s experimental and stable extent on Internet mail, the RBBS developer culture was actu- versions has another function related to, but distinct from, ally able to base a substantial on-line community on RBBS that hedging risk. The split attacks another problem: the deadliness was completely independent of the TCP/IP infrastructure. of deadlines. When programmers are held both to an immutable feature list and a fixed drop-dead date, quality goes out the [CV] That transparency and peer review are valuable for taming window and there is likely a colossal mess in the making. I am the complexity of OS development turns out, after all, not to be indebted to Marco Iansiti and Alan MacCormack of the Harvard a new concept. In 1965, very early in the history of time-sharing Business School for showing me me evidence that relaxing operating systems, Corbató and Vyssotsky, co-designers of the either one of these constraints can make scheduling workable. Multics operating system, wrote One way to do this is to fix the deadline but leave the It is expected that the Multics system will be feature list flexible, allowing features to drop off if not com- published when it is operating substantially... Such pleted by deadline. This is essentially the strategy of the “stable” publication is desirable for two reasons: First, the kernel branch; Alan Cox (the stable-kernel maintainer) puts out system should withstand public scrutiny and releases at fairly regular intervals, but makes no guarantees criticism volunteered by interested readers; second, about when particular bugs will be fixed or what features will in an age of increasing complexity, it is an obligation beback-ported from the experimental branch. to present and future system designers to make the The other way to do this is to set a desired feature list inner operating system as lucid as possible so as to and deliver only when it is done. This is essentially the strategy reveal the basic system issues. of the “experimental” kernel branch. De Marco and Lister cited research showing that this scheduling policy (“wake me Reading 2: 01/26 Concepts 01/26 2: Reading [JH] John Hasler has suggested an interesting explanation up when it’s done”) produces not only the highest quality but, for the fact that duplication of effort doesn’t seem to be a on average, shorter delivery times than either “realistic” or net drag on open-source development. He proposes what I’ll “aggressive” scheduling. dub “Hasler’s Law”: the costs of duplicated work tend to scale I have come to suspect (as of early 2000) that in earlier sub-qadratically with team size — that is, more slowly than the versions of this essay I severely underestimated the importance planning and management overhead that would be needed to of the “wake me up when it’s done” anti-deadline policy to the eliminate them. open-source community’s productivity and quality. General This claim actually does not contradict Brooks’s experience with the rushed GNOME 1.0 release in 1999 suggests Law. It may be the case that total complexity overhead and

33 that pressure for a premature release can neutralize many of the (to pick one of many) is pushing the state of the art in GUIs and quality benefits open source normally confers. object technology hard enough to have attracted considerable It may well turn out to be that the process trans- notice in the computer trade press well outside the Linux parency of open source is one of three co-equal drivers of its community. Other examples are legion, as a visit to Freshmeat quality, along with “wake me up when it’s done” scheduling and on any given day will quickly prove. developer self-selection. But there is a more fundamental error in the implicit assumption that the cathedral model (or the bazaar model, or [SU] It’s tempting, and not entirely inaccurate, to see the core- any other kind of management structure) can somehow make plus-halo organization characteristic of open-source projects as innovation happen reliably. This is nonsense. Gangs don’t have an Internet-enabled spin on Brooks’s own recommendation for breakthrough insights — even volunteer groups of bazaar solving the N-squared complexity problem, the “surgical-team” anarchists are usually incapable of genuine originality, let organization — but the differences are significant. The alone corporate committees of people with a survival stake in constellation of specialist roles such as “code librarian” that some status quo ante. Insight comes from individuals. The most Brooks envisioned around the team leader doesn’t really exist; their surrounding social machinery can ever hope to do is to be those roles are executed instead by generalists aided by toolsets responsive to breakthrough insights — to nourish and reward quite a bit more powerful than those of Brooks’s day. Also, the and rigorously test them instead of squashing them. open-source culture leans heavily on strong Unix traditions of Some will characterize this as a romantic view, a modularity, APIs, and information hiding — none of which were reversion to outmoded lone-inventor stereotypes. Not so; I am elements of Brooks’s prescription. not asserting that groups are incapable of developing break- through insights once they have been hatched; indeed, we learn [RJ] The respondent who pointed out to me the effect of widely from the peer-review process that such development groups varying trace path lengths on the difficulty of characterizing a are essential to producing a high-quality result. Rather I am bug speculated that trace-path difficulty for multiple symp- pointing out that every such group development starts from — toms of the same bug varies “exponentially” (which I take to is necessarily sparked by — one good idea in one person’s head. mean on a Gaussian or Poisson distribution, and agree seems Cathedrals and bazaars and other social structures can catch very plausible). If it is experimentally possible to get a handle that lightning and refine it, but they cannot make it on demand. on the shape of this distribution, that would be extremely Therefore the root problem of innovation (in valuable data. Large departures from a flat equal-probability software, or anywhere else) is indeed how not to squash it — but, distribution of trace difficulty would suggest that even solo even more fundamentally, it is how to grow lots of people who developers should emulate the bazaar strategy by bounding the can have insights in the first place. time they spend on tracing a given symptom before they switch To suppose that cathedral-style development could to another. Persistence may not always be a virtue... manage this trick but the low entry barriers and process fluidity of the bazaar cannot would be absurd. If what it takes [IN] An issue related to whether one can start projects from is one person with one good idea, then a social milieu in which zero in the bazaar style is whether the bazaar style is capable one person can rapidly attract the cooperation of hundreds or of supporting truly innovative work. Some claim that, lacking thousands of others with that good idea is going inevitably to strong leadership, the bazaar can only handle the cloning out-innovate any in which the person has to do a political sales and improvement of ideas already present at the engineering job to a hierarchy before he can work on his idea without risk of state of the art, but is unable to push the state of the art. This getting fired. argument was perhaps most infamously made by the Halloween And, indeed, if we look at the history of software Documents, two embarrassing internal Microsoft memoranda innovation by organizations using the cathedral model, we written about the open-source phenomenon. The authors quickly find it is rather rare. Large corporations rely on uni- compared Linux’s development of a Unix-like operating system versity research for new ideas (thus the Halloween Documents to “chasing taillights”, and opined “(once a project has achieved authors’ unease about Linux’s facility at coopting that research “parity” with the state-of-the-art), the level of management more rapidly). Or they buy out small companies built around necessary to push towards new frontiers becomes massive.” some innovator’s brain. In neither case is the innovation native There are serious errors of fact implied in this to the cathedral culture; indeed, many innovations so imported argument. One is exposed when the Halloween authors themse- end up being quietly suffocated under the “massive level of selves later observe that “often [...] new research ideas are first management” the Halloween Documents’ authors so extol. implemented and available on Linux before they are available / That, however, is a negative point. The reader would incorporated into other platforms.” be better served by a positive one. I suggest, as an experiment, If we read “open source” for “Linux”, we see that this the following: is far from a new phenomenon. Historically, the open-source — Pick a criterion for originality that you believe you can community did not invent Emacs or the World Wide Web or the apply consistently. If your definition is “I know it when I see Internet itself by chasing taillights or being massively managed it”, that’s not a problem for purposes of this test. — and in the present, there is so much innovative work going on

Reading 2: 01/26 Concepts in open source that one is spoiled for choice. The GNOME project

34 — Pick any closed-source operating system competing with multiple redundancy and degrades very gracefully. In both Linux, and a best source for accounts of current develop- networks, each is important only to the extent that other ment work on it. nodes want to cooperate with it. — Watch that source and Freshmeat for one month. Every day, The peer-to-peer part is essential to the community’s count the number of release announcements on Freshmeat astonishing productivity. The point Kropotkin was trying that you consider ‘original’ work. Apply the same definition to make about power relationships is developed further by of ‘original’ to announcements for that other OS and count the ‘SNAFU Principle’: “True communication is possible only them. between equals, because inferiors are more consistently — Thirty days later, total up both figures. rewarded for telling their superiors pleasant lies than for telling The day I wrote this, Freshmeat carried twenty-two the truth.” Creative teamwork utterly depends on true commu- release announcements, of which three appear they might push nication and is thus very seriously hindered by the presence of state of the art in some respect, This was a slow day for Fresh- power relationships. The open-source community, effectively meat, but I will be astonished if any reader reports as many as free of such power relationships, is teaching us by contrast how three likely innovations a month in any closed-source channel. dreadfully much they cost in bugs, in lowered productivity, and in lost opportunities. [EGCS] We now have history on a project that, in several ways, Further, the SNAFU principle predicts in author- may provide a more indicative test of the bazaar premise than itarian organizations a progressive disconnect between fetchmail; EGCS, the Experimental GNU Compiler System. decision-makers and reality, as more and more of the input to This project was announced in mid-August of 1997 as a those who decide tends to become pleasant lies. The way this conscious attempt to apply the ideas in the early public versions plays out in conventional software development is easy to see; of The Cathedral and the Bazaar. The project founders felt that there are strong incentives for the inferiors to hide, ignore, the development of GCC, the Gnu C Compiler, had been stagnating. and minimize problems. When this process becomes product, For about twenty months afterwards, GCC and EGCS continued as software is a disaster. parallel products — both drawing from the same Internet devel- oper population, both starting from the same GCC source base, Bibliography both using pretty much the same Unix toolsets and development I quoted several bits from Frederick P. Brooks’s classic The environment. The projects differed only in that EGCS consciously Mythical Man-Month because, in many respects, his insights tried to apply the bazaar tactics I have previously described, have yet to be improved upon. I heartily recommend the 25th while GCC retained a more cathedral-like organization with a Anniversary edition from Addison-Wesley (ISBN 0-201-83595-9), closed developer group and infrequent releases. which adds his 1986 “No Silver Bullet” paper. This was about as close to a controlled experiment as The new edition is wrapped up by an invaluable one could ask for, and the results were dramatic. Within months, 20-years-later retrospective in which Brooks forthrightly the EGCS versions had pulled substantially ahead in features; admits to the few judgements in the original text which have better optimization, better support for FORTRAN and C++. Many not stood the test of time. I first read the retrospective after the people found the EGCS development snapshots to be more first public version of this essay was substantially complete, and reliable than the most recent stable version of GCC, and major was surprised to discover that Brooks attributed bazaar-like Linux distributions began to switch to EGCS. practices to Microsoft! (In fact, however, this attribution turned In April of 1999, the Free Software Foundation (the out to be mistaken. In 1998 we learned from the Halloween official sponsors of GCC) dissolved the original GCC development Documents that Microsoft’s internal developer community group and officially handed control of the project to the the is heavily balkanized, with the kind of general source access EGCS steering team. needed to support a bazaar not even truly possible.) Gerald M. Weinberg’s The Psychology Of Computer Pro- [SP] Of course, Kropotkin’s critique and Linus’s Law raise some gramming (New York, Van Nostrand Reinhold 1971) introduced wider issues about the cybernetics of social organizations. the rather unfortunately-labeled concept of “egoless program- Another folk theorem of software engineering suggests one of ming”. While he was nowhere near the first person to realize them; Conway’s Law — commonly stated as “If you have four the futility of the “principle of command”, he was probably the groups working on a compiler, you’ll get a 4-pass compiler”. The first to recognize and argue the point in particular connection original statement was more general: “Organizations which with software development. Reading 2: 01/26 Concepts 01/26 2: Reading design systems are constrained to produce designs which are Richard P. Gabriel, contemplating the Unix culture copies of the communication structures of these organizations.” of the pre-Linux era, reluctantly argued for the superiority We might put it more succinctly as “The means determine the of a primitive bazaar-like model in his 1989 paper “LISP: Good ends”, or even “Process becomes product”. News, Bad News, and How To Win Big”. Though dated in some It is accordingly worth noting that in the open- respects, this essay is still rightly celebrated among LISP fans source community organizational form and function match (including me). A correspondent reminded me that the section on many levels. The network is everything and everywhere: titled “Worse Is Better” reads almost as an anticipation of Linux. not just the Internet, but the people doing the work form a dis- The paper is accessible on the World Wide Web at http://www. tributed, loosely coupled, peer-to-peer network that provides naggum.no/worse-is-better.html.

35 De Marco and Lister’s Peopleware: Productive Projects and traders, can use these designs to make them by and Teams (New York; Dorset House, 1987; ISBN 0-932633-05-6) themselves. The author hopes the idea will last into is an underappreciated gem which I was delighted to see the future and asks those who build the furniture, Fred Brooks cite in his retrospective. While little of what the and in particular, variations of it, to send photos to authors have to say is directly applicable to the Linux or open- his studio at 10 piazza Baraca, 10 - 20123 Milan). source communities, the authors’ insight into the conditions necessary for creative work is acute and worthwhile for anyone Newspaper comments on the operation and attempting to import some of the bazaar model’s virtues into a the reasons behind Mari’s autoprogettazione commercial context. proposal... Finally, I must admit that I very nearly called this In one or maximum two days’ work, it is possible essay “The Cathedral and the ”, the latter term being the to furnish a whole apartment, bed, chairs, tables, Greek for an open market or public meeting place. The seminal wardrobe, bookcase, desk, and a bench too. The “agoric systems” papers by Mark Miller and Eric Drexler, by cost is about 40,000 lire (≈ $25) per article if you describing the emergent properties of market-like computa- use wooden planks that are already squared and tional ecologies, helped prepare me to think clearly about analo- smoothed; perhaps even less if you use rough wood gous phenomena in the open-source culture when Linux rubbed that still needs sawing and finishing. The proposal my nose in them five years later. These papers are available on is by Milanese designer Enzo Mari, who offers a free the Web at http://www.agorics.com/agorpapers.html. catalogue with about twenty drawings showing how to build your own interior. http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-ba- zaar/index.html Enzo Mari’s “self-design” (rough translation of autoprogettazione) has the undertones of a chal- lenge or provocation, at the very least it is intended Autoprogettazione? as an encouragement to reflect critically on the BY ENZO MARI objects that fill our daily existence. R3 Originally published in/around 1974 See plans @ www.are.na/block/1578466 Mari gives two versions of his proposal: either get the rough planks and do it all by yourself, with the Introduction help of the catalogue the designer offers free of In my job as designer, or rather as an intellectual charge, or you can order the pack of planks form who contradicts the actual state of things, I try the simon international factory in Bologna, which within the network of commissions and projects has supported the project and sells the material to “smuggle in” moments of research and ways of needed to make three pieces of furniture. Difficult? creating the stimulus to free oneself from ideolog- Not at all, says Mari: there’s no need for glue, no ical conditioning, standard norms, behavior and need for particular joints, the method is extremely taste. One of the operations carried out with this simple and is the one used by carpenters to build ambitious aim to influence social assumptions is their work benches and scaffolding, a semi-spon- on show at the present exhibition (and was initially taneous method which is very easy to learn. There published in a catalogue entitled: Proposta per is no danger of getting it wrong therefore: a poorly un’autoprogettazione, Galeria Milano, April 1974. shaped plank does not affect the stability of the bed What happened as a result of this initia- or table. tive is the exact opposite to the initiative itself. Showing here the different and complex aspects of There’s nothing odd about Mari’s proposal. It may some of the responses (by critics, the public, use appear touched with ingenuousness, or even up to its and valuation), in an attachment, I intend not to neck in unrealistic ambitions. So what’s this — from illustrate the project itself, but to produce examples now on are we all going to start sawing tables and of the contradictions existing in social phenomena, nailing planks together? Mari is the first to realize on a trip through a specific social project and that this is a limit, perhaps an insurmountable con- the different levels and ways of interpretation in tradiction: of course, he says, his gesture is undoubt- separate and conditioned reality edly utopian, it is undoubtedly over ambitious, but what is a designer to do who so far has fought Public notice given by Enzo Mari regarding his without success to propose to the industry objects autoprogettazione proposal... and solid furniture at low cost and which could A project for making easy-to-assemble furniture provide an alternative to the dominant taste? Should using rough boards and nails. An elementary tech- he throw away his drawing board and deny his role? nique to teach any to look at present production Should he shut up, stop working? His giving up would

Reading 3: 02/02 Bringing in Designing in Bringing 02/02 3: Reading with a critical eye. (Anyone, apart from factories be a double and irreparable defeat. The designer for

36 all his unrealistic ambitions and perhaps impotence, society that wastes and embraces the useless; that needs instead to try and move within the narrow tend to focus attention once again on man and his confines available to him, to take the only route life rather than the object and its conscious and open, i.e. that of the challend, the provocation, unconscious values; democratic because the oper- appealing to the public directly for support. ate within the general vector of self-management). Do you agree with this interpretation? A Critical and Artistic Evaluation (by G.C. Argan, Talking about it together we found par- in L’espresso, 5 may 1974) allels with past events and different productions, As regards us, with more explicit ideological and in the advanced technology/mass consumption political commitment, Enzo Mari has turned his ratio. The obviously non-mechanical example is back on the illuminate entrepreneurs and is now that of the American balloon-frame construction proposing anti-industrial design. It harks back system (a mass of standardized wooden planks to the pre-artisan, pre-linguistic state: to the thanks to which in the 19th century entire cities, primary stages of pottery with its organic gestural pioneer wagons, and boats were built). The main expressiveness of mixing and interlacing, and to characteristic about the balloon-frame system was the piece of furniture with rudimentary construc- the apparent ignorance (or conscious rejection) of tions of modular planks assembled and nailed more advanced technology (trusses, also made of together. It has social ends: to give away projects, wood, beams and tie-beams, etc.); this alternative executive drawings: “anybody, except factories and was clearly available to anyone (the person directly traders, can use these designs to make them by involved, the common employee, took the place themselves.” It is not the DIY that the Americans of the skilled site worker). Therefore what seemed preach about for their free time; by thinking with to be a step backwards in the technology sector your own hands, by making your own thoughts turned into a quantitative/qualitative extension of you make them clearer, even if they concern, just production and habits. Do you think your proposal as an example, the politics of Kissinger. Mari is not contains something similar? interested in the myth of the Noble Savage nor does he practice tribal cults; but perhaps he thinks, like A Critical-Ideological debate between E. Mari Robinson on his island, that we live in the mega- and E. Facchinelli (in L’erba voglio, issue no.16) lo-necropolis of net-capitalism. To survive he had to start making the tools with which to build himself E. Facchinelli: When we saw the drawings a place to live in. Mari is right, everyone should for your furniture for the first time we thought it was have a project: after all it is the best way to avoid necessary to go through someone who would cut and being designed yourself. prepare the wood that was needed. Instead we have seen that there’s no need for an intermediary. All you Questions initially Asked in the presentation of really need is the catalogue. the “Proposta” (by V. Vercelloni, in the cata- Enzo Mari: In fact, I tried to reduce the logue itself, 1974) technical difficulties to a minimum. I could hardly The significance of your proposal implicitly ask people to start straight from the tree. For overcomes all moral restrictions: both the banal centuries sawmills have been delivering wood cut anti-consumer one and that of a return by the to standard sizes, like bricks from the furnaces, if it bourgeoisie to these objects for a self-critical and comes to that. So I thought of these boards prefabri- iconoclastic consumption of their traditional cated in different sections which could very easily be consumer symbols (perhaps through young groups shortened to the length required. The system is not or the liveliest member of the middle classes). That only made simple by the use of the nail, but also by this operation is not, moreover, the answer to the the simplified cut of the saw. There are no diagonal Reading 3: 02/02 Bringing in Designing furnishing problems of the working classes (in Italy or complex cuts, or anything needing joints. What’s today) is obvious even in your awareness of the pos- more, the simple orthogonal cuts don’t even need to sibilities or lack of them of an “alternative culture” be well done. Even if the struts are a bit uneven, as and of the objective impotence of a “progressive” you pointed out to me, everything works all the same. technician or intellectual in today’s society. It is in this sense that the project entails the direct But here it could be stressed that this use of the prefab board; and thus, apart from a few operation itself has certain objective values: first of exceptions, each of the objects is made using a single all that of being able to become a new instrument board section. This means you can buy the boards (and as such usable by anyone in any way) in the from the sawmills or specialist stores in lengths (the world of the home, and that it is strongly connected most common format is four meters). Then, given the to enlightened values (debunker when compared simplicity of the cuts you can also ask for them to be to traditional values; anti-consumerist, rejecting a cut to measure for very little extra charge.

37 EF: It is interesting though that when we able to accept it, those who have an idea of another look at your drawings everyone thinks that there has space in which to live and function. to be a kind of intermediary factory that will supply EM: People already aware of this world ready-cut pieces. If this factory isn’t available we … who look at magazines, will probably accept think we can’t go on, that the project can’t be carried it. Others … in my experience with the manual through, etc. In short, probably the greatest difficulty workers or the carpenters themselves who made in making these projects popular is ideological, there this models, these people know how to appreciate is a form of prejudice firmly rooted in the division of the object as it is, but at the same time tend to be work and tasks, which is felt as incapacity or impossi- frightened of actually using it, because actually bility to do certain things. using it implies a relationship with others, fear of EM: This is certainly an important factor, being judged. It is too unusual an object. When in fact it touches on one of the reasons for this you underline the economics of the table, i.e. its project. One tends usually to give specialist roles low cost, then rejection becomes even more direct, that are not ours a particular position, one says: more immediate. If this is the table that costs less this requires technology, a culture, a special than all the other then people are afraid of having approach that precludes me. And this is an ideo- something poor. When thinking of the home there logical approach, because if it is true that certain is always an expectancy of a certain status which technical difficulties exist and specific technical works on several levels. Then there are the young, experience is required, what should be stressed is the students, a few old ex young students… that the art of design is simple and easy. It seems or is difficult for different, unrelated reasons, EF: On the other hand, there is undoubtedly one of the first of which is that the space for the a search for something in these objects that can be substance of a project is almost never allowed, only built using the simple methods you spoke about. that for its appearance. EM: But this search was not so much a particular moment of mine. It was due more to EF: It seems to us that these things you the fact that I recognized myself in those models have designed stand, as objects, in contradiction to I mentioned before, the job of the carpenter … in all the other objects already existing, a table like this the recovery of the essentiality of the job. It is an certainly becomes dominant, causing that other table idea I have already expressed. It is something that to have an identity crisis, or certain types of things manual workers already have, at certain times, at designed and built according to industrial models, it least those that do not have a direct relationship tends to expel thesis immediately. Do you think this is with the official culture. They already inde- a significant fact? pendently handle something they don’t know how EM: These objects don’t seem false to me, to recognize as their own precisely because they they aren’t mysteries. But why aren’t they? They are conditioned by other models. are made using the same methods as carpenters for their work benches and their scaffolding, just as they EF: In what way is this work of yours differ- are by stage-set workers, it is a semi-spontaneous ent from the American do-it-yourself? technique. The fact is though that this table stands EM: My intention was for it to be exactly properly, all the details announce their functions. the opposite. Then maybe it will return, or perhaps This leg is obviously a leg. This lattice work under- it is nothing other than part of the American neath is a strengthening beam. This small strut model. Hobbies are nothing more than a degrading under the boards of the table top are there to stop it of culture, I mean doing some imitative, without vibrating. The nail serves no other purpose than to really knowing properly what you are doing, just link the boards together. Having reduce the tech- to be able to say: I made it, just as a pastime. Within nique down to its reasons, to its simplest moments, every specific field a search is made which can be this is what makes this object autonomous. experienced only by direct contact. It would in any case be wrong to think of a return to Arcadia, to a EF: But who will accept this table? Not world where everyone does everything. Industry many people evidently, if the majority go with the exists and that’s a positive thing, industry should ideology of the objects you want to demystify and if be kept busy, be managed, made its won, tools the furniture industry is already largely an ideological should not be rejected. However, these items are industry, or rather an industry that sells objects not intended as alternatives to industrial ones. loaded with imagery, which have value because of the Their creation is intended as a critical exercise on imagery they are loaded with, and of which the high design, and this is the reason why this experiment price is one of the fundamental factors. Only those was called home design, not home production. The

Reading 3: 02/02 Bringing in Designing in Bringing 02/02 3: Reading who already live within a different framework will be use, in repeating the operation, which can never be

38 a slavish repetition … the designs have no mea- relationships. How is it possible to change the surements and while you are making them you can state of things? This is what I ask myself. How is it make changes, variations. When making the object possible to accomplish the de-conditioning of form the user becomes aware of the structural reasoning as a value rather than as strictly corresponding to behind the object itself, therefor, subsequently content? The only way I know of, in that it belongs he improves his own ability to assess the objects to my field of experience, is what becomes possible on the market with a more critical eye. You have when critical thought is based on practical work. already said that an object of this kind tends to Therefore the way should be to involve the use of expel the other objects from the room: this was pre- an item in the design and realization of the item cisely the type of assessment I wanted to reach. The designed. Only by actually touching the diverse fact that it is a critical work carried out on a simple contradictions of the job is it possible to start to table rather than on other questions that appear be free from such deeply rooted conditioning. But more important (or are more important) does not how is it possible to expect such an effort when the seem to me to be an important objection; what is production tools are lacking as it, above all, the important is the operation and the habit of the technical know-how, the technical culture it would operation. And it is not irrelevant that the - take a fairly long time to acquire? On the other tion starts not from the general, but from a specific hand, if this were possible, anyone needing a table situation and that one acquires experimentally for example could learn what is essential to make a what is the specialist’s prerogative. In this sense it table, for example that the legs need to be planted is right to speak of manual ability, in the sense of firmly on the floor, therefore at the moment of direct experience, first hand experience, not in the purchase could evaluate within the vast array of tactile sense of working on a natural materials such objects on sale the models that corresponded most as wood. It is a search and searching can only be closely to their technical requirements and which done through direct experience. are best crafted, without entering into the merits of style or taste. As far as production tools are con- EF: In this sense, have you thought of the cerned what was important was to choose ones that possibility of doing this in schools, for example, were not so much easy to acquire, but that were where this way of learning critically through direct already commonly owned; almost everyone has a use of the materials, this direct appropriation of hammer and almost everyone has tried planting knowledge, doesn’t exist? a few nails at some time. As regards material, the EM: In general terms, yes. But to be more easiest to acquire is undoubtedly still the wooden specific, I don’t know whether kids in Elementary plank. As regards technical culture, on the other or Middle School are interested in this sort of hand, this is not so simple but there is an example object. At 13 or 14 I certainly wasn’t thinking of technical culture theoretically open to everyone about tables! The operation could be proposed even though it is used only by manual workers. only within the field of objects that interest young The technique of the carpenter and not, I want to people directly, otherwise it is just another way of stress, that of the cabinet maker; it is reduced to stopping them from finding things out. the minimum and in fact never taught. It involves frames, wooden boards, or whatever, based on very Comment by Enzo Mari on the “Proposta per simple principles which in actual fact lie behind un’autoprogettazione” transcribed by Arturo the basic elements of engineering and architecture. Carlo Quintavalle in the book Enzo Mari pub- The beam and the pilaster. The joining of the beam lished by the Centro Studi E Archive Della Co- to the pilaster takes place using nails and because municazione at the University of Parma, 1983 nailing is a kind of joint that does not guarantee After the production of the Day-Night sofa and steadiness, it is necessary to strengthen the joint Reading 3: 02/02 Bringing in Designing other similar attempts I am in a state of terrible using a nailed diagonal element. What emerges is depression because I have come into contact first a construction based on the triangle, which again hand with ingenuity of the approach to the well-de- is one of the fundamentals of engineering: the signed object at low cost; the outcome is a complete triangle cannot be deformed. Furthermore, because failure and the public to whom these items are the economics of the carpenter’s job force him to directed rejects them because they do not see them completely recoup the material used for certain as belonging to the cultural system. When I say construction, he soon gets accustomed to using the public I’m also referring to young students or diagonal strengthening parts with a minimum of militant workers as well as to the political manag- waste. As I said, the technique is easily acquired ers of the groups of the new Left, i.e. to that part precisely because, once you have nailed a beam of the public that clearly develops research and between a couple of pilasters, you add some trans- criticism, albeit limited to the basics of structural versal pieces to make the structure sturdy. Starting

39 from these two choices, tools and technique, I and was encouraging the concept of the hobby and my young assistants tried making a series of objects, do-it-yourself, but clearly the hobby phenomenon tables, benches, chairs, and beds using this method is always restrictive. It is always a petit bourgeois in the sense that the objects were not drawn before metaphor for the acquisition of technical culture. hand, but, by putting together a number of small Indeed most people who requested the planks we gave shape to the objects themselves, copybook did so to: juxtaposing the minimum planks necessary. — satisfy the needs of a taste that was starting at What’s more we did not concern ourselves with the the time and for which I provided and ideal alibi, perfection of the outcome because the only terms which was that of the “poor” wooden object, the of judgement for all the models made was their pseudo-crafted object, the indigenous object of solidity rather than the saving on the materials a return to nature; used, and even less did we worry about the pains- — to resolve the real furnishing problems of young taking work of formal ratios. These models were students or similar who simply wanted to be collected together in a small copybook and this was able to make what they needed, spending as distributed in various ways, the final one being to little as possible send it free to anyone who asked for it. — to decorate the country cottage, the second The proposal was for people to be stimu- home, in a rustic style, etc. lated by the examples shown to make what they Only very few people — 1% or 2% — under- needed, including types that were not in the book stood the intended meaning of the experiment. and to make them freely, taking the example proposed simply as a stimulus, not as a model to copy. Our idea was a great success and I received Designer As Author thousands of requests. The book had to be reprinted. BY ANTHONY DUNNE AND FIONA RABY But once again the work theory fails because 99% 2001 of the time the proposal is not understood, or is understood differently. Obviously objects have Design is Ideological to be produced using machinery and the most When technology is developing as rapidly as it is now, advanced technology and only in this way is it reflection and criticism are particularly important. possible to have items that are good quality and We need to consider alternative visions to those economical. Machinery in theory frees man’s work put forward by industry. Design, being accessible, and Socialism itself is born and can exist because contemporary and part of popular culture, is per- industrial machinery exists. Obviously the models fectly positioned to perform this role. But in order to proposed were totally uneconomical from this point achieve this, some significant shifts need to occur. of view: any table, to give and example, correctly We need to develop a parallel design activity that made by machine requires no more than 30% of the questions and challenges industrial agendas. material we used in our models, with results that Most designers, especially industrial are far more stable and longer lasting. Obviously it designers, view design as somehow neutral, clean is important to socialize the implications of modern and pure. But all design is ideological, the design technology and this has to be done by really using process is informed by values based on a specific technology to its utter best and not proposing world view, or way of seeing and understanding the use of an archaic technology. Obviously wood reality. Design can be described as falling into should be used only where it is more economic two very broad categories: affirmative design and than other materials. Moreover, the use of wood critical design. The former reinforces how things should not be a way of re-proposing a material of an are now, it conforms to cultural, social, technical ancient tradition instead of modern materials such and economic expectation. Most design falls into as plastic, better suited to real production stan- this category. The latter rejects how things are now dards. In fact from this point of view all proposals as being the only possibility, it provides a critique using natural material such as wood tend to be of the prevailing situation through designs that reactionary. I was aware of these things and I tried embody alternative social, cultural, technical or to say them: it was simply a fact of using this - economic values. rial and this technique because it was the only way possible of carrying out the exercise. I was accused Critical design of trying to return to nature, of a drastic dislike Critical design, or design that asks carefully of machinery, in the sense that I was accused of con- crafted questions and makes us think, is just as fusing the current production ratios of the machine difficult and just as important as design that solves rather than the positive potential of the machine problems or finds answers. Being provocative and

Reading 3: 02/02 Bringing in Designing in Bringing 02/02 3: Reading itself. Another objection was that in a sense I challenging might seem like an obvious role for art,

40 but art is far too removed from the world of mass simply reinforces global capitalist values. It helps consumption and electronic consumer products to create and maintain desire for new products, to be effective in this context, even though it is of ensures obsolescence, encourages dissatisfaction course part of consumerist culture. There is a place with what we have and merely translates brand for a form of design that pushes the cultural and values into objects. Design needs to see this for aesthetic potential and role of electronic products what it is, just one possibility, and develop alterna- and services to its limits. Questions must be asked tive roles for itself. It needs to establish an intellec- about what we actually need, about the way poetic tual stance of its own, or the design profession is moments can be intertwined with the everyday destined to loose all intellectual credibility and be and not separated from it. At the moment, this type viewed simply as an agent of capitalism. of design is neglected and regarded as secondary. We are not against industry, although it Today, design’s main purpose is still to provide new could direct more of its profits into serious design products — smaller, faster, different, better. research rather than facile PR exercises. Industry Critical design is related to haute couture, is after all in the business of making money for its concept cars, design propaganda, and visions of the shareholders. More disturbing is the unwillingness future, but its purpose is not to present the dreams of the design profession to take on a more respon- of industry, attract new business, anticipate new sible and pro-active role within society. Before this trends or test the market. Its purpose is to stim- can happen, designers will have to redefine their ulate discussion and debate amongst designers, role, embracing and developing new methods and industry and the public about the aesthetic quality approaches that simultaneously appeal and chal- of our electronically mediated existence. It differs lenge in the way a film or book does. More could too from experimental design, which seeks to be learned from fine art where there is a history extend the medium, extending it in the name of of critical strategies for asking questions through progress and aesthetic novelty. Critical design objects and stimulating debate in engaging ways. takes as its medium social, psychological, cultural, Instead of thinking about appearance, technical and economic values, in an effort to push user-friendliness or corporate identity, industrial the limits of lived experience not the medium. designers could develop design proposals that This has always been the case in architecture, but challenge conventional values. But critical design design is struggling to reach this level of intellec- must avoid the pitfalls of the 1970s by developing tual maturity. strategies that link it back to everyday life and fully engage the viewer. Things are far more complex (Un)Popular Design today than they were 30 years ago. It is not enough Developing a critical perspective in design is made to simply offer an alternative, new strategies need difficult by the fact that the design profession, and to be developed that are both critical and opti- product designers in particular, see the social value mistic, that engage with and challenge industry’s of their work as inextricably linked to the market- technological agenda. Global corporations are place. Design outside this is viewed with sus- becoming more powerful than states, as Noreena picion as escapist or unreal. At the moment, the only Hertz points out in The Silent Takeover (2001) — the alternatives to the Hollywood genre of corporate annual values of sales of each of the six largest design are design consultancies promoting them- transnational corporations, ranging between $ll1 selves to corporate clients with slick mocked-up and $126 billion, are now exceeded by the GDPs of products that are never intended to be developed only 21 nation states, and as a result, governments any further. These objects are purely about PR, they and politicians are loosing power. Corporations are designed to sell the consultancy’s potential for have a bigger influence on reality than government, innovative and creative design thinking. and buying power is more important than voting Reading 3: 02/02 Bringing in Designing To be considered successful in the power. A world where shopping has more political marketplace, design has to sell in large numbers, impact than voting is a threat to democracy. therefore it has to be popular. Critical design can There has also been a shift in the intellec- never be truly popular, and that is its fundamental tual landscape as relations between popular culture, problem. Objects that are critical of industry’s the market and critical positions have changed. agenda are unlikely to be funded by industry. As The marketplace is viewed as the only reality, or a result, they will tend to remain one-offs. Maybe as Thomas Frank writes in One Market Under God we need a new category to replace the avant-garde: (2001) a form of ‘market populism’ has taken hold, (un)popular design. where people’s true desires are expressed and The design profession needs to mature and fulfilled through the marketplace. Anything outside find ways of operating outside the tight constraints of the marketplace is regarded as suspicious and of servicing industry. At its worst, product design unreal. This state of affairs makes critical positions

41 almost impossible, they are dismissed as elitist. It The toy company then set out to sue etoy, accusing is almost taboo for an industrial designer to reject the internet artists of unfair competition and what the market wants. trademark delusion. With the help of 1,800 vol- As the intermediary between the con- unteer etoy agents and activists, who served the sumer and the corporation, the design profession cause by publicizing the case on the net and in the is in a perfect position to host a debate in the form news media, filing counter suits and establishing of design proposals about technology, consum- alliances, etoy succeeded in getting eToys to back erism and cultural value. But first designers will off. During the course of the Toywar campaign, the need to develop new communication strategies value of the on-line toy store’s stock dropped from and move from narratives of production to $67 to $15 a share. narratives of consumption, or the aesthetics of Not all artists choose to wage war against use. That is, they will have to shift emphasis from the corporate world. Instead of seeking arts the object and demonstrating its feasibility to the funding, Lucy Kimbell preferred to present one of experiences it can offer. her projects as a business proposition and look for Designers can learn much about this investors. Her proposal was for a vibrating internal from the approaches developed by artists during (VIP) using the same technology as vibrating the 1990s, when a general blurring of distinctions mobile phones. If you liked someone, you could give between fine art, design and business began to them your VIP number and receive a gentle buzz develop. For instance, the artist collective Atelier when they called you later. The product was never Van Lieshout has worked on the design of a Dutch realized, in fact there is not even a picture of what abortion ship to be anchored off the coast of Ireland it looks like. VIP exists as a description, a business and other catholic countries where abortion is proposal and an on-line application form. illegal. Liam Gillick, who explores decision making Artists presenting themselves as employees mechanisms in corporate culture and their impact of imaginary organizations or companies can also on history, also designs exhibitions, interiors and is yield some interesting results. Originally from an working on a building. engineering background, Natalie Jeremijenko now Other artists have concentrated on describes herself as a staff engineer working for the appropriating the business world’s organizational Bureau of Inverse Technology (BIT). She has left the structures to produce work that fused fictional and idea of artist as individual behind to work on a fic- real, legal, economic and cultural systems. Probably tional organization where she is just one employee. the best known example is etoy, a corporation, In Suicide Box (1996), BIT installed a motion detec- art group and brand formed in 1994 by a group tor and video camera near San Francisco’s Golden of architects, lawyers, programmers, artists and Gate Bridge to count the number of people jumping designers. Their original aim was to create a purely off. Later, a report was produced (engineer’s report digital identity (www.etoy.com) and break out of SB03: Jan 23-97) with recommendations for how the narrow art world constraints. All participating BIT Suicide Box data could be used to calculate a artists agree to sell their individual identity to etoy ‘robust and market responsive value of life’. There corporation for shares and to live an anonymous is something more sinister about the idea of an life as etoy agents. It is not possible to buy etoy organization rather than an individual carrying out products, its art exists solely in the form of stocks. subversive work like this. The value of etoy in share units is equivalent to the One of the most comprehensive fusions of cultural value of etoy corporation which in turn art and corporate culture has to be Maywa Denki, consists of the electronic brand etoy. an art unit set up in 1993 by two Japanese brothers, Etoy do not merely adopt the rhetoric of Nobumichi and Masamichi Tosa. Describing them- the corporate world though, they play big busi- selves as ‘parallel world electricians’, they are orga- ness at its own game. In 1999 etoy embarked on a nized as a business whose core activity is producing campaign called Toywar, financed through exper- a variety of devices. They even produce a Maywa imental investment strategies. This campaign was Denki company profile explaining all the company’s directed against the multi-national corporation activities for potential job applicants. During their eToys, an on-line toy store (www.etoys.com) that performances, or product promotions as they like attempted to use its superior size and financial to call them, they wear costumes designed to look power to force etoy to give up its domain name, like those of a typical Japanese small to medium even though the artists’ site had been established sized enterprise (SME). Maywa Denki produce long before the retailer’s. Afraid that potential three kinds of object: prototypes (NAKI), which customers might confuse the two similarly named are one-of- a-kind products and are not for sale; sites, eToys originally tried to buy out the etoy multiples (GM-NAKI), which are reproductions of

Reading 3: 02/02 Bringing in Designing in Bringing 02/02 3: Reading brand, but their $500,000 offer was turned down. NAKI products and are for sale; and industrial Goods

42 (TOY-NAKI) which are mass-produced in a factory means serious issues are rarely addressed on the and sold in the mainstream marketplace. They also main commercial TV channels. One attempt to produce CDs, videos, books, uniforms and stationary. change this situation was a project to infiltrate the Their NAKI series is a collection of fish-in- American soap opera Melrose Place, which is set in spired nonsense machines. Many of the products a Los Angeles apartment complex. Artist Mel Chin in the NAKI series have a darkly humorous side. had the idea of using TV as a medium for ‘public Uke-Tel is a cage with a tank at the bottom, with art’ that raises important issues about gender, two or three fish swimming around in it. The cage violence and infectious diseases. He approached is connected to a speaking clock. When the number the set designers of Melrose Place and offered to is dialed, a is released and drops on to the fish provide free art to put in the background. When below. It may or may nor kill one. Sei-Gyo is a cross- they agreed, Chin formed the GALA Committee, shaped, waterfilled container mounted on a robotic made up of students and teachers from University vehicle. The direction the vehicle takes depends on of Georgia and CalArts (Los Angeles), to collaborate which arm a fish inside the container swims into. on the design of props for the show which they Grafish consists of a sheet of paper surrounded by a called non-commercial PIMs (product insertion box into which a living fish dipped in ink is placed. manifestations). The dying fish leaves a graphic pattern on the sheet: On closer inspection, many of the GALA ‘as each fish has a unique life, it also has a unique paintings hanging in the Melrose Place apartments death’. Maywa Denki’s industrial goods (TOY-NAKI) turn out to depict infamous LA locations where are so popular that some Japanese department horrible violence or death occurred — Marilyn stores have a dedicated Maywa Denki department. Monroe’s bungalow on the day she died, the Most of these products are not unlike the merchan- apartment from which Rodney King’s beating was dising used to promote a new film- plastic minia- videoed, Nicole Brown Simpson’s house. Having ture versions of fictional characters. noticed that characters on the show have a lot Although their work borders on entertain- of sex but are never shown using condoms, GALA ment, Maywa Denki offer another way of thinking produced bed linen for one bedroom scene that is about design in relation to both art and product covered in images of unrolled condoms. Although markets, cutting across several genres and types it is not clear how many people actually noticed of activity. Originally signed to Sony Music Enter- these subtle interventions, it is a fresh and playful tainment as musicians producing CDs and perfor- combination of set design and art. mances, they later transferred to the amusement and entertainment division of Yoshimoto Kogyo Co. Complicated pleasure Ltd, a wellknown agency for managing TV person- We believe that in order for conceptual design to be alities and comedians. In 2000 they were awarded ‘A effective, it must provide pleasure, or more spe- good design award for theme category’ by the Japan cifically, provide a type of experience that Martin Industrial Design Promotion Organization. Maywa Amis has called ‘complicated pleasure.’ One way Denki use design as a form of entertainment, a dark this could happen in design is through the devel- counterpoint to the ‘happy-ever-after’ world of opment of value fictions. If in science fiction, the Alessi products. technology is often futuristic while social values Similarly subversive, Surrender Control is are conservative, the opposite is true in value a poetic service by Matt Locke and Tim Etchells that fictions. In these scenarios, the technologies are was delivered to participants through their mobile realistic but the social and cultural values are often phones. An experimental narrative in the form of fictional, or at least highly ambiguous. The aim is SMS messages, Surrender Control drew users into to encourage the viewers to ask themselves why an evolving game of textual suggestion, provoca- the values embodied in the proposal seem ‘fictional’ Reading 3: 02/02 Bringing in Designing tion and dare through instructions such as ‘break or ‘unreal’, and to question the social and cultural something and pretend it was an accident’, or ‘call mechanisms that define what is real or fictional. somebody and tell them something that you have The idea is not to be negative, but to stimulate already told them. Don’t explain’. The idea was to discussion and debate amongst designers, industry invite people to live life in a strange dialogue with a and the public about electronic technology and distant other; to surrender some control. everyday life. This is done by developing alternative is medium ripe for subversion. and often gently provocative artifacts which set out Watched by millions, it touches nearly everyone’s to engage people through humor, insight, surprise life but is heavily policed, in the US especially. The and wonder. fear of being boycotted by the extreme Right, of The suspension of disbelief is crucial- if alienating sponsors and incurring the wrath of the artifacts are too strange they are dismissed, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) they have to be grounded in how people really do

43 behave. The approach is based on viewing values more traditional cultures. Could a battery be as as raw material and shaping them into objects. significant as a ceramic urn? Loizeau’s exploration Material using unusual values in products is one of value resulted in a device for maintaining an way that design can be a very powerful form of ‘after life’. It consists of a raised bed/trolley, body social critique. The design proposals portrayed in bag, zinc/copper wet cell battery, extraction tube, value fictions derive their interest through their voltage meter and 1.5v battery and holder. When potential functionality and use. One of the main someone dies, their stomach contents are drained challenges of using value, fictions is how they are off to provide acid to charge a special ‘after-life’ communicated: we need to see them in use, placed battery, which is engraved in the way a gravestone in everyday life, but in a way that leaves room for might be. As an object, it allows an atheist to grieve. the viewer’s imagination. We don’t actually have Once the battery is charged, it can be used to power to use the proposed products ourselves, it is by all sorts of existing and specially designed devices: imagining them being used that they have an effect night lights, torches, vibrators. on us. Value fictions cannot be too clear or they In Noam Toran’s short film Object for Lonely blend into what we already know. A slight strange- Men (2001) the protagonist desires to be at one with ness is the key- too weird and they are instantly Jean-Luc Godard’s 1959 film À bout de souffle. Toran dismissed, not strange enough and they’re absorbed explains: ‘In the film, the whole set-up was that the into everyday reality. character was preparing for his night out, which The following examples, drawn from was no more absurd than our normal nights out. He recent graduate projects at the Royal College of stays in, and goes out in a different way.’ The proj- Art in London, show how design proposals like this ect explores not only our relationship to electronic might work. The projects explore the psychological objects but how these objects mediate fantasies. and behavioral dimensions of our relationship to The physical design consists of an extended TV objects and services, rather than the technical, dinner tray which includes among other things a formal or structural possibilities of consumer tech- child’s steering wheel, a female head and a cutout nologies. The emphasis is shifted from the aesthet- gun. It could be used as a kit you borrow when ics of production to the aesthetics of consumption, you rent a video, or it could be a place-setting in a an imagined aesthetics of use. Like the examples special restaurant for lonely men where you choose from the art world described earlier, these projects your meal, and you interact. mix fiction and reality, borrow commercial struc- Another project by Noam Toran, Accessories tures and combine different media in an effort to for Lonely Men (2001), consists of a collection of eight engage and challenge the viewer. products designed to provide some of the incidental Ippei Matsumoto uses product design to pleasures of shared existence for those who live explore the powerful need for individual identity alone. The idea for these products arose when the and meaning within a context of global culture. designer began to wonder whether we missed an With Life Counter (2001), you choose how many individual or the generic traces they leave. During years you would like to or expect to live for and the night, the Sheet Stealer winds the bedclothes start the counter. Once activated, it counts down up into a tube attached to the side of the bed. Once the selected time span at four different rates: the woken by the cold, the sleeper can pull the sheet out number of years, days, hours or seconds to go are again and reclaim it for himself. In another piece, shown on different faces. Depending on which face a cutout female silhouette is placed in front of a you choose to display, you may feel very relaxed light to throw a shadow. The even has a small as the years stretch out ahead or begin to panic as drawer to store the silhouette in. Other objects are you see your life speed away before your eyes. The devised with more intimate moments in mind: once counter is designed to be visually unassuming and placed on the user’s body, the steel finger of the ¬∑ could easily fit into the slightly retro-futuristic Chest-Hair Curler starts to rotate gently, playing style of the moment. It is a classic noir product, with his chest hair, while Shared Cigarette comes its power lies in its precise function and low key into its own after a solitary sex act. This device has display of disturbing information. two holes, one for the cigarette, and the other for In After-Life (2001), Jimmy Loizeau employs exhaling smoke. The rapid-fire Plate Thrower, on design to dramatize a taboo subject. Although he the other hand, is to be used in moments of high is an atheist, Loizeau felt a need for an alternative passion. The collection also includes a pair of cold idea to a spiritual afterlife when a relative and then feet-like objects to place at the bottom end of the a pet died. He imagined the consequences of a long bed, an alarm clock that wakes you up by flicking term cultural shift where people fully embraced a strand of hair across your face, and a device that an electronically mediated culture, a time when expels breath-like bursts of warm air, to be placed

Reading 3: 02/02 Bringing in Designing in Bringing 02/02 3: Reading electrical culture took on some of the dignity of on the pillow while you drift off to sleep.

44 These objects are clearly not intended for developed its own independent vision, working production, but are designed to provide mental with the public to demand more from industry pleasure and stimulate reflection. They are products than is currently on offer. This would require not for the mind. Their generic form raises issues about only a shift in the way designers view their own the use of form in conceptual design. If they are position, but also how professional design orga- too realistic — that is, if they look as if they really nizations and associations see their role. Perhaps should be used — objects like these can quickly they could follow the lead of some architecture become ridiculous. Their abstract form signals that institutions, and focus on the need to encourage they are intended to be used in the imagination. diverse visions through competitions and work- Rather than designing objects that mimic shops for practicing designers, as well as trying people’s actions, James Auger explores the psycho- to engage the public through more challenging logical aspects of technologically augmenting our exhibitions and publications. bodies, and uses value fictions to draw attention to Or is this a role for ‘academic’ designers? values that could well emerge in the future, even Rather than writing papers and seeking conven- though they are very different from anything we tional academic approval, they could exploit their have now. He is interested in how new technolog- privileged position to explore a subversive role for ical possibilities will affect the way we treat other design as social critique. Free from commercial people in our search for new pleasures, and asks restrictions and based in an educational envi- us to think about the desirability of his scenarios ronment, they could develop provocative design becoming reality. proposals to challenge the simplistic Hollywood Auger’s device allows someone to be vision of the consumer electronics industry. Design somewhere they are not. Wearing a head-mounted proposals could be used as a medium to stimulate display, the user receives information from a debate and discussion amongst the public, design- second person whose own headset is equipped with ers, and industry. The challenge is to blur the a video camera and binaural microphones. So for boundaries between the real and the fictional, so example, a person might be hired to spend time in that the conceptual becomes more real and the real a peep show, attend a meeting, go on a blind date or is seen as just one limited possibility among many. even shopping on somebody else’s behalf — verbal instructions would be relayed from the user to the Excerpted from Design Noir: The Secret Life of Electronic Objects host via a speaker in their helmet. Should the host be able to enjoy the experience too, or are they just renting out their body? One version of the device Utopia Is No Place masks the host’s ears and eyes, dehumanizing BY STEPHEN DUNCOMBE & SARAH PETER them and clearly reminding them that they are Aug 27, 2012 just a rented body. In another scenario, a dog is used as a host, transmitting images and sounds Theorist and activist Stephen Duncombe was of the countryside back to the customer. A more invited by Open Field (see glossary for more info on advanced service might allow the customer to Open Field) artists-in-residence Red76 to give a lec- tune into a range of different hosts as though they ture at the Walker on his work on utopia. His ideas were TV channels. Of course, this device could about the uses of utopia in political imagination have socially beneficial uses too, providing the also became fodder for the group’s Pop-Up Book housebound with a means of connection to their Academy discussion series, part of their project environment, for instance. exploring ways to repurpose knowledge and mate- Design proposals like these can really rials. For that program, he led a conversation on only exist outside the marketplace, as a form of collective utopia, a complicated concept in which Reading 3: 02/02 Bringing in Designing “conceptual design” — meaning not the conceptual individual dreams meet (or clash) with collective stage of a design project, but a design proposal desires. Here, Duncombe discusses these ideas in intended to challenge preconceptions about how relationship to Open Field in an e-mail interview electronics shape our lives. These ideas might even with Sarah Peters in March 2011. be expressed in the form of films and books rather than products. Designers need to explore how such Sarah Peters: Open Field was both praised design thinking might re-enter everyday life in and criticized for being utopian. Your book Dream: ways that maintain the design proposal’s critical Re-imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fan- integrity and effectiveness, while facing accusa- tasy elaborates on the necessity of utopian thinking tions of escapism, utopianism or fantasy. to reshape progressive politics. Can you summarize One way this could happen is if the design why you think we need this kind of imagination? profession took on more social responsibility and

45 Stephen Duncombe: We need utopian accustoming them to the strange. This is what good thinking because without it, we are constrained by art does; it’s what Thomas More’s Utopia does. And the tyranny of the possible. Look where realistic (and this is an important “and”) the stimulus needs thinking has gotten us: a looming ecological crises to be just that: a stimulus, a prompt but not a plan. that may exterminate life on the planet; and a state The trick is to lead people out of what they know of normality whereby the rich get richer and more without simply replacing this old way of being, powerful, while everyone else gets poorer and more thinking, and seeing with a new one. You need to powerless. This is reality, and to imagine something provide space for people’s own imaginings. other than this takes a bold leap. Meanwhile, critics of the status quo act Peters: In my notes from the discussion you as if criticism is enough, an appropriate response led for Red76’s Pop-Up Book Academy, I have written to the unfolding apocalypse that is now. They this quotation: “Let’s not be practical about utopian seem to believe that criticism itself will transform thinking. We won’t get there.” I have no idea who in the society. It’s not that easy. Criticism is part of the room said this–which is not insignificant for a con- very system itself. By its condition, criticism always versation on collective utopia. Can you talk about the remains obedient to the present: the object it tensions between pragmatism and impossible utopias? criticizes. That is, criticism is wed parasitically to Duncombe: “Be realistic, demand the the very thing it ostensibly wants to change. There impossible!” as the May ’68 slogan went. But I is no transformative moment. Besides, liberal want to push this idea of impossible thinking democracies such as ours need critics in order to even further, to a point where I think it starts to legitimate themselves as liberal democracies; it’s become practical. The problem with Utopia, as the part of the system. horrific social twentieth-century experiments The political problem of today is not a of Nazism and totalitarian Communism amply lack of rigorous analysis, or a necessity for the demonstrated, is that dreams start to be taken for revelation of the “truth,” but instead the need for realities. Once this happens, there is a tendency to a radical imagination: a way to imagine a world brutalize the present in order to bring it into line different from the world we have today. with an imagined future. We must collectivize farms, even if it kills all the farmers! This is the Peters: From what you experienced of Open nightmare of Utopian history from which we Field, does this museum experiment relate to the are desperately trying to wake. But what if we idea of utopia? imagine Utopia as only a dream? That is, make it Duncombe: I think Open Field is an something patently impossible? experiment. You/we set boundaries: time and This is what Thomas More does in his space, but we were also “open” to what might Utopia: he sketches a picture of an attractive and happen in that space. This is a good setting compelling world for us to lose ourselves within. for Utopian imagination; you need that sort of We live in it, see it, feel it, experience it. We WANT opening to dream. Many curatorial practices it. And then at the same time, he takes it away function as tightly scripted spectacle with the from us by calling it “no-place.” He denies us the expert directing the spectator’s gaze and provid- cathartic moment when we’d switch our allegiance ing meaning. This has its functions, but Utopian from reality to a fantasy. Because we realize the dreaming is not one of them. But Open Field was dream is just a dream, this fantasy of the future not completely open. There was always some sort cannot be sold to us as a place in which we can, of impetus or prompt to organize participation: a and thus must reside (even if it kills us). And, more project, a discussion, etc. And this was productive. importantly, it forces us into a space where we can The problem with complete openness is that it imagine for ourselves. often leaves one dazed, confused, and disoriented. This sort of unrealistic Utopia in its true This is good in a way, as it breaks us out of the meaning of no-place, still retains its political func- present, but without any guidance, the response tion as an ideal: a loadstone to guide us and a frame is often to retreat back to what is safe and known– within which to imagine, yet it never closes off this returning home to the familiarity of the very imaginative journey with the assertion that we are structures we were trying to escape from. If you there. There is no “actually existing socialism,” as want to stimulate imagination, it is far better to Stalin had the temerity to declare. Utopia functions take people on a journey, give them something to as what Stevphen Shukaitis has been calling an think about, or do, or play with. “imaginal machine.” This sort of prompt pulls people out of the Peters: We discussed the idea of collective everyday and lets them experience an alternative utopia at length during your visit to Open Field.

Reading 3: 02/02 Bringing in Designing in Bringing 02/02 3: Reading reality — breaking them from the familiar and Utopias tend to be exclusive — representing one

46 person’s or group’s ideal of how society should be, didn’t contain the commendations, letters, prefaces, yet a collective utopia would make space for con- maps, alphabets, and marginalia of the original flicting visions. Has your thinking about collective printings in 1516 to 1518 — all of which are import- utopia changed since that discussion? Was Open ant to the imaginative power of the text. Luckily, a Field any influence? book that’s been around 500 years tends to have Duncombe: This, I think, is biggest ques- lots of translations whose copyrights have expired, tion I walked away with from Open Field, and it’s so I pieced together a new edition. a question that I have still not resolved. If, as I’ve Then I thought about how I might explode argued above and elsewhere, the function of Utopia the very idea of a book, replacing the author-pro- is not to present a vision of an idealized other world, duces and the reader-consumes model implicit in but to prompt people to imagine another world for the form of a traditional printed text. In order to themselves, then how do we end up with anything break this binary, I’ve used software produced by besides a million and one individual and possibly the Institute for the Future of the Book to enable incommensurate visions? How do you get any public annotation, paragraph by paragraph. I’ve sort of social change from that? The advantage of also created a wiki wherein a collaboratively the totalitarian Utopian visions is that they were produced new Utopia will be written. I have chan- singular: you either bought in or you didn’t; you nels for uploading Utopia-inspired art and videos as either climbed aboard or you were rolled over. This well. The whole site is produced using open-source is brutal, but very effective in changing the world software under a . on a mass scale. Opening up Utopia is important to me Is there a way to envision a democratic because this is exactly what I think that More process of Utopian imagination that leads to some was trying to do when he wrote the book. By sort of consensual model that, together, we can describing this ideal someplace, but calling it push toward and act upon? I honestly don’t know, no-place, he pushes the reader into imagining an but there are glimmerings of hope in collective alternative. More did this masterfully within the projects such as Open Source software development limitations of the book. I’m fortunate enough to and Wikipedia. In both cases, there is a process of have access to communications technology that individual imagining (code, truth) and something allows me to develop this imaginative capacity of useful comes of it (program, definition). How this Utopia even further. process might translate from the digital to the political is still very much unknown, but I think https://walkerart.org/magazine/stephen-duncombe-utopia-open-field this is a fruitful direction in which to go.

Peters: You’ve recently started an online Counterculture & Anti- project that allows anyone to use the complete text of Thomas More’s Utopia as a true commons; one Design: Postmodern R4 that can be annotated, reorganized, and downloaded freely. Would you talk briefly about Open Utopia? Appropriations of Utopia Duncombe: The Open Utopia actually MARJANNE VAN HELVERT began at Open Field. When contemplating the 2016 workshop Red76 invited me to lead, I though it might be interesting to “open” the text of Thomas In the beginning of the second half of the twen- More’s Utopia itself by reediting it, annotating it, tieth century, socially committed designers in and perhaps writing our own version. To prepare the western, industrialized world largely found for this, I found a public domain version of Utopia themselves in a countercultural position. Consumer through Project Gutenberg and copied it into a capitalist ideals and practices had come to dom- Culture? Counter 02/09 4: Reading collaborative authoring site. Reality, of course, got inate the design discipline, and mass production in the way: we ran out of time just talking about had democratized design culture to unprecedented the ideal of Utopia and never got around to writing levels in the industrialized countries, yet the 1960s our own. But the idea stuck with me, and I decided and 1970s are also known for a number of critical to expand the scope of the workshop by opening designers and movements that posed alternatives it up to the digital public, building a website that to this status quo. Richard Buckminster Fuller’s would allow people to freely read, copy, download, work influenced many, among them Stewart Brand, annotate, remix, and write Utopia. whose DIY-bible the Whole Earth Catalog of 1968 The first thing I needed to do was to find a helped American hippies and dissidents build their version of Utopia in the public domain. The Project self-supported, ecological communities. Meanwhile Gutenberg version was a good beginning, but it in Europe, an anti-modernist tendency inspired

47 groups such as Superstudio and Archizoom to a house after all, as the domes tended to leak, and conceptualize radical urban utopias as a form of were quite unpractical to furnish. Lloyd Kahn, who critique on the political detachment they perceived wrote two popular books on dome building in the in the commercialization of architecture and early seventies,3 lived in one for a year before he design. In search of alternative ways of living and decided it was a failure and stopped reprinting his of designing, the 1960s and 1970s were a time of books. In a 2010 interview he recalls: experiments outside the mainstream, as well as a foundational era for future attitudes within I was looking at farm buildings along the consumer capitalist society, as subcultures were side of the road and I remember thinking, quickly found to be fertile ground for profitable ‘God those are so simple. They’re rectangu- marketing strategies. It was a transitional time lar and the roof is just one plane, while we both in western design and society. It represents have a building with 105 different surfaces.4 the last big wave of socially committed design before the new millennium, and a rupture between Recognizing the do-it-yourself (DIY) ethic the Modernist past and the postmodernist future that the counterculture communities put into within the canon of western design history. practice, American entrepreneur Stewart Brand Industrial design was still dominated by published the Whole Earth Catalog in 1968. Subtitled functionalism and the International Style, which ‘Access to Tools’, it was a comprehensive product had its roots in high Modernism and produced guide for anyone looking to become self-sufficient. some of the most famous design icons of the twen- It featured reviews of products such as tools, tieth century.1 The high times of the International machines, clothing, materials, and books, because Style had come when former Bauhaus members, information was also considered a tool, and it listed such as Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Ludwig Mies prices and addresses of vendors where the products van der Rohe, and Herbert Bayer, had fled Nazi-Ger- could be ordered. The Catalog became extremely many and settled in the United States in the 1930s. popular and influential in the US, especially Especially in the post-war years, they latched on within the counterculture movement. It professed to the corporate world, which proved a sizable its anti-establishment attitude in stating as its clientele. The Bauhaus ideals of democratizing and purpose: industrializing what they considered good design found an alternative gateway to proliferation We are as gods and might as well get used within North American corporations and institu- to it. So far, remotely done power and glory tions. Their Modernist, functionalist aesthetics — as via government, big business, formal came to dominate architecture and design for education, church — has succeeded to the much of the century, and Modernism’s radical point where gross defects obscure actual claims to universality still echo loudly within gains. In response to this dilemma and today’s design culture. Even though they soon came to these gains a realm of intimate, per- under fire with the advent of postmodernism and sonal power is developing — power of the postcolonial theory, Modernist design has become a individual to conduct his own education, widely accepted standard worldwide. find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with Whole Earth and DIY whoever is interested. Tools that aid this Some of the most iconic images of 1960s countercul- process are sought and promoted by the ture are pictures of Drop City,2 an artist and hippie WHOLE EARTH CATALOG.5 community in rural Colorado, USA. Built from 1965 and already abandoned by the early seventies, it This statement echoes libertarian senti- consisted of a small group of buildings inspired by ments voiced earlier by Brand’s great inspirator Richard Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes. The Buckminster Fuller, who believed that politicians colourful, futuristic looking domes were made of are unable to solve complex problems, but that metal car rooftops and other recycled materials, designer and engineers are able to do so instead.6 and after a flurry of media attention, many hippie Brand expanded this view to include anyone who communes sprang up following its example. The was willing to educate themselves independently. dome-based architecture of these communities was Despite the anti-capitalist ideas often associated an attempt to put one of Buckminster Fuller’s light with the counterculture movement, Brand had a construction principles into practice, and for the more entrepreneurial, anti-establishment moti- hippies it was a way to distinguish their self-built vation and was focused on the use of technology dwellings from conventional housing. They soon as a tool for change. Today he promotes a vision of

Reading 4: 02/09 Counter Culture? experienced that it was not the ideal prototype for the future he calls ecopragmatism, which implies

48 doing what is necessary at the moment, in which he self-built furniture guides. Victor Papenek and includes controversial technologies such as nuclear James Hennessey published Nomadic Furniture in power and bioengineering.7 1973,10 which set out to show ‘how to build and The rural communes were part of a larger where to buy lightweight furniture that folds, movement of people leaving the North American inflates, knocks down, stacks, or is disposable and cities in an attempt to provide for themselves in the can be recycled’, as it said on the cover. The authors countryside. This exodus is referred to as a back-to- stated that it was meant for an ecologically respon- the-land movement, one of several such agrarian sible generation that is constantly on the move. movements in history, which occur for example in In Italy, in 1974, designer Enzo Mari published times of crisis and food shortages, or as a reaction Autoprogettazione? (Self-Design? Or Self-Made?), a to the perceived ill effects of industrialization and similar book with instructions for building simple urbanization. Many people in the 1960s and 70s furniture made out of wooden boards.11 That same in the western world declared cities unhealthy year, American designer Ken Isaacs came out with and uninspiring, and wanted to get away from the How to Build Your Own Living Structures,12 a more demands of consumerism and nine-to-five jobs, to experimental interpretation of ecological, modern go back to growing their own food and building living. The book introduced Isaacs’s modular their own houses. This back-to-the-land and hippie system for interior constructions based on different movement chimed in with the emergence of the scales of cube structures to replace furniture, environmental movement, which accounts for the and ideas for micro-houses that promote spatial long-standing identification of environmentalism and material efficiency. A recent reincarnation of with the political left. One of the main catalysts for these projects is Hartz-IV Möbel13 (German welfare the rise in environmental awareness at that time furniture), an initiative by German designer Van was Silent Spring,8 a book by American biologist Bo Le-Mentzel. Started as a blog and then also Rachel Carson, published in 1962, which researched published in book form, Hartz-IV Möbel is ironi- the effects of pesticides and other chemicals on the cally named after the German welfare system. The environment and on human health. It generated a designer himself was on welfare when he decided to wide debate, which eventually led to the instalment make a simple, affordable but well-designed chair, of several significant acts of environmental protec- and put the instructions online for other people tion legislation in the United States and many other with a limited income. The chair was soon followed countries. Environmental awareness was important by other pieces of modernist-inspired furniture, in most of the hippie and artist communes and all published for free on his website with detailed other newly established rural communities, which instructions and an overview of the material costs. often practised organic farming and ecological living and building using natural and recycled Design for Need and Appropriate Technology materials. Besides the rise of environmental awareness, The term ecology became widely used the influence of which in industrial design was at that time in science and in popular culture. In then mostly still limited to the counterculture science it concerns itself with the interconnect- movements, the 1970s also saw the emergence of edness of organisms, humans among them, and a socially responsible or humanitarian design in their environments, but it also came to be used in a the western world. Designer Victor Papanek had more mystical, holistic sense of living together with argued not only for an environmental approach nature. Its significance was well illustrated by the to design, but also for designer to assume respon- picture on the cover of the first Whole Earth Catalog. sibility in social issues. He urged them ‘to design It had been Brand’s personal mission to persuade for people’s needs rather than their wants’,14 which NASA to release it for public use. It was one of the according to him especially meant focusing on first photographs of our planet, of the ‘whole earth’, ‘the fields that design has neglected’, among them Culture? Counter 02/09 4: Reading taken by a spy satellite that was far enough from design for the medical field, for the handicapped the earth to view it in its entirety, floating in empty, and the disabled, and design for the Third World.15 black space. In the months before, Steward had In the western world industrial design and design petitioned with NASA to release the images, as he education were increasingly thought to be an thought an image of the earth as a singular, iso- important part of development aid, as it was lated, and unified world would have a great impact argued that they could be instrumental in the on people, and could be instrumental in raising industrial development of ‘Third World’ countries. environmental awareness.9 This idea culminated in a conference organized by Several designers answered to the the International Council of Societies of Indus- popularity of DIY counterculture and the search trial Design (ICSID) at the Royal College of Art in for environmentally friendly alternatives with London in 1976. Its aim was to

49 return to the earlier ideals of the profes- in hand-powered machines, solar cookers, and sion of industrial design which aimed to self-built wind turbines. Although the concept of meet the needs of the modern world by appropriate technology became very popular in designing in human terms where social the field of development aid, it was soon criticized purpose combined with aesthetic expres- for promoting inferior technologies to the poor and sion and symbolic value.16 thus perpetuating inequality. Yet its influence can still be seen in many social design projects today.21 Aside from Papanek, German designer Gui Within the current resurgence of environmentally Bonsiepe was one of the principal names associated friendly design, appropriate technology continues with this movement. He was educated at the Hoch- to be a strategy for sustainable solutions, and might schule für Gestaltung in Ulm — and later taught be especially appropriate for promoting technol- there — a short lived but influential design school ogy based on renewable power sources and other that can be seen as a post-war reincarnation of the alternative solutions in the industrialized world. Bauhaus, continuing its modernist ideas. After the closing of the HfG, he emigrated to South America, Radical and Anti-Design where he still lives and works, mostly on interactive In Europe the proliferation of Modernist design and information design projects. In his contribu- and architecture was equally challenged by a new tion to the Design for Need conference Bonsiepe generation of designers, often grouped together as argued that ‘what was needed was not design for the Radical Design or Anti-Design movement. The developing countries but design in and by devel- Radical and Anti-Designers designed furniture as oping countries.’17 This argument seems prescient well, but are most famous for their architectural of the criticism that the movement would receive, concepts. At the time, post-war Europe was being questioning the importing of western design to a rebuilt according to Modernist urban planning culture or climate that it might not be suitable for. principles inspired by Swiss architect Le Corbusier, It has also been called a neo-colonial or imperialist which afforded the fast and efficient construction practice, as it relies on western designers working of much-needed residencies. High Modernism for developing countries, rather than focusing on had seen its ‘Utopian forms now degraded into vernacular design traditions and local people’s anonymous forms of large-scale housing and office expertise.18 Some of the Design for Need discourse construction’, as philosopher Fredric Jameson has certainly sounds paternalistic, as evidenced by the aptly put it.22 The Radical designers attempted following words of Misha Black, joint chairman of to conceptualize the possible consequences of the organizing committee, which serve as a motto increased industrialization and urbanization for of the conference publication: design and society, which took the form of utopian and dystopian architectural megastructures in We have two things to offer the emergent their work. As these new urban visions were often world: our technology — a power for good difficult to reconcile with existing landscapes and as well as evil — and the frail but real infrastructures, most of the Radical design projects advantages of democracy. But if the rest of remained in a conceptual phase, often deliberately the world is to learn from us, we must prove so, and were visualized and theorized in sketches, ourselves worthy of the role of teacher.19 texts, photomontages, scale models, and perfor- mances. As a result, many of these concepts were Some social design practices today are vul- communicated to the public through exhibitions nerable to similar criticism, as they continue to rely rather than marketable objects, and acquired on the assumption of the superiority of professional, intellectual and sometimes mythological status western designers operating in a context that is through the years. foreign to them.20 While their futuristic looking plans for Another concept that is associated with ubiquitous urban landscapes and technological humanitarian design is appropriate technology, living structures show aesthetical and conceptual which finds its origins in Small is Beautiful, an parallels, their ideological motivations and inten- influential book by economist E.F. Schumacher, tions varied widely. Some of these designers and published in 1973. The appropriate technology groups of the late 1950s, the 1960s, and early 1970s movement searched for small-scale, environ- were explicitly Marxist, while others celebrated mentally friendly solutions to problems, as an capitalist consumer culture in their work. Some alternative to mainstream industrial design and of them fervently rejected Modernism, yet others technology that is aimed at mass production considered themselves the dutiful heirs of the ‘prim- and perpetual growth. Examples of such func- itives of ’ and regarded their

Reading 4: 02/09 Counter Culture? tionalistic and cheap technologies can be seen work as the next phase within the development of

50 design.23 What they had in common was a search space at the ground level. The intention of his for a revolutionary new type of city, one that accompanying concept of Mobile Architecture was would connect industrial design and technology that citizens would construct their own flexible to the demands of the free, modern citizen. They living arrangements within the superstructure, researched the connections between modern design according to their wishes. Next to his architectural and consumer capitalism, which were booming and designs Friedman produced manuals for self-reli- transforming society, as they seemed very much ance in building and urban planning.27 aware of something that Fredric Jameson much later, Inspired by this megastructure architec- in 1991, described in his seminal work Postmodernism, ture as well as by the work of Buckminster Fuller, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism: the group Archigram formed in London in 1961. Its principal members were Peter Cook, David Green, [A]esthetic production today has become Michael Webb, Warren Chalk, Ron Herron, and integrated into commodity production Dennis Crompton. Their projects focused on the generally: the frantic economic urgency implementation of technology and a celebration of producing fresh waves of ever more of consumerism and hedonism in concepts for novel-seeming goods (from clothing to futuristic urban structures. They became famous airplanes), at ever greater rates of turnover, for their iconic images of pod-like modular archi- now assigns an increasingly structural tectural designs, such as the Walking Cities and function and position to aesthetic innova- Plug-In Cities.28 In Florence a few years later, a tion and experimentation.24 group of architects and designers decided to name themselves Archizoom as a critical parody of Some Radical and Anti-Designers Archigram.29 Its members Andrea Branzi, Gilberto researched an exploited design’s functioning as Corretti, Paolo Deganello, Massimo Morozzi, Lucia aesthetic innovation and in that sense they embody Bartolini, and Dario Bartolini wanted to subvert the end of the utopian Modernist era, and the modern, consumer society by exploiting its own beginning of postmodernism. system, through themes of pop culture and mass In the late 1950s one of the forerunners of consumption. They believed that this was the only the superarchitecture projects, Dutch CoBrA artist way to challenge the partnership of capitalism and Constant Nieuwenhuys, started his utopian project Modernist design, and to free the working class New Babylon, a proposal for an endless, intercon- of the bourgeois hierarchy of taste as well as class nected global city. For almost twenty years, initially divisions themselves. One of their projects was while he was part of the Situationist International Dream Beds,30 a range of ‘kitsch furniture capable movement, Constant worked on scale-models, of destroying the good taste of middle-class homes, collages, and drawings that offered glimpses like new Trojan horses’.31 As Branzi later wrote about of what life in this ever growing, hypothetical, Archizoom’s intentions: ‘The optimism of modernity nomadic city-world would look like. He argued that was replaced by an enthusiastic desire for its flop.’32 increased technological production and automation Since their endeavour to liberate design from the would afford more people more leisure time and taboo of kitsch has been quite successful, especially unprecedented freedom and creativity, which so within consumer culture itself, their opposite would transform society into the ‘Marxist kingdom’ intentions may seem hard to grasp for us now. of New Babylon. About its realization he wrote: Archizoom was part of a range of critical, left-leaning Italian groups active at that time, such The building of New Babylon can only as UFO, Gruppo 9999, Gruppo Strum, and, perhaps begin once the economy is exclusively the most famous one, Superstudio, founded in aimed at the satisfaction of our needs, in 1966 by Adolfo Natalini and Cristiano Toraldo di

the widest sense of the term. Only such an Francia. Superstudio’s best-known project is the Culture? Counter 02/09 4: Reading economy permits the complete automation Continuous Monument,33 an architectural concept of non-creative activities, and consequently of an endless, mysteriously monolithic structure the free development of creativity.25 stretching across the landscape. It was intended as a dystopian ‘warning of the horrors architecture A similar type of free citizen was envi- had in store with its scientific methods for perpet- sioned by Hungarian-born French architect Yona uating standard models worldwide’.34 Much quoted Friedman, who developed his idea of the Ville Natalini stated at a lecture in 1971: Spatiale (Spatial City) from 1956 onwards.26 It allowed for existing cities to remain, while new, If design is merely an inducement to con- labyrinthine superstructures would be built in a sume, then we must reject design; if archi- raised grid above them in order to save valuable tecture is merely the codifying of bourgeois

51 model of ownership and society, then we society. The emergence of postmodern design, in must reject architecture; if architecture and which irony and pastiche erased or redirected any town planning is merely the formalization of possible political content, may be seen as a sign present unjust social divisions, then we must of a design culture having consolidated within reject town planning and its cities … until all consumer capitalist society, successfully absorbing design activities are aimed towards meeting countermovements and deviating styles along the primary needs. Until then, design must dis- way. Interestingly, this apolitical cultural era in appear. We can live without architecture.35 western industrial design seems to have partly come to an end with the multiple crises in global The formal elements and visual aesthetics politics, climate, and economy at the start of the of Archizoom, Superstudio and other groups in the new millennium, and a revived environmental critical Italian movement have proven to be very awareness has instigated a new movement of social influential in later years, yet their political message and sustainable projects in design. appears to have been left in the past. After the peak of Radical and Anti-Design in the late sixties 1 See for example the furniture designs by Charles and and early seventies, their colourful use of plastics Ray Eames, Alvar Aalto, Charlotte Perriand, Florence and foams, kitschy decorations, pop culture, and Knoll, George Nelson, et cetera. surrealist imagery soon became characteristic of 2 Drop City, Trinidad, Colorado, c. 1968, Photo by the apolitical and more commercial postmodern Gilles Mahe. Collection Centre Georges Pompidou, movement, in design perhaps most iconically rep- MnamCCI, Kandinsky Library. resented by the Italian studio Memphis.36 Within 3 Lloyd Kahn, Domebook 1 and 2 (Los Gatos: Pacific postmodernism the radical new style paradoxically Domes, 1970 and 1971). came to be part of the commercial system it had 4 Lloyd Kahn, ‘Domography’. Interview by Julianne intended to subvert. Gola and Yukiko Bowman, Volume 24 (2010), p. 77. 5 Stewart Brand, ed., Whole Earth Catalog: Access to Tools Postmodern Post-Utopia (Menlo Park, CA: Portola Institute, 1968). The establishment of industrial design as an 6 See for example: Richard Buckminster Fuller, ‘The autonomous discipline, which had only begun to Designers and the Politicians’, in Beyond Left and Right: Rad- be taken seriously since the Second World War, ical Thought for Our Times, ed. Richard Kostelanetz (New had coincided with the institutionalization of York: William Morrow and Co. Inc., 1968), pp. 364-370. Modernism in the International Style in much of 7 Stewart Brand, Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist the western world. Still, if the Modernist design Manifesto (New York: Viking, 2009). culture of the first half of the twentieth century 8 Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962). survives as an elemental model of industrial design 9 Robert Horvitz, ‘Whole Earth Culture: Exploring Whole today, it is not because the countermovements of Earth’, Whole Earth Catalog, wholeearth.com/histo- the 1960s and 1970s have not tried to undermine ry-whole-earth-culture. (accessed 18 April 2016). and transform it. Some of the most ideologically 10 James Hennessey and Victor J. Papanek, Nomadic outspoken designers made a name for themselves Furniture (New York: Pantheon Books, 1973). in the US and in Europe in this period, with either 11 Enzo Mari, Autoprogettazione? (1974, reprint Mantova: very pragmatic or purely hypothetical proposals Corraini, 2002). for new, utopian futures. They came from a gen- 12 Ken Isaacs, How to Build Your Own Living Structures eration that felt it had to rebuild and change the (New York: Harmony Books, 1974). world, and they proposed radical and experimental 13 Van Bo Le-Mentzel and Birgit S. Bauer, Hartz IV Moebel. alternatives to mainstream design and society. Yet com: Build More — Buy Less: Konstuieren statt Konsumie- they seem to have generated the last big waves ren (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2012). in socially committed and utopian design in the 14 Victor Papanek, Design for the Real World: Human western world, followed by almost three decades Ecology and Social Change (London: Thames & Hudson, in which apolitical, postmodern, and commercial 2011), p. 219. design dominated the design discipline. 15 Ibid., pp. 234-47. For more on Papanek, see pp. 145-62 In retrospect, the Radical, Anti-Design, of this book. and Counterculture movements appear to have 16 Julian Bicknell and Liz McQuiston, Design for Need: formed a transitional moment between modernism The Social Contribution of Design: An Anthology of Papers and postmodernism, an evolutionary rather than Presented to the Symposium at the Royal College of Art, revolutionary period that opened up the arena of London, April 1976 (Oxford: Published for ICSID by industrial design to ambiguity, reuse and reinter- Pergamon Press, 1977), p. 7. pretation of previous styles and dogmas, and to a 17 Pauline Madge, ‘Design, Ecology, Technology: A

Reading 4: 02/09 Counter Culture? new, more dynamic relationship with consumer Historiographical Review’, Journal of Design HIstory 6, no. 3 (1993), p. 155, www.jstor.org/stable/1316005.

52 18 For an overview of this critique see for example: Ann The Global Style: Brown, ‘Neocolonialism in Design for Development’, Making Futures Journal 3 (28 March 2014), www. Modernist Typography plymouthart.ac.uk/documents/Brown_Ann.pdf. 19 Bicknell and McQuiston, Design for Need, p. 2. after Postmodernism 20 For a case study and critique of contemporary social MR. KEEDY design projects see for example: Danah Abdulla, ‘A Nov 25, 2013 Manifesto of Change or Design Imperialism? A look at the Purpose of the Social Design Practice’, In A Matter As a reaction to the postmodernism of the 80s and of Design: Making Society through Science and Technology, 90s, modernism reasserted itself (did it ever really ed. Claudio Coletta et al. (Milan: STS Italia Publishing, go?) with a new-ish style of typography that has 2014), pp. 245-60, www.stsitalia.org/conferences/ become ubiquitous in cultural institution around STSITALIA_2014/STS_Italia_AMoD_Proceedings_2014. the world. The good old International Style has pdf. been upgraded to a bigger and better (or at least 21 A well-known example is the Hippo water roller, see: easier) Global Style. www.hipporoller.org. Another one is Little Sun, a Over the course of about thirty years the solar-powered LED lamp developed by artist Olafur various radical and experimental modernist styles Eliasson and engineer Frederik Ottesen: www. coalesced into the Swiss Style of typography. Which littlesun.com. grew and spread across Europe and to the Americans 22 Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic and was renamed the International Style. It was the of Late Capitalism (Durham; Duke University Press, style for typography for three more decades until 1991), p. 314. the late 80s when postmodernism deconstructed 23 Superstudio, ‘Superstudio: Projects and Thoughts’, its hegemony. But postmodernism set too many Domus 11 February 2012. www.domusbweb.it/en/ designers adrift, up a creek without a paddle (not from-the-archive/2012/02/11/superstudio-proj- enough rules), and their nostalgia brought them back ects-and-thoughts.html (accessed 29 April 2016). to the safer and familiar shores of modernism. Originally published in Domus 479 (October 1969.) The International Style designers turned 24 Jameson, Postmodernism, p. 4. their backs on local and regional traditions and cre- 25 Constant Nieuwenhuys, ‘New Babylon’, isites.harvard. ated a new universal visual language that became edu/fs/docs/icb.topic709752.files/WEEK_7/CNieu- the default style of corporate capitalism. It gave wenhuis_New_Babylon.pdf (accessed 30 April 2016). impersonal companies an identity so they could be Written by Constant for the exhibition catalogue easily recognized but not really known (that would published by the Haags Gemeentemuseum, The come later with branding). To this day the Interna- Hague, 1974. tional Style is still in full force at most airports, and 26 Yona Friedman, photomontage of a Ville Spatiale government offices of western superpower nations. over the Seine in the heart of Paris, 1959. Collection History does not repeat itself but it rhymes. of Centre Georges Pompidou. What the International Style was to 27 For more on his work, se: www.yonafriedman.com commercial corporations, the Global Style is to (accessed 30 April 2016). cultural institutions. It is the new typographic style 28 An archive of Archigram’s work can be found on of Institutional art and cultural production. You archigram.westminster.ac.uk (accessed 30 April 2016). can see it at your local museums and art galleries, 29 Pier Vittoria Aurell, The Project of Autonomy: Politics or at just about any arts institution of any kind, and Architecture Within and Against Capitalism (New anywhere in the world. Thanks to the internet it is York: Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of more widespread than the International Style ever American Architecture, 2008), p. 71. was, and it is becoming a universal visual language

30 Archizoom Associati, Naufragio Di Rose Dream Bed, on a global scale. Culture? Counter 02/09 4: Reading 1967. For most graphic designers Modernism is not 31 Andrea Branzi, No-stop City: Archizoom Associati an unfinished project, it’s an unending one. Where (Orleans: HYX, 2006), p. 146. postmodern typography was a fragmented, de-cen- 32 Ibid. tered, self-regulating (some might say self-defeating) 33 Superstudio, Continuous Monument, 1969. system, for making meaning. The Global Style, like 34 Adolfo Natalini, quoted in: Jonathan Glancey, the International Style before it, is a prescriptive, ‘Anti-Matter’, The Guardian 31 March 2003 www. language of specific formal compositional rules that theguardian.com/artanddesign/2003/mar/31/archi- when followed will successfully convey a message tecture.artsfeatures (accessed 4 May 2016). while expressing a specific mood or emotional 35 ‘Superstudio’, Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ response. These rules that elicit the desired emotional Superstudio (accessed 30 April 2016). response are what constitutes the style. 36 Ettore Sottsass, Memphis, Casablanca Sideboard, 1981.

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54 The emotional response that one has to International Style was grounded in the laws of the old International Style is that it is contem- physics. Paper was cut and scored to a quantifiable porary, sophisticated, cool, calm, and rigorously and very determinate size. Type came in at limited logical. And that is exactly how it’s supposed to feel. sizes of lead or photo-film strips. Within these Designers wore lab coats at Unimark, to show that finite restrictions the designer asymmetrically they were not artists, they were calculating pro- composed carefully scaled text into architectonic fessionals. But now after half a century the Inter- compositions that conveyed a concept that embod- national Style is pretty familiar. It’s lost some of its ied the message. Transforming the simple 2D space snootiness by being so pervasive in the corporate of the printed graphic into an abstract deep space and commercial world. Helvetica starred in a biopic that seemed to extend from the poster to the wall and you can get PMS color chips on a coffee mug or and worlds beyond. t-shirt. Today the International Style is more like a By contrast the Global Style’s typographic posh uncle (from some exotic European metropolis). composition does not explicitly refer to the rect- He’s distinguished and cool, but he’s old! angle or object in which it exists, nor to anything By contrast the Global Style looks new, but in the real world. It may be on a poster or book or still familiar. In fact it radiates newness and very website, but it is not an integral part of an object little else. Like the International Style before it, the occupying a specific space or size. It could be a large Global Style is easy to assimilate and is obedient to poster that someone is holding in their studio or the point of near transparency. On an emotional just a thumbnail JPEG of someone holding a poster. level it sublimates quotidian boredom into a It makes no difference to the design. Because the contemporary expression of cool, ironic, ennui. It design is not a size, site, nor media specific. When is as if the lab-coat wearing designer/scientist of you gaze upon a Global Style composition you don’t Unimark has been replaced by an App. imagine what is happening outside of the picture Most of the formal and aesthetic attributes plane, because you know the answer is nothing. The of the new Global Style are lifted directly from typography doesn’t delineate space, it just fills it. the International Style. White space backgrounds, Space in the Global Style is flat to the point sans , minimalist asymmetrically of non-existence. Although there is almost always balanced compositions with limited color palette. some layering of a tedious geometric shape on top No extraneous decoration, ornament or complex of an insipid block of text, the effect is still one of patterns. A love of simple geometric shapes. The simultaneity and flatness as the overlap is usually one notable exception is the grid. transparent. The picture plane is not composed, It’s not that the grid is no longer there it’s it is just temporarily occupied. The hierarchy of that the grid is no longer visible or even detectable. forms is designed so that everything within the It is embedded in the 0’s and 1’s and x and y coor- composition is of more or less equal unimportance. dinates of digital space. Just like the movie Tron Some words go this way some go that way, here it the digital environment is built on a grid (it just is, easy to read, easy to look at, everything in place doesn’t glow like neon). So it is understandable why filling the page up nicely. Since the page is so evenly designers would stop fussing with grids when it is filled we read it instantly as “complete” or “done,” the ground beneath us, the water we swim in and it requires very little of the audience in terms of the air we breathe in our virtual/digital world. interpretation or participation (who has the time). But back in the old days, the International Like a child’s drawing, there is a charming dumb- Style designers ground their blue lead pencils to ness to it. It feeds on our nostalgia for a long lost a razor-sharp point that they used to inscribe a simplicity and purity that never existed. It func- bespoke grid structure into the picture plane. tions like cultural “wallpaper” it is easy to ignore. This was the scaffolding or framing on which the The International Style used typographic typography would hang. The grid was the starting trickery to animate the flat picture frame with the Culture? Counter 02/09 4: Reading point that determined more than anything what illusion of depth and space. Borrowing from music the relationship between the typography and the and video, the Global Style uses the fourth dimen- space it existed in would be. So the designer took sion of time, or rather a reference to time, to ani- great care to make sure that the grid they devised mate the 2D space. It accomplishes this by looking would accommodate the space they were creating like it was a single frame taken out of an animated to the concept they wanted to communicate. sequence. One can easily imagine many different Grids were something you learned about in iterations before and after the one we are currently school. Competent use of a grid is one of the things seeing. The overlap of disparate imagery looks like that showed you were a pro. Creative transgression “screen burn” or “ghost images” that would make or “breaking” of the grid, showed that you wanted more sense seen individually and sequentially. In to be more than just good. The analog world of the this way the Global Style extends beyond itself

55 forward and backward in time but not in space. It styles for each other? Is being an institutional is very emblematic of our transient culture, it’s servant somehow better than being a commercial a move that hits the zeitgeist right on the head. one? Better for who? Making it more relevant than the old International The Global Style, like the International Style with its analog abstraction of 2D space. Style before it, will be with us for some time to What the Global Style took from Postmod- come. It is the new normal, or base from which ernism is a taste for the vernacular, the quotidian, a multitude of stylistic iterations, and reactions the punk inspired anti-aesthetic and an interest will evolve. Every era and culture gets the style it in language. That is where the “ugly” and deserves. What did we do to deserve this? color choices come from as well as the squashed Or maybe it’s something we didn’t do? type and the frames around the outside and the frames within frames, the overt use of language and diagrammatic symbols, the slash, the under- Beyond The New: A Search line, etc. Center axis typography was used as a historical referent in postmodern typography, but For Ideals In Design in the Global style it is simply an easy (auto) default BY HELLA JONGERIUS & LOUISE SCHOUWENBERG setting, randomly deployed. It also appropriated the aura of theory, or We advocate an idealistic agenda in design, as we at least it insinuates theoretical motivations, even deplore the obsession with the New for the sake though there is to date little tangible evidence of of the New, and regretfully see how the discipline any theory. That so many designers would utilize a lacks an intimate interweaving of the values that single prescribed style almost exclusively in service once inspired designers, as well as the producers of to cultural practices and yet be so uncritical or their ideas. self-reflecting of that style is curious indeed. — Count the blessings of industry. Industrial pro- Designers of the postmodern era were cesses have greater potential than low-volume accused of aesthetic self-indulgence with all the productions of exclusive designs, which reach computer stunts, historical quotation, formal such a limited market that talk of ‘users’ can contortions and time consuming complexity. No hardly be taken seriously. Industries can make one can accuse the designers of the Global Style of high-quality products available to many people. aesthetic self-indulgence since pretty much anyone We should breathe new life into that ideal. can design like that, and do it quickly. Obviously — It is absurd and arrogant to begin the design their self-indulgence is not an aesthetic one, but a process with an empty piece of paper. Cultural social one. Forget about print, digital, motion, envi- and historical awareness are woven into the ronmental, or interactive media, because it’s social DNA of any worthwhile product. Otherwise the media that has the biggest impact on design today. designer is merely embracing newness for its Does it really take a studio of three or four own sake, an empty shell, which requires over- designers to design a Risograph art catalog or silk- blown rhetoric to fill it with meaning. There is screened poster consisting of an ALL CAPS HEAD- value in continually re-examining what already LINE (with underline) and coarse halftone photos exists, delving into the archives, poring over for a friend’s “art” show? Should design studios the classics. What untapped potential do the really put the bulk of their efforts into “projects” of materials, colors, functions and forms, still hold. their own devising that are of no use or interest to — Design is not about products. Design is about anyone but themselves and a few underemployed relationships. Good design can draw, almost friends? Feeding your blog, Instagram, Tumblr, and invisibly, on different levels of meaning to Twitter account is self-promotion, but is it design? communicate with users. It suggests a lack of The fact that you are busy doing design doesn’t imagination when those opportunities are not mean you are a designer, anymore than the fact exploited to the fullest. that you are busy cooking makes you a chef. — Aesthetic value is a potent means of communica- Design is for somebody besides you! tion. Ugliness is also a potent means of com- I say this as someone who argued back in munication. Without aesthetic refinement and the day, for designers to be recognized as making without friction at the boundaries of aesthetics, culturally significant contributions and not just be there can be no personal signature and no seen as problem solving commercial tools. Today it intimate relationship with the user. is taken for granted that graphic designers have a — Designers who take themselves seriously cultural role to play. We won that battle, we have strike an effective balance between their our autonomy. But is this how we want to use it? experimental, visionary projects and the

Reading 4: 02/09 Counter Culture? Replicating art world practices, and recycling old

56 compelling designs that are worth pursuing for — Good design entails research. Good design manufacturers. equals research. We owe it to the field to reflect — Everyday products are used, seen, touched. The on our own practices, again and again, and to tactile and expressive qualities of materials are investigate every component, again and again. important means of communication, and ask for Design requires a constant research of new a hands-on design process, an intense explora- idioms, a battle against presuppositions, a push tion of textures that appeal to the human scale. of the limits, and the continual refinement of — By means of its language and employment of responses to fundamental questions, like ‘What techniques, good design expresses both the can design add to the world of plenty?’ and zeitgeist and a deep awareness of the past. ‘What is functionality in the here and now?’. — Design ≠ Art. Good ideas in design require further development after they are presented Lost Ideals in museums as experimental, eye-catching ges- We are in search for new ideals in design, a holistic tures. Only then will they add meaning to the approach on all levels. We make no pretense of world of daily objects and reach a larger public. having fully achieved those ideals in our own work, — Know the companies that share your moral and as a designer and the head of a design program. But aesthetic values. Know the others too. we do wish to emphasize the urgent need for an — By addressing the ‘afterlife’ of every product, idealistic agenda, so that our profession does not designers contribute to a change of mentality fall prey to lethargic self-satisfaction. in both users and producers. An all-encompass- Design has become an impoverished ing approach requires designers not to focus field. Yes, designers have solved many problems exclusively on the functionality and expressive and conceived of many functions that are relevant power of a design, but also to investigate how to future problems. And they are now devoting maintenance and repair can be integrated into attention to an unfathomable range of production the final product. Designers should be aware of methods from artisanal techniques to the very the circular economy they are embedded in. newest media. Designers have put forward activist — Many design students question the role design agendas, devised strategies, and harnessed the plays in today’s world, aiming to solve larger full expressive and narrative potential of everyday societal problems with their work, empower objects. The field has expanded its horizons out to the users with surprising strategies, and entice infinity. This has led not only to a huge array of passionate debate on the implications of the products and strategies, but also to a wide variety newest media. In the meantime professionals of presentation platforms, including many interna- are ploughing ahead with business as usual, tional design events. sending one egocentric design after another out Design is flourishing. But the field has into the world. Is the future generation naïve, not benefited. What most design events have in or more in tune with the world around them? common are the presentations of a depressing cor- In any case: the gap between higher ideals and nucopia of pointless products, commercial hypes industry is too large. around presumed innovations, and empty rhetoric. — Terms like ‘authenticity’ and ‘sustainability’ We think the reasons for the decline of become empty verbiage when the hidden interesting developments in design are the lack of agenda is still, as usual, economic returns. cohesion between the many facets of the profes- Imagine a future where shared ideals and moral sion, and the prominent role afforded to economic values point the way! returns. We have lost sight of the higher ideals that — An initial concept is not worth very much. A were so central to the most influential movement final concept is not worth much either. An idea by far in industrial design. The Bauhaus ideals —

must be thoroughly tested in the real world making the highest possible quality accessible to Culture? Counter 02/09 4: Reading before it can lead to a viable product. Young many people were based on the intimate interweav- designers have to put in the hours. Experienced ing of cultural awareness, social engagement, and designers and companies need to ‘kill their economic returns. For companies, this meant that darlings’ once in a while. production had to be organized as intelligently and — Without play, there can be no design that inexpensively as possible, on the condition that ‘the inspires the user. Without foolishness and fun highest possible quality’ was guaranteed. there can be no imagination. Today, design companies are trapped in — An industry that is willing to embrace new a rat race for the largest market share. In most challenges and experimentation has the power industrial production processes the marketing and to exploit the full potential of existing and new communication departments have taken the lead technologies, including the digital media. and the company’s competitive energy is focused

57 completely on increasing sales. The ideal of the ‘highest possible quality’, which by necessity implies An item is listed in the Catalog if it is deemed: and demands an intricate layering of cultural and — Useful as a tool, historical meanings and values, plays a marginal — Relevant to independent education, role these days. Naturally every generation is enti- — High quality or low cost, tled to embrace the zeitgeist, to design something — Not already common knowledge, new. However, currently the appeal of the NEW is — Easily available by mail. celebrated as the one and only, inherently desirable quality of commodities. As such it no longer equals Catalog listings are continually revised according real innovation and might even be rephrased as to the experience and suggestions of Catalog users ‘the illusion of the new’. An empty shell, devoid of and staff. meaning and substance; design has become a goal instead of a means to an end. Purpose We are as gods and might as well get good at it. So Designers Should Take The Lead far, remotely done power and glory — as via govern- The special status of designers in between users ment, big business, formal education, church — has and producers gives them the opportunity to take succeeded to the point where gross defects obscure the lead in a much-needed change of mentality. Yet, actual gains. In response to this dilemma and to they rarely do. these gains a realm of intimate, personal power is Designers are pivotal to industrial design. developing — power of the individual to conduct his Any shift in mentality should thus begin with them. own education, find his own inspiration, shape his They can take users seriously by making them look own environment, and share his adventure with at the world of everyday objects with fresh eyes, whoever is interested. Tools that aid this process and challenge them to appreciate the incorporated are sought and promoted by the Whole Earth Catalog. meanings, the details, the traces of a great variety of manufacturing techniques. They can draw the attention of industry to the importance of a better Vernacular: How Buildings balance between high quality, unfettered creativity, R5 enthusiastic experimentation, social responsibility, Learn From Each Other and economic factors. A renewed all-encompassing BY STEWART BRAND approach to design will not simply mean returning to past ideals, but will deal with today’s challenges What gets passed from building to building via build- and possibilities. It will embrace a rich layering ers and users is informal and casual and astute. At of qualities and not necessarily lead to simplicity least it is when the surrounding culture is coherent in design, nor will it be a heavy moral burden enough to embrace generations of experience. that stifles the imagination. An idealistic agenda “Vernacular” is a term borrowed since the will rather be a liberation from the schizophrenic 1850s by architectural historians from linguists, subdivision of our field and the stifling rut in which who used it to mean “the native language of a users, designers, and producers have been caught region.” Chris Alexander adopts a similar usage for far too long. It’s time to rid ourselves of the when he declares that a “Pattern language” is the obsession with the new. medium of humane building design. “Vernacular” means “vulgar” sometimes and “the bearer of folk Hella Jongerius (NL) is an industrial designer and art director. wisdom” sometimes. It means “common” in all / Louise Schouwenberg (NL) is head of the Masters program three senses of the word - “widespread,” “ordinary,” Contextual Design at Design Academy Eindhoven. and “beneath notice.” Found at www.readingdesign.org/beyond-the-new In terms of architecture, vernacular buildings are seen as the opposite of whatever is “academic,” “high style,” “polite.” Vernacular The Whole Earth Catalog is everything not designed by professional archi- BY STEWART BRAND tects - in other words, most of the world’s buildings, From the opening page of the 1969 Catalog: ranging in assigned value from now-previous Cotswold stone cottages and treasured old Cape Function Cods to the despised hordes of factory-built mobile The Whole Earth Catalog functions as an evaluation homes. In the eyes of tastemakers, old vernacular and access device. With it, the user should know is lovely. New vernacular (including everything we better what is worth getting and where and how to might call Low Road) is unlovely.

Reading 5: 02/16 Vernacular, Etc. do the getting. There is a magazine called Progressive Architecture but none called Conservative Architecture.

58 If there were such a magazine (a good idea, in my aisle in the middle with its central fire — was view), it would be largely about vernacular archi- enclosed from the inclement weather. With the tecture, which is profoundly cautious and imitative, thatch-bearing rafters supported at their center of so immersed in its culture and its region that it load by vertical timber columns, the buildings were looks interesting only to outsiders. easy to raise and then easy to adapt. The side aisles Eminent folklorist Henry Glassie has invited subdivision for a variety of purposes and for described vernacular building tradition in operation: privacy. Growth came easily by adding bays at either end, and yet the interior was always kept unified by A man wants a house. He talks with a the wide central aisle. The form has survived the builder. Together they design the house out millennia magnificently in barns and cathedrals of their shared experience, their culture of and is worth reviving for houses. what a house should be. There is no need The lesson for the ages from the three- for formal plans. Students of vernacular aisled structures is that columns articulate space in architecture search for plans, wish for a way that makes people feel comfortable making plans, but should not be surprised that they and remaking walls and rooms anchored to the find none. The existence of plans on paper columns. You can always visualize what you might is an indicator of cultural weakening. The do next to improve the space plan. The recent engi- amount of detail in a plan is an exact mea- neering triumph of huge free-span interior spaces is sure of the degree of cultural disharmony; actually a loss for intuitive adaptivity. The effect of the more minimal the plan, the more wide-open space is oppressive rather than freeing. completely the architectural idea abides in The space plans of vernacular buildings the separate minds of architect and client. are typically generic and general-purpose. The identical bays of three-aisled structures and the Vernacular building traditions have the additive identical rooms of courtyard houses had attention span to in incorporate generational been found to be the most inexpensively adaptable knowledge about long-term problems such as main- over time. Vernacular design is always prudent taining and growing a building over time. High- about materials and time, seeking the most style architecture likes to solve old problems in new pragmatic building for the least effort and cost. It ways, which is a formula for disaster, according to provides an economicals grammar of construction. Dell Upton at the University of California. Vernac- Let there be a central passageway and stair hall, ular builders, he says, are content to accept well- say, with roughly identicals pairs of rooms on each proven old solutions to old problems. Then they can side upstairs and down. (That was the “double pile” concentrate all their design ingenuity strictly on house that the fathers of George Washington and new problems, if any. When the standard local roof James Madison built and that pervaded eastern design works pretty well, and materials and skills America.) The specifics of material, style, and finish are readily available for later repair, why would you were left to the builder and dweller. mess with that? To the cultural historian Ivan Illich, the Vernacular buildings evolve. As genera- spare clarity of such buildings was honed by count- tions of new buildings imitate the best of mature less real and individual lives: buildings, they increase in sophistications while retaining simplicity. They become finely attuned to Dwelling is an activity that lies beyond the the local weather and local society. A much-quoted reach of the architect not only because it is a dictum of Henry Glassie’s states that “a search popular art; not only because it goes on and for pattern in folk material yields regions, where on in waves that escape his control; not only a search for pattern in popular material yields because it is of a tender complexity outside periods.” Roof lines and room layout are regional. of the horizon of mere biologists and system Paint color and trim vary with fashions in analysts; but above all because not two Etc. Vernacular, 02/16 5: Reading style. The heart of vernacular design is about form, communities dwell alike. Habit and habitat not style. Style is time’s fool. Form is time’s student. say almost the same. Each vernacular archi- You can see it in two major forms of tecture...is as unique as vernacular speech. European rural building of ancient lineage. The The art of living in its entirety — that is, the Mediterranean masonry courtyard house has long art of loving and dreaming, of suffering and been celebrated for its perfect fit with local climate dying — makes each lifestyle unique. And and landscape and the multi-generational needs therefore this art is much too complex to of extended families. Less well-known but equally be taught by the methods of a Comenius or admirable is the long, three-aisled, steep-roofed Pestalozzi, by a schoolmaster or by TV. It is wood structure developed in the forests of the north. an art which can only be picked up. Each Here the courtyard equivalent — the double-wide person becomes a vernacular builder and

59 THREE-AISLED STRUCTURES in northern Europe date at least from 1300 (Lower Left) Ernest Born, 1958. The Plan BC and continue their evolution to this of St. Gall, vol. 2, p. 95 day. They were robustly multi-purpose Ca. 1295 AD - St. Mary’s Hospital in — Nordic sagas chronicle their use as Chichester, England, still survives (see dwellings, dining halls, celebration next page). The six-bayed infirmary hall halls, kitchens, dormitories, and barns opened into a chapel at the far end. A for cattle or hay. Often many of the uses hospital at that time provided shelter for combined in one building or followed pilgrims and paupers as well as the ill. each other in sequence. These drawings No medical treatment was attempted. are from the impeccable work, The Plan of St. Gall, by Walter Horn and Ernest Born TIMBER-FRAMED ROOFS, steep-pitched, (see Recommended Bibliography). are perfectly capable of lasting seven centuries, as in the Great Coxwell barn (Top Left) Walter Schwartz, 1958. (ca. 1310) and St. Mary’s Hospital (ca. Reprinted from The Plan of St. Gall, vol. 2, 1295). Their three-aisled form kept them p. 44. useful. Ca. 300 BC - Reconstructed from archaeology at Groningen in The (Bottom left) 1991 - The tithe barn at Netherlands, this typical combination Great Coxwell, Oxfordshire, is 152 feet of house and barn shows how the wide long, 43 feet wide, 48 feet high. William center aisle (nave) is used for circulation MOrris, who lived nearby, regarded it and common uses such as the fire, while as “the greatest piece of architecture in the side aisles can be subdivided for England.” The sophisticated bracing of specialized for private functions. beams and roof evident here is thought to have worked out in wood the forms (Center Left) Ernest Born, 1958. The Plan later used in stone cathedrals. of St. Gall, vol. 2, p. 150 Ca. 820 AD - Reconstructed from (Bottom right) ca. 1920 - St. Mary’s detailed plans of a Benedictine Hospital (see previous page) was monastery at St. Gall, Switzerland. As converted to an almshouse in 1535, depicted in the plan for this House of offering private rooms. These partitions Distinguished Guests, servants occupied and chimneys date from 1680. In the the left aisle around the side entrance, four bays remaining (of the original six) while horses were stabled in the aisle are eight two-room dwellings still used flanking an exit to privies on the right. for old people, and the center aisle still Guests had private rooms at each end opens into the chapel. and dined in the common area around the open fire in the nave. Reading 5: 02/16 Vernacular, Etc.

60 INCREMENTAL GROWTH. Because vernacular houses assume the inevitability of later expansion and always seek the economical path, they are universally expert at growing by stages. The semi-medieval “whale houses” of the island of Nantucket off Massachusetts were so tiny they had to grow, and they grew in a locally-patterned way. The practice reached its celebrated apogee in the big-house-little-house-back-house- barn “connected farms” of the mid-19th century.

(Top) ca. 1885 - Pump Square of Siasconsett, Nantucket, founded by whalers in the 1680s. The full taxonomy of add-ons is displayed. A former shanty in the foreground has become an ice cream saloon. Reading 5: 02/16 Vernacular, Etc. Vernacular, 02/16 5: Reading (Right) Reprinted from Henry Chandlee Forman, Early Nantucket and its Whale Houses, p. 130. See Recommended Bibliography. Henry Chandlee Forman’s chart of how the whale houses grew (viewed as somewhat fanciful by other building historians). The original “great room” of these houses was only 11 by 13 feet.

(Center) 1940 - The “connected farms” of mid-19th-century New England rationalized add-ons via a popular theory of more efficient agriculture. Like most, this one in Monticello, Maine, around a south-facing work yard.

61 Far more sophisticated, probably because the culture is more stable, are the traditional village houses of Malaysia. The Malay house, with its refined, varied means of growing from the original core house, is a wonder of incremental architecture. Lim Jee Yuan rightly claims, “It created near-perfect solutions to the control of climate, multifunctional use of space, flexibility in design and a sophisticated prefabricated system which can extend the house with the growing needs of the family.”

(Top Left) ca. 1985 - Steel-roofed against tropical rains, raised on stilts for privacy, for breezes, for protection from floods and animals, and for storage underneath, the vernacular house of Malaysia is supremely adapted to its climate and culture.

(Top Right) ca. 1985 - The interior of a Malay house is designed for natural ventilation while excluding glare and rain. Windows are wide and low, roofs have long overhangs, and interior space is wide open. Rooms are indicated by differing floor and ceiling levels, which also makes growing the building by increments exceptionally easy, since floors and roofs don’t have to match precisely.

(Bottom Left) The Malay house has a specific pattern language of growth, with special terms for the core house (rumah ibu), same-level verandah (serambi samanaik), step-down verandah (serambi gantung), covered walkway (selang), kitchen (dapur), front extension “like a baby elephant suckling its mother (gajah meyusu), and entrance porch (anjung).

(Bottom Right) Diagram of Common Addition Sequences Reading 5: 02/16 Vernacular, Etc.

62 a vernacular speaker by growing up, by I was drawn to talking with vernacular moving from one initiation to the next in building historians because, more than other archi- becoming either a male or a female inhab- tectural historians, they focus on how the buildings itant. Therefore the Cartesian, three-di- work. In America the discipline is new and young mensional, homogeneous space into which — some call it a “children’s crusade”- having been the architect builds, and the vernacular pioneered in mid-20th-century by the likes of J. B. space which dwelling brings into existence, Jackson (vernacular landscapes) and Henry Glassie constitute different classes of space. (folk material culture) and fostered by the growth of the preservation and environmental movements. And they were arrived at by different Vernacular building historians excel classes of design. The process of vernacular design at “reading” buildings — analyzing the physical is treated, even by its admirers, with undeserved evidence of what actually happened in a building, condescension, insists building historian Thomas and when, and why. I inquired about the tricks of Hubka. In an introduction to Hubka’s paper “Just the trade with Orlando Ridout V, head of the Office Folks Designing,” Dell Upton summarizes: of Research, Survey and Registration of the Mary- land HIstorical Trust, based in historic Annapolis. Hubka carefully distinguishes the ver- A second generation architectural historian and nacular builder’s process of design, in onetime builder himself, Ridout reminded me of which existing models are conceptually field biologists and geologists. FOr such people the taken apart and then reassembled in new world is a constant puzzle and revelation, filled buildings, from the professional designer’s with what Vladimir Nabokov called “transparent manner of working, in which elements from things, through which the past shines!” disparate sources are combined to solve As we strolled around Annapolis, Ridout design problems anew. He characterizes the explained how to see through a building. “Tradi- vernacular architect’s process as “precon- tionally architectural history, because it came from strained”; by choosing to limit architectural art history, has tended to focus on style. Style is ideas to what is available in the local the last thing that I would teach a student about context, the vernacular architect reduces architectural history, because it’s so misleading. I the design task to manageable proportions. could care less what style a building is. I want to Although this mode of composition seems know when it was built, and how it evolved, and superficially to generate monotonously sim- what floor plan it had, and how the spaces in that ilar structures, it allows in fact for consid- house were used. The best way to approach dating a erable individuality within its boundaries, building and unraveling the sequence of change is permitting the designer to focus on skillful to look at things that are least likely to lie to you — solution of particular problems rather than essentially, the things that are least self-conscious. on reinventing whole forms. The living room is a self-conscious part of the house. The front facade is a self-conscious part of the house, Hubka says in the article that , far from where the owner is trying to make a statement to constricting the folk builder’s own creativity and the world about what he is about - whether it’s ‘I’m individuality, this approach frees them: a simple man with simple tastes’ or ‘I’m richer than you are and don’t you forget it’ or simply, ‘I have The folk designer simply signs his signa- crossed the threshold of gentility. I can now afford a ture much smaller [than contemporary brick house with a fancy entrance porch.’ designers] but by no means less forcefully. “So you head for the parts of the house This signature is in the details, in the where nobody has tried to dress things up, and care, and in the craft of building (and that’s the attic and the cellar. In the attic what while the modern observer might not you’re really looking for is where a second period of Etc. Vernacular, 02/16 5: Reading see this signature you can be sure his construction has encapsulated an original period contemporaries saw it). Folk architecture of construction. Even the windows sometimes get that appears unified, homogeneous, even buried in place, and the paint colors are all still identical becomes, on closer inspection, there. The most original hardware’s always at the rich, diversified, and individualistic. top of the house. It got the least amount of use, and nobody cares if it doesn’t look great, so it stays Hubka concludes: “A case can, and should, there. Go up and look at the servants’ quarters. be made for folk design method as one of the most “The thing that is most helpful in figuring pervasive and well-conceived design methods in out a building’s history is technology. Building the history of civilization.” He recommends that technology never lies. No 18th-century builder ever contemporary architects study it. had access to a machine-made nail. He had to use

63 a handmade nail. He’d never seen a circular saw. classical Roman column, which referred to the clas- He couldn’t buy his boards planed in a planing sical Greek column of stone, which referred to the mill or his plaster lathing cut on a bandsaw. An earlier wooden column made of a tree. They are all 18th-century house is totally a hand crafted build- mostly nonfunctional and expensive to craft. Clem ing, with very distinctive tool marks, methods Labine, founder of Old House Journal, has commented, of construction, joinery, nails, interior finishing “While the popularity of classicism has certainly elements — whether it’s the plaster lathing or the waxed and waned, there hasn’t been a period in trim around the door or the way he framed the over two millennia when someone in some part base of the chimney. The industrial revolution of the world hasn’t been fitting architraves across begins to show up in the late 1790s, but it really column tops.” Modernism swore it would get rid of doesn’t begin to take hold until the 1840s and 1850s these pagan temple ornaments forever, and the first in the Chesapeake area. After the Civil War you thing Post-Modernism did was put them back. have a sea change. Then you’re basically building Something evidently drives continuity national housing.” between buildings at a mythic level. Masonry I asked Ridout what the historic building fireplaces and chimneys have been utterly obsolete inventories and archaeology of Maryland suggested since the popularization of the Franklin stove by about the comparative survivability of the various the 1830s, yet 160 years later every house that can kinds of old buildings. He said the main survivors afford it still has at least a facsimile of a masonry were masonry buildings, even though they were fireplace and chimney. Some deep lullaby croons, only 15 percent of what was originally built. “Hearth and home.” Medium to large houses survived the best, because In some high-style buildings the architect there is always use for them. Small houses were decrees and the client accepts - a status battle built shoddy and disposable. Barns survived fairly lampooned in Tom Wolfe’s From Bauhaus to Our House well, thanks to being solidly constructed. Special- - but in most buildings it is the other way around. ized farm buildings perished of obsolescence, with And clients seldom innovate. They borrow. They one interesting exception. see something they like, and they insist that their “Small domestic outbuildings that are well building be “like that.” How did running water, built tend to survive. Everybody can find a use for bathrooms, central heating, and air conditioning a 12- or 14-foot-square building. Meat houses, for originally get into houses? Not via architects. example, tended to be very well built. They were Historian Daniel Boorstin tells an interesting tale of either of masonry, log, or very heavy timber frame the dialogue between public and private buildings: construction, partly because they were carrying a lot of weight - maybe 2,000 pounds of ham hanging In the older world [of Europe], the public from the roof - and they had to be theftproof. They facilities tended to copy the private. Inns usually were relatively close to the main house, were shaped like large private residences, so they’re still convenient to this day. These days town halls were fashioned after the palatial they’re full of lawnmowers and weedcutters and dwellings of rich citizens. But the urban turpentine and bicycles. They’re very hard to mea- communities which sprang up in the sure because they’re always crammed with junk.” United States in the nineteenth century Vernacular building historians of the were bristling with newcomers, while there current breed are interested in any kind of building were still few rich men and, of course, no from any period, including the present. The patri- ancient palaces. Here public buildings arch J. B. Jackson has remarked, “The older I get, the and public facilities made their own more interested I get in the future that’s waiting style, which gradually influenced the way for us. I don’t think it will have much dignity, but it everyone lived. will have vitality.” And vitality is what he inspired people to study. It was raffish commercial buildings rather One of the things that would be worth than the stately institutional ones that led the way. investigating in contemporary buildings is the infor- Grand hotels, which historians consider to be an mal pathways of influence. The formal pathways of American invention, introduced gas light, spring architect influencing architect have been studied mattresses, running water and central heating by to death, but they explain little about where most mid-19th century. Guests soon took insistence on of the real action is. Even in matters of style, some such luxuries home with them. Once people had elements seem to have lives of their own, like clas- experienced air conditioning in movie theaters in sical columns. A decorative Post-Modern column the 1930s, they could not bear to live without it at refers to the Beaux Arts Column, which referred home. Maybe home adoption is the final test of the

Reading 5: 02/16 Vernacular, Etc. to the Renaissance column, which referred to the success of a new building element. That the sealed

64 windows and services — hiding dropped ceilings of directions and makes any view quickly boring. And offices have not migrated to the home may signify it’s worthless as a wall, being nonstructural and non- that they are ultimately failures. insulated, bleeding heat in whatever is the wrong Sometimes a building form takes off direction. The sliding glass door is a measure of how and becomes so widely popular that its design is remote the builders’ decisions have become from the assumed to be anonymous - “folk” - when in fact users’ experience and of how powerless users are in it was some individual’s bright idea. America’s the face of standardized building doctrine. roadside service stations were largely created Where a regional tradition does survive and continuously updated, right up to the time of into the modern world it can work potent magic, interstate truck stops, by one man. even when adulterated. A textbook case is the tri- Carl Petersen devised these building for umph in the American southwest of “Santa Fe style” several American oil companies from 1914 to 1970, (also called “Pueblo Revival”). Visitors today to and his designs were copied by the competition. Santa Fe, New Mexico, are thrilled to find an entire Suburban “ranch houses,” which defined the city of low, beautifully sculptured adobe buildings American 1950s, largely came from a little-known gleaming in the high desert sun, obviously redolent Californian named Cliff May. For years his designs with history, inheritors of America’s most ancient wouldn’t sell. Then a contractor advised him to stop building lineage. It is all a 20th-century invention. trying to hide the driveway and garage and instead Santa Fe style developed from the collision flaunt them, because Americans love showing off of three vernacular building traditions and one their car. With that his career took off. He person- generation of calculating boosters. It was an epic ally designed a thousand ranch-style houses and of cross-cultural borrowing. The mythic baseline had 18,000 built to his design by developers. “On comes from the Indian multi-story adobe and stone the strength of these figures, it could be claimed for “apartment houses” of New Mexico and Arizona May that he is probably the most popular architect that were built dense and high by the agricultural that has ever lived,” observed one critic. Though Pueblo tribes. They were stepped down, terrace by May never went to architecture school and never terrace, toward the south and southeast to soak up got a license, his work attracted the admiration of the sun’s warmth. Spanish explorers arrived in the Frank Lloyd Wright (a rare event) and the flattery of area in 1540 and began colonizing in 1598 (twen- imitation by countless developers. ty-two years before the Mayflower Pilgrims) with It may be that one of the reasons archi- an architecture somewhat similar to the Indian tects are so driven toward surface originality is pueblos based on the traditional Mediterranean that their industry compels them to uniformity courtyard house - masonry, flat-roofed, with small throughout the rest of a building. Caught between general-purpose rooms added casually. the rigid requirements of building codes, the The Indians soon adopted several Spanish standard solutions of professional books such as innovations. They replaced puddled adobe with Architectural Graphic Standards, and the standard wood-formed adobe bricks laced with straw. They products of Sweets Catalog, there is not much room replaced smoky open fires in the pueblo rooms with for creativity, so architects grab what they can. the shapely adobe corner fireplace called a fogon, This is a gain and a loss for quality in buildings. and they began whitewashing interior walls. Outside, The worst are less bad because of having to meet they added the Spanish beehive oven, the horno, fairly intelligent standards. But the best are less beloved of tourist photographers. Meanwhile the innovative as a whole, and they are less likely to Spanish, imitating the Indians, often opened their be finely adapted, or adaptable, to their unique courtyard houses into L- and U-shapes facing south circumstances. Instead of learning from each other, and southeast. The colonial capital in Santa Fe was such “catalog architecture” buildings are guided so isolated that not much further influence came by a standard homogenized pool of building lore from Europe. The nearest Spanish city was thirty which is no longer regional and often not even days’ travel to the south, and trade caravans only Etc. Vernacular, 02/16 5: Reading national, but world-encompassing, inescapable and came once every three years. Two centuries went by. unchallengeable. The third force, Yankees, started arriving How else can we explain the survival from on the Santa Fe Trail after 1821 and brought with decade to decade of the aluminum-frame sliding them a frontier vernacular and an accelerated pace glass door? It seems to serve simultaneously as door, of change. By 1850 local sawmills were making window, and wall, but it’s terrible at all three. As a milled lumber, doors, and windows. Soon came door it’s fiddly and awkward to open, and dangerous, glass and manufactured metal hardware. After 1879 since it has the vicious property of looking the same the Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe railroad brought when open or closed, and people walk smack into in even more goods and Anglos (the regional the glass. As a window it reveals too much in both name for non-Spanish whites). They imported the

65 SANTE FE STYLE. America’s oldest public building, the adobe palace of the Governors (1610) on the Sante Fe plaza, was the first expression of the city’s determinations to redesign itself as a tourist town. One of the devisers of the architectural Indian-Spainish-Anlgo amalgam called Sante Fe Style was archeologist Jesse Nusbaum. From 1909 to 1913 he remodeled the portal of the palace backward psat its Victorian and Territo- rial periods to an imaginary colonial look. The result was one of four or five New Mexico buildings most influential as a model for thousands of Sante Fe style buildings.

(Top Left) ca. 1868 - Spanish colonial governor Don Pedro de Peralta had the “palacio real” (royal palace) built in the new capital of Santa Fe in 1610 as a rude fort and administrative headquarters. From 1680 to 1692, following the Pueblo Revolt, Tewa and Tano Indians occupied the building, converting it to a multi-story pueblo until the Spanish recaptured it. Americans seized the building from Mexico in 1846 and housed the Territorial Governor there for decades. Sawn lumber was showed off in the portal columns.

(Second) 1882 - Always approaching a ruinous state ever since it was built, the Palace was renovated in 1877 with a metal roof and a fancy balustrade on the portal. Decoration on the near end included an elaborate brick cornice and stucco painted to look like stone. The interior was still a mess in 1878 when Governor Lew Wallace moved in. He wrote of his writing room: “The walls were grimy, the undressed boards of the floor rested flat upon the ground, the cedar rafters, rain-stained as those in the dining hall of Cedric the Saxon, and overweighted by tons and tons of mud composing the roof, had the threatening downward curvature of a shipmate’s cutlass. Nevertheless, in that cavern- ous chamber I wrote the eigth and last book of Ben-Hur.”

(Third) 1913 - In 1909 the Palace was turned over to the brand new Museum of New Mexico, and its first employee, Jesse Nusbaum, set about rebuilding the portal. In one of the old adobe walls he found embedded a round wood column and corbel, which he took as a pattern for the new columns. Like most Santa Fe style buildings, the Palace portal only looks like adobe. As shown in this photo by Nusbaum, he built for the ages with stuccoed brick.

(Bottom) 1991 - For nearly a century now the remodeled Palace of the Governors has been one of the major attractions in Santa Fe, with its excellent museum inside and its daily market of jewelry offered by local Indians on colorful blankets under the portal. Tradition is what you make it. That is, most traditions were once someone’s bright idea what was successful enough to persist long enough for people to forget that it was once someone’s bright idea. region’s first architectural style - a derivative of Rapp was identified as a perfect example of the new Greek Revival known today as the Territorial style, style. It was a romanticized copy of the Spanish featuring rudimentary ornamentation such as mission church at Acoma Pueblo. pediments over doorways and decorative brick atop Quickly a number of public buildings on adobe walls. Santa Fe’s plaza were built or rebuilt in the new While the Anglos were adopting some Pueblo-Spanish-Anglo blend. They had pueblo Spanish practices such as portales - covered set-back upper rooms and dramatic vigas (ceiling walkways in front of commercial buildings - the log ends protruding from exterior walls). They traditional Spanish buildings were becoming had Spanish portales with exaggerated corbeled thoroughly hybridized. They remained one-story, columns, mission-style towers and balconies, and small-roomed, low to the ground, and casually pseudo-Spanish tiled floors and decoration. Hidden additive, but they began to acquire pitched roofs, inside were the Anglo construction and services. porches, and specialized rooms. Instead of show- The buildings looked massive, apparently crafted of ing their back to the street and facing inward on adobe soft-sculpted by hands and weather, but most courtyards, they turned around to face the street, were actually stucco on brick or wood frame. and new Spanish buildings were set back from It was a brilliant concoction. Soundly the street with an Anglo-style front yard. The researched, ably carried through, fiercely enforced, gradual specialization of rooms was complete when the new style turned Santa Fe into America’s most plumbing arrived in the 1920s and established once coherent old city. The style responded perfectly to and for all which room was the kitchen. the romantic cherishing of vernacular simplicity that Good from the money economy came arrived in America with Ruskin-Morris-inspired Arts slowly to the self-sufficient Pueblo Indians but and Crafts movement, and it fed on later infusions eventually overwhelmed them. Since the need for of romanticism that came with the artists’ colonies defense was reduced under colonial protection, of the 1920s and hippies in the 1960s (I was in that ground-level doorways began to appear. Some group). Dominant Santa Fe style architects such as families began to move away from the massive John Gaw Meem were able to stave off Modernism “apartment” blocks to live closer to their crops and by claiming that their style incorporated Modernist flocks. Glass windows replaced the old tiny windows principles. “Some old forms,” he argued, “are so of selenite (crystallized gypsum), and stovepipe honest, so completely logical and native to the envi- replaced adobe chimneys. Adobe walls gradually ronment that one finds - to one’s delight and surprise gave over to stone or, later, concrete block. Leaky - that modern problems can be solved, and are best flat roofs - no surprise - were covered with low solved by [the] use of forms based on tradition.” pitched roofs. Steadily since the 1950s the Indians What about the tourists? In a 1912 speech have dispersed into subdivision-style housing, the archaeologist/booster Sylvanus Morley had much of it funded and designed (often obtusely) proclaimed: by the US government. Through it all, they suc- ceeded in maintaining their spiritual practices and None of us may live to see the day, but cultural identity. sometime in the future there will surely At the very time the Indians were buying come a generation of Santa Feans who will into Anglo convenience for housing, the Anglos not be eternally sleeping at the switch; were heading the opposite direction. In 1912 Santa but who will realize the possibilities of a Fe realized it was facing a crisis. Bypassed by the Glorified Adobe City, and reap the golden railroad, it was steadily losing population. The only harvest therefrom. Then, and not until hope lay in attracting tourists, and tourists were then, will Santa Fe enter upon the epoch of flocking to see the pueblos and Spanish colonial increased and ever increasing prosperity, buildings such as the old mission churches. Led by which is hers by right of every association, former easterners - archaeologists Edgar Hewett, historic, geographic, and climatic. Etc. Vernacular, 02/16 5: Reading Sylvanus Morley, and Jesse Nusbaum, and the artist Carlos Vierra - the Santa Fe Planning Board began In 1992, newspapers reported, “Santa Fe, the search for a “Santa Fe style” that would evoke NM, bumped San Francisco from the top spot in visibly the town’s considerable history. It had to be Conde Nast Traveler’s annual Readers Choice poll as different from the newly successful Mission Revival the best travel destination in the world.” A home-de- style in California. Jesse Nusbaum and Carlos Vierra cor style book titled Santa Fe Style was a national made extensive photographic surveys of pueblo and bestseller. All through the 1980s, “Santa Fe” shops vernacular Spanish buildings and assembled them and restaurants permeated America’s malls and into an influential exhibition. An idiosyncratic airports and even invaded Europe. The galleries of warehouse in Colorado by architect Isaac Hamilton tiny Santa Fe became America’s third-largest market

67 The core structures of Zuni pueblo dispersed as the need for defense diminished and wheeled vehicles made streets useful. These maps by Victor Mendeleff, Alfred Kroeber, and Perry Borchers are reprinted from the excellent paper, “Contemporary Zuni Architecture and Society,” by T. J. Ferguson, Barbara J. Mills, and Calbert Seciwa in Pueblo Style and Regional Architecture (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1990), pp. 103-121. North is up. I have added lines to show the angle of view in the photo series.

“CONTINUAL FLOW, continual change, continual transformation,” said cultural historian Rina Swentzel, describing her own Pueblo village of Santa Clara in this century. The best documented transformation was at ZUNI PUEBLO, west of Albuquerque, New Mexico. For all the violent physical change, Zuni culture and traditions remain remarkably intact. The enormous changes evident in these photos were wrought piecemeal, family by family.

1873 - By the time of this photograph the Zuni Pueblo was renowned for being five stories high, but it had been perhaps seven stories high in the early 19th century. The village was founded about 1400AD. When the ladders were drawn up, the complex of several hundred rooms became a fortress against raids by Navajos and Apaches. New rooms were added casually to the top of the structure, turning former roofs into floors and terraces. The terraces were public walkways and the site of family activ- ities such as food preparation. These photos were taken from atop the Brain Kiva, still in use, and the Big Plaza in the foreground continutes to serve ceremonial occasions such as the Shalako celebration in mid-winter.

1882 - A party of visiting whites entertainment for the Zunis. Ground-level doorways are beginning to appear.

1895 - Sash windows brighten interiors, and the coming of wagons starts to open up the village with streets.

1899 - Sandstone masonry and a higher ceiling probably accompanied the foreground building being used for the masked giant Shalako dancers.

1912 - More windows, more doors, higher ceilings.

1945 - Even newer masonry, soon to be followed by pitched roofs.

1992 - stone buildings with pitched roofs ca. 1900 and 1978 - Zuni house interiors changed as radically as the exteriors. The 1900 living room shows whitewashed walls, a hooded fireplace, ledge for seating and shelving, a skylight, and kerosene lamp (right). A hooded fireplace still dominates the 1978 living room, where Francine Laate is about to make bread and G. Olaweon and Tom Awalate chat on the sofa.

(Bottom Triptych) WHOSE FIREPLACE is it? Anglos call it a “kiva fireplace” and put several in every Santa Fe style building, carefully burning pinon firewood upright in the approved local manner. The name shows that Indians are considered chic and Spanish not-so-chic, because the built-in corner fireplace is in fact Spanish and is called a fogon. The Indians picked it up from the Spanish colonists. They never did put any in the kivas (ceremonial clan rooms) - that would have been too much of a cultural trespass.

(Bottom Left) 1934 - At Acoma Pueblo (west of Albuquerque), the house of Indian Santana Sanchez radiates the textured dry austerity that became the Santa Fe aesthetic, but his fogon is highly functional - cooking food, hearing the small room, providing a convenient shelf, and staying out of the way of traffic in the corner. The practice of hanging working stuff on the walls - Shaker-fashion - was not adopted by Santa Fe style.

(Bottom Center) ca. 1935 - The house of artist Randall Davey in Santa Fe exhibited the growing inventory of Santa Fe style decor items, including an added-on kiva fireplace. The building originally was a sawmill, built in 1847 by the US Army. In 1935 Davey had lived there for fifteen years.

(Bottom Right) 1985 - An illustration from the nationally influential book Santa Fe Style (1986) shows a recent prestigious second home outside of Santa Fe. The tiled floor, Taos drum, leather chair, and antlered skull (made iconic by local artist Georgia O’Keeffe) have joined the decor canon. By now the room is designed around the kiva fireplace. IMITATION RESHAPES ORIGINAL. The massive adobe Spanish mission church (1630s) at Acoma Pueblo is a true Spanish-Indian hybrid and one of the most impressive buildings in the Southwest (left). By the late 19th century, the bell towers were so eroded that no one knew how they originally looked. One architect (Rapp) guessed at their appearance in a series of Santa Fe style imitations of the building (above). Then another architect (Meem) restored the original church so that it matched Rapp’s imitations. San Esteban was a prodigious 17th century undertaking. The largest of all Spanish mission churches in the region, it served the most remote population - a village on top of a sheer-sided 400-foot mesa. There is no water, no trees, no dirt. The church is 150 feet long inside, 33 feet wide, 50 feet high, with walls 10 feet thick. Its esti- mated 20,000 tons of adobe and stone (not counting the necessary water) had to be carried up the mesa on a steep trail. The 40-foot roof beams, tradition insists, were borne by hand from mountains 20 miles away. Indians were never good slaves. It must have been either faith or the joy of doing something really impossible and spectacular.

1900 - The church of San Esteban at Acoma was begun by Fray Juan Ramirez after his arrival as the mission padre in 1629. The construction took ten years.

ca. 1915 - An attempt at restoration in 1902 produced blocky bell towers. Earlier known restorations occurred in 1710 (when the bells date from) and 1810. The loggia in the foreground is part of the convent attached to the church.

ca. 1940 - A group of Anglo preservationists called the Society for the Restoration and Preservation of New Mexico Mission Churches raised money to restore the church and put Santa Fe architect John Gaw Meem in charge of the project. The work ran from 1924 to 1930, employing Acoma labor. For structural as well as aesthetic reasons Meem designed a slight batter (slope) in the bell tower walls, which were rebuilt of stone set in adobe mortar.

1992 - In any weather (I was there in bracing snow flumes), a visit to the mesa citadel of Acoma is one of the great Southwestern experience, always climaxed by the Acoma guides with a visit to the historic church.

70 1908 - It was all a client’s idea, actually. Colorado businessman C. M. Schenk, president of the Colorado Supply Company, asked his architect to use the church at Acoma as the model for a warehouse at the company’s mining camp at Morley, Colorado. The architect was Isaac Hamilton Rapp, who had done strictly conventional brick and stone buildings up to that point. He made a stab at what the San Estaban bell towers might once have looked like and reversed the position of the convent loggia so the towers would draw the eye of passing train passengers toward an arroyo to the right. The archaeologist Sylvanus Morley was in charge of an exhibit to be called “New-Old Santa Fe” at the Palace of the Governors. On September 20, 1912, he wrote to Rapp:

Quite by accident, there has fallen into my hands a picture of the Colorado Supply Co.’s store at Morley, Colorado, designed by you. The thing is so absolutely in the spirit of “The Santa Fe Style” that I am taking this liberty of asking you to allow us to exhibit the original drawings, maps, elevations, etc. of this structure at our coming exhibition… The extension of the native architecture to all kinds of buildings is, I believe, possible; and your success at adapting an old church to the highly specialized needs of a commercial house confirms me in my belief.” [Carl D. Sheppard, Creator of the Santa Fe Style (Univ. of NM, 1988), p. 77]

Rapp sent a watercolor, and the exhibit was a huge success. The building itself, kernel of so many others, was later demolished.

1915 - The New Mexico Building at the Panama-California Exposition in San Diego, designed by Rapp, was a sensation. So was the Painted Desert Exhibit - five acres of cliff ruins, Navaho hogans, and pueblos - assembled by Edgar Hewett’s New Mexico Museum, which was learning ever more about attracting and educating tourists. (San Die- gans liked Rapp’s stucco-on-wood-frame building so much that they kept it, and it is there still, much remodeled.)

ca. 1919 - Of course Rapp got the commission to build the Fine Arts Museum of New Mexico (1916) in Santa Fe. It is a beautifully designed building, inside and out - its details an encyclopedia of contemporary research on Spanish and pueblo buildings. Santa Fe style had arrived. A complete exemplar was in place. Rapp had refined his bell towers through three iterations. Ten years later John Gaw Meem would add one more back at Acoma.

1991 - Rapp’s third copy of the Acoma church is safe from demolition or remodeling. Like the Palace of the Gover- nors portal across the street on Santa Fe’s plaza, the Fine Arts Museum is built of brick and stucco and is so revered only a terrorist would dare change it.

71 for art, following New York and Los Angeles. Com- box and expected to add on,” says Massachusetts mercializing vernacular had turned adobe into gold. builder John Abrams. “It’s very easy to take those But native adaptivity got left behind when broad expanses of roof and put something into them vernacular form was translated into “vernacular” - put in a dormer, have another roof come off for an style. Real adobe was inherently fluid, the opposite ell. It’s even easier to add onto the gable end, because of stuccoed wood frame or concrete block. Chris you don’t have to connect to the roofs. Most modern Wilson summarizes the systemic-loss: “It was the buildings have their roofs much more broken up.” change from an ad-hoc, open-ended, accretion form The was the standard cheap New to formal designs conceived completely before the England house from 1750 to 1850, spreading into building is built; from multipurpose spaces and New York and the Great Lakes states with a Greek widely shared design and construction knowledge Revival skin but the same essential floor plan. After to specialized rooms and uses in buildings and the decades of by Victorian and other styles, it specialized knowledge of professional architects suddenly re-emerged on a national scale. An editor and builders.” Specialized knowledge distances of Architectural Forum wrote in 1949, “Twentieth buildings from users. Specialized space hinder Century America’s most popular house design, future flexibility. Santa Fe style seized all that was now scattered throughout the entire country, is picturesque in the local vernacular traditions and the Cape Cod Cottage.”Starting in the 1920s, a threw away much that was wise. Massachusetts architect named Royal Barry Wills Popularity over time, such as Santa Fe revived the low-cost Cape Cod house and found style has achieved, is something worth exploring. ready customers during the Depression. With larger What makes some building forms proliferate more windows all around and dormers upstairs for more widely than others? The question has also been room, the design flourished through the 1930s and raised in biology, where it is termed “hyperdiver- 1940s and then took off in the housing boom after sity.” What makes creatures such as ants, rodents, World War II. “That’s when the Cape became the and orchids so common and variable? It might be most widely built house in the world,” says Schuler. worth examining the attractions of three house “Its enduring quality is its simplicity, attractiveness types that became hyperdiverse in this century and its basic integrity.” — Cap Cods, bungalows, and mobile homes. Does What are the traits, then, that selection their extended popularity say anything about what preferred? The Cape is small, solid, simple, cheap, current vernacular evolution selects for? growable, and carries a big roof. It looks respectable Children draw houses as unpreventably but stands apart from fashion, secure in the conser- as they draw faces. No matter where they actually vatism of its Yankee vernacular background. live, they nearly all draw the same house - one If the Cape Cod house remained surpris- story, door in the middle, two windows to each side, ingly true to type, a house form which became pitched roof seen from the front, a central chimney known for its diversity was the bungalow. It all with a swirl of smoke, and an inviting path up to began with a common epiphany. You’re in your the door. The classic Cape Cod house. It is so simple, third week at some rude holiday cabin, luxuriating rudimentary, austere, and yet practical that it in its Spartan simplicity, its raw wood and stone, its fulfills the mythic image of house. casual access to the outdoors, and you realize you’re In its original profusion in coastal Mas- shocking happy. “This is so great,” you sigh, “why sachusetts (including Cape Cod) the house was don’t we live like this all the time?” built by people dealing with very little money and Bungalows came to England originally as a lot of wind. Its three major downstairs rooms vacation cottages in the late 19th century, a north- and upstairs garret huddled around the massive ern-summer translation of what had become the heat-storing central chimney serving multiple fire- standard rural house for British colonial officials places. The house hunkered low to the ground with in India (hence the exotic name). Hence also the shingled or clapboarded walls and narrow eaves. name of its broad porch - verandah. The most It was so compact and solidly built of tim- distinctive feature of a bungalow, its low-pitched ber-frame that Cape Cods frequently were dragged wide roof extending out over the verandah, was on skids from site to site. “The most distinctive originally designed to deflect tropical rains and feature of the Cape Cod house is the roof,” writes welcome tropical breezes. In Britain and later in Stanley Schuler in The Cape Cod House. It dominated America it served a different function, reconnecting the house, medium-pitched - 8 to 12 inches to the the inhabitants to the outdoors. In both countries, horizontal foot (35 degrees to 45 degrees) - devoid quantities of bungalows were built for the growing of interruption or ornament. The roof’s simplicity middle class, which had acquired money and leisure made it leak-free, cheap to build and maintain, and enough for a rustic second home. Soon the same

Reading 5: 02/16 Vernacular, Etc. easy to add to. “Everyone started with the Cape Cod design was discovered to serve admirably on small

72 city lots in the new streetcar suburbs with their emphasis on detailed craftmanship continues to new customer - small nuclear family, no servants, reward the eye and fend off the repairman. When not much cash, wants a yard. they were built, bungalows were referred to as “the In America after the turn of the century, least house for the most money,” but it was a good the bungalow came to represent a whole philosophy investment, evidently. that was best expressed in Gustav Stickley’s influen- If, on the other hand, you want the most tial magazine, The Craftsman (1901-1916). Bungalow house for the least money, a mobile home is what chronicler Anthony King writes that the magazine, you get. Mobile homes typically cost a fourth to “fusing architecture with social reform, was devoted a half of what comparable site-built houses cost. to the development, both in theory and practice, That’s why 10 percent of all houses in America of the three main principles of the Arts and Crafts are mobile homes, housing 12.5 million people. In philosophy - simplicity, harmony with nature, and 1985, mobile homes comprised one-fifth of all new the promotion of craftsmanship. The bungalow houses sold in the US, and two-thirds of all new was to become the incarnation of all three.” The low-cost single-family houses. Polite culture only physical expression of this philosophy reached its notices them after a tornado or hurricane tears pinnacle in the work of California architects Greene up a few, but in the words of the authoritative Field and Greene, whose sometimes extravagant bunga- Guide to American Houses they are the “dominant folk lows in Pasadena (1904-1909) are venerated to this house of contemporary America.” day. The combination of an appealing philosophy, This tenth of all US housing has only one high-style fame with Greene and Greene, and the book about it, fortunately a good one. Allan Wallis’s quick-and-cheap needs of new subdivisions made Wheel Estate begins, “The mobile home may well the “California” bungalow the standard expansion be the single most significant and unique housing housing of the 1910s and 1920s. Sears & Roebuck innovation in twentieth-century America. No other sold them by mail order. Architectural historians innovation addressing the spectrum of housing regard them as the direct parent of the ranch house, activities - from construction, tenure, and com- which spread bungalow horizontally even broader munity structure to design - has been more widely on the bigger lots of the automobile suburbs of the adopted nor, simultaneously, more widely vilified.” 1940s and 1950s. They began as travel trailers in the 1920s, creatures Bungalow scholar Clay Lancaster claims of the American highways. They grew gradually that the bungalow let America escape from the in size till they became “house trailers” used for dead weight of Victorian and Queen Anne style: temporary postwar housing, sometimes as long as 55 feet, but still only eight feet wide. One innovator, The bungalow vogue made new and Elmer Frey, invented the term “mobile home” and definite contributions to the evolution the form that would live up to it, the “ten-wide” - a of home planning in the direction of ten-foot-wide real house that would usually travel informality and unpretentiousness, use of only once, from the factory to the permanent site. common, natural materials, integration of For the first time there was room for a corridor house and landscape setting, simplification inside and thus private rooms. By 1960 nearly all of design that became closely allied to mobile homes sold were ten-wides, and twelve- practical requirements, and concentration wides were starting to appear. on livability… The American house during A mobile home is an instant house. You the bungalow period became lighter in wheel it in one day, hook up to the local utilities, construction, more flexible and open of and you’re home. Everything works - plumbing, plan, and less fussy in its furnishings. wiring, heating. It was all assembled in one smooth operation at a factory out of light wood frame on The bungalow, in other words, was an a steel chassis, clad with aluminum sheeting. The exceptional teacher. roof of white-enameled metal reflects the sun and Etc. Vernacular, 02/16 5: Reading People who live in those old bungalows sheds rain better than most site-built roofs. Half of today say there’s not much occasion to remodel all mobile homes are in specialized parks, among or demolish them because they work so well as the last real communities in America, drawn is. They’re a little cramped and dark, but the together in part by physical closeness, in part by open layout of rooms with space-saving built-in the need for political solidarity against enemies. benches and inglenooks keeps them comfortable. Mobile homes are always being attacked. By (Bungalows were the first houses in America with aesthetics for their appearance. By bigots for hous- a spacious “living room,” a clever kitchen, and a ing the “wrong” people. By the construction indus- porch built in.) The big overhanging roof protects try for “unfair” competition. By local government the whole structure from rain and sun. The for paying insufficient taxes. (In fact, mobile-home

73 (Top) 1959 - CAPE COD HOUSE. In fact on Cape Cod (North Truro), this late- 18th-century Cape has grown a sequenced pair of kitchen ells, flagged by the narrow stove chimneys. (“Ell” as in one limb of an “L”.) Until the mid- 20th century, kitchens were considered noisome necessities to be pushed as far away as conveniently possible. Apart from the formally symmetrical front, windows appear to have been added as needed.

(Second) BUNGALOWS were mass-marketed by lumber companies (“From the Forest to You”) as well as individually crafted to a high level of sophis- tication by architects such as Greene and Greene (see page 68). In the judgment of architectural historians, “The bungalow is one of the most successful vernacular houses ever built. It has been adapted for all regions and all climates. It was built in clusters, in rows, and as single houses, finished in several aesthetics, and scaled up and down both as to size and cost.” [Jan Jennings, Herbert Gottfried, American Vernacular Interior Architecture 1870-1940 (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1988), p. 342.]

1920 - At the South Florida Fair in Tampa, a model bungalow promises a quick ride on Florida’s real estate boom - “Completed in 7 ½ Days With 5 Men.”

(Third) 1993 - TRAILERS, because of their mobility, lead surprisingly long lives. You can get an old one cheap, haul it somewhere rural where regulations aren’t too strict, and start a homestead. The sequence here, near Willits, California, was started with the left hand trailer in 1980. The one in back came in 1982, and then the common room joined them. The day I visited, the place felt spacious and pleasant, full of books and sunlight.

(Fourth, Bottom) Assembling a mobile home compound has several advan- tages over just getting a bigger (double-wide) home. It costs less to start; it has better natural lighting; you can adapt better to family, financial, and site circumstances; and you get a nice enclosed courtyard after a while. This drawing of a typical sequence is by Allan D. Wallis.

(Below) 1991 - MOBILE OFFICES, just bare shells with a few windows and rudimentary services, are perhaps the most flexible and widely used of contemporary Low Road buildings. You see them used as film studios, classrooms, government offices, and on-site construction offices, as here on King Street in London. I confess that I looked at the highrise being built and wondered, “Why bother? Why not just keep stacking these things?”

74 park operators usually provide services such as It should be no surprise that Cape Cods, sewage, water, garbage, and thoroughfares that bungalows, and mobile homes are all tiny. Small government is spared paying for.) Many counties buildings are dramatically cheaper to build and simply outlaw mobile homes. In 1970 the federal to maintain. So long as people of modest means government recognized that most of the nation’s outnumber the rich, small will always win. Also, low-cost housing was in mobile homes, and it set out small invites the metamorphosis of growth. Only to help the industry, but it messed up. HUD (Housing bungalows, because of their low overhanging roofs and Urban Development) came up with such a bur- and tight city lots, discouraged growth and change. densome set of regulations that small manufactur- But bungalows were the most hyperdiverse of the ers were driven out of business. Allan Wallis points three because of the quality of their legend. Pop- out that “the smaller manufacturers, who needed a ular songs were written about bungalows; whole distinctive product to compete, were often a source magazines pushed their philosophy of informal of design innovation.” A highly creative industry naturalness. More than either Cape Cods or mobile was made stodgy by the strictures of approval. homes, bungalows spread a pattern language - big But that hasn’t yet stifled the creativity homey living room with prominent fireplace, of mobile-home dwellers. The low initial cost and conveniences and furniture built in, connection to severe boxiness of mobile homes invites elabora- the outdoors, horizontally. tion. Full-length shed roofs are added, first as a The difference between style and form is kind of porch, often later closed in to become new the difference between a statement and a language. interior space. The need for storage, acute in mobile An architectural statement is limited to a few homes, customarily leads to the purchase of a “Tuff stylistic words and depends on originality for its Shed” or other small metal structure. Sometimes, impact, whereas a vernacular form unleashes the in unregulated rural areas, a whole normal house power of a whole, tested grammar. Builders of is built around the “seed” of a mobile home. More would-be popular buildings do better when they often, additional mobile homes are added to form learn from folklore than when they ape the elite. As an informal compound, well daylit and loosely for the elite: what might be accomplished with their adaptive. Wallis writes, “The factory-built mobile abundant intelligence and creativity if architects home together with its site-built modifications rep- really studied the process and history of vernacular resents an extension of two vernacular traditions, designs and applied that lore in innovative work? one industrial and the other user-based. In no We might get buildings that could be as original as small part the success of the mobile home as a form needed, but still would feel profoundly familiar and of industrialized housing must be attributed to the right, and would invite change. fact that it readily permits user modification.” It would be a relief after all those smugly Wallis goes further. He quotes John decorous buildings that “refer to” stylistic details Kouwenhoven on the attributes of American ver- of one vernacular tradition or another and miss the nacular design - “resilient, adaptable, simple, and integrated lore. Of all buildings they are the most unceremonious” - and concludes that mobile homes maddeningly perverse. They look like they should express a native energy, an “aesthetic of process.” work, and don’t. Mobile homes are openly make-do, unfinished. They embody the vitality and unembarrassed lack of dignity that J. B. Jackson sees enlivening the Hacking clothing: American future. They demonstrate vividly that however much buildings may be sold as a product, An interview with Susan they are lived as a process. So, what do the successes of Cape Cods, bun- Spencer galows, and mobile homes tell about the vernacular NATALIE MACIW process in industrial times? For one thing, vernac- Etc. Vernacular, 02/16 5: Reading ular is no longer regional, except in detail. (Mobile Natalie Maciw: How would Tau Meta Tau homes in really hot climates, for example, often grow Physica work for its users? an extra roof to ventilate away the radiant heat from Susan Spencer: The TauMeta program the sun. In cold climates, pitched roofs are added to is still under development, it is not a finished tool. shed snow.) Successful building forms are broadcast The user interface will allow patternmakers to nationally, driven by the national market economy. select from libraries of patterns, create new, or Builders and developers imitate the most successful modify existing patterns, and generate these pat- of their competition. That is how buildings learn terns with a selected client’s body measurements from each other in this century. Whatever buyers or other specifications. There are new tools being flock to will proliferate. What do they flock to? developed that focus on 3D methods, but I believe

75 that this sacrifices control of the pattern. 3D and determine the future of the industry that the methods are best used to initially develop an idea, software serves. Participation in an open source and at the end of the process check the results of a community lends authority to the individual and pattern and present the final pattern in spectacular provides a channel to influence the marketplace. ways, but letting the software determine details Fashion is a culture where the contribution of the during actual pattern development means that the individual is valued. Tools and communities that designer or patternmaker is giving up control and contribute to this culture increase the relevance the results may not be what was desired. TauMeta of fashion and the vitality of the industry. It makes will utilize the best aspects of 2D and 3D methods sense to have flexible and accessible open source to develop patterns. tools for the fashion industry.

NM: What were your reasons for initiating NM: Is the program primarily intended to be the Tau Meta Tau Physica project? a business or facilitate businesses, or is it designed SS: There are several excellent pattern- for hobbyists? making software packages available, but the ones SS: The TauMeta software is intended to be I could afford did not appear to allow the user free as in “free access to modify the code” and free to go deep enough into patternmaking to meet as in “free beer.” It is intended to give patternmak- my creative needs. There isn’t any existing open ers complete and accurate control of every aspect source patternmaking software that I’m aware of, of the pattern. This granularity should enable so I began to create my own. I decided to rethink working with extremely creative forms and also how patterns were generated so that I could have provide easy generation of patterns with excellent complete control of the output. I wanted to create fit regardless of whether the pattern is unusual or patterns in an open data format to enable the pat- conventional. The focus is to assist patternmakers terns to be usable by anyone. Craftsmen, artists and with artistic creations. manufacturers should be able to interact without Currently the patterns are home-sewist needing to match up the software packages they use. type patterns with seam allowances and grainlines. I am a proponent of the open source and But there will be a set of options to choose which open data movements for programming, govern- type of pattern to generate. Hobbyists will hopefully ment, fashion and just about everything. In our be an important user base. Someone who doesn’t technology-driven world, we need access to tools make patterns professionally should be able to which are modifiable and customizable to leverage understand it and use its full range of functions. It our talents in performing our work and creating our would be nice if TauMeta could be modified to be art. If all tools are produced, designed and patented used by other communities outside of the fashion by a few large corporations, and user customization industry. Perhaps woodworking or sheet metal work. is prohibited, then specific needs of the market I’ve played with generating a pattern for the Trajan may get overlooked. The marketplace of goods font’s letter A as described in David Lance Goines’ and services produced by those tools may become book A Constructed Roman Alphabet,(www.goines.net/ unrepresentative of the products which could be acra_book/acra_content/files/index.html). produced by the talents of the design community. Regarding the fashion industry, it makes NM: Do you think it is important to introduce sense to have open source tools to design and open source tools to the fashion industry? Could such create fashion-based products. The velocity of the tools create change in the industry? Who stands to evolution of fashion product is based upon the benefit? Does anyone stand to lose out? re-use of existing ideas, especially ideas taken from SS: Tools define the workflow in any the street. Creative tools should allow a designer, industry. And they can greatly affect profits. patternmaker or artist to express their ideas, cus- Proprietary patternmaking tools have been around tomize their product, store their work, and allow for a long time and reflect common needs of the collaboration and communication on their terms. If commercial garment industry. The business model, the creative person’s tools are defined by the needs workflow and assumptions built into proprietary of entities that are not similar to them, then the software may not be appropriate for all businesses tool doesn’t serve that person well. Open source or applications. software typically invites participation by the users The garment industry is huge. The and encourages the development of communities beneficiaries of using open source tools in the to define new requirements for the software. The fashion industry will primarily be the independent users become the producers of the tools. Through designer or patternmaker, the small or regional this process the behavior and voice of open businesses, the businesses for which proprietary

Reading 5: 02/16 Vernacular, Etc. source communities can indicate the direction software has been a bad or marginal fit.

76 Here are a few examples of how open advantage of the characteristics of the people who source tools could benefit the fashion industry: use it or are served by it. Open source software is Design tools can be written for improved collabora- customizable so that individual or group character- tion between design teams, and further modified to istics and local competencies can be reflected in the meet the needs of specific projects between teams, business. If a local community is known for specific schools, print or web magazines, etc. They could be fabrics or sewing techniques then these should be written to easily input fabric characteristics, colour, explicitly incorporated into the design tools. and other building blocks of fashion, so that what someone sees on the street today they could add NM: Is open source a growing trend in the to their library of design bits and pieces tonight. fashion industry, or is your project a one-off? The tools could be written to assist in determining SS: Open source has always been a silent where the strengths of a design or manufacturing partner in the fashion industry. There are some team lies, and to help restructure to take advantage who work towards copyright restriction, but I must of these strengths. The point is that these tools respectfully disagree with this approach. I believe should be created for designers or patternmakers to that protection for a product is actually a restriction develop products their own way. The essence of open on the industry. For example, Diane von Furstenburg source software is that it can be customized and combined the previously existing wrap-around dress modified for the needs of the users. The open source and the simplified dress silhouette of the late 1960s community allows everyone to share their findings and early 1970s with the amazing new knit textiles of and developments, and get ideas from others. the mid 1970s to achieve her gloriously fashion-break- I don’t see anyone losing as a result of ing wrap dress. She did not develop this dress in introducing open source tools into the fashion a bubble, nor did she have to deal with another industry. The current proprietary software man- designer owning the copyright for wrap-around ufacturers will always be around. I don’t see open dresses, or for usage of a particular color or pattern in source fashion tools displacing the big players, I see combination with the dress, or for a particular slope them enabling new players into the marketplace on the neckline, nor for having a particular sleeve and creating new communities that will put new and cuff and collar, nor for hemming and lining and ideas into the fashion world. seam finishing techniques, nor for any other design feature that existed in other garments before they NM: Pattern cutting seems to suit open existed in her dress. She had open source access to source in the sense that it can be made digital — do the design elements which her artistic talent com- you see any way of implementing open source prin- bined into a fashion hit and personal global career cipals into the more physical aspects of the fashion success. There is nothing in her garment that did not industry? How? previously exist in other garments. Yet, the world SS: Open source software is hackable by knows the name Diane von Furstenberg. This is the definition. Hacking into it to create your own tools lesson of open source in the fashion industry. Fashion and make adjustments helps you do what you do is a constant recycling of existing design elements best, leverages your talents, lets you develop your combined with traditional and emergent textiles to own workflow. Fashion creativity, which includes generate fresh new product and art. unique fit and ease, could be extended past the In the United States, a copyright is auto- design, patternmaking and sample phases into the matically applied to garment patterns without the manufacturing and distribution phase. Once you patternmaker having to apply for the copyright. embrace doing things for yourself, and understand The copyright does not extend to the design or how something works on your own terms, and then design elements the pattern was based upon. Auto- change it to fit your needs, you own the process and matic copyrights on patterns don’t appear to have that field of endeavor. It’s an empowering feeling, affected the fashion industry very much! and it can make you see the world with different The TauMeta project in the fashion indus- Etc. Vernacular, 02/16 5: Reading eyes. After that, you may want to change your try is a reflection of the need for open source tools entire approach to fashion. Anything could change. in every industry. As our dependence on technol- There are physical and cultural charac- ogy grows, so does our need to own our own tools. teristics of every societal group around the world. As I see it, the TauMeta project is part of the greater Having access to the most detailed level of pattern trend and is not a stand-alone development. design enables changes to be made to patterns to accommodate these characteristics. NM: What effect do you hope the software These differences can also affect workflow will have on the fashion industry once it is complete? and manufacturing processes. If software works SS: I hope that it enables the entry of only one way, then it can’t be adjusted to take new fashion designers into the industry, that it

77 encourages fashion designers to enjoy patternmak- In the spirit of the fork, there is a lot to be ing and patternmakers to enjoy designing fashion. said about how a pragmatic view on originality and I hope it helps local and regional fashion designers authorship and an embracing of redundancy can and garment manufacturing businesses to bloom make for a culturally rich ecosystem. These ideas as a result of designing to reflect regional identities. are inspiring enough to see how they could also I hope it helps to provide garments to previously work outside the realm of software development. ignored or under-served markets and to help But when it comes to type design, one need not look remove a source of depression for people who are to software development. To see how building upon frustrated by the garment choices available to them existing creations makes typographic sense, one and who have a negative relationship with clothing can look at type design history itself. and fashion. One of the seminal typefaces of post-war On this point, I must express the opinion graphic design is described by its own creator as that most people don’t wear fashion. They wear an improvement upon an existing font. Gill Sans is clothing. Many dislike the clothing they wear considered Britain’s national sans serif, as seen on because it doesn’t fit and it looks awful. They may Penguin books and in the BBC logo. The even reject the fashion industry as being useless was designed by Eric Gill, who described it as an and self-serving and pointless. Yet everyone on the attempt to improve Edward ’s typeface planet wears clothing! made for the London Underground. Though one I hope the TauMeta project can help in could go to great lengths enumerating the differ- its small way to improve access to clothes that fit, ences between the two typefaces, it is the idea that clothes that don’t engender self-loathing and that Gill Sans represents a proposition of improvement go the extra distance to assist in building a healthy over an existing typeface that interests me. outlook and lifestyle. The average person deserves In software, it can be confusing to have to have a better relationship with what they put on many forks of one project existing, because it is prob- their body every day. There may be some who say ably practical to use just one version of the package. that what we wear is not that important. I would Cultural artefacts like typefaces, however, can say to these people that our clothing shouldn’t be more easily exist in an abundance of similar guises, the most important aspect of our lives and our soci- because they coexist. Both the inspiration and the eties, but neither should it be the most consistently inspired can be used by a contemporary designer. humiliating. Access to hackable design patterns Gill Sans can exist comfortably alongside Johnston’s which can be generated with custom measurements typeface, without diminishing from its functionality. could help make a necessary change in our culture. The fork is an addition, rather than a diminishment. As more and more typefaces are becoming From Libre Graphics 2.1 available under various open licenses, a type design culture of the digital fork becomes more and more feasible. Yet for this to happen, type designers Friendlier forks might first need to give themselves permission to ERIC SCHRIJVER modify, to edit instead of re-making, and to tweak instead of reviving. The metaphors we live by are different in each era, and tell us about the social movements shaping the From Libre Graphics 2.3 moment. In the time of Snowden and Zuckerberg, we get our metaphors from . The “fork” is one such concept, originating in this case from Specimen the world of Open Source software development. BY LORAINE FURTER Initially considered a negative occurrence, a fork is when someone creates a new version of an The form of type specimens has varied over time: existing project, taking a different direction from single sheets, postcards, posters, books, and since the original. A new style of Open Source collab- the inception of digital typesetting, the arrival of oration, embodied in the popular code sharing the Internet, and the creation of web fonts, digital platform GitHub (and Git, the system on which it is and web specimens. Since the first known specimen based), encourages forking. On GitHub, collaboration by Erhard Ratdolt in 1486, these documents have starts by creating a fork of a project and adding usually either displayed all the letters of the font changes to this fork. Then one either contributes from A to Z plus the punctuation and other ; these changes back to the original repo (if the used pangrams — sentences containing all the maintainer accepts it), or one goes one’s own way — letters of the alphabet — such as “The quick brown

Reading 5: 02/16 Vernacular, Etc. a fork in the traditional sense. fox jumps over the lazy dog;” or have used “greeking,”

78 false Greek or Latin texts such as the famous lorem Whether to be used for body text or head- ipsum — derived and altered from Cicero’s De finibus lines on a web page, [***] is the right font bonorum et malorum — to be shaped by the typefaces. for any project. Traditionally, collections of type spec- imens proposed a kind of neutral treatment for The search engines of big font directories every font: the same layout, font size, text, etc. This, sort through the names of the fonts, their physical in addition to a sense of exhaustivity — the use of characteristics, whether they have serifs or not, pangrams is representative of that tendency — and width, thickness, popularity, but never through efficiency (one page per font or less) is supposed to their “stories.” And that isn’t the only kind of help comparison of fonts. It suggests a very specific, literature that gets left out. formal approach to typography, and supposes that A digital font is made of programmatic you already have content, naked, that needs to find instructions, visually interpreted and rendered by the perfect shape, the “one.” the interfaces used to create, read and print them. The reason texts in specimens are usually This dimension usually remains in the backstage of uninteresting or even unreadable is because they the computer. aren’t supposed to be read, but rather looked at. Funnily, an exception is when it comes to They are models, wearing the type until they are legal issues. Legally, the creative status of a font is not replaced by the “real content.” Like the contestants so clear, and in a way this is not really the main point in a beauty contest, all the typefaces are forced into of interest of this text. But it is interesting to note the same swimming suits before it is announced: that in US law, fonts are considered as utilitarian “let the most beautiful win!” objects and are thus exempt from copyright restric- Today, since designers mostly use digitized tions. And as computer programs are under copy- and digital fonts, distributed through websites, right, many foundries consider their fonts as such in specimens are usually found online. The tendency order to be subject to the same legal protections. of contemporary web platforms to separate form This is taken very seriously by digital from content (in which the content is stored in a type foundries. One just has to look at their license database and pushed through a template) aligns agreements: in these sections, suddenly, the word perfectly with this aforementioned way of showing font is associated with the word software in every typefaces. We find this approach almost without sentence. Words that disappear once one gets back exception in the foundries’ websites and even more to other sections. in the web font directories, where it is unfortu- Despite the legal importance of code, and nately rare to find something about the (hi)story of even if it is today part of every font’s “body,” little the font: why and how it was made, what were the attention is paid to the code behind fonts. references for the work, etc. In the context of type, using the term The informative text on a font is usually software means considering the fonts as a set of after the following categories: programmatic instructions. Basically, coordinates Family (the name of the typeface) and bézier curve formulas. [Fig 1] Category (Serif, Sans Serif, …) In case you didn’t recognize it, this was the Designer code of the “A.glif” file from the Open font. License Let’s not be afraid of it. If you read it, this Full Language Support code describes the drawing of a classical digital Description/Information font: built as outlines. The points are coordinates I’ve considered making a cut-up out of for the contour of the letter. [Fig 2] different description texts from font directories Technically, the code of every typeface to give a sense of that kind of literature, and try to is public, as they can all be opened in font editing construct the most unspecific text ever written. But software and reveal the position of their points in fact these texts don’t need to be edited to speak and curves. But unlike software, the interest and Etc. Vernacular, 02/16 5: Reading by themselves: originality of a font usually still remains the same: its shape. Even though there is a growing interest [***] is the perfect font for body text and in programmatic fonts, fonts today are hardly ever headlines on a website. Its modern style, designed by writing code, they are instead drawn suited with past characteristics of great in visual interfaces, and in the end it is their visual typefaces, make it highly readable in any form that is read and used. context. The full-circle curves on many Rather than viewing these approaches characters make [***] a great font to separate from fonts, wouldn’t it be nice to consider blend seamlessly with other fonts while all these aspects — the visual aspects, the code and still maintaining it’s [sic]uniqueness. [...] the history of a font — as a whole?

79 Manufactura Independente developed a The F/LOSS approach seems to offer a good tool2 called transpacing, which trans- framework for such a proposition. plants the spacing information from one In his essay Take Care, art critic Anthony font to another. With adaptations and Huberman speaks about “thankful” behaviour for regular tweaks, this font evolves hand- institutions and curators, inviting them to perform in-hand with Libre Graphics magazine. their job in the key of “I Care” (borrowed to Jan Less polite and without softening the Vervoert’s essay “Exhaustion and Exuberance”): edges, OSP took a cutting from Nimbus paying homage to who or what they work with, Mono to grow Not Sans during taking the risk of performing both the “I Know” the Libre Graphics Meeting in 2008, in and the “I Don’t.” Wroclaw. F/LOSS approaches make me feel something similar. There, people are invited to perform in the Proposing another kind of tree, the col- key of the “I Share,” sharing one’s work and making ophon of the book Transparence Camouflage Opacité it possible for others to appropriate it, enrich by Samuel Rivers-Moore highlights the lineage it, enabling a dialogue. And more importantly between the font he created for the book, Arcadia, sharing one’s sources, in the sense of recipes and and its “sources.” Its graphical interpretation mixes instructions (code), but also sources in the sense of the family tree and an indentation referring to references and inscription in a (hi)story. programming languages. [Fig.5] And there again we It’s about influence, as a positive dynamic find Libertine cooking up with OSP in a Limousine ! of circulation and transmission. F/LOSS approaches This article is a call for more attention to the (hi) emphasize the evolution, the history and narrative stories in (F/LOSS) font projects. of projects, with frameworks and tools that facili- tate documentation and show the lineage between 1. On this specific question, read the article “Appro- projects. Soon, with versioning systems such as priation and Type — Before and Today” by Ricardo Git, we will be able to visualize the evolution of a Lafuente, 2008. typeface, from 0.0 to 1.0 and beyond. No type design comes completely out of SPECIMEN is an attempt to propose a different approach to nowhere. In fact, it’s more the concept of originality (choosing) typefaces, another way of considering specimens. or uniqueness that comes out of nowhere. Copying Far from pretending to be neutral or exhaustive, it rather and re-interpretation of typefaces has always been assumes its partial aspect. Each font thus has its own specific 1 part of the history of typography. On this specific treatment, with its own content and shape, all contributing to question, read the article “Appropriation and Type — tell its story: the (hi)story of the font is re-placed at the centre Before and Today” by Ricardo Lafuente, 2008.], and of the specimen. This project is inspired by Open Source Font Spec- still today old metal typefaces need to be translated imens, by Greyscale Press. Greyscale Press released the specimen into digital formats to be used on new mediums. book L’Ève future — Spécimens de fontes libres, a collection of font specimens for usage in print, with F/LOSS fonts. Created during The lines you’ve just read are composed in Linux a workshop, this specimen book uses as sample text the whole Libertine, the body text font of Libre Graphics mag- science-fiction novel L’Ève f uture, by Auguste de Villiers de L’Isle- azine, with Linux Biolinum [Fig.3] and Prop Courier Adam, published in 1886 and thus in the public domain. It’s a Sans. The multilingual family was great project that made me want to go further in questioning created in 2003 by Philipp H. Poll, and is inspired the still rigid production and use of specimens today. by 19th century book typefaces, such as Janson and Palatino, in turn inspired by Renaissance models. On appropriation: Its name is a very playful reference to the different — Ricardo Lafuente, “Appropriation and Type — Before meanings of “Open” and “Free.” Not monogamist, and Today,” 2008. http://ospublish.constantvzw.org/ it brings another metaphor to this whole speci- blog/typo/appropriation-and-type-before-and-today men story, the family tree and its wild branches: — “You Need to Copy to Understand, interview bastards and other milkman’s sons. [Fig.4] with Harrisson,” OSP-Blog, 2006. http:// ospublish.constantvzw.org/blog/typo/ It is very nice to be embrace the voyeur you-need-to-copy-to-understand posture and observe the multiple relations between F/LOSS fonts. On specimens: — Nick Sherman, “Le design des spécimens typo- A friendly fork of Not Courier Sans by graphiques,” The Shelf n°1, 2012. OSP, Prop Courier Sans is “not here to — L’ È v e f u t u e — S p é c i m e n s d e f o n t e s l i b r e s , Greyscale Press, 2013. be correct.” To create this propor- tional version of the Not Courier Sans, Reading 5: 02/16 Vernacular, Etc. From Libre Graphics 2.3

80 Fig.3 Fig.1

Fig.4 Reading 5: 02/16 Vernacular, Etc. Vernacular, 02/16 5: Reading

Fig.2

Fig.5 81 Awkward Gestures Mastering your tools BY FEMKE SNELTING At the end of the 19th century, machines increasingly R6 March 2008 took over the work of typographers, printers and typesetters. Designer and socialist William Morris We launched OSP because our portfolio started to fill was convinced that workers should not only have up with designs for alternative music, activi- collective ownership of their own means of produc- ties and Linux Install Parties and the gap between tion, he also believed in another form of ‘mastery’, the language of our work and the jargon of the i.e. the skillful employment of techniques and commercial software we used became more obvious materials.2 For Morris, there was more to it than just with every new job. We were also interested in the being handy; his Arts and Crafts movement brought role that software plays in the creative process and together artists and designers who thoroughly trying to find out how our digital tools could become reflected upon the influence of the production pro- a creative and substantial element in design itself. cess on the nature and meaning of everyday objects. But since the software packages of Adobe Inc. have For them, getting the job right implied not only the become quite the standard in art academies, creative economic ownership of machines and resources, but studios and printshops, it is difficult to detect their also the technical mastery of the work instead of influence, let alone analyse their effect. being the machine’s slave. The past two years, OSP has made a number Designer David Reinfurt observes, that of publications, posters, brochures and websites the overdetermined functionality and staggering with F/LOSS and this experience has changed our complexity of professional design software makes practice. Although this was clearly our objective, it users restrict themselves to standard techniques also led to surprising discoveries about the way we and tools.3 How could F/LOSS be more empowering? work and what we actually expect from software. The fundamental difference it makes, is that it Almost every poster, website or publication that allows users to use, analyse, change and distribute is made nowadays, is the result of a partial or a source code and in a sense users literally get hold complete digital process but worldwide there is of their means of production. But while a computer just one single company that supplies designers programmer, by having the right to adjust software, with tools to make them. Adobe’s out-of-the-box can feel in control, every other ‘power user’ with packages are certainly powerful but as they can be the same rights, is practically blown away by the customised only superficially, the wish to ‘make a explosion of procedures, formats and processes difference’ starts to become an argument to choose she is confronted with. Let alone the fact that the for a more active engagement with software. It has ‘means of production’ for designers include more even lead to the acknowledgement of Open Source than their software,4 our experience of designing as an option, most notably by the Adobe company with Free Software has shown us over and over itself. Design critic David Womack compares it to again that ‘owning’ our tools is not the same as the production of the Ford Model-T.1 Although a ‘mastering’ them. streamlined process might be faster, it runs the In Design by Numbers,5 the book that led to risk of everything looking the same in the end (the the development of Processing, a visual program- Model-T famously came in any color you wanted — ming language that has become popular among as long as it was black, and had no customization designers, John Maeda warns that a clever use of options). Thus, in order to make your mark, a software is often wrongfully considered as crafts- diversification of tools is necessary. manship. His point is clear; unless we learn to use Like with the production of the Ford code as a material, we will never become the master Model-T, that of course had much more to it than of our software. A comparable argument can be the fact that from then on cars looked more or less found in the enthusiasm for the commandline inter- identical, software does not merely determine the face, as this facilitates a communication with the boundaries of visual expression. Because it is con- numerical operations of the machine itself. Without stantly present, it conditions our practice in terms detracting from the thrilling experience of effort- of division of labour, vocabulary and the physical lessly commanding the shell or self-confidently relationship with the digital medium. Our choice manipulating squares and circles in Processing, we for a different toolset is therefore as much related need to avoid a tunnel vision of technology where to ethical as it is to aesthetic considerations; OSP is practices, conditions and perspectives can and must first of all an attempt to facilitate a design practice be pushed aside to enable a sense of control. that starts from a critical use of technology and Through cutting a comfortably coherent explicitly functions in an ecology of knowledge slice out of the unruly entity that software is, you based on distribution and circulation rather than might miss the opportunity to engage with it in

Reading 6: 02/23 Cultural Commons competition and exclusion. other ways than as a means to an end. Software is

82 source code, but also an interface which, whether of clearly defined ‘clutches’ in the form of pipes and graphic or not, represents a particular interaction standard streams (stdin and stdout), the shift with the underlying processes. Groups of users from one action to another is easy to experience. gather around certain applications and thereby And once you get to know this versatile set of tools create patterns of use that make sense of this a little better, you will detect their traces every- interaction. Mailing lists and documentation on where, even in more complex graphic applications. software are characterized by a specific language The generative principle that character- and tone, as is the way software developers con- izes F/LOSS has lead to an incredible variety of verse with each other and their users. When we programs; in graphic interfaces alone there are consider software as culture, it is perhaps possible numerous differences. A volunteering developers to drop the rhetoric of master and slave, and we can community is less motivated to hide their efforts begin to think about how ‘competence’ can mean from users (the identity of the project actually more than ‘control’. matters) so the convergence of tools that we are accustomed to from Adobe and Apple, is less likely Making an account of itself to happen. This can be clearly experienced when In The Confessions of Zeno,6 Italo Svevo describes how working through the differences between Scribus one evening Zeno strikes up a conversation with a (desktop publishing), Gimp (image editing) and Ink- doctor who explains to him at length how 54 mus- scape (), three programmes cles come in motion when you walk rapidly. Zeno that OSP often employs side-by-side. Whether it’s becomes fascinated by this extraordinary account the result of a lack of attention or the outcome of of the monstrous machinery of his own body, but deliberate choices, moving between these pro- his curiosity proves to be fatal: “Of course I could grammes reveals the culture of it’s developers, it’s not distinguish all its fifty-four parts, but I dis- technical construction and development history. covered something terrifically complicated which At times this can be destabilizing but more often seemed to get out of order directly I began thinking it is inspiring, as it constantly reminds us of the about it. I limped, leaving that café; and I went on cultural aspect of software production. limping for several days.” From that moment on he Matthew Fuller introduced the term inter- is unable to think about this memorable evening, rogibility7 to describe the quality of software to the doctor or even about his own legs without make an account of itself and to share the premises starting to stagger. on which it is based with it’s users. It is important Is a similar principle at work in software? how well something can be put to use for a specific Apple promotes its operating system with ‘software purpose, but also to what extent it clarifies the that just works’ (apparently you don’t need to processes that it generates and it is here where F/ worry about it at all) and also Adobe makes every LOSS can make a difference. By considering inter- effort to push the simulations and algorithms, the rogability beyond the obvious level of source code, monstrous machinery, that define the software, software opens up to be used in different ways than into the background. Recognizable patterns are intended, even as tool to think with. inventively arranged in well-organized and reliable “A sane person”, says Zeno, “doesn’t interfaces, minimizing their own presence and analyse himself, doesn’t look in the mirror,”8 just creating a feel of naturalness. Free Software on like software is paid attention to most of all when the contrary categorically refuses to disappear it doesn’t work. When a hammer is broken, you out of sight, if only because it’s not mainstream. realize how heavy and how big it actually is, how Simply by offering an alternative, it already its weight is relative to your own strength and makes a statement about itself and without even how its size relates to what you actually wanted to 9

making a spectacular difference, certain automatic do with it. Also proprietary programs have their Commons Cultural 02/23 6: Reading actions become visible that otherwise would have bugs and glitches, but it is the automatic reflex of F/ remained unnoticed. LOSS developers not to avoid or hide them. On the This could also be a side effect of the contrary, it is important that imperfections remain Linux/Unix philosophy itself, where the emphasis visible so that users feel inspired to report them or is on small specific tools that are good at executing do something about them. relatively simple and well-defined tasks with the The obligatory use of open standards is intention of giving users as much freedom as pos- the last but not least reason for processes being sible in order to let them compose their own more more explicit in F/LOSS. Far from being normalised, complex configurations later. The software remains they often cause obstructions in the publishing tangible, because the same recognizable elements workflow where documents are sent back and forth can be connected to each other again and again in between authors, designers and printers. The risk many different ways. With this modular structure of a possible incompatibility compels us to warn, to

83 explain and to be alert during each moment of the all of us.” William Morris. Art and Its Producers, and process. Conversions are never flawless. The Arts and Crafts of To-day: Two Addresses Delivered Before the National Association for the Advancement of Art. Awkward gestures Longmans & Co., London, 1901. Not unlike Zeno’s experience, it is difficult to stay 3 David Reinfurt. Making do and getting by. Software and design. in motion when the machinery comes to the fore- Adobe Design Center Think Tank. http://www.adobe. ground. Anyone who has seen a designer at work, com/designcenter/thinktank/makingdo (March 2008). knows that the self-assured agility with which a 4 See also: Why you should own the beer company you layout is done or how the tension of a digital curve design for (interview with Dmytri Kleiner). is determined, leaves little or no room for questions http://ospublish.constantvzw.org/?p=380, 2007 about the nature of the underlying processes. 5 John Maeda. Design By Numbers. The MIT Press , 2001. Taking doubt into account implies breaking with 6 Italo Svevo. De bekentenissen van Zeno. Athenaeum-Po- the natural ‘flow’ of things and accepting the lak & Van Gennep, 2000. hitches that aren’t always that easy to deal with. It 7 Matthew Fuller. Softness. Interrogability, general is in this way we have started to understand the intellect; art methodologies in software. Media Research importance of performing our practice publicly Centre, Huddersfield, 2006. because it brings out unusual gestures that break 8 Svevo. 2000. with the appeasing elegance of the typical self-as- 9 Sarah Ahmed. Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, sured designer who has everything sorted. Others. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2006. While a familiar gesture is one that fits 10 BoF: Birds of a Feather, informal meetings based on perfectly well in a generally accepted model, an shared interest. Version Control: system to track awkward gesture is a movement that is not com- changes in software development. GPL3: fiercely pletely synchronic. It’s not a countermovement, nor debated update of the General Public License, now a break from the norm; it doesn’t exist outside of explicitly excluding Digital Rights Management. the pattern, nor completely in it. Like a moiré effect reveals the presence of a grid, awkward behaviour can lead to a state of increased awareness; a form of In Defense of the Cultural productive insecurity that presents us with open- ings that help understand the complex interaction Commons between skills, tools and medium. BY SARAH PETERS & SARAH SCHULTZ The Print parties that we organize now Sep 24, 2012 and then in a vacant café, a bookstore or a class- room are irregular public appearances whenever “Art is what we do,” Carl Andre once said. we feel the need to report on what we discovered “Culture is what is done to us.” Cultural and where we’ve been; as anti-heroes of our own critic Lewis Hyde, invoking the quote, adventures we keep contact with our fellow adds, “It’s the ‘done to us’ part I’d like the designers who are interested in our journey into citizen to avoid; let us be the constant the exotic territory of BoF, Version Control and makers of our cultural world.” In a recent GPL3.10 We make a point of presenting each time a conversation about creativity and copy- new experiment, of producing something printed right, democracy and the commons, Hyde and also something edible on site; it is the tension expanded on the ideas in his book Common between parallel processes that defines those as Air: Revolution, Art, and Ownership (2010). infectious events. Throughout our practice we are looking Sarah Schultz & Sarah Peters: Why do you for forms of reflection that can do without com- think the idea of the commons has so much reso- fortable distance. We use our awkwardness as a nance now? strategy to cause interference, to create pivotal Lewis Hyde: All cultures must feel friction moments between falling and moving, an awkward between the individual and the group, or between in-between that makes space for thinking without public and private. In the United States, the tension stopping us to act. seems unusually marked. At the founding of this country, we had an emphasis on “commonwealth” 1 Steven Heller en David Womack. Becoming a Digital and we valued “civic virtue,” a thing that citizens Designer, A Guide to Careers in Web, Video, Broadcast, could earn by acting more for the group than for Game and Animation Design. John Wiley & Sons, 2007. themselves. In his writings on America, Alexis de 2 “It is not this or that... machine which we want Tocqueville expressed a typical caution regarding to get rid of, but the great intangible machine of citizens who exclusively seek their own interest:

Reading 6: 02/23 Cultural Commons commercial tyranny which oppresses the lives of “Individualism at first only saps the virtues of public

84 life; but in the long run it attacks and destroys all began to feel less inclined to soften the face of others and is at length absorbed in downright self- capitalism with poetry and music. I believe it ishness.” As for selfishness, it “blights the germ of all is no accident that rigorous cuts in funding for the virtue,” Tocqueville declared, aligning himself with arts followed swiftly the fall of the Berlin Wall in the view that had been widespread in British North the late 1980s. The market triumphalists had come America before the Revolution. “A people is traveling to power. fast to destruction, when individuals consider their That said, if the government, or “the interests as distinct from those of the public,” wrote collective” in any form, is going to support art-mak- John Dickinson in 1768. “Brethren, we were born not ers and arts institutions, it seems a shame to do so merely for ourselves, but the Public Good!” wrote only in response to another nation’s perceived bad Tennent a decade earlier. opinion. If we are not “a nation of money-grubbing All of this slowly changed in the nineteenth materialists,” can’t the desired balance be achieved century, the center of gravity of American thought through some counterforce native to our own land moving away from the Public Good and toward the and history? Capitalism may well have triumphed individual who happily considers his own interests over communism, but that does not mean we yet before all others. Ralph Waldo Emerson was the know what capitalism is. Or, rather, there are many most eloquent spokesman for this revaluation; his forms of capitalism, and here on home ground we essay “Self-Reliance” being one of the standard should be debating what form we want. calls. “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that The need for that debate and the erasure iron string,” wrote the Sage of Concord. “Do not tell of “communism” as one pole of the argument–these me … of my obligation to put all poor men in good two things combine, for me, to explain why we now situations. Are they my poor?” see a growing interest in “the commons.” In my own lifetime, the tension between the individual and the collective was deeply Schultz & Peters: What does it mean to be a affected by the Cold War. In the 1950s, those who good cultural citizen? sought to strengthen labor unions or the welfare Hyde: First of all, it means becoming an state, or who worked for civil rights, were often the actor rather than a passive consumer or audience first to be charged with “un-American activities,” if member. In writing Common as Air, I got interested not with being actual communists. Later, Cold War in two distinct ways of thinking of “property,” rhetoric–in the ’60s and ’70s–had the oddly inverse common property in particular. Some people say effect of softening government policy toward the that you know you have property if you have the collective efforts needed to support the arts. right to exclude other people from it. I know I own Soviet propaganda, after all, regularly my house because I can keep you out of it. claimed that the United States was a nation of crass, This is an old view; you find it in William tight-fisted capitalists who could not possibly seek Blackstone, the eighteenth-century British jurist, or appreciate the finer things in life. Consciously who defined “the right of ownership” as “that sole out to prove them wrong, President Kennedy and despotic dominion which one man claims and invited Robert Frost to read at his inauguration exercises over the external things of the world, in and later, at the Frost Library in Amherst, [Massa- total exclusion of the right of any other individual in chusetts], defended American cultural freedoms the universe.” (And you find it today in the views of in terms of the standard opposition to communist someone like Justice Antonin Scalia, who has written oppressions, extolling the artist as the “last that “the hallmark of a constitutionally protected champion of the individual mind and sensibility property interest is the right to exclude others.”) against an intrusive society and an officious state.” A contrasting view takes property as “a

After Pablo Casals played his cello at the White right of action.” I know I own my car because I may Commons Cultural 02/23 6: Reading House, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. declared the event drive it, paint it, sell it, clean it, loan it to a friend, “of obvious importance … in transforming the etc. My right to exclude others is one such right of world’s impression of the United States as a nation action, but only one of a potentially large bundle of money-grubbing materialists.” Thus, for a while, of rights. Property in this regard is best thought of did common-wealth (including tax dollars) lend as the bundle of rights that we have in regard to support to the private-wealth of individual creators, any particular thing — and most of these should and to the institutions that facilitated that support. be thought of as rights of action. Property enables There’s much more to say in this line. (I us to be agents in the world, people who act rather tell the fuller story in the Afterword to the new than find themselves acted upon. edition of my book, The Gift). For now, though, the Put briefly, what interests me in regard to point is that it should not have been a surprise that cultural commons is the need to resist situations after the fall of the Soviet Union the US Congress in which a right to exclude comes before the right

85 to use. My book is largely about the history and a true commons is a managed thing; it operates philosophy of copyright, and copyright makes a through rules and constraints that the commu- good example. I should say, first, that I think lim- nity develops and shapes to serve its ends in a ited-term copyrights are a good idea, the problem sustainable manner. A cultural commons ought to being how to limit them. Right now copyright be durable; we ought to be able to hand it on to the easily runs a century or more and, once the rights generations that will follow. are given, the rights holder’s power to exclude precedes any citizen’s right to use. Often that is https://walkerart.org/magazine/ not a problem, but increasingly we see the right lewis-hyde-defense-cultural-commons to exclude being used as a way to shape or censor cultural expression. The way that the literary estate of Martin Luther King, Jr. has been handled is Open Source as Culture/ a striking case (one explained at length in the book), and there are many others. Culture as Open Source As Carl Andre once said, “Art is what we SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN do. Culture is what is done to us.” It’s the “done to us” part I’d like the citizen to avoid; let us be the The “open source” way of doing things is all the constant makers of our cultural world. rage. Companies as powerful and established as IBM boast of using Linux operating systems in Schultz & Peters: What can the model of a its servers. Publications as conservative as The commons offer an art institution? Economist have pronounced open-source methods Hyde: In 2009, Elinor Ostrom won the “successful” and have pondered their applicability Nobel Prize in economics “for her analysis of eco- to areas of research and development as different nomic governance, especially the commons.” A few from software as pharmaceutical research.1 years earlier, Ostrom and Charlotte Hess edited a It is striking that we have to employ useful book titled Understanding Knowledge as a Com- phrases like “open source” and “free software” mons: From Theory to Practice (MIT Press, 2007). I find at all.2 They are significant, powerful phrases the writing a bit dry, but the core material is very simply because they represent an insurgent useful and might taken as a prompt for an institu- model of commercial activity and information tional discussion of how to imagine a museum (or policy. They challenge the entrenched status quo: other institution) in terms of the cultural commons. the proprietary model of cultural and technolog- I mentioned above that traditional agri- ical production. cultural commons might be approached in terms But this has only recently been the case. of the bundle of use rights associated with them. The “open source” way is closer to how human cre- In regard to modern commons broadly conceived ativity has always worked. Open source used to be (for example, including such things as irrigation the default way of doing things. The rapid adoption systems and national parks), Ostrom and Hess offer of proprietary information has been so intense and this list of typical use rights: influential since the 1980s that we hardly remem- — access rights (the right to enter an area and ber another way or another time. However, through enjoy no subtractive benefits, e.g., hike, canoe, most of human history all information technologies enjoy nature); and almost all technologies were “open source.” — extraction rights (the right to obtain resources, And we have done pretty well as a species with tools e.g., catch fish, divert water); and habits unencumbered by high restrictions on — management rights (the right to regulate inter- sharing, copying, customizing, and improving. nal use patterns and to make improvements); We have become so inured to the — exclusion rights (the right to determine who proprietary model, so dazzled and intimidated will have rights and how those rights may be by its cultural and political power, that any transferred); commonsense challenge to its assumptions and — alienation rights (the right to sell or lease tenets seems radical, idealistic, or dangerous. But management and exclusion rights). in recent years the practical advantages of the It would be fun to expand this list based “open source” model of creativity and commerce on the actual practice of any particular institution, have become clear. The resulting clamor about and then have a discussion of the enumerated the advantages and threats of open-source rights, and of the persons who have them. One goal models have revealed serious faults in the chief of such a conversation would be to think about the regulatory system that governs global flows of ends toward which the institution is dedicated. In culture and information: copyright.

Reading 6: 02/23 Cultural Commons considering ends or mission, it helps to know that

86 The Rise of Proprietarianism and market relations can be powerful: witness Copyright gets stretched way out of shape to the remarkable successes and wealth of the global accommodate proprietary software. Copyright was pharmaceutical industry or, for that matter, of originally designed to protect books, charts, and Microsoft. But they can be just as powerful with maps. Later, courts and legislatures expanded to limitations that allow for communal creation, include recorded music, film, video, translations, revision, criticism, and adaptability: witness the public performance, and finally all media that now culture of custom cars or the World Wide Web.4 exist or have yet to be created. Software is special, In fact, as economist Richard Adkisson though. It’s not just expression. It is functional. It’s argues, the veneration of muscular intellectu- not just information. It’s action. In some ways, the al-property rights as the foundation of innovation inclusion of software among the copyrightable forms and creativity above all other forms has generated of creativity has complicated and challenged the an unhealthy cultural and social condition, one intellectual-property tradition. Copyright and pro- which can generate suboptimal levels of invest- prietary software have metastasized synergistically. ment, asset allocation, and policy choices. Adkisson The proprietary model of software indicts the widespread belief that intellectu- production dates to sometime in the 1970s, when al-property rights are the best (perhaps only) of all mainframe software vendors like AT&T and Digital possible arrangements for innovation, by alerting started asserting control over their source code, us to the “ceremonial status” these rights have thus limiting what computer scientists could do assumed. “Ceremonial encapsulation occurs when to customize their tools. This was an insult to and ceremonial values are allowed to alter or otherwise offense against these scientists who were acclimated limit the application of technologies instrumental to the academic and scientific ideologies that priv- in the process of social problem solving,” Adkisson ilege openness and nonmonetary reward systems. writes. Specifically, Adkisson warns that blind faith In a much more precise sense we can date the in high levels of intellectual-property protection is of the conflagration between the then-insurgent of the “future-binding type,” in which technology proprietary model and the then-dominant hacker and mythology act synergistically to legitimize culture (open source, although they didn’t have a elite control over technologies or other innovative name for it then) to ’s 1976 open letter to or creative processes.5 the small but growing community of personal-com- puter hackers warning them that his new company, The Return of the Jedi then spelled “Micro-Soft,” would aggressively assert Richard Stallman took a stand against the pro- its intellectual-property claims against those who prietary model long before the rest of us even would trade tapes that carry the company’s soft- realized its power and trajectory. A computer ware. Since that date, despite frequently exploiting scientist working in the 1970s and 1980s for the the gaps and safety valves of copyright protection artificial-intelligence project at MIT, Stallman on their rise to the heights of wealth and power, grew frustrated that computer companies were Microsoft and Gates have worked in correlation if denying him and other hackers access to their not coordination with the steady valorization of source code. Stallman found he was not allowed to intellectual-property rights as the chief locus of improve the software and devices that he had to cultural and industrial policy in the world.3 work with, even when they did not work very well. According to the proprietary ideology, More important, Stallman grew alarmed that he innovation would not occur without a strong was becoming contractually bound to be unkind incentive system for the innovator to exploit and selfish. The user agreements that accompanied for commercial gain. “Fencing off” innovations proprietary software forbade him from sharing his

becomes essential for firms and actors to establish tools and techniques with others. As a scientist, he Commons Cultural 02/23 6: Reading markets and bargain away rights. Because innova- was offended that openness was being criminalized. tion so often concerns the ephemeral, trade in the As a citizen, he was a concerned that freedoms of innovation requires excluding others from using, speech and creativity were being constricted. As exploiting, or copying data, designs, or algorithms. a problem solver, he set out to establish the Free The Clinton, Bush, and Blair administrations in the Software Foundation to prove that good tools and United States and United Kingdom embraced the technologies could emerge from a community of proprietary model as the key to thriving through concerned creators. Leveraging the communicative the deindustrialization of the developed world, power of technology newsletters and the postal thus locking in the advantages that educated, system, Stallman sold tapes with his free (as in lib- wired nation-states have over those that have been erated) software on them. By the time enough of his held in technological and economic bondage for constituency had connected themselves through centuries. Proprietary models of innovation policy the Internet, he started coordinating projects and

87 conversations among a diverse and distributed set calls “integration”), can generate brilliant and of programmers.6 powerful tools and expressions. Benkler concludes, During the late 1990s a growing team of hackers struggled to build the holy of free The strength of peer production is in software: an operatingsystem kernel that would matching human capital to information allow an array of programs to work in coordina- inputs to produce new information goods. tion. The group, led by Linus Torvalds, created a Strong intellectual property rights inef- system that became known as Linux. It has since ficiently shrink the universe of existing become the chief threat to the ubiquity and domi- information inputs that can be subjected nance of Microsoft.7 to this process. Instead, owned inputs will While Linux and the GNU (free software) be limited to human capital with which project have garnered the most attention in the owner of the input has a contractual — accounts of open-source development, the proto- usually employment — relationship. More- cols and programs that enable and empower e-mail, over, the entire universe of peer-produced the World Wide Web, IRC (), and information gains no benefit from strong just about every other activity on the Internet all intellectual property rights. Since the core emerged from community-based project teams, of commons-based peer production entails often ad hoc and amateur. The resulting protocols provisioning without direct appropriation are elegant, efficient, effective, and under con- and since indirect appropriation — intrinsic stant revision. And they have empowered both or extrinsic — does not rely on control of the growth of the proprietary model and the the information but on its widest possible open-source model of cultural production to reach availability, intellectual property offers no expansive new markets and audiences.8 Each of gain, only loss, to peer production. While these projects illuminates what Yochai Benkler it is true that free software currently uses calls “peer production.” Benkler writes, copyright-based licensing to prevent certain kinds of defection from peer production The emergence of free software as a processes, that strategy is needed only as a substantial force in the software devel- form of institutional jujitsu to defend from opment world poses a puzzle for [Ronald intellectual property. A complete absence of Coase’s] organization theory. Free software property in the software domain would be at projects do not rely either on markets or least as congenial to free software develop- on managerial hierarchies to organize ment as the condition where property exists, production. Programmers do not generally but copyright permits free software projects participate in a project because someone to use licensing to defend themselves from who is their boss instructed them, though defection. The same protection from defec- some do. They do not generally participate tion might be provided by other means as in a project because someone offers them well, such as creating simple public mecha- a price, though some participants do nisms for contributing one’s work in a way focus on long-term appropriation through that makes it unsusceptible to downstream money-oriented activities, like consulting appropriation — a conservancy of sorts. or service contracts. But the critical mass Regulators concerned with fostering inno- of participation in projects cannot be vation may better direct their efforts toward explained by the direct presence of a com- providing the institutional tools that would mand, a price, or even a future monetary help thousands of people to collaborate return, particularly in the all-important without appropriating their joint product, microlevel decisions regarding selection of making the information they produce freely projects to which participants contribute. available rather than spending their efforts In other words, programmers participate to increase the scope and sophistication of in free software projects without following the mechanisms for private appropriation of the normal signals generated by mar- this public good as they now do.10 ket-based, firm-based, or hybrid models.9 Benkler’s prescriptions seem like predic- Economists assumed for decades that firms tions. In recent years the governments of nation- emerged to lower or eliminate transaction costs states as diverse as South Africa, Brazil, and the and coordination problems. But as it turns out, fast, People’s Republic of China have adopted policies efficient, and dependable communication, guided by that would encourage the dissemination of open-

Reading 6: 02/23 Cultural Commons protocols both social and digital (a process Benkler source software.

88 More significantly, the open-source describes the tension between copyright systems model has moved far beyond software. Musician as dictated by the industrialized world and modes and composer Gilberto Gil, the culture minister of of communal cultural production that are best Brazil, has released several albums under a Creative (albeit not exclusively) demonstrated in developing Commons license. Such licenses (under which this nations, he uses terms that could just as easily be chapter lies as well) are modeled off of the GNU applied to technological peer production. “Creativ- General Public License, which locks the content ity as a social process is the common denominator open. It requires all users of the copyrighted mate- of these concepts and approaches,” Hafstein rial to conform to terms that encourage sharing writes. “From each of these perspectives, the act and building.11 of creation is a social act. From the point of view Other significant extrasoftware projects of intertextuality, for example, works of literature based on the open-source model include Wikipedia, are just as much a product of society or of discourse a remarkable compilation of fact and analysis as they are of an individual author or, for that written and reviewed by a committed team of peers matter, reader.” Traditional cultural knowledge, placed around the world. And the scientific spheres communally composed and lacking distinct marks have rediscovered their commitment to openness of individual authorship, is “a node in a network of through the movement to establish and maintain relations: not an isolated original, but a reproduc- open-access journals, thus evading the proprietary tion, a copy,” Hafstein explains.16 Nothing about traps (and expenses) of large commercial journal Hafstein’s descriptions of the politics of traditional publishers.12 By 2004 citizen-based journalism, knowledge offers a resolution to that particular often known as “open-source journalism,” had source of friction in global intellectual-property grown in importance and established itself as an battles. But the converging rhetorics reveal the important and essential element of the global infor- extent to which innovation and creativity often mation ecosystem.13 Such experiments are sure to (perhaps most often) sit outside the assumptions of proliferate in response to the failures (market and incentives and protectionism on which high levels otherwise) of proprietary media forms.14 of corporate copyright protection rest. The open-source model of peer production, How Open Source Changes Copyright sharing, revision, and peer review has distilled and Copyright is a limited monopoly, granted by the labeled the most successful creative habits into a state, meant to foster creativity by generating a political movement. This distillation has had costs system of presumed incentives. The copyright and benefits. It has been difficult to court main- holder must have enough faith in the system to stream acceptance for such a tangle of seemingly justify his or her investment. And the copyright technical ideas when its chief advocates have been holder’s rights to exclude are limited by some hackers and academics. Neither class has much public values such as education and criticism. This power or influence in the modern global economy is the standard understanding of copyright law’s or among centers of policy decision-making. On the role and scope. But while acknowledging the inter- other hand, the brilliant success of overtly labeled ests of the public, it omits the voice of the public open-source experiments, coupled with the horror itself. In other words, the system cannot thrive if stories of attempts to protect the proprietary the public considers it to be captured, corrupted, model, has added common sense to the toolbox of irrelevant, or absurd.15 these advocates. The rise and success of open-source models fosters a general understanding that copyright is This chapter was originally published in Open Source Annual not a single right bestowed on a brilliant individual 2005 (Berlin: Technische Universität). This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.

author but is instead a “bundle” of rights that a Commons Cultural 02/23 6: Reading copyright holder (individual, corporation, organi- zation, or foundation) may license. Most important, 1. “An Open-Source Shot in the Arm?,” Economist, 12 these experiments and projects show that “all June 2004. Also see Steve Weber, The Success of Open rights reserved” need not be the default state of Source (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004). copyright protection. For many people, “some 2. Throughout this essay and in all of my work I rights reserved” serves the interests of creators intentionally conflate these two terms while being better than the absolutist proprietary model does. fully aware of the political distinction that Richard As the rhetoric of open source and the pol- Stallman emphasizes in his defense of “free software.” itics of traditional knowledge and culture emerge Stallman’s point — that “open source” invites an in starker relief within the topography of copyright emphasis on convenience and utility rather than and cultural policy debates, their themes tend to freedom and community — was important to make in converge. As anthropologist Vladimir Hafstein the 1990s. He lost the battle to control the terms, just as

89 he has had to concede the rhetorical convenience and 13. Jay Rosen, “Top Ten Ideas of ’04: Open Source Journal- ubiquity of “LINUX” instead of the more accurate “GNU/ ism, or ‘My Readers Know More Than I Do,’” Press- LINUX.” I am confident that anyone who peers into the Think (blog), 28 December 2004, http://journalism. history or politics of the open-source movement will nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2004/12/28/ encounter Stallman’s persuasive case for freedom and tptn04_opsc.html. Also see Dan Gillmor, We the Media: the GNU project’s central contribution to the growth of Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People the operating system we now call LINUX. See Richard (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly, 2004). Stallman, “The GNU Operating System and the Free 14. Christopher M. Kelty, “Culture’s Open Sources: Software Movement,” in Open Sources: Voices of the Software, Copyright, and Cultural Critique,” Anthro- Open Source Revolution, ed. Chris DiBona, Sam Ockman, pological Quarterly 77, no. 3 (2004). and Mark Stone (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly, 1999). 15. Vaidhyanathan, The Anarchist in the Library. 3. Siva Vaidhyanathan, Copyrights and Copywrongs: The 16. Vladimir Hafstein, “The Politics of Origins: Collective Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creation Revisited,” Journal of American Folklore 117 Creativity (New York: NYU Press, 2001). Also see Peter (2004): 307, 303. Also see Pekka Himanen, The Hacker Wayner, Free for All: How Linux and the Free Software Ethic and the Spirit of the Information Age (New York: Movement Undercut the High-Tech Titans (New York: Random House, 2001). HarperBusiness, 2000); Eric S. Raymond, “A Brief History of Hackerdom,” in Open Sources: Voices of the Open Source Revolution, ed. Chris DiBona, Sam Ockman, In Practice: RestructWeb and Mark Stone (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly, 1999). BY ANNEMIEKE VAN DER HOEK, TIMO KLOK, & 4. Siva Vaidhyanathan, The Anarchist in the Library: MICHAEL VAN SCHAIK How the Clash between Freedom and Control Is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System (New What is RestructWeb? York: Basic Books, 2004). Also see Lawrence Lessig, Restruct web is a three-person web design & The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a development agency from Rotterdam, creating Connected World (New York: Random House, 2001); user-friendly websites and (web) applications. We Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture: How Big Media Uses are a full service commercial web/software agency, Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and with a passion for F/LOSS. Services we provide Control Creativity (New York: Penguin, 2004). include: online strategy, web design, web devel- 5. Richard Adkisson, “Ceremonialism, Intellectual opment, mobile applications and custom/special Property Rights, and Innovation Activity,” Journal of software projects. Economic Issues 38, no. 2 (2004): 460. 6. Stallman, “The GNU Operating System and the Free Why Collaboration? Software Movement.” Also see Sam Williams, Free We have a background in graphic design/video, and as in Freedom: Richard Stallman’s Crusade for Free met at the Piet Zwart Institute. After our gradu- Software (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly, 2002). ation we each ran our own separate studios for a 7. Linus Torvalds et al., Revolution OS: Hackers, Pro- while. During these years we found it hard to do grammers & Rebels UNITE! (Los Angeles: Wonderview everything on our own. One has to stay up to date Productions; distributed by Seventh Art Releasing, with the latest technologies, design developments, 2003), video recording. Also see Eric S. Raymond, The handle business, act on malfunctioning websites/ Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and servers and try to find time to actually work as well. Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary, rev. ed. Our conclusion was that while all this work could (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly, 2001). be done by one person, it would be tough to also be 8. Scott Bradner, “The Internet Engineering Task good at it. Force,” in Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source The logical solution was to merge our Revolution, ed. Chris DiBona, Sam Ockman, and three studios. Naturally, each one of us also had Mark Stone (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly, 1999). Also see individual reasons to collaborate. They ranged from Alexander R. Galloway, Protocol: How Control Exists being taken more seriously as a business, being able after Decentralization (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004). to handle bigger projects and sharing the process 9. Yochai Benkler, “Coase’s Penguin, or, Linux and the Nature of creation to sharing the rent, dividing tasks and of the Firm,” Yale Law Journal 112, no. 3 (2002): 372–373. being able to specialize. Of course, wanting to work 10. Ibid., 446. with each other helped, too. 11. Julian Dibell, “We Pledge Allegiance to the Penguin,” We make each other laugh. A lot. Wired, November 2004, available online at http://www. wired.com/wired/archive/12.11/linux.html. Who’s the boss? 12. Jocelyn Kaiser, “Zerhouni Plans a Nudge toward Open We all are. When we started, we clearly outlined

Reading 6: 02/23 Cultural Commons Access,” Science, 3 September 2004. the direction we wanted to take as a company and

90 who would focus on what. While we try to stick to After graduation in the Netherlands, this plan, it doesn’t always work. Depending on when you start your own studio without much of the projects at a specific moment, we may all, for a budget, you have roughly two options; start out instance, be doing some coding. That’s one of our with pirated software or try to get a “startstipen- strengths as a group: we each have our specialties dium” (funding for auspicious graphic designers by but we can also cover for each other. the Dutch government) and use that to buy official Whenever we make bigger decisions, we hardware and software. It’s a bit sad to realize that naturally discuss them first. But we also explicitly a big chunk of this public tax money gets poured trust each other in smaller decisions so we don’t straight into the bank accounts of Apple and Adobe. have to discuss everything. As a company, we are If students were educated to consider F/LOSS as a a bit like a mesh network; we each have an equal viable alternative, it could save them a lot of money. say in decisions and each do the part of the work Money we think would be better spent on the we’re most interested in. We also have a built-in acquisition of knowledge and self-initiated projects veto clause: any one of us can decide that the group to develop the profession further. should not take on a specific project or client. In those cases it’s be up to the other members if they 1. As outlined in The Elements of User Experience: User-Cen- want to do the project outside of RestructWeb. tered Design for the Web by Jesse James Garrett from Our collaboration, by having a non-hierar- New Riders/AIGA, 2002. chical structure, causes each one to be responsible for keeping the company and the others up to date. From Libre Graphics 1.3 We adapted the workflow for user-centered design as described by J.J. Garrett1 to our projects. This is working well for us so far. Being able to divide Giving Things Away Is an assignment into specific chunks like strategy, wireframing, design and development, etc. allows Hard Work: Three Creative R7 each of us to focus on these tasks and develop our abilities in a specific direction. We’ve noticed this Commons Case Studies clear workflow is also appreciated in communica- MICHAEL MANDIBERG tion with our clients. It helps them focus and decide on the right choices at the right time. Open-source software and the free-culture We fill gaps in the workflow with in-com- movement have created vibrant and thriving pany projects, like the wireframe-library we’re sharing-based online communities. These commu- currently working on, or by doing research. These nities and individuals have created an enormous are tougher undertakings when working alone. quantity of open-source and freeculture projects. In all our projects we have a strong focus Many examples of these are well-known and much on F/LOSS, and especially open standards. heralded: Wikipedia, Linux, WordPress, and the Programming, being able to script and being like. These success stories primarily revolve around able to understand the inner workings of a technology, code- and/or text-focused projects and are much are important aspects of F/LOSS for us. We may script less common among other work whose medium is a part of an SVG and finish it in (or the not code or text. While one could disagree from a other way around). Recently, we’ve made a generative semiotic or a materialist perspective, code and text identity which reacts to rhythms found in nature. We are effectively immaterial in relationship to other wrote the algorithm in PHP/Python and generated forms of physical creation. A copy of the original some 20.000 different logos within a few hours. We is merely a keystroke’s effort, and the basic tools then scripted Inkscape to convert a few hundred of to create or modify the original are so common- them into business cards (PDF), and used pdftk to place as to be universal: a keyboard and a mouse. combine them into one printable document. Try that Obviously one also needs fluency in the human or by apple-scripting Illustrator! computer language of the project, but one does not Work Hard 7: 03/02 Reading Another reason we love F/LOSS is cost. We need access to expensive or specialized materials occasionally set up machines for exhibitions. Cheap, or tools; nor does one need the physical skills of a after-market Linux boxes usually suffice instead of craftsperson in the medium. the expected, super expensive Macintoshes. While Unlike code- or text-based practices, art, this same pragmatic financial reason is gaining design, and other creations that are manifest in support in the business world, the art schools in nondigital forms require production outside of the the Netherlands seem to be lagging behind. They keyboard-mouse-language toolset. While there may still tend to mainly teach the Adobe toolchain on be a code- or text-based set of instructions, the final high-end, brand new Apple machines. form of the project usually must be transformed

91 into a physical object, either through a machine like applied to works that are not exclusively digital. a printer or laser cutter, a physical technology like What happens when the license is applied to a circuit board or paint, or an offline social process cultural objects whose materiality prevents them like agreements and collaborations with people or from being effortlessly copyable. business entities that have the tools or knowledge to Inside this larger free-culture community, realize a project. It seems that this additional step there are groups of engineers, artists, and design- often makes it more difficult to realize a physical ers using open licenses for physical objects which project. Despite this difficulty, or maybe because are not as easily reproduced.7 The genealogy of of this challenge, there are examples of artists, the move to license physical works with Creative designers, and engineers working in this model, Commons licenses that I trace here comes out of myself included. After producing three years of art/ Limor Fried’s work as an R&D fellow at the Eyebeam design work with open licenses, I want to look back Center for Art and Technology’s OpenLab. Located and consider the results.1 The central question I seek in New York City, Eyebeam is like a think tank, to answer is if and how an art or design idea/proj- where artists, engineers, designers, and program- ect/product is helped, hindered, or not affected at mers work together on projects dedicated to pub- all by its open licensing model. I have chosen three lic-domain research and development. In a sense, it key examples from my creative practice and explore is not so much a think tank as a make tank. I was a their successes and failures as a way of assessing resident, fellow, and senior fellow at Eyebeam from this question. 2006 to 2010, and my time at Eyebeam has strongly influenced my work and, thus, this essay. A Genealogy One of the requirements for working in the “Open source” is a term used to refer to computer Eyebeam OpenLab is that all work is published with software for which the source code can be viewed, an open license; this stipulation is written into the modified, and used by anyone. As the story goes, contract that all R&D fellows sign.8 This is easy to once upon a time all software was open source. In comply with as a programmer, but Fried primarily 1980, MIT researcher Richard Stallman was using worked in what is known as physical computing, one of the first laser printers. It took so long to print which is the intersection between computer and documents that he decided he would modify the electrical engineering, and experimental art and printer driver so that it sent a notice to the user design. Fried and Jonah Peretti, the director of when the print job was finished. Unlike previous R&D at the time, spent some time trying to figure printer drivers, this software only came in its com- out the right way to comply with the contract. In piled version. Stallman asked Xerox for the source the end, the decision was made to publish a full code. Xerox would not let him have the source code. instruction set and to make available DIY kits with Stallman got upset and wrote a manifesto, and the the circuit board and all components. began.2 Later, Eric Ray- At Eyebeam, one of the central goals is to mond, a fellow computer programmer, published The be copied. At my orientation in 2006, then senior Cathedral and the Bazaar, which popularized the term fellows James Powderly and Evan Roth of the Graf- “open source.”3 The two terms are frequently referred fiti Research Lab gave a presentation of their work, to by the acronym I use in this essay: F/LOSS, which tracing their LED Throwies project from its original stands for “free/libre/open-source software.”4 form, a simple LED with a magnet and a battery, More recently this concept has been through the modifications made by hackers and extended from code to other forms of cultural pro- aficionados across the world (one had a timed duction via Creative Commons licenses and what blinker, another used a photosensor to turn on has become known as the free-culture movement.5 only at night to conserve battery, someone offered The Creative Commons licenses provide a legal tool LED Throwies for sale).9 They noted that the form of for applying F/LOSS licensing to media other than distribution that generated the most views of the computer code: text, image, sound, video, design, project was not their blog or their video on YouTube and so on. Many websites that are focused on fos- but their instruction set at Instructables.com, a site tering creative communities, like Flickr or Vimeo, that allows creators to give instructions on how to incorporate this license into their content-upload make things. The point of their presentation was process. Creative Commons estimates that there that the life of a project as a social phenomenon is are 135 million Creative Commons–licensed works its most important form and is often the primary on Flickr alone.6 While this has been a very suc- form to be evaluated for success. The sharing of the cessful initiative, most of these millions of works project creates participation. And participation is are digital. They are infinitely copyable, quickly at the edge of the beginnings of community.10 It is transferable, and easily distributable. What I seek not quite community, but it is one of the precondi-

Reading 03/02 7: Hard Work to answer is what happens when this license is tions for community.

92 One of the most important points about When I was in Portland, Oregon, in 2008, this example, and a point that Powderly and Roth I was introduced to Joe Mansfield, who runs an emphasized, is that these were ideas they would engraving business called Engrave Your Tech. I not have come up with by themselves, or if they had met him right as he was scaling up from individual come up with the idea, they would not have had the projects to larger runs and big architectural proj- time to execute it. They had one idea, which they ects. He had just broken the news to the rest of the shared with the world. People thought the original Mole-skine-notebook fan community that despite idea was interesting, but these people had their initial disavowals, the Chinese manufacturer of own ideas to contribute. The end result is some- the notebooks includes PVC in the covers, and they thing that is much greater than the original idea therefore could not be lasercut.18 It was clear when and something that could not have been created I met Mansfield that he was pretty well established without the contribution of others. in the scene. When I told him I was working out of That is the optimistic side of the Eyebeam Eyebeam, he looked at me blankly. I said, “You know, model, a model influenced by Peretti and R&D Eyebeam, where Limor Fried, a.k.a. Lady Ada, came technical director Michael Frumin. The flip side up with the idea to use the laser cutter to do what is that success is also measured in pure numbers: you make a living doing?” And he said that the name YouTube, Vimeo, and Flickr views, incoming links seemed familiar somehow. You could argue that this ritualistically tracked via analytics software, Diggs, is a failure, because people using this technology do blog posts, and overall hits. This became known as not know who created this use, but I would argue “The Famo.”11 Powderly, Roth, and Jamie Wilkinson that this is a success: the practice has become so coined the phrase, and by the time I arrived at pervasive that the origins are no longer important. Eyebeam, there were plans to create a complete Famo-meter, which would pull all the statistics Three Case Studies from every possible source of views, hits, referrals, I’m going to talk about three projects and try to and rankings and crown a king of Famo. They even evaluate their success in the terms I have laid out created and taught a class at Parsons (The New thus far. Notably, these three projects are design School for Design) in which the final grade was projects, not artworks; artworks would activate entirely determined by Famo.12 a different set of terms for success. I want to view Famo is relevant here because in order to all of these through the cycle of taking things and be copied, a project has to be viewed many, many making them better I have laid out earlier in this times. As codified in the 1% rule (or the 90-9-1 prin- chapter: participation breeds creative mutation, ciple), a very small number of people are committed and creative mutation leads to better ideas through enough to take up a project and modify it.13 If you this collaborative process. have lots of eyes on a project, it is much more likely Steve Lambert and I made a laser-cut that someone will also put his or her hands on it. In lampshade for compact fluorescent bulbs CFL( s) that the process of being copied, a change is made. No we called the Bright Idea Shade. We identified a copy is a direct copy: every copy is a mutation in problem and tried to come up with a solution for it. some form.14 When the ultimate goal is to change The Eyebeam space is two dark converted industrial culture, the intermediary goal is to get copied. buildings; most recently one side was an S&M club, and the other was a taxi garage. When Eyebeam first One Example moved in, it was only one floor with twenty-five-foot Limor Fried was one of the first people to laser-etch ceilings. When it was built out for office and work the top of a laptop and publicly share the results.15 space, the architects lit the space with bare sil- She and her partner and collaborator Phil Torrone ver-tipped incandescent light bulbs in raw porcelain figured out the process for etching laptops (specifi- fixtures. This was very much in vogue during the cally Apple’s Powerbooks), and then she did some- 1995–2005 loft conversions in New York and San thing really crucial: she published the instructions Francisco. It looks great in photographs and is an

on her website with an open license. As a result, inexpensive solution, but it became a problem when Work Hard 7: 03/02 Reading she created an industry. There is now a growing we started to switch out our incandescent bulbs for number of commercial engravers who focus on CFLs. The bulbs were now really just bare bulbs. We using the laser cutter as an artistic tool to engrave needed a solution that made it possible to use CFLs laptops, cell phones, Moleskine notebooks, leather without blinding ourselves. accessories, fingernails, and so on. For example, After some initial tests, we settled on a etchstar was built off Fried and Torrone’s published polygon solution, based on an Instructable, which materials;16 the business was purchased for an was based on a ReadyMade magazine project, which undisclosed sum by the Microsoft-funded Wallop was based on the work of several designers from and is now known as Coveroo.17 the ’60s and ’70s who each claim authorship of

93 the original shape.19 We consulted with an intel- also fear that if they invest to streamline the lectual-property lawyer, who of course would not production process, brand the product, and create a actually give us an answer as to any potential legal market, their competitor will jump in and produce liability. But from our discussion with him and the it cheaper, and their effort will be for naught. If transformative changes we made, we felt comfort- this did happen, it would be great for the end user/ able making the project public. consumer/citizen who wants to use CFLs, but it is To recap an earlier point: in order to get not so great for the bottom line of the profit-driven hands on a project, you have to get a lot of eyes on company that invested the time and money into it first. We followed the internal Eyebeam model producing the first version. identified by Peretti, Powderly, and Roth and Part of me wonders about Urban Outfitters created an interrelated video and Instructable.com and the rest of the corporate design community instruction set.20 This video showed how exciting that perpetually poaches art for their own uses. I the project was and then explicitly stated that jokingly think that they can’t even do anything the whole purpose of the video was to give the legitimately. They actually have to rip off someone’s idea away. The video clearly said that we wanted art. Playfully, I think that maybe if we said, “Don’t someone to take the idea and manufacture it and touch this. This is our artwork!” maybe they would encouraged people to make money off the idea in have copied it. But I know this is a simple and the process. Through our Attribution-ShareAlike incomplete response. There are larger problems license (CC BY-SA) and our text in the video, we that this example highlights. I came to realize that made it clear that we expected no money. We just there were better ways of getting this kind of proj- wanted someone to make it. ect scaled up and distributed, and to accept that we Steve Lambert and I are artists, designers, pitched the product and gave it away for free, and it educators, and activists, but we are not business didn’t work. The lesson learned is that giving things people. When we design things, we generally make away is hard work. prototypes and give them away. It’s great for code, I took that lesson into my next major but maybe it’s not so great for objects. Many, many project, Digital Foundations: An Intro to Media Design, people who saw this video wanted to buy a Bright a textbook that integrates Bauhaus pedagogy and Idea Shade. But it isn’t for sale. It is free, but not as art-historical examples into a software-focused in beer. All the patterns and instructions are there, design primer.21 I coauthored this book with xtine but you have to do it yourself. A manufacturer burrough. Though this project is closer to the code could do it and then sell the kits, but manufacturers and text projects I referred to in the introduction, it aren’t used to this idea of taking someone’s ideas, involves so much design work that it is not copyable prototypes, and intellectual property for free. and translatable like software or wikis. This book There are business questions and problems teaches the formal principles and exercises of the with fabricating and marketing a free-culture Bauhaus Basic Course through the Adobe Creative product. Despite the fact that this project generated Suite. One prime example of this strategy is the several million impressions in video, image, and chapter on color theory. We teach color theory blog views, there was only one failed lead, and using Josef Albers’s classic Bauhaus exercises, which that was from Urban Outfitters. When I tell people defined the modern artistic use of color, showing that Urban Outfitters was our only lead, they the interrelationship of color’s components: hue, often laugh, as Urban Outfitters’ business model value, and saturation. We point out the way these is perceived to be focused on copying artists and principles have been directly integrated into the designers and selling the infringing derivative work computer interface used to select colors. This on the cheap. I had a direct connection to someone is a classic exercise from the traditional Studio at the top of the company’s design team. We offered Foundations course that introduces students to the project to them, and they wouldn’t copy us the basic techniques and formal characteristics of when we handed it to them. art and design. The classrooms where these studio There is a lot of fear built into this process classes used to take place have been converted into by the law and capitalism. Intellectual-property computer labs, and more and more curricula skip law creates fear that companies do have some this traditional analog foundations course and unknowable liability because there are competing instead go straight into a computer class. Students claims on the original shape, and we may not have are not trained in the basic formal principles of done enough to modify the original shape to make visual composition: balance, harmony, symmetry, the new work outside the original copyright. It does dynamism, negative space, and so on, nor do they not help that no lawyer can give an authoritative learn color theory or basic drawing. answer on this question, so the large company We made a number of strategic decisions at

Reading 03/02 7: Hard Work with highly suable assets shies away. Companies the beginning that attempted to avoid the problems

94 Lambert and I encountered with the Bright Idea Program, led a translation Shade. Instead of waiting for someone to find the of the whole book into Spanish.24 This book has book and publish it, we went through the traditional been published and is going to be released in an book-proposal process. Once we had the publisher extremely low-cost newsprint edition sponsored by excited about the book, we then started negotiating Media Lab Prado in Madrid and distributed for free the Creative Commons license on the work. Before to design centers, schools, Internet cafes, coworking the work was even finished, we actively worked to spaces, and community centers. In addition, there give the work away by partnering with an organi- are active translations into French, Farsi, Mandarin zation called Flossmanuals to translate the book Chinese, Finnish, and German. from the proprietary Adobe design applications We succeeded in giving the project away, like Photoshop and Illustrator to the F/LOSS design and the project continues to evolve into new trans- applications like GIMP and Inkscape. formations and uses. We were able to achieve this We wrote the book on a wiki, which at the because we were more strategic at an earlier stage time was rather unusual for textbook writing.22 than Lambert and I were with the Bright Idea Shade. It was so unusual that we were concerned about We formed a partnership early and made sure that the publisher’s reaction. We decided to go ahead it was an open partnership that allowed us to make with it, as it was the most effective way for the further partnerships with other individuals and two of us to collaborate, share the results with our organizations that were interested in the material peers who were providing feedback, and test the we covered in the book and in the process by which exercises from the book in our classes as we were we made the book. writing them. When we did show the publisher, The materiality of the two projects dif- they were thrilled. They sent the site around to ferentiates them in a way that may be instructive. everyone in the company as an example of how Digital Foundations has taken multiple physical they could start to adopt new peer production forms: a trade paperback technical book published techniques for their books. in an initial 2008 run of eight thousand copies, with We wrote it on a wiki with the Creative a 2009 reprint of four thousand copies; two print- Commons license we were in the process of nego- on-demand books published by Flossmanuals; and tiating with the publisher. We only used public-do- in the future, as five thousand copies of a newsprint main or Creative Commons–licensed images. After edition.25 It has also taken multiple digital forms: nine months of negotiating, during which time we the whole book is up on a wiki; the full F/LOSS wrote the majority of the book, we finally signed version is available in English and Spanish from the a Creative Commons–licensed contract with the Flossmanuals.net website, where partially trans- publisher, AIGA Design Press/New Riders, which is lated versions also live; and I put the entire master an imprint of Peachpit Press, which is a division of design file for the original book up as a torrent Pearson, one of the largest publishers in the world. file on Clear Bits, a legal torrent site.26 Digital Their legal department took nine months to churn Foundations was also closer in form to the more its wheels and finally agreed to a Creative Com- successful text/code-based examples discussed in mons license. We licensed this work with a Creative the introduction, though the significant design Commons license on principle and also because I work in the book differentiates it from these text/ was contractually obliged to do so by my contract code examples. Conversely, the Bright Idea Shade with Eyebeam. Most importantly, we did it out of was necessarily a physical object. It was effectively the hope that this time we would be able to succeed a prototype for a kit that could have been manu- at giving the work away. factured in large scale. Its digital form was a set As I mentioned, we were building plans of vector files that a laser cutter could use to cut with Flossmanuals to translate the book into copies and an instruction set on Instructables.com: F/LOSS software. Run by Adam Hyde, Flossmanuals’ these were not the product; they were procedural mission is to create free manuals for free software. tools that would help get to the end product. The

For Digital Foundations, Flossmanuals assembled Bright Idea Shade was rooted in physical materi- Work Hard 7: 03/02 Reading a team in New York and ported the whole book to ality, while Digital Foundations was whole both in open-source applications like Inkscape, GIMP, and physical and digital forms. Processing. In a three-day book sprint, eight to The demands of participation were very ten people per day, with a wide range of technical different between the two projects. For Digital experience, “F/LOSSified” the whole book.23 I Foundations we were able to make the process attended the sprint primarily to observe and advise of sharing into a collaborative process, and one but did almost no actual translation; burrough which accessed collaborators who had a range of did not attend. Since then, Jennifer Dopazo, at experience, from expert to novice software users, the time a graduate student in NYU’s Interactive to translators in multiple languages. Some of the

95 most helpful participants in the translation book as an example. During her time at Eyebeam, she sprint were the people who had no experience with and Torrone had started a business called Adafruit the F/LOSS software into which we were translating Industries, selling the DIY kits she was making.29 I the book; these contributors’ responsibility was made revisions to the original design, creating two simply to work their way through the finished different DIY kits that take five and fifteen minutes chapters, following the new instructions, and to apply each.30 I made a about one hundred of successfully completing each step along the way. these kits on a friend’s vinyl cutter, sent out one When they got confused or encountered errors, the e-mail, and quickly sold out. I launched a fundrais- translators knew they had to rewrite that section. ing campaign via the crowdfunding site Kickstarter. In the process they learned the software. With the com which raised $2,500 from eighty-six different translation process, contributions could be large “project backers” who each received rewards in the or small. Though Dopazo translated the majority form of DIY kits.31 Their support allowed me to buy of the Spanish version, she did have collaborators a bulk order of the expensive vinyl and to make translate and proofread. It is not all or nothing, and dedicated jigs, so I could fabricate the kits quickly many small contributions led to a complete project. (hand cutting with jigs proved faster and more Conversely, the Bright Idea Shade was all or nothing. accurate than using a vinyl cutter). We were not trying to find a person to collaborate Presently, I have shipped wholesale orders with but, rather, a company that had very specific to a bicycle shop in Portland, Oregon, and to several capabilities. We were looking for a company to design boutiques and bike shops in San Francisco commit to the large-scale production of the design and Amsterdam. I have an assistant who cuts and prototype we had created. This was not possible ships kits one day a week. The revenue from the through collaboration; this did not access multiple kits is paying the wages of the assistant and for new skill levels; nor did it allow for incremental produc- supplies of the vinyl. The project is creating enough tion. It was an all-or-nothing proposition, and as a profit to sustain itself. By sustaining the project, result, it was not successful. I am creating the possibility for more people to Some time after we made the Bright Idea get it in their hands, in the hope that one of them Shade, I covered my bicycle in black retroreflective will use their hands and transform the project. It vinyl. “Retroreflective” is a technical term that appears that this strategy is working: a number of means that the material reflects directly back in Flickr users have posted creative applications of the direction of a light source. This is the same the kits, and I recently discovered that a bike shop reflective material on the backs of running shoes to which I gave a sample has derived a modified and night safety vests. I called the project Bright version of the kit which they are putting on all of Bike, made a video, and released it online.27 By this the bikes they sell.32 time I was beginning to see the flaws with the plan I was at a family event, and a distant for the Bright Idea Shade and to see the potential cousin came up to me to talk about the Bright Bike successes of the way we were planning the Digital kits. She thought it was a great idea, but she was Foundations project. I tried to include some of this very concerned that I patent the idea as soon as knowledge in the plan for the Bright Bike. possible, lest “one of the big bike manufacturers The vinyl comes in sizes starting at thirty- steal it from you and make a lot of money and foot-long, fifteen-inch-wide rolls, but the initial kit leave you with nothing.” I told her that it would be required only six feet of fifteen-inch-wide vinyl. wonderful if that happened, because I was really Eyebeam sold six-foot sections of the vinyl out of interested in design for bike safety and that a major the Eyebeam Bookstore, but that was only acces- bike manufacturer could scale up the project much sible to people who happened to stop by in person. larger than an individual like me could. I also told In an effort to expand that range, we approached her that based on my past experience, it was pretty our vinyl supplier to see if they would be willing to unlikely that her fears would play out but that I still sell six-foot lengths of vinyl cut for the Bright Bike hoped they might. project. The supplier was interested, as the com- pany happened to be run by an avid cyclist. They This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribu- sold the vinyl in six-foot lengths to correspond to tion-ShareAlike license. the Instructable that had the directions on it.28 We achieved some success. Despite the kits’ 1. One of the potential pitfalls of this essay is trying to being buried deep in the vinyl supplier’s website, define the boundary between the two categories I people did order them. Somewhere along the way I am setting up. I do not set up this binary for the sake also realized that, like it or not, I was going to have of defining borders and establishing categories but, to become a businessman, if only a small-scale rather, to articulate different modes of production.

Reading 03/02 7: Hard Work DIY one. In this, I turned to Limor Fried’s practice In reality, this is a continuum, with some interesting

96 cases floating in the middle. A digitized photograph For modifications, see projects tagged “Throwies” on is code, but the image itself has to be inputted and Instructables.com: http://www.instructables.com/ outputted from the computer. Additionally, it cannot tag/throwies/ (accessed June 25, 2010). LED Throwies be reworked quite as easily as code/text. While for sale: Hebei Ltd., http://www.hebeiltd.com. interesting, the exploration of these boundary cases is cn/?p=throwies (accessed June 25, 2010). not the focus of this essay. 10. Lewis Hyde, The Gift (New York: Vintage, 1979); Adam 2. Richard Stallman, “The GNU Manifesto,” http://www. Hyde et al., Collaborative Futures, Flossmanuals. gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html; and Free Software net, 2010, http://www.booki.cc/collaborativefutures/ Foundation, “The Free Software Definition,” http:// (accessed June 25, 2010). www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html (accessed 11. The term “Famo” comes from the URL www.internet- June 25, 2010). One of Richard Stallman’s most creative famo.us; without the TLD (top-level domain “.us”), the contributions to this movement was the General word “famous” is cut to “famo.” Public License or GPL, http://www.gnu.org/licenses/ 12. James Powderly, Evan Roth, and Jamie Wilkinson, gpl.html. Software licensed with the GPL is required to “Internet Famous Class, 2007–2008,” http://internet- maintain that license in all future incarnations; this famo.us/class/ (accessed June 25, 2010). means that code that starts out open has to stay open. 13. Ben McConnell, “The 1% Rule: Charting Citizen You cannot close the source code. This is known as a Participation,” Church of the Customer Blog, May “copyleft” license. 3, 2006, http://customerevangelists.typepad.com/ 3. Eric Raymond, The Cathedral and the Bazaar (Sebastopol, blog/2006/05/charting_wiki_p.html (accessed June 29, CA: O’Reilly, 2001). 2011); Julia Angwin and Geoffrey A. Fowler, “Volun- 4. There is much debate in the subcultures of the teers Log Off as Wikipedia Ages,” Wall Street Journal, free-culture movement about what terms to use. November 27, 2009, http://online.wsj.com/article/ Some argue that the term “open source” is a neutered SB125893981183759969.html (accessed June 25, 2010). version of “free software” that caters to corporate 14. For an edge case of this idea, see Michael Mandiberg, entities like IBM that see the business potential in a AfterSherrieLevine.com, 2001. software-authoring model that is built around sharing 15. Limor Fried and Phil Torrone, “Adafruit Laser Informa- and group work but cannot allow the word “free” to tion Wiki,” LadyAda.net, first posted December 2005, enter into their business lexicon. While these disputes last updated March 5, 2010, http://www.ladyada.net/ arise from time to time, the term “F/LOSS” (or “FOSS”) wiki/laserinfo/start (accessed July 20, 2010). is used as a catchall acronym to refer to both terms. 16. Phil Torrone, personal interview, July 1, 2010. 5. For more on the mechanics of Creative Commons 17. Camille Ricketts, “Microsoft Social App Co. Wallop licenses, please see http://creativecommons.org/ Rebrands as Coveroo,” Deals & More, December 17, about/licenses/. 2008, http://deals.venturebeat.com/2008/12/17/ 6. Mike Linksvayer, “Creative Commons Licenses on Flickr: microsoft-social-appco-wallop-rebrands-as-coveroo/ Many More Images, Slightly More Freedom,” Creative (accessed July 20, 2010). Commons Blog, March 10, 2010, http://creativecom- 18. Vaporized PVC releases deadly chlorine gas. mons.org/weblog/entry/20870 (accessed June 25, 2010). 19. Dan Goldwater, “Universal Lamp Shade Polygon 7. There are even limitations beyond the materiality Building Kit,” Instructables, http://www.instructables. of the works: one group of leading artist-engineers is com/id/Universal-lamp-shade-polygon-building-kit/ currently working with Creative Commons on making (accessed June 25, 2010). “REWIRE: Piece Together it possible to license an electronic circuit via an open Pendant Lamps,” ReadyMade, December–January license, as it is currently not possible to fully do so. For 2007–2008. Antonio Carrillo, modular construction video documentation, see Eyebeam, “Opening Hard- system, 1964; see, e.g., http://www.ylighting.com/brs- ware,” March 17, 2010, http://eyebeam.org/projects/ lj-col-drop.html (accessed June 25, 2010). Holger Strom, opening-hardware (accessed April 11, 2010). “IQ Light,” 1972; see overview at http://www.sadiethepi- 8. Eyebeam has changed its internal structure to adapt lot.com/iqweb/iqstory.htm (accessed June 25, 2010). to changing needs of its fellows and resident artists: at 20. Steve Lambert and Michael Mandiberg, “Bright Idea

the time of Fried’s fellowship, there were multiple labs Shade,” Vimeo, 2008, http://vimeo.com/1553079 Work Hard 7: 03/02 Reading with different licensing requirements. Due to external (accessed June 25, 2010). factors like the growing importance of free culture 21. xtine burrough and Michael Mandiberg, Digital Founda- and internal factors like the fellows’ desire to all work tions: An Intro to Media Design (Berkeley, CA: Peachpit, 2008). in one shared lab, the organization collapsed the labs 22. xtine burrough and Michael Mandiberg, “Digital into one lab. Fellows are no longer designated “R&D Foundations Wiki,” http://wiki.digital-foundations. fellow” or “production fellow” but are simply “fellows,” net (accessed July 20, 2010). and all contracts require open licenses. 23. Flossmanuals.net community, Digital Foundations: 9. Graffiti Research Lab, “LED Throwies,” Instructables, Introduction to Media Design with F/LOSS, 2009, http:// 2006, http://www.instructables.com/id/LED-Throwies.

97 en.Flossmanuals.net/DigitalFoundations (accessed artist collective Futurefarmers to give a talk on the June 25, 2010). commons for the core participants of A People With- 24. Flossmanuals.net community, Fundamentos out a Voice Cannot Be Heard in August 2010. During Digitales: Introducción al diseño de medios con F/LOSS, his visit to the Walker, Sarah Schultz and Sarah Peters 2009, http://translate.Flossmanuals.net/DigitalFoun- posed these questions about the relationship between dations_es (accessed June 25, 2010). commons and museums, and the complications of 25. burrough and Mandiberg, Digital Foundations; institutional forays into social practice. Flossmanuals.net community, Digital Foundations; Flossmanuals.net community, Fundamentos Digitales. Sarah Schultz & Sarah Peters: What can 26. burrough and Mandiberg, “Digital Foundations Wiki”; the model of a commons offer an art institution? xtine burrough and Michael Mandiberg, “Digital Rick Prelinger: Open Field offers us an Foundations Master File,” Clear Bits, 2009, http://www. unusual opportunity — to throw light on, and per- clearbits.net/torrents/597-digital-foundations-text- haps even to resolve for a time — the contentious bookmaster-file-including-all-files-links-images and vexing relationship between what we think of (accessed June 25, 2010). as “art” and what we call “craft,” “social practice,” 27. Steve Lambert and Michael Mandiberg, “Bright Bike,” “maker culture” and yes, “political activity.” Vimeo, 2008, http://vimeo.com/2409360 (accessed As civic actors, artists have been noto- June 25, 2010). riously unsuccessful at causing social change on 28. Graphics, http://www.beacongraphics.com/ a macro level. While we’ve collectively helped brightbike.html (accessed June 25, 2010); Michael to construct one of the most culturally exciting Mandiberg, “Bright Bike,” Instructables, http:// periods in recent history, we’ve had no success www.instructables.com/id/Bright-Bike/ (accessed halting militarism, reversing accelerating economic June 25, 2010). inequalities, or grafting our values and ideas onto 29. The business, Adafruit Industries (http://adafruit. a working political framework. I believe we’ve com/), is the creative outlet for Fried’s physical experienced these chronic failures traumatically, computing projects and distributes her work into the and we’ve adapted by reconfiguring our senses of hands and soldering irons of those who want to use ourselves and our work to focus on smaller, more the tools she is making. autonomous, and more achievable outcomes. 30. All of the images and blog posts about the first version On a micro level, we’ve been much more that appeared online emphasized how hard it was successful, and our victories come in many fla- to actually complete the project and how long it vors. We’ve taken performance into public spaces, took those who tried. Michael Mandiberg, “Bright invented new objects, planted vegetables, floated Bike v2.0,” Vimeo, 2009, http://vimeo.com/8159498 conceptual projects, sketched out utopias, and (accessed June 25, 2010). called attention to conditions that must change. 31. Michael Mandiberg, “Bright Bike DIY Kits: Night Visi- This and more constitute the labor of twen- bility for Safer Riding,” Kick-starter, 2010, http://www. ty-first-century artists. We work, however, in a kickstarter.com/projects/mandiberg/bright-bike-diy- staccato manner: we conceive projects, we fund kits-night-visibility-for-safer-r (accessed June 25, 2010). (or don’t fund) them, perform them, evaluate them, 32. Michael Mandiberg, “Bright Bike Mod in Brooklyn,” possibly hand them over to the community, and Michael Mandiberg’s website, August 31, 2010, http:// then–we move on. Admittedly, there are exceptions, www.mandiberg.com/2010/08/31/bright-bike-mod- but most often we behave like serial monogamists, in-brooklyn/ (accessed August 31, 2010). living as fully as we can within a moment until the next moment arrives. Our social practice is almost always short-term. We don’t run community An Authentic Commons Is organizations; we don’t build permanent work- shops for makers; we do propose concepts, but we Not a Temporary Affair generally aren’t bound by the consequences of our BY SARAH SCHULTZ & SARAH PETERS propositions. None of this is necessarily bad; in fact, Sep 6, 2012 it’s quite traditional. While we work in constantly changing environments and newly emerging media Rick Prelinger is best known as the founder of the forms, our social function remains much the same. Prelinger Archives, a collection of thousands of And as long as these conditions prevail, Open Field advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur will be a playground, a temporary (and not terribly films available for public use, a portion of which are autonomous) zone, incubating crops that die in the accessible online for free viewing, downloading, and autumn and sprout again in spring. remixing. A writer, filmmaker, and longtime advo- Open Field could certainly evolve into a bona

Reading 03/02 7: Hard Work cate for the public domain, Prelinger was invited by fide commons, or at least as much of a commons as

98 can exist within current society, but an authentic or a place is a most difficult problem. Schemes such commons is not a temporary affair. Building a place as the General Public License (GPL) and the Creative where tools, ideas, and projects are shared and money Commons CC0 license make it possible to irrevo- wields no power is a profoundly urgent and exciting cably build sharing into the core of an intangible experiment, but its success would require that we good such as software or digital content, but few redefine what we do as artists. We’d have to move working schemes exist for tangible goods. As artist beyond a demonstrative mindset and into a produc- Amy Balkin points out in her piece This is the tive mode, and to build a more permanent presence Public Domain, our current legal regime requires geared to supplying goods and services, tangible and that all real property have a distinct owner. We intangible, that society doesn’t currently provide. might be able to stretch intangible licensing We might have to chip away at the “visiting artist” models into the tangible world, but doing so on paradigm as well, because residency, longevity, and a voluntary basis falls far short of permanently accountability are greater enablers of community. viralizing non-owned status. Finally, it might make sense to try to redefine privi- Intentionally devaluing property by lege as an outgrowth of participation in the commu- rendering it overabundant or manipulating its nity, rather than individual reputation, and find new market price works well, but can have destructive ways to distribute agency, control, and attribution. consequences. The government of Venezuela I’m not arguing for an end to art or for subsidizes gasoline within its borders; as of spring self-effacement on the part of artists. Rather, I 2011, the price was about twelve cents per gallon, imagine the commons as a space where art prac- and Venezuelan society has been criticized for its tice can find new meaning as it addresses deeply overdependence on motor vehicles. Google Maps has intractable and unsolved dilemmas. Not a single caused the price of dashboard-mounted GPS units to year’s crop, but a field with many harvests. drop by as much as seventy-five percent, a disrup- tion that may threaten new product development by Schultz & Peters: Is the word “commons” GPS receiver manufacturers. File sharing has made a useful term? Is this concept effective for creating a galaxy of sounds and images accessible to a wider real change? audience, but recording and motion-picture trade Prelinger: As the term “commons” works associations have responded by suing downloaders. its way into everyday speech, it runs the risk of being As we evolve new models of value and appropriated to describe arrangements and schemes exchange, necessity is likely to play a greater role that have little to do with collective ownership than altruism. Real-world tests that we haven’t yet (non-ownership!) or shared resources. If the word had to experience will measure the survivability of goes the way of “organic” and “sustainable,” we’ll commons-oriented ideas. have an issue unless we work hard to let our practice lead our language, rather than the opposite. https://walkerart.org/magazine/rick-prelinger-commons-open-field

Schultz & Peters: What is the scale of the commons; what units do we use to measure it? Does Oxygen’s project coordina- a commons have to be intimate to be successful? Prelinger: At present, commons-based tor Nuno Pinheiro Interview initiatives are by necessity micro-narratives, scaled to the levels of neighborhoods, blocks, or grassy Manufactura Independente: Tell us about spaces outside museums. But the micro — the inti- Oxygen. What is it? How is it related to the KDE project? mate — is the prerequisite to imagining the macro. Nuno Pinheiro: Well, Oxygen is considered While it may be frustrating to restrict ourselves to one of the foundations of KDE. It’s a design platform. the local, it is much more difficult to work toward Initially, it was created by three people — commons-based solutions on a grander level. This I wasn’t one of them — at this get-together called limitation is time-dependent, and I would suggest Appeal Meeting, which took place right after the Work Hard 7: 03/02 Reading that we should enjoy working locally while we still KDE 3.4 release. Many important KDE people were have the freedom to do so. present in order to discuss and decide where to go from there. KDE had reached a fairly mature state Schultz & Peters: How do you make the and it was appropriate to find out which next commons essential rather than a choice? How do you steps to take. virally build sharing into something so that it can’t be Two people involved in the meeting were taken away? Kenneth Wimer and . David is the Prelinger: Building sharing, interdepen- author of the Nuvola theme which was, back then, dence, and non-ownership into a good, a practice, one of the most popular alternative themes for

99 KDE. Actually, it was the most used theme. At this we’re going that way” or “We’re not going that way.” meeting, we decided to begin work on a new icon I’ve got the role of drawing the line when it comes theme, which was to be called Oxygen. to final design choices. Besides Ken and David, they invited me to However, Oxygen is not a young project. join the effort of building a completely new icon There’s quite some years behind it. It’s sported some theme. We had the sponsorship of Novell, which different visual tendencies through time, graphi- was a nice and cool company back in the day. That’s cally and formally. Every two KDE versions, we try the story behind the creation of Oxygen, which was to slightly change the general concept and message set to become the icon theme for the fourth version of the theme. This message is not defined by us, but of KDE. We started work on the icons. Novell ended rather by the KDE community. For instance, the up changing their minds and left the project. We message we’re working on for KDE 4.6 and 4.7 is carried on nevertheless. about elegance, in its broadest definition. Code can As we progressed on Oxygen, it became be elegant, user experience can be elegant. So, we clear that icons were a single aspect of the user took this message and tried to convey it through desktop experience. The desktop has many things, the theme design, aiming for an elegant experience: and it became clear that the user interface (UI) tool- elegant wallpapers, elegant sound pieces, and so on. kit [or window decorations] was a significant part This is the centerpiece of the experience we want to of the experience. KDE used , which had its own pass on to the user — a global message that Oxygen window decorations. We thought it was appropriate helps get across. to do our own UI theme. So I started work on that as And this is the most complicated part a sub-project of Oxygen, drawing many mock-ups inside a design project: achieving consistency when using Inkscape. I made a full mock-up of the theme, we have several people with very different styles without any code underneath. Then, I approached and ideas contributing to the same project. From some developers and they ended up supporting my there, it’s the challenge of creating a bundle that work. We worked together and did some iterations is smooth and continuous, has an even pace, and until we got to the current version. speaks the same language. Managing all of this is Now, if you can make an icon theme and a UI my task: talking to people and trying to have their theme, you can also make a window theme. So we did work flow into something that’s consistent and that next. If you can make a window theme, you can dynamic, something that goes along with the rest also make a sound theme. So I talked to Nuno Póvoa, and, at the same time, addresses the core message. who made it. If you can make a sound theme, you can also make a mouse pointer theme. If you make a MI: Regarding your tools of choice, we know mouse pointer theme, you can also make wallpapers. you use Inkscape... If you can make wallpapers, you can make websites. NP: I do use Inkscape. I also work with This way, Oxygen ended up becoming a design , Gimp, , scanner, pencil, pen and my platform. Everything in KDE that is design-related is imagination. taken care of inside Oxygen [except type]. In the meantime, while making Oxygen, MI: Have these been your tools all along? we decided on using an icon naming spec, adopting NP: When I started, my first tool was the freedesktop standard. Thanks to this icon Sodipodi, the predecessor of Inkscape. Inkscape is naming scheme, you can get a KDE icon theme and definitely my main design tool. use it within GNOME, and vice-versa. This means that Oxygen, though closely connected to the KDE MI: Have you ever approached the Inkscape project, can be used in many other contexts — in developers to ask for a specific feature? fact, we encourage that other projects use Oxygen. NP: To be honest, I’m not close to the The license is free and the process is open. I get Inkscape guys. On the other hand, I do frequent really happy when Oxygen is used in other projects, exchanges with the Scribus people. We get along other places and for other purposes. rather well. I’m almost done with their icons! Scri- bus requires a lot of icons, around three hundred. MI: Going from this idea of Oxygen being the design hub for KDE, there’s a question we’re inter- MI: How many icons are there in Oxygen? ested in: what’s the decision-making process for aes- NP: Two thousand and something. It’s thetic criteria? In the end, how does it come together? the largest part of KDE in terms of file size — two Is it a top-down process, or can anyone propose new hundred or so megabytes. As far as I know, it’s the directions? Is there any other kind of control? world’s most complete icon theme. I’m not aware NP: It’s bidirectional. Actually, I coordi- of any other theme with such an amount of icons.

Reading 03/02 7: Hard Work nate the project, and I’m the guy who says “Okay, Tango had almost as much, but we’re bigger. To give

100 you a point of comparison, Apple only has around a designer, with a rather high quality standard eighty base icons, and then each application brings considering the tools available at the time. He’s now their own set. working for Apple. The Crystal theme was of very high quality, MI: Are there any style guidelines that you indeed. But it’s the result of what Everaldo is as a set out before starting work on a new theme? Setting designer, a specific kind of stubborn designer with a formal style direction is a mainstay of traditional a distinct style. It is glossy, playful, colorful, fun. Its graphic design, usually through corporate identity visual style eventually became associated with KDE. manuals or interface guides. Our question is, do you follow this tendency, or is the Oxygen style defined MI: What we were trying to get at with the through a less formal, more organic way? previous question was, does the Oxygen team see NP: It is organic. To be blunt, I don’t believe themselves as trendsetters? Do you think that you’re in those things. I’ve read several identity and creating a norm, a set of unwritten rules of taste that interface guideline manuals, particularly icon style would motivate others? guides. I could get the style guidelines for Windows NP: Honestly, with Oxygen I’m aiming to Vista and create Mac icons following them, and vice influence my community to get better. I think that versa. This while strictly following their rules. there are many more interesting things out there than Oxygen, and I’m not just talking about the MI: And you could end up with something desktop. I think that there’s incredibly interesting consistent. stuff made for the web — which by the way, I don’t NP: I could! Any designer worth his name approve of as a platform, we’re sacrificing our future can do that. It’s very easy for a designer to follow freedom by moving everything to the cloud — but every single rule, and still end up with something design-wise, there’s very exciting things being done that doesn’t fit. There’s some intangible aspects, a for the web today. I try to translate some of those kind of feeling, which you can’t turn into logical new principles to the desktop, and in doing so try to rules and crystalise on guidelines. Having 42 bullet influence design perception inside the community. points that you have to go through in order to Design is learned, an acquired taste. Just achieve X is not something that works in this case. like enjoying wine, or cooking in general. You I’ve heard many dissenting opinions, but I seriously might go your whole life loving potato chips and don’t agree with this way of doing things. It’s my steak; one day, you try fish, and the next day you personal opinion. come back. Maybe you’ll go on to like fish. Then you Oxygen could have better documentation, try a good wine, and you gradually become able to but it’s more about having good designers. Every appreciate wine. I try to influence the community time I have a designer asking for the rules, I tell to become aware of these little things. them to look at the icons. If, after analyzing the icons from any theme, you still have doubts about MI: Icons are pieces created with the pur- their graphical and aesthetic rules, you probably pose of being used and re-used in different contexts. shouldn’t be working on this. Honestly, it’s a In the case of Oxygen this becomes more evident language. If it’s well written, one should be able to because of the Free licensing you employ. Have you clearly interpret and identify the meaning just by ever been surprised by a particular use of the Oxygen reading it. Something along the lines of “Oh, they’re icons? using references to this and that. And I think I NP: Oh, many surprises. “A Bola” [a get where they’re trying to go here.” If you need a top-selling daily Portuguese sports newspaper] manual for a language in order to be able to write it, used my icons. Any mention to the license or even then something failed during the process, I’d say. attribution is nowhere to be seen. I’ve stopped worrying about licensing issues. MI: Now, we might be basing this on a The license we use is the LGPL. It’s the per- historical inaccuracy here, but we’re led to believe fect license for icons. We could have used Creative Work Hard 7: 03/02 Reading that KDE pioneered the glossy interface look, with Commons, but the most permissive CC license is polished looks, clean lines and shiny surfaces. The very similar to LGPL. With it, you only have to make same approach that has now been made popular by sure proper attribution is made; other than that, Apple on its recent user interfaces. the icons belong to whoever wants to use them. NP: Yes — this great designer, Everaldo Coelho, is to blame for the glossy style. He worked MI: In corporate settings, one can usually on this theme, Crystal, which is very well known find a schism between designers and developers and heavily used on a number of web sites world- or engineers. In Oxygen’s case, does this kind of wide. It was one of the first Free themes made by tension occur?

101 NP: Such tensions are nowhere to be do serious design work. This myth has historically found. I’m actually lucky — I’m an engineer. I been emphasized by the prominent presence of studied engineering. And I find this is one of the Adobe in the graphics software arena. reasons why Oxygen solved many of the issues The magazine [This excerpt from the that can plague other open source projects. I can magazine Libre Graphics] you’re currently reading speak both languages. is, we hope, evidence to the contrary. While the I come from a specific background: I’m a process of reframing your mindset for a new tool is civil engineer. Civil engineering implies a crossover rarely straightforward, making the switch to F/LOSS between architecture and engineering. My sister design tools is not only an attitude but a refreshing is an architect, so I know the battlefield well when new view on digital design work, moving away from it comes to the problems of both theorizing and the Adobe way of doing things. implementing. The person who theorizes — often Specialized GNU/Linux distributions like the designer — should be comfortable with imple- Studio or the Fedora Design Suite try to fill mentation details, but very often that’s not the case. this gap. However, our impression is that these are A good designer should incorporate the engineer closer to the audiovisual and web side of design, and the artist, but most of the time the artist wins. and do not devote as much attention to print — and I keep trying to make sure I’m in touch with both we understand that choice. But it means that perspectives. there’s still work to be done to show how F/LOSS There was a particular issue in Oxygen tools can be a viable alternative to the Adobe suite regarding the styling of window shadows. Only for print designers. someone well aware of design and implementation We find that one of the reasons people issues could tackle the problem of how to properly around us have trouble switching is that the F/LOSS anti-alias window corners and make it look good. I tool ecosystem is hardly the neat, shrink-wrapped knew the implementation pitfalls, knew how the experience that Adobe’s suite provides — and while tech worked, went to the developers and presented we think that’s a plus for Free Software tools, it lacks a different solution that could elegantly solve the the convenience that people crave. It is true that problem. It is very important for the designer to the scattered nature of the Free tool world makes it be aware of the technical limitations. However, it’s desirable, if not necessary, to have some hand-hold- very important for the designer to not be aware of ing through the switching process. It is also true that the technical limitations. convenience is the main enemy of principle. That’s why coordination is important. I So how can we reduce the effort in migrat- like having designers in the who ing to Free Software tools? work with absolute freedom, pure artists. The 1. Give people easy access to Windows or Mac kind of people who come to me with completely versions of F/LOSS design tools. Requiring an nonsensical ideas and make me say “You’re an idiot, operating system switch is too drastic a change this is impossible.” But it’s very important that they to ask as a first step (naturally, the goal is to keep pushing me in that direction so that I can go make it clear that it’s a worthy change!). “This is impossible but hey, maybe we can do half of 2. Bring together software packages and their it.” Then I go to the developer and he’ll say “This documentation, so that one does not need to is impossible because of this, this and that,” and hop between sites and software versions. I can suggest “But this and this could be done in 3. Provide a selection of resources that can be this particular way,” to which he’ll reply “Maybe used immediately in those tools: brushes, we can do half of it.” This way, things progress presets, typefaces, ready-made configurations according to the artist’s vision and the developer’s and examples. understanding. These goals fueled the Libre Graphics Kit, a project we’re starting that tries to address these From Libre Graphics 1.2 issues. It takes the shape of a physical access point, directly inspired by the “USB dead drops” explored by, among others, media artist Aram Bartholl. Our Making the switch dead drops are read-only USB devices, accessible BY MANUFACTURA INDEPENDENTE in public places, which contain a set of tools and resources that we’ve selected for people who want Making the switch is one of the main issues in the to try something different. Libre Graphics community. Providing a physical location to access The “professionals use Adobe” meme is still these goes a long way further than telling people very prevalent, to the point that the Adobe way of “go to site X and download version Y.” Picking loca-

Reading 03/02 7: Hard Work doing things has become, to many, the one way to tions such as art schools, hackerspaces and libraries

102 can, we believe, work towards familiarizing people this creative ground during a pernicious corporate with F/LOSS workflows for print design. resource grab has at least two beneficial effects: We’re still in our first steps with this proj- first, it alerts us to this newest round of enclosure ect, so we’d certainly appreciate whatever feedback by the forces of capital; and second, it provides a you might have about the idea, especially if you’d training ground for experimenting with alternate be interested in placing a dead drop in your campus, practices. It is unclear whether these two will office or local coffee house! We’ll be bringing a dead be sufficient to propel this work beyond colonial drop with us to our stand at FOSDEM, so be sure to regimes of property. For the forces of enclosure drop by and see how it works. are neither new, nor are they contained. Both historically and globally, they siphon natural and From Libre Graphics 2.2 human resources into the machine of capital that is so effective at producing wealth for the few and poverty for the masses of humanity. Indigenous Domain: Parallel movements in indigenous culture, permaculture, and digital culture claim a far Pilgrims, Permaculture more radical ground, and suggest an alternative R8 to the intellectual property regime at the base of and Perl colonial cultures. And indeed recent research on JOLINE BLAIS the forgotten forest provisions of the Magna Carta suggests that the reclaiming of the commons may There are two ways to conceive of the Commons. well require a reversal of the nearly thousand-year Either it functions within a larger regime of history of colonization. If the Forest Charter property and capital, or it functions as leverage provisions could reverse 200 years of Norman against it. In Free Culture, Larry Lessig champions appropriation of Anglo forests and return them to the Internet as an “innovation commons” where the commoners, then perhaps these movements creative individuals can remix cultural artifacts can help their respective groups reclaim their to produce new knowledge, culture, and civil own digital and physical commons, or at least the disobedience. This commons functions as a kind right to engage with cultural artifacts and natural of anonymous resource in which individuals can resources in their own culturally specific ways. freely take materials without permission, ethical responsibilities or social contract. No payment or Pumpkins gift is required, no relationship is established, and Pilgrims no genealogy is produced. While this commons The intertwining of these three cultural responses creates a kind of “cultural reservation” that might to the Intellectual Property regimes is complex, protect artists from the rapacity of corporate greed but we might begin tracing their development by — as Indian reservations were supposed to protect telling a story about pumpkins. First is the Native Native Americans from the rapacity of settlers — in American pumpkin, one of the first New World the long run, like its colonial predecessor, it may foods brought to Europe, and symbol of a supposed end up as an exception that proves the rule of Thanksgiving harvest celebrated by Pilgrims and property. Since the Creative Commons licenses Native Americans. Behind the myth is a history of are meant to mesh with existing commercial and two related but disparate commons, both at risk copyright regimes, they ultimately risk re-inscrib- in the narrative of progress unleashed in North ing a colonial view of culture, one that offers no America — the commons of the Native Americans radical critique of the market and its effects on who saved the Pilgrims by teaching them how human culture and nature. These limitations are to survive in the Northeast, and the dwindling most apparent when intellectual property laws commons in Britain whose defenders were rioting Article… Last One 03/09 8: Reading are imposed on cultural production outside the US, against the enclosures enacted by their own especially in the case of indigenous and peasant Puritan elite. One of the Native American commons production. Unfortunately, as Christen claims, “The was the free sharing of information about planting, rhetoric of freedom — free of restrictions — replays navigation, fishing, medicine and local dangers that the structure of enclosure, open for some closed Tisquantum, a Patuxet Indian, taught the Pilgrims for others.”1 The variety of forms of authorship, during his year living with them. This commons collaboration, and resource sharing across cultures also included the land gift of Tisquantum’s former provides a formidable challenge for this culturally Native village of Patuxet to the Pilgrims who specific definition of creativity and value. renamed it Plymouth. Despite the cultural limitations of the While this sharing of information and land Creative Commons concept, the gesture of claiming ensured the Pilgrims’ survival in the New World, it

103 proved insufficient for a people who believed they and the squash with its lush, prickled foliage acts as had been sent to subdue the heathen and spread a natural mulch and pest inhibitor, keeping insects, god’s kingdom over the satanic savages in the slugs, and raccoons from eating the ripened corn. wilderness. The natural and customary rules that Each member of the guild both gives and takes would suggest a return of gifts or resources from something from the community, and in the end the the Pilgrims to the Natives never occurred. By 1636, soil itself is nourished rather than depleted as it is in under pressure of an exploding settler population, single-yield, industrial monoculture. Guilds, plant the Pilgrims triggered King Phillip’s war with the communities, food forests, herb spirals, water and massacre of 600 Narragansett villagers, a war which energy catchment — most of the methods popu- was to be the bloodiest in New England history, a larized in permaculture can be found in peasant war that eroded the New World commons as effec- and indigenous communities, which have forged tively as Cromwell’s purge of Levellers from the complex relations to the ecosystems around them New Model Army eradicated the British commons.2 — relations that have ensured survival over ten of During the settler land-grab in the thousands of years. Placed beside the provisions of Americas, a similar land grab was occurring in the forest charter, which provides for sustainable England in the centuries old battle for the control uses of the forest by local people — for herbage, of the forest commons, a right guaranteed by the pannage, eyries etc. — they look very familiar.4 Magna Carta. Resisters of enclosure, the Blacks and Compare the integrated management of Levellers were described as “rough and savage in permaculture with article 12 of the forest charter their Dispositions.” In Peter Linebaugh’s analysis of of the Magna Carta: “Henceforth every freeman, in the links between race, slavery and the commons, his wood or on his land that he has in the forest, he notes that these Commoners were considered to may with impunity make a mill, fish-preserve, pond, be a “sordid race” and “compared to the Indian, to marl-pit, ditch, or arable in cultivated land outside the savage, to the buccaneer, and to the Arab.”3 coverts, provided that no injury is thereby given to During the 17th and 18th century, both sets any neighbour.” Two principles stand out here: of commoners with a survival stake in the lands 1. usage produces no injury, neither to the forest, they shared would lose their ground. In both cases, nor to the neighbor — there is clearly a com- lands were enclosed and privatized, and in the US, plex web of relations here that ties neighbors to citizenship and thus freedom for the settlers would forest resources; be tied to the ownership of this stolen land. 2. usage is local, and its effects are related to a neighbor.5 Permaculture Under this provision there would be no A reincarnation of the Thanksgiving pumpkin drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife might be found in the permaculture pumpkin Refuge, because the benefits go to non-local agents patch: a plant guild composed of corn, squashes who have no care or relationship to the land, and or pumpkins, and beans. While Northeast Native furthermore the damage affects both natural and Americans were early practitioners of sustainable human neighbors. Thus the Forest Charter refers to forms of agriculture that included the Three Sisters customary usage — which predates nobility, legal plant guild, some settler cultures, eventually system, and governments — customs which reflect transformed by the lands they occupied, began to both ethical and community concerns, though recognize the benefits of these practices. Drawing already diluted from the complex forms of interde- on both indigenous knowledge and long-term pendence found in the New World. Permaculture and close observation of nature, Australians Bill communities seek to rebuild these, or similar, sus- Mollison and David Holmgren devised intensive, but tainable customary practices in a modern context. sustainable methods of agriculture, social organiza- They depend on local solutions rather than cen- tion, and selfgovernment that became the perma- tralized, global bureaucracies — whether political culture movement. Based on systems thinking and or economic — for meeting human needs. And they on replicating patterns found in nature, perma- may very well be the mammals that survive the culture stresses interdependent relationships, like dinosaurs of industry and capital. those found among companion plants, plant guilds, plant communities, local ecosystems, ecotones and Perl bioregions — moving from local to regional. The indigenous and permaculture communities In the Three Sisters guild corn, squash have curious allies in the digital community. The (including pumpkins), and beans grow together in digital “patch pumpkin,” a token of trust and a a synergistic and mutually beneficial system. The method of self-government found in the digital beans feed the corn with much needed nitrogen, commons of open source software, may be an

Reading 8: 03/09 One Last Article… the corn provides a structure for the beans to climb, emergent form of these evolutionarily learned

104 human impulses. How does a “patch pumpkin” The result of this land grab in North America is that resemble its metaphoric siblings? Most notably, the only 2% of the land is now wild, its major rivers are patch pumpkin helps establish social, political, and polluted, its lakes have caught fire, and its forests economic protocols for collaborative work. Perl are dying from the top down. The tragedy of this programmers do this by passing around the “patch commons was that it never really was a commons pumpkin.” Whoever has the pumpkin is in charge after colonization, but was surrendered to plunder, of managing the workflow. As the story goes, the privatization, and exploitation in the name of name originated in the Perl community with Chip Manifest Destiny and progress.8 Salzenberg and co-worker David Cory. At one of To return to a tribal commons, both for David Cory’s previous jobs, many systems relied contemporary land management and its digital on a tape drive for backup. “But instead of some counterpart will demand reevaluating some of high-tech exclusion software, they used a lowtech the so-called freedoms of the colonial commons. method to prevent multiple simultaneous backups: Consumerism has taught us that free culture is a stuffed pumpkin. No one was allowed to make detachable: I can download, consume, and remix backups unless they had the ‘backup pumpkin.’”6 a Creative Commons-licensed MP3 without ever During one Perl work session Chip asked, “Who has contacting its author. Free culture is also presumed the patch pumpkin?” And, as “patching” is the term to be disposable: I can drag that MP3 to the trash used for controlling workflow in Perl — i.e. making when I’m done with it — and do the same with my a patch, testing a patch, incorporating a patch; a laptop once I upgrade to a better one. Detachment patch being a module of code — the name stuck. and disposability depend on disinterest: in place What is worth noting about this patch of entertainment monopolies like Sony and Time pumpkin is that it is a low-tech solution for devel- Warner, free culture proposes a “free market of oping trust among a group of programmers, that ideas” where a democratic process selects which it initially depended on face-to-face meetings cultural artifacts gain support and endure — with and physical distribution of a stuffed pumpkin to the side effect, of course, that all artifacts that establish a trust metric, and that responsibility don’t garner acclaim pass into oblivion. passed around the group, ensuring a kind of work- But free culture’s tropes of detachment, ing democracy. All of this was operating in a gift disposability, and disinterest are not the only pos- economy in which programmers contributed to and sible foundation for an alternative to monopolistic benefited from a common project, from which they cultural production. Indigenous culture, permacul- developed a sense of both community and identity. ture, and digital culture offer three different and This emerging digital commons builds meaning- powerful dynamics: catchment, circles, and care. ful relationships around non-coercive work in a context of self-government, all conspicuously Indigenous Culture absent from the nature of paid work in our culture. The following examples from Native practices Against this model, paid work begins to look like can help us move beyond the commons as a free the wage-slavery described by the YES MEN in their resource pool to a social practice in which creativ- antiglobalization campaigns, a slavery that became ity and kinship are intertwined. necessary during the enclosure of the commons in Europe and North America, an enclosure that Catchment in Papua New Guinea continues to be forced on indigenous and peasant The term catchment derives from permaculture, people around the world in the name of progress where we will see it has a specific meaning. In and free trade.7 an indigenous context, however, catchment is a So we have three kinds of pumpkins, each useful antithesis for the economic detachment suggesting to us movements towards reclaiming required for a globalized market. The production the commons, not as an endangered preserve in of Malanggan cloth in Papua New Guinea follows Article… Last One 03/09 8: Reading a regime of property, but as complex economic, a logic of ownership that entangles rather than social, and political alternatives to that regime. detaching its object from the context of its making. These complex networks of relationships, resources, To produce a new design, an artist must “purchase” and practices are designed to perpetuate fertility an already existing design, by viewing this design and abundance in the communities that form them. in a public showing. After this brief showing, the The Eden that Europeans described when they artist must hold the design element in memory reached North America was not a wilderness, but a until a compelling experience triggers a significant well-managed resource, a complex combination of revision of the original. But in order to realize nature and culture, ecology and economy, a system the new vision the “owner” of the element must so subtle and effective that it eluded the settlers find a carver or weaver to realize it, since people who saw only natural wealth free for the taking. do not “materialize their own images.”9 The new

105 image (both original and derivative at the same fire in the center representing Wakan Tanka, the time) emerges as a collaboration among a number Great Mysterious. Hanging in a museum, without of sources — the original owner, the new owner, the the central fire drawing the gaze of the children fabricator, and ultimately the owner in the next while the elders tell stories, the tipi becomes an generation who will similarly modify it. inert object.14 Similarly, in “It’s Where You Put Your This kind of multiple ownership creates Eyes,” Sam Gill talks about the power of masks a legal nightmare for IP law. But among the coming from the inside view, the view the wearer craftspeople of Papua New Guinea, it produces a has when he dons the mask and sees the faces of dense network of relationships, as well as serving those who behold it.15 He quotes the Navajo Emory as a metaphor for cultural preservation and loss Sekaquaptewa performing as a kachina: “the use at each generation. The Malanggan, a distributed of the mask in the kachina ceremony has more object, produces identities dispersed across time than just an aesthetic purpose […] when he [the and space. This means that the creativity lies not in performer] dons the mask he loses his identity and the object, but in the technologies of distribution, actually becomes what he is representing… the which create genealogies similar to those produced audience becomes his personal self. He tries to in The Pool, an online environment which fosters express to himself his own conceptions about the artistic collaboration by encouraging and tracing spiritual ideals that he sees in the kachina.”16 And trajectories of creation.10 Malanggan unites the in doing so he does not represent the spiritual synchronous collaboration of image holder and world, but rather he becomes the spirit he is maker, as well as the asynchronous collaboration of seeking.17 Thus, once a mask is placed in a museum, past, present and future images. As Leach observes, so viewers can appreciate its “aesthetic” qualities, ownership in these conditions connects people it has lost its real cultural power.18 The “executable rather than separating them as it does in the West. power” of this art requires participation and And these connections are critical to the “preserva- interaction, just as digital forms do.19 tion of the social conditions of creativity itself.”11 What is interesting to note is that while Native conceptions of the sacred embrace all of Circles in the Plains Creation, the articulation of spiritual life is very In I Become Part of It, Joseph Epes Brown, an anthro- specific and local, based closely on the particular- pologist who lived and worked with the Lakota ities of the seasons, the flora and fauna, and the Medicine Man, Black Elk, describes the practices geography of their homelands. So the power of that characterize tribal life in many parts of cultural practices is contextual and local, rather North America, practices that help us understand than universal. Not being universal, they are hard the confusion between Tisquantum’s generosity to commodify and dispose of in a system of abstract and the Pilgrims’ rapacity in the face of common and equal exchange value. resources.12 In tribal life, art is not separated from Leach describes an interesting example craft, but permeates all of life. The value of art, of these local practices in his discussion of the then, cannot precipitate into an art object that “purchase” of the tunes, words, and carvings of a can be sold or placed in a museum, but rather its Tambaran spirit in Papua New Guinea: “One aspect value lies in the entire activity of production and of Tambaran is a male musical cult with secret distribution. The aid and land given to the Pilgrims ritual paraphernalia. The tunes and designs […] was a way to build alliances and share knowledge, have a named owner. Yet this ownership does not not an exchange of commodities. Similarly, to give the right of disposal. They are not ‘property,’ make a basket, a Native woman gathering grasses yet they are transacted.”20 In Papua New Guinea, prays and makes offerings for the resources she the transaction of a Tambaran spirit requires takes; when she moistens the grass with her lips, elaborate rituals, including contact between the she also “gives her life breath”13, and these sacred “purchasers” and ten of the Tambaran owners, and dimensions create relationships linking her to offerings of a pig, cooked and distributed by the the place and time of gathering, the grasses, and sellers in a public recognition of the transfer of the the person to whom she will give the basket. The spirit. Payment, however, does not give the new making of the basket establishes kinship bonds owners complete rights to do anything they want, that weave the natural and cultural world together. as is the case with purchase of goods or lands in In these examples, nature is not a resource to be much of the developed world. Once purchased, the exploited for creative or commercial uses, but a set new “owners” must maintain respect and honor of material relationships that sustains sacred and for the spirit, including following elaborate rules material life. for its development within the new context and Brown points to the Lakota tipi as a ensuring its propagation to future generations.21

Reading 8: 03/09 One Last Article… microcosm of the world, for example, with the Furthermore, what differentiates this “purchase”

106 from a commodity purchase is that there is no changes attendant upon expanding colonization object to own. Rather what has been purchased is a and globalization as “progress.” In the developed particular kind of relationship with specific spirits, world, despite Ptolemy’s confirmation that the that is, the right to practice a kind of sacred ritual world is a sphere, and Galileo’s proofs that the earth that recognizes prior relations between that spirit revolves around the sun, economists still boldly and a particular community. This is very different claim that The World is Flat,26 and that the universe from disposability. revolves around humans, who are the pinnacle The notion that creation entails respon- of a linear evolution. Without these ideological sibility, that creators may not be entirely free to supports, the notion of property would collapse, “dispose” of their inventions however they like — is and the appropriation of Native culture and anathema to our society’s rabid obsession with natural resources that drive globalization would turning every conceivable scientific discovery into lose their main ideological foundations. Without a cash cow. The right to turn culture into cash these foundations, the destruction of nature, and derives from John Locke’s view that cultural value the enslavement and exploitation of human beings accrues to natural resources when they are manip- would appear as the abomination that it is in Native ulated by the labor of the maker. The artist’s labor eyes. And when the machine of globalization is becomes the mark of authorship and guarantor prevented from consuming what is left of the nat- of ownership. In this view, Nature in itself has no ural and cultural resources of the world, then the value until it is used, developed, commodified, or unsustainable systems that this intensive feeding put through the mill of human labor and industri- supports will collapse under their own weight, and alization. Its value, then, becomes an abstract sale new more equitable and sustainable systems will value — how much profit it can bring the maker. In replace them — a view that resonates in Native a “free market” where natural resources are free Culture, Permaculture, and Digital Culture.27 for the taking or available to the highest bidder, clean water, clean air, forests, beaches, wetlands, Care among the Pintupi and arctic refuges exist outside a cultural or even In Papua New Guinea, as in many tribal societies, natural network of relationships, can be modified cultural production — what some descriptions of or manipulated at the owner’s discretion, because open source refer to as “gift-giving” — is “an action in themselves, they add nothing to the GNP. In such performed within the context of reciprocity and an economy, Nature is merely a resource, and has expectations of return — status, rights, or more no inherent economic value. Following New Zea- gifts.”28 It is not altruism — which is motivated at land MP Marilyn Waring’s analysis of free market some level by ego — that produces these complex economics, the destruction accompanying the structures, but rather a kind of enlightened Exxon Valdez oil spill is terrific for GNP, so is pros- self-interest, one that recognizes the self as part of titution of ten-year old girls in Thailand; whereas many, larger networks upon which the self depends the Arctic National Wildlife refuge is worth nothing for its livelihood. The similarities between collab- until compromised in the process of oil extraction22, orative production in tribal societies and in the and the pristine Passamaquoddy bay in Northern digital economy are not trivial. Though the former Maine is worth more to the local community if its measures its age in millennia and the latter in natural resources are compromised for the process- decades, “both are based on the self-interested par- ing of Liquefied Natural Gas.23 ticipation of individuals and communities linked by By contrast to the disposability inherent a complex web of rights and obligations.”29 In both, in capital accounting methods, Brown claims that cultural production can be viewed as the formation reciprocity “permeates so many aspects of North of kinship patterns (with people, natural world, American cultures.”24 He defines reciprocity as a land, resources, fellow programmers) that are “process wherein if you receive or take away you economically viable. What their example suggests Article… Last One 03/09 8: Reading must always give back.” This view conceives of time is that if you have the right kind of kinship-family, and life as permeated by circles, of processes that community, and land — you do not need a job. In repeat and return. “Everything comes back upon fact, if you extend these kinship structures far itself.” Providing inspiration for the permacultur- enough, as Native Americans did, and as McLuhan ists that would follow, Native people were close predicted would happen with electronic media, you observers of nature, which is where they perceived no longer need the nation.30 these living cycles, “the birds build their nests in IP regimes have notoriously failed indig- circular form, foxes have their dens in circles, the enous peoples trying to preserve and practice wind in its greatest power moves in a circle.”25 their cultural life in the context of colonization Compare this to the linear view of history and globalization.31 Partly this is because these that places “Man” at the center, and views the regimes offer only simple alternatives of closed

107 proprietary models, or open libertarian models.32 know, entropy is the natural tendency to disorder, Neither addresses the nuances of indigenous cul but it is balanced by an opposing tendency toward tural production, where information does not nec- self-organization — or what we call life. This kind of essarily want to be free, but where it may require self-organization happens “whenever energy flows care. Myers describes such a dynamic among are sufficient to generate storages.”37 Even small the Australian Pintupi whose words for property, storages of energy can trigger an explosion of life. walytja and yapunta, describe types of relationship Like capital, catchment proceeds via an that resemble family ties more than commodity initial concentration of resources. How those two rights.33 Walytja signifies relative, whereas yapunta systems distribute resources in the long run, how- signifies an orphan, one who is not cared for. Sim- ever, is very different. In capital, positions initially ilarly, someone who ‘steals’ the cultural artifact of favored with power and wealth continue to aggran- another kin group in Papua New Guinea is assumed dize the latter through reinvestment of profit, and to be signaling a desire to be included in the over time the rich only get richer relative to the kinship group from which he is stealing, and thus poor. While capitalist’s apologists claim that the through elaborate ritual is brought into the fold.34 elevation of the rich eventually raises the standard These examples suggest that cultural practice of living for all, history demonstrates that the gap may depend not on ownership, authorship and its between rich and poor only steepens with time. attendant rights, but on kinship, belonging, and the If the metaphor of capitalism is building a rituals of inclusion — all hallmarks of care. pyramid on the desert, the metaphor of catchment is growing a forest from the desert. In his film Permaculture Planting in Drylands,38 Bill Mollison shows a small The aim of permaculture is simple: create wealth rolling device that forms tiny divots over the desert without doing damage.35 In order to accomplish floor. These small depressions in an otherwise flat this, permaculture envisions nature as a complex surface collect dew and stray seed, so that over a network in which humans collaborate with other surprisingly short amount of time, small sprouts life forms — much as plants in a guild cooperate shoot up, which in turn are able to collect more dew — to produce harmonious and sustainable energy and hold more water in the soil. Under the right systems. The approach is glocal: emergent bot- conditions, this positive feedback loop can actually tom-up local solutions produced through trial and turn a desert path to a living one with minimal observation and cognizant of larger, global forces, human intervention — not even the need to sow both natural and cultural. By stimulating interde- seeds. Whether the result is a grassland or forest, pendence locally, permaculture moves away from the terrain moves from a handful of green spots centralized models of production and consumption to a terrain so evenly covered with life that it is no that require massive energy input, institutions longer possible to find the spots where the wealth and technology to manage. By reversing current was initially concentrated. Nature is the original centralizing and globalizing trends and practices, Leveller. In contrast, capital’s initial concentrations humans can halt the resource destruction that pro- of “green” are conspicuous — just look for the duces financial capital and move toward resource mansions and sports cars that herald a tycoon at creation in the form of natural and human capital. the top of his pyramid. Unlike capital, whose increase is measured Catchment in the Sand only in financial terms, catchment wealth is mea- Catchment, nature’s method of wealth accu- sured in terms of real wealth. It replaces short-term, mulation and energy storage is permaculture’s centralized profit, with “long-term asset building alternative to capital. Where capital is centralized for the benefit of future generations.”39 The real accumulation that resists redistribution, catchment wealth assets here refer to soil fertility, seed saving, is a system for accumulating a critical mass of a reforestation, keyline water harvesting, and carbon, needed resource, like water or soil minerals, in water and nutrient storage in the landscape. Nat- order to trigger self-organizing system, i.e. life ural capital like water, living soil, trees, and seed forms, that then spread over the landscape. Some help insure low-energy sustainability because they natural examples of catchment include the sun, are 1) self-maintaining; 2) have low depreciation plant carbohydrates, bodies of water, geothermal rate; 3) are easily tapped with simple technology; energy, and plate tectonics. and 4) resist monopolization, theft and violence. So How does catchment work? Since the in addition to long-term real wealth accumulation, “driving force behind all natural systems” is catchment also produces long-term security, first energy36, catchment focuses on ways to capture by eliminating the need for energy-based resource naturally occurring flows of energy in such a way wars like the current Iraq war, and second, by

Reading 8: 03/09 One Last Article… as to maximize the yield over time and space. As we building local stores of wealth that are distributed

108 across the landscape and locked in ecosystems and communities, they can respond to change much thus hard to steal without mobilization of armies faster than large institutions, governments or against the local community — which unfortu- markets; and so they are far more effective at nately is the pattern of current enclosure in the initiating social change. “There is little point in developing world. While catchment in nature and spending your life trying to persuade other people in permaculture has clear payoffs, there are more that they are wrong. If there is a better way of pressing reasons to adopt this technique in place doing things, and you know what it is, then do it. If of the dominant capital model of wealth creation. it is really better […] other people will try it too.”41 Under current free market economics, “we have This argument may sound like some of the utopian been living by consuming global capital in a reck- rhetoric of early adopters of the Internet and its less manner that would send any business bank- virtual communities. However, unlike immigrants rupt.”40 The results are resource wars; destruction who abandoned “meatspace” for a better world in of independent, sustainable lifestyles and replace- cyberspace, permaculturalists seek not to abandon ment with dependent pauperization; destruction this planet but to embrace it, not to hide from a of ecosystems worldwide; global warming; and society they cannot support but to model a more collapsing political structures that erode the very sustainable paradigm for it. freedoms upon which they are based. Care for the River Circles on the Farm As David Holmgren, one of the founders explains, If the poetry of Native cultures lies in circles and “It’s the conversations you have with your neighbor cycles, the poetry of permaculture lies in feedback over the garden fence which saves the world, and loops. In nature negative feedback mechanisms, if you want to know what the news is, go outside like predators, natural disasters and parasites and look.”42 In principle these sentiments sound have the effect of keeping populations healthy and very much like those of Free Software guru their numbers under control. They also discourage Richard Stallman, who claims “globalization is a unsustainable behaviors. Positive feedback loops very inefficient way of raising living standards of are the kind we saw in guilds and plant commu- people overseas” and that a much better economic nities where synergies develop between species in system would decentralize power and resources.43 particular microclimates. In a massively central- Holmgren situates this practice not in altruism but ized economy, where basic needs are produced far in clear-sighted common interest. And he refers to from where they are consumed, it is very difficult the historical record to confirm that caring for the for people to note the effects of the systems that self required caring for land and natural resources. sustain them. When a river is polluted, few people In his view, permaculture “asks you to see yourself hold up their newspapers as the culprit, when as one with the universe, and to measure its wonder ground waters are contaminated no one holds up for your mutual benefit. You and the rest of cre- the dinner plate laded with pesticide- produced ation have the same interest at heart — survival — produce. In the local ecosystems of permaculture, so you should look after each other.” This invitation it is much easier to identify negative feedback and to care for self, family, community and neighbors to make adjustments. When the family dog dies in the widest possible sense — as we see in Native an early and unnatural death, the farmer may culture — reinserts humans into the Web of Life. reevaluate the heavy use of pesticides on his crops. Like nature, permaculture rarely central- Taking responsibility for the state of the world is, izes wealth because of the amount of poverty cre- for permaculturists, the first step toward empower- ated in its wake. In nature a river might meander ment and change. back and forth across a landscape bringing water One of the ways of responding to feedback to huge tracts of forest or arable lands. Likewise, is to take personal responsibility for the choices we permaculture constructs smallscale swales and Article… Last One 03/09 8: Reading make that lead to effects we don’t like in the world. keyline irrigation, to control small amounts of There a number of ways permaculture encourages water flow over larger areas, leaving just enough personal responsibility. Not only does exercising wealth in each area to trigger healthy plant growth, responsibility often replace despair with hope, it which in turn spills over to unirrigated areas. Such supports many permaculture values. Like a blocked modest, gravity-fed irrigation system could be Internet packet, Permaculture does not resist found in Ladakh, in the high Himalayas before the the source of blockage, but rather, routes around area was developed. In Ladakh, such catchment it. While the rest of the culture is busy working of water irrigated entire arid areas with limited long hours to pay for consumer goods, permacul- mountain runoff, using elaborate sharing schemes turists shorten their work hours and consume across households to produce rich and abundant less. Because they organize as small groups and crops and clean drinking water. After development

109 — fed by an ideology that trusts to a disinterested While Certification Authorities like Veri- “invisible hand” instead of the common interest of sign have emerged as third-party guarantors of net local villagers — the water became polluted, and identity, many open software programmers prefer staple crops were imported once local agriculture to roll their own identity via public key encryption, and ways of life were displaced by wage labor and which can operate via peer-to-peer networks rather the media and material attractions of capital.44 than a centralized structure. PGP (“Pretty Good Privacy”) is one of the most popular systems for Digital Culture verifying network identity among groups of people “Changes in the way we think, especially the emer- who will be working together. PGP verification gence of design thinking, are more fundamental to begins with face-to-face contact at key signing par- the information economy than the hardware and ties49, gatherings of people who verify each other’s software we use.”45 Although this is a permaculture identity by checking ID cards, faces, and anecdotal principle, it might apply to the free and open evidence (“This is my husband, Jim”). Once iden- software movement and the development of online tities are confirmed face to face, users sign each communities; these are practice grounds for the other’s public keys, effectively hinging one develop- kind of community development that permacul- er’s credibility on that of another developer — more ture activists seek. If Internet spaces function like catchment than detachment. [Fig. 3] practice grounds, it is because these areas are not As if to echo Holmgren’s belittlement of fully colonized economically, legally or politically, hardware and software, computers are forbidden though the colonial paradigm still influences our at such meetings because they could compromise limited understanding of the digital commons.46 security.50 If people used a computer to sign keys For permaculture, the landscape is the textbook47; at the party, it would be hard to tell if the machine so to with digital culture though the landscape was compromised, or set up to capture the PGP is virtual and made up of networks of human information, or even infect it with a virus. It’s inter- communication. What can this textbook teach us esting that key signers seem more concerned about about human community, about ways to manage exchanging computer viruses than biological ones, resources that move beyond the private / public despite all the hand shaking and card swapping; dichotomy and into complex emergent social for this “virtual community,” physical intimacy is patterns that are sustainable? not a liability but a sign of their interdependence Many critics of closed, hierarchic insti- and a prerequisite of the mutual trust they need tutions have recently turned toward the open to do their work. When key signers stand in a line software movement for an alternative model. While to receive each other’s identity written on a piece these critics applaud the sharing and openness of of paper, it is a ritualistic echo of the Powhiri these seemingly global communities of software ceremony by which the Maori greet newcomers, developers, they rarely look beyond the virtual standing opposite each other in a line and touching veneer to analyze the specific mechanisms behind foreheads so as to receive each other’s breath in the their success. Coders of open software are often hongi greeting. more tribal than global.48 The “free culture” model notwithstanding, a coder cannot simply refactor Circles of Credibility a module of the GNU/Linux kernel without the The more signings a public key gets — the more permission of other trusted developers. While attached it becomes to other public keys — the open software communities do not resort to the more trusted it becomes. When the party is over, command-and-control hierarchies of corporate when identity is confirmed, people sign each oth- and military structures, they do exercise a form of er’s public keys, thereby increasing their credibility. management, but one with surprising resonances When an encrypted email message arrives in an to the forms of entanglement found in indigenous email box — signed by one very credible public and permaculture communities. key, or three fairly trusted public keys — then the receiver can be almost certainly the message was Catchment in Webs of Trust sent by the person who claims to have sent it. The Local trust (or lack thereof) is easy to establish receiver can then use her private key to decrypt the when members share an ecosystem or physical message. Ironically this makes digital signatures community. But how do you build a community in a more trustworthy than paper ones, which are easily virtual space where members have no prior rela- forged. Paper signatures on treaties are useful for tionship? Furthermore, how do you communicate colonial powers, because they seem to command with co-workers or family and friends in a way that trust, but in the end, as repeated Native American is secure from sniffing software like FBI’s Carnivore? experience confirms, these paper signatures are

Reading 8: 03/09 One Last Article… not worth the paper they were written on, certainly

110 nowhere near the power face-to-face trust origi- wisdom about social wealth. While peer-to-peer nally had in Native communities. culture is relatively new by comparison to indige- The best way to develop and expand webs nous cultures, these “natives of cyberspace”53 may of trust for over the Internet be able to re-imagine a lost common heritage more is to hold as many key-signing parties as possible. readily than those of us still burdened by the tropes Frequent meetings ensure that the web of trust of print and visual culture. is “deep and tightly interlinked,” thus making it In fact, geeks — for all their obsession with harder to crack. PGP protects the parties involved protocol, syntax and patches — can demonstrate in a communication as well as ensuring the a sophisticated grasp of current political dangers integrity of the software produced. Though used and issues when they care about them. Because extensively by open software developers to check our culture is increasingly mediated through out software modules and/or sign off on approved lines of code, programmers are in a privileged modules, PGP guarantees can also safeguard the position to watch the effects of such mediation on passing of any kind of information among users in the consuming public — so we can hope that as a web of trust. The more people use encryption, the their awareness grows, programmers will expand less information can be sniffed by government or their concerns beyond bugs in the latest Debian corporate software, and the more thoughtful they distribution to include broader issues like child become about the kind of information they casually prostitution or deforestation. distribute via any technology.51 Practicing PGP is a Curiously, a humorous allusion to a polit- constant reminder that “not all information wants ical mission surfaces in the middle of “Notes on to be free.” handling the Perl Patch Pumpkin,” which explains protocol for contributing a patch to a development Care for Kin and Beyond team. Near the end of this online document is a Beyond creating security, PGP parties also generate section called “How to Save the World.” While the real local political communities since they involve instructions are prosaic — “You should definitely face-to-face meetings by people who often share announce your patch on the perl5-porters list,” political and ethical concerns including civil “You should make it quite clear that a subversion is liberties, the future of cryptography, and Internet not a production release”54 — the humorous linking regulation — all attempts to prevent the enclosure of participation of the production of a shared of emerging digital commons. In the digital as well resource with the saving of the world is far from as real worlds these are basic freedoms that gener- naïve. In fact it is a wakeup call from the cultural ate passionate support. Furthermore, holding PGP propaganda that proclaims that, in Stallman’s parties allows a local area to configure its servers words, “sharing with your neighbor is the moral and technology to run PGP, making it available for equivalent of attacking a ship.”55 Of course if we others to use. Building this infrastructure across recall that many pirate ships were precisely dispos- the Internet through local webs of trust creates a sessed people such as peasants and African slaves communication system that looks less like a global taking back a commons that had been “criminal- net and more like strongly linked local nodes with ized”56, then piracy itself appears as a commoner’s ties to other local nodes. This is not a global village, logical response to enclosure of land and body.57 but a tribal web. This new kind of kinship may seem Sovereignty abstract to those who haven’t been to a key signing, While it may not be surprising that programmers but its emergence is easy to see in diagrams of webs are concerned with the securing of “individual of trust. Applications such as Sig2dot.pl, a PGP liberties” that once motivated piracy, it is interest- key ring graph generator, can produce a graph of ing to see key signing parties dwell on a discussion all of the signature relationships in a GPG/PGP key of “sovereignty,”58 an issue that grounds Native Article… Last One 03/09 8: Reading ring, including the network developed at PGP party. political struggles. Used by Native Americans, “Graphing the web of trust in your local area as you sovereignty signifies their right to enter into trea- build it can help motivate people to participate as ties with other nations, and to be recognized and well as giving everyone a clear sense of what’s being respected with full rights accruing to nations. The accomplished as things progress.”52 The correlation US government takes pains to associate national of visual diagrams with the establishment of kin- security and cryptography, regulating the latter’s ship patterns sounds remarkably like the protocols export. But neither Native tribes nor key signers in Papua New Guinea for Malanggan. The idea that are ultimately interested in national sovereignty creativity and cultural production depend on and so much as individual and tribal sovereignty.59 are correlated with the social safety net of kinship This concern is echoed in David Berry’s summary groups is a digital recuperation of an indigenous of “Libre” culture — a sort of Creative Commons

111 with an ethical slant: “Political struggle will no is speaking for the waters of the earth? Who doubt be oriented towards the nation state […] but it is speaking for the trees and the forests?61 cannot remain there alone […] Creativity is at once too small and too large. Political action and the The parallels in understanding between struggle for true democracy will have to be aimed the Libre Society and Native culture, the acknowl- simultaneously at local and global levels.”60 edgement of a Web of Life to which we all belong, Berry goes on to propose a “treaty obliga- points to an economic and political practice that tion” to prevent “the commodification of human moves beyond the limited freedoms established by DNA and life itself. Or a UN protectorate to defend the commons, either traditional or digital. While the sanctity of ideas and concepts. We might we may yearn for a long-lost commons where picture something akin to Bruno Latour’s ‘Parlia- humans were landkeepers, where they cared for ment of Things,’ a space where not just the human all living things, what we need now must move is represented, but all of life has a defender, all of beyond the logic of common/enclosed, of free/ life has a voice.” Of course, this kind of community private. For in today’s context, any commons is only voice — one that speaks for all living things — respite from a larger cultural model of property, already exists among indigenous peoples. When the theft, enclosure, and loss of political liberty for all UN established the Geneva Convention on human humans and exploitation of all life. To move beyond rights after World War II, the Six Nations and the human rights toward the rights of all living things, Lakota suggested they were leaving something out: what Leach calls “common rights”,62 we need the commons to become the rule of human culture There is a hue and cry for human rights — rather than the exception. That human beings in human rights, they said, for all people. And Native culture, Permaculture and digital culture the indigenous people said: What are the are trying to protect and reclaim some common rights of the natural world? Where is the ground, some space for remembering and reinvent- seat for the buffalo or the eagle? Who is ing sustainable cultures, is a message of hope in representing them here in this forum? Who otherwise dismal times.

1. K. Christen, “Gone Digital: Aboriginal 3. P. Linebaugh, “Charters of Liberty toward our men, all persons of our Remix and the Cultural Commons,” in Black Face and White face: Race, kingdom, both clergy and laity, shall, International Journal of Cultural Slavery and the Commons,” Mute in so far as concerns them, observe Property 12 (2005), pp. 315-345. (2005), http://www.metamute.org/ toward their men.” 2. Levellers, whose power base was en/node/5602, accessed May 18, 6. http://www.perl.com/doc/manual/ in the New Model Army, upheld 2006, p. 4. html/Porting/pumpkin.html common rights, until their leaders 4. See Forest Charter at: http://www. 7. Some theorists claim that the major were executed and their followers constitution.org/sech/sech_045.htm conflict of our time is not between cashiered by the Grandees. “The 5. Gentry and Clergy are prohibited in “democracy” and “terror,” but Grandees were represented by the forest charter, since they are not between civilized cultures and indig- Henry Ireton (son-in-law of Oliver local, both because a number came enous cultures, the latter holding all Cromwell), Oliver Cromwell, and from France with the Normans, and the evolutionary knowledge needed some others. Each party put forward also because others did not live in to live sustainable in each of the a pamphlet to lay out their position. close proximity of the forests. “17. areas they inhabit. See “Traditional The Levellers’ pamphlet, written by Now these liberties with regard to Culture Strikes Back,”http://www. civilians, was entitled Agreement of the forest we have granted to all, iht.com/ articles/2005/07/20/news/ the People. The Grandees’ pamphlet, saving to the archbishops, bishops, edpfaff.php# endorsed by the General Council abbots, priors, earls, barons, knights, 8. The Dawes Act 1887, which turned of the Army, was written by Henry and other persons both ecclesiastical communally held Native American Ireton, and entitled The Heads of the and lay, [also] to the Templars and land into private property, ostensibly Proposals. It put forward a constitu- the Hospitallers, the liberties and to speed assimilation and help tional manifesto which included the free customs in forests and outside Natives become self-sufficient, had preservation of property rights and them, in warrens and in other things, disastrous effects leading to massive maintenance of the privileges of the that they earlier had. Moreover, loss of land and culture: “some sixty gentry;” http://en.wikipedia.org/ all these aforesaid liberties and million acres (240,000 km) of treaty wiki/Levellers customs, which we have granted to land (almost half) were opened to

Reading 8: 03/09 One Last Article… be observed, in so far as concerns us, settlement by non-Indians. The Act

112 had one of the most substantial 9. M. Strathern, “Imagined Collectiv- 27. gkisedtanamoogk, “Miingignoti-Ke- impacts on Natives, most signifi- ities and Multiple Authorship” in R. teaoag: Decolonizing Justice and cantly affecting Native gender roles. A. Ghosh (ed.), CODE: Collaborative Sovereignty” (1997), http://www. This Act broke up the reservation Ownership in the Digital Economy geocities.com/CapitolHill/9118/ lands into privately owned parcels of (The MIT Press: Cambridge, MA, 2005), gkis10.html. D. Holmgren, Permacul- property [given to men]. In this way, p. 18. ture: Principles & Pathways Beyond the legislators hoped to complete the 10. See: http://pool.newmedia.umaine. Sustainability (Holmgren Design assimilation process by deteriorating edu/ Services: Hepburn, Australia, 2002). the communal lifestyle of the 11. J. Leach, “Modes of Creativity and the Richard Stallman, “Copyright and Native societies and impose values Register of Ownership” in R. A. Ghosh Globalization in the Age of Computer of strengthening the nuclear family (ed.), CODE: Collaborative Ownership Networks” in R. A. Ghosh (ed.), CODE: and values of economic dependency in the Digital Economy (The MIT Collaborative Ownership in the strictly within this small household. Press: Cambridge, MA, 2005), p. 37. Digital Economy (The MIT Press: Legislators’ opinions of communal 12. J.E. Brown, “Becoming Part of It” in Cambridge, MA, 2005). living saw the extended family as D. M. Dooling, P. Jordan-Smith (eds.), I 28. R. A. Ghosh (ed.), CODE: Collaborative “needy” since the Indigenous ideas Become Part of It: Sacred Dimensions Ownership in the Digital Economy (The of wealth contrasted and disagreed in Native American Life (Parabola: MIT Press: Cambridge, MA, 2005), p. 7. with Western ideas of wealth. Indig- New York, 2002). 29. Ibid., p. 7. enous people valued generosity and 13. Ibid., p. 15. 30. See Stallman: “The centralization received status by being generous. 14. Ibid., p. 20. and economy of scale introduced Western values form around individ- 15. S. Gill, “It’s Where You Put Your Eyes” by the printing press and similar ual wealth and surplus and status is in D. M. Dooling, P. Jordan-Smith technologies is going away.” And gained from these same values. The (eds.), I Become Part of It: Sacred McLuhan (1962): “What we have kin-network, which was the base of Dimensions in Native American Life called ‘nations’ in recent centuries economic and social reproduction (Parabola: New York, 2002). did not, and could not, precede the in Indigenous societies, split and the 16. Ibid., p. 83. advent of Gutenberg technology reservation became a checkerboard 17. Compare this to Leach’s (2005) anymore than they can survive the pattern… The Act forced Native description of how creativity advent of circuitry with its people onto small tracts of land produces both children and spirits: power of totally involving all people distant from their kin relations. “creativity, understood as the regen- in all other people.” Traditionally, in most Indigenous eration of people and places through 31. B. Boateng, “Square Pegs in Round societies, women were the agri- the work of family groups…Children, Holes? Cultural Production, Intel- culturists while the men were the like spirit designs, are generated in lectual Property Frameworks, and hunters and warriors. The Allotment the specific productive partnerships Discourses of Power,” in R. A. Ghosh policy depleted the land base, ending of kin groups.” (ed.), CODE: Collaborative Ownership hunting as a means of subsistence. 18. Ibid., [15]. in the Digital Economy (The MIT According to Victorian ideals, the 19. See Blais & Ippolito, At The Edge of Press: Cambridge, MA, 2005), pp. 61-74; men were forced into the fields to Art, for a description of executable A. Seeger, “Who Got Left Out of the take on the woman’s role and the art, art which has an effect in the Property Grab Again: Oral Traditions, women were domesticated. This material world: http://at-the-edge- Indigenous Rights, and Valuable Old Act imposed a patrilineal nuclear of-art.com/ Knowledge,” in R. A. Ghosh (ed.), CODE: household onto many traditional 20. Ibid. [11], p. 33. Collaborative Ownership in the Digital matrilineal Native societies. Native 21. Ibid., [9], p. 20. Economy (The MIT Press: Cambridge, gender roles and relations quickly 22. M. Waring, If Women Counted: A New MA, 2005), pp. 75-84; K. Warren, and J. changed with this policy since Feminist Economics (Harper Collins: Jackson, (Eds.) Indigenous Movements, communal living shaped the social New York, NY 1990). Self-Representation, and the State in Article… Last One 03/09 8: Reading order of Native communities. Women 23. See http://www.savepassamaquod- Latin America. (Univ. of Texas Press: were no longer the caretakers of dybay.org/ and Ntulankeyutmonen Austin, TX 2002). the land and they were no longer Nkihtaqmikon (We take care of 32. GPL offers an interesting mix of these valued in the public political sphere.” the homeland), http://penbay.org/ two, not entirely successful from an See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ sipayik/ indigenous perspective, but certainly Dawes_Act and http://www.csusm. 24. Ibid. [12], p. 12. effective as anti-enclosure device. edu/nadp/a1887.htm. One might 25. Ibid., p. 12. Discussion of the complex ways compare this modern enclosure 26. T. L. Friedman, The World is Flat, GPL thwarts colonial paradigms of with the enclosures in Europe in the (Farrar, Straus and Giroux: New York, property is beyond the scope of this previous centuries. NY, 2005) paper.

113 33. F. Myers, “Some Properties of Culture replacement or system modifications from slaving, and that piracy was and Persons,” in R. A. Ghosh (ed.), are very easy ways to compromise “multiracial and it was against the CODE: Collaborative Ownership in PGP systems.” See: http://www. slave trade […] Sixty of Blackbeard’s the Digital Economy (The MIT Press: cryptnet.net/fdp/crypto/gpg-party. crew of one hundred were black.” Cambridge, MA, 2005), pp. 45-60. html 58. “GPG keysigning Party HOW TO,” 34. Ibid. [11], p. 34. 51. This is especially true when that http://www.cryptnet.net/fdp/crypto/gpg- 35. G. Bell, The Permaculture Way information is a matter of life and party.html#ss1.4) (Chelsea Green: While River Junction, death, as it was when Patrick Ball, 59. “The idea of the nation in contem- VT, 1992), p. 17. open-source programmer-cum-hu- porary Latin America is based on 36. D. Holmgren, Permaculture: Prin- man-rights activist, was gathering the negation of indigenous cultures.” ciples & Pathways Beyond Sustain- evidence for the war-crimes trial [My translation from the Spanish] ability (Holmgren Design Services: of ex-Yugoslavia’s leader Slobodan Rudolfo Stavenhagen in A. Ramos, Hepburn, Australia, 2002), p. 27. Milosevic. His statistics proved “Cutting Through State and Class” 37. Ibid., p. 15. that killings and refugee flows in in K. Warren and J. Jackson (eds.), 38. More on Mollison’s film at http:// Kosovo were independent of military Indigenous Movements, Self-Rep- www.networkearth.org/perma/cul- activity by NATO or the Kosovo resentation, and the State in Latin ture.html. Permaculture co-founder Liberation Army but tied directly to America (University of Texas Press: (with Mollison) David Holmgren’s Serb attacks. While the information Austin, TX, 2002). own rhetoric occasionally falls back he needed might have been sent by 60. D. Berry & G. Moss (2006), http:// on the pyramid metaphor, but other email, there were obvious security www.freesoftwaremagazine.com discussions suggest he believes risks for all involved. The evidence 61. O. Lyons, “Our Mother Earth” in D. the strength of permaculture lies based on interviews, government M. Dooling, P. Jordan-Smith (eds.), I precisely in its potential for offering records, and testimony by Albanian Become Part of It: Sacred Dimensions a non-hierarchic ontology. border guards was often provided by in Native American Life (Parabola: 39. Ibid., p. 51. face-to-face-contact with people who New York, 2002), pp. 273-4. 40. Ibid., p. 27. passed on the information in the form 62. Ibid. [11]. 41. Ibid. [35], p. 212. of tapes, disks, or other media. This 42. Ibid. [36]. verification of information through 43. Richard Stallman, “Copyright and human contact, whether crime data Globalization in the Age of Computer on a diskette or a patch pumpkin on Networks” in R. A. Ghosh (ed.), CODE: a string, suggests that true security Collaborative Ownership in the depends on human relationships, Digital Economy (The MIT Press: regardless of the sophistication of Cambridge, MA, 2005), p. 331. our military technology. It is not the 44. H. Norberg-Hodge, Ancient Futures: database that saves lives, but the Learning from Ladakh (Sierra Club human network through which the Books: San Francisco, CA, 1992). data passes on its way to the database. 45. Ibid. [36], p. 14. Patrick Ball’s “” not only 46. See Blais, “In the Presence of the provided information under more Sacred: Indigenous Alternatives to secure conditions, but it also afforded Colonized Cyberspace,” forthcoming the kind of face-to-face verification in M. Stewart and P. Wilson (eds.), upon which PGP security is based. Indigenous Media (Duke University 52. Advice from the GPG key signing Press: Durham, NC 2006). party “How To” page at http://www. 47. Ibid. [36], p. 15. chaosreigns.com/code/sig2dot/ 48. Margaretha Haughwout, “A Reflect- 53. J.P. Barlow, “Art after virtual reality,” ing and/or Refracting Pool: When a paper presented at a meeting at the Guggen- Community Becomes Autonomous heimMuseum Soho, New York, October 27, 1993. Online,” First Monday 11, no. 4 (April 54. http://www.perl.com/doc/ 2006), Retrieved April 27, 2006 from manual/html/Porting/pumpkin. http://www.firstmonday. org/issues/ html#Help_Save_the_World issue11_4/haughwout/ 55. Ibid. [43], p. 325. 49. See: 56. Waltham Black Act of 1722 effectively http://www.cryptnet.net/fdp/ criminalized the commons. crypto/gpgparty.html 57. Ibid. [3]. Linebaugh claims that “the 50. Computers are a problem at crisis of the commons began as a

Reading 8: 03/09 One Last Article… PGP meetings because “binary financial crisis which itself arose

114