But that's not what you said. You said they distribute abstractions, which they clearly do not ... cannot because that's nonsense. One cannot distribute an abstraction. The reason one can _experience_ discovering an unintended _use_ for an artifact is because these things that get distributed are personally experience-able, local. Sure, if you don't use it, you can call it abstract if you want. But it's not. It's concrete. And the more you use it, the more tightly coupled to it you get.
I don't disagree that whatever artifact is being distributed (bits on a disk, flyers outside a church, etc.) can be executed/interpreted/experienced/personalized differently. Linux is useless without a shell like GNU. But that doesn't mean those artifacts are somehow abstractions. And my original point was that if the artifacts these thoughtful anarchists distribute are open to wildly diverse interpretation, then perhaps they should spend less time _thinking_ and more time running with the Black Bloc and steering the BB toward more constructive action. (Eg perhaps don't vandalize the struggling small business owner. Or in Wikileaks case, perhaps don't act as an unwitting tool of a dictator.) Their interpretation of their distributed artifact is decoupled from, abstracted from, their audience's interpretation of the same artifact. And they bear some responsibility for that decoupling. On 05/05/2017 09:49 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > These local representations are not necessarily the same or even similar and > interesting insights come about from the simple act of distribution. > Assange is arrogant, but he is not so arrogant to think that someone else may > be able to profoundly contextualize the documents he distributes. > Similarly, anyone that has worked with component-oriented software has had > the experience of discovering a new unintended use for an artifact. Whether > any given distribution act is constructive or destructive is arguable, but > there are certainly examples where millions of people would agree that it was > constructive, e.g. the Linux kernel. -- ☣ glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
