Your comment gives me an idea: I’ve heard various flavors of hackerdom propose various versions of this kind of thing since back in the 80’s (Argentina flirted with it on a national level in the 70’s, and was severely punished). Typically the ones proposing such a setup vastly overestimate the importance of the technical infrastructure, and underestimate the user’s inventiveness in using the system in unexpected ways.
All of which makes me think such a system should maybe be piggybacked into an existing meatspace social network, where the human connection is already established. I’m thinking setups like a tool libraty, or a hacker space, or a time bank. Such deeply volunteer efforts usually know they can’t rely on a major financial doner to grok whet they’re doing and make it better. There needs to be (I think) a powerful disincentive monetize despite all temptation.
I’m a fan of this model and esp. these examples. After school STEM programs and farm share are two other examples I like since it’s easier to write grants for those.
I think you’re right. Part of the power of the approach is that even a modestly networked spreadsheet of, say, delivery schedules for a farm share can “unlock value” in a way analogous to how money lending unlocked value in the medieval period.
Last time I asked someone if there was an easy way to learn vim, they
Looked at me and laughed.
Said to type in man vim.
The same people helped me when I was stranded in the desert once by giving me a skateboard to make it back to civilization with. I’m beginning to think I can’t trust them.
MS-Office is “respectable”? I’ll have to ask one of my co-workers to remind me of that the next time I’m snarling, “Stop it! I’m not a child and that’s not what I told you to do!” at my screen.
You read the request message but don’t click on Accept, or something like that. I know I’ve not connected with a few former co-workers who were HR issues waiting to happen.
If you were to brainstorm adjectives to describe my daughter, “compliant” would not be in that list! That’s why I find psychological marketing tactics so helpful. I avoid outright confrontation, because I’ll probably lose. Instead, I use tricks like the doorway effect - she insists on bringing something to school, so I help her get ready and carry it to the door, then leave it behind just as we go out. Most of the time she doesn’t notice until we’re already at school. Other forms of distraction work too: give her a hug or read a book to create a different atmosphere when she’s about to get worked up about something. Obscure and obstruct choices you don’t want her to make, and offer a range of options that are more acceptable. Use foot in the door tactics to break down decisions into smaller ones that are more likely to be acceptable. Gamify chores and other things that are likely to meet resistance. Find ways of associating your choices with positive feelings, rather than punishing poor choices and thereby feeding confrontation.
Give her responsibility and ownership over her life, so she chooses her clothes, gets herself dressed and cleans her teeth (on the condition that I can vet the clothing choices and clean her teeth afterwards), she chooses her cereal or helps me cook (but I chose the cereal selection or the ingredients to use, which are all pretty healthy).
Basically, most of this is an attempt to encourage maturity and responsibility, but I’m not above bait and switch tactics if the situation calls for it.
The one of mine who is like that is now an adult, and when she reminisces about her youth she laughs at the things I allowed her to do – always mindful of safety considerations – and realizes she has no one to blame for herself for things like how she looked in kindergarten. Time is a parent’s friend: as they age, they’ll start to understand why you treated them differently than their siblings (each according to their own).
I love your approach. We call that Zen parenting at our house, or perhaps jujitsu. Don’t go straight for the confrontation but redirect the energy and avoid it. Until I run out of patience.,
I have learned that to be a good parent one only needs the wisdom of Confucius, the patience of the Buddha and the love of Jesus. Everyday, 24-7. I might be putting to much pressure on myself. Perhaps I need less of the perfectionism of…
It doesn’t always work - her favourite expression at the moment is “I want to choose!”. At the end of the day, I think energy (or perhaps water) is a good way to look at it and redirection is much better than confrontation. An independent spirit is such a great asset and opposing it seems like a way to either turn it against you or break it, so I try to stay out of the way where there’s not a good reason not to. If all else fails though, it’s more tiring to be the immovable object than the irresistible force, and I can compete with her for stubbornness.
My wife and I talk about how if we had had our son at a different age we would have raised him differently because our own personalities were different and have changed. As I get old(er) I have much more of the don’t mess with me attitude and that rubbed off on my son. I do want him to have the independent spirit like you describe. When I have a store of patience I find I am as amused as annoyed when he expresses that independent spirit.
Ive thought about a stack of open source tools ready to deploy for social networks built around campaigns for nonprofits and community actions. It would be nice to press a single button and deploy a chat tool, a forum, a file and video sharing site, and a few other things.
That’s not hard.
Hosting and bandwidth cost money now. The software is free.
We kinda need an open social protocol. Like… I wanna communicate with X person. What do they have for me to interact with?
Maybe in some future, our whole social network will be hosted from our phone, and interact with other people’s networks.
That’s interesting. I’m not sure funding is the most challenging part.
I think the most challenging part is how best to institute and curate a social practice of recruiting, training, supervising and then graduating and networking cohorts of people who, over time, integrate basic open coding and networking practices with their farmers’ market (or other project).
Or, put other way, to migrate nonprofits and community-based organizations and committees from an out-of-the-box approach to code to a shared practice approach.
That’s why I find psychological marketing tactics so helpful. I avoid outright confrontation, because I’ll probably lose. Instead, I use tricks like the doorway effect - she insists on bringing something to school, so I help her get ready and carry it to the door, then leave it behind just as we go out. Most of the time she doesn’t notice until we’re already at school. Other forms of distraction work too: give her a hug or read a book to create a different atmosphere when she’s about to get worked up about something. Obscure and obstruct choices you don’t want her to make, and offer a range of options that are more acceptable. Use foot in the door tactics to break down decisions into smaller ones that are more likely to be acceptable. Gamify chores and other things that are likely to meet resistance. Find ways of associating your choices with positive feelings, rather than punishing poor choices and thereby feeding confrontation.
