Re: <nettime> Goodbye Classic ?

[Alessandro Ludovico <a.ludovico@neural.it>]

>  > But, at the risk of sounding like a zealot, this is the typical
>>  example of how proprietary software platforms, and dependency on them
>>  [which includes dependency on binary compatibility],
>
>   far from zealotry what you are saying is sanity in a world of
>madness and a sense that though not common is common to most of those
>on this list. Interestingly (I think) that Graham Harwood taught
>himself to code after he was disgusted that another Mongrel 'classic'
>called Linker which depended on a propriatory ap suddenly not working
>after an 'upgrade'. As Jaromil said recently, even by the standards of
>the industry "dropping backwards compatibility is a clear sign of *bad
>design*

Totally agree, even if on the other hand, the poorer graphic and
functional design has probably been the Linux Achille's heel. Efforts
in Open Source design showed up only in the last years. I'm wondering
why.

>But although these questions of dependency on propriatory soft (and
>hard) ware tools is in one sense central. I think that in other
>ways the radical net media culture is some times just as likley to
>be caught in the nihilism of the 'big now' where any backwood look
>(curating in an older sense) is dismissed as nostalgia. A 'rehearsal
>)or recuperation) of memory in a broader sense may not a bad idea. Not
>of course that I would suggest disintering and publishing in stable
>form ancient nettime threads :) but then again...

I think that after 11 years of Nettime and software technology 
evolution, it's time to ask ourselves what has really changed in 
terms of software corporation/user relationship, what's the 
contemporary perception of software as a cultural structure and if 
the Open Source enormous social and emotional capital will really 
lead to a definitive change in culture.

p.s. Here I'm not going further in the 'preservation' direction, 
nevertheless there's another big issue: accessing old stuff with 
outdated hardware/software requirements and building a common open 
source search tools, connecting online archives.
-- 


Alessandro Ludovico
Neural Magazine - English (http://neural.it/) Italian 
(http://www.neural.it/neural_it/)
Latest Printed Issue - http://www.neural.it/art/2007/06/neural_27.phtml
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