The Library of Infinite Loan is a physical world practice I conceived of many many years ago¹, implemented in minimal prototype form 5+ years ago², shared a summary with the #IndieWeb community at least four years ago at the #IndieWebCamp Austin in 2020³ and last year in IndieWeb chat⁴, so it’s about time⁵ I wrote it down.
Summary: lend a #book from your personal library⁶ to a friend, on the conditions that they do not donate sell or dispose of it, and instead when they are done with it they return it or lend it to someone else who agrees to these conditions.
My goal was to create a book lending system that:
* preserves books — effectively in a giant #distributed communal #library
* makes lending easier fiscally, psychologically, emotionally for both parties
* encourages direct person-to-person lending without intermediaries
* grows a culture of non-zero-sum sharing, preservation, and longterm thinking
The basic steps to create a Library of Infinite Loan:
1. Create a separate space (like a particular bookshelf) for #books to infinite lend. A small shelf in a guest room or common space like a hallway works well.
2. Move books there that you are ok lending out and never seeing again
3. Label that space your “Library of Infinite Loan”, or invite guests to borrow from your “Library of Infinite Loan”
4. When visitors ask what that means, explain the Rules
Rules for borrowing from a Library of Infinite Loan (“the Rules”)
1. Keep it as long as you like
2. Do not sell donate or otherwise dispose of it
3. You may give it
a. back to the person you borrowed from
b. or back to its original purchaser if they wrote their name and web address inside
c. or (lend it) to someone else who agrees to the Rules
There are several ways to extend / expand the Library of Infinite Loan:
* custom book plate: design a custom book plate for yourself with room for your name (and web address) on it e.g. “From Tantek’s (@tantek.com) Library” (with space), print it on longterm adhesive paper, and place it inside new books you purchase. When you move a book to your Library of Infinite Loan, amend the book plate to say ”… Library of Infinite Loan” and attach a copy of the Rules.
* add a “borrowers log” with blank lines for anyone you lend it to or they lend it to, transitively, to optionally add their name, web address, and a date of borrowing. Then amend the rules to allow returning a book to who you borrowed from or anyone in the borrower log or original purchaser.
* more media: CDs, vinyl records, DVDs, LaserDiscs, VHS, cassette tapes, video game cartridges etc.
* other things
* large tools — which usually come in a box with instruction manual, so there’s a logical place to put an “owners plate”, “borrowers log”, and copy of the rules.
* artwork — a great way to rotate art among a community
This is what I remember off the top of my head and with a little web searching. I know I have a bunch more notes in various places of my thoughts (and conversations) over the years about a Library of Infinite Loan. As I find those notes, I’ll post them as well.
#infiniteLoan #libraryOfInfiniteLoan
References:
¹ I’m looking through old personal logs for earliest mentions of “infinite loan”
² In my 2019 personal log I found a note that I “moved some books as library of infinite loan to guest room” where I had previously setup a small bookshelf for such books.
³ https://indieweb.org/2020/Austin/reading
⁴ https://chat.indieweb.org/2023-10-01#t1696202307311300
⁵ I was also inspired by sharing the idea again to a couple of friends in an espresso-making livestream this morning
⁶ https://indieweb.org/personal_library
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"html": "The Library of Infinite Loan is a physical world practice I conceived of many many years ago<a href=\"https://tantek.com/2024/120/t1/library-of-infinite-loan#t5Wh1_note-1\">\u00b9</a>, implemented in minimal prototype form 5+ years ago<a href=\"https://tantek.com/2024/120/t1/library-of-infinite-loan#t5Wh1_note-2\">\u00b2</a>, shared a summary with the <a href=\"https://indieweb.social/tags/IndieWeb\">#<span class=\"p-category\">IndieWeb</span></a> community at least four years ago at the <a href=\"https://indieweb.social/tags/IndieWebCamp\">#<span class=\"p-category\">IndieWebCamp</span></a> Austin in 2020<a href=\"https://tantek.com/2024/120/t1/library-of-infinite-loan#t5Wh1_note-3\">\u00b3</a> and last year in IndieWeb chat<a href=\"https://tantek.com/2024/120/t1/library-of-infinite-loan#t5Wh1_note-4\">\u2074</a>, so it\u2019s about time<a href=\"https://tantek.com/2024/120/t1/library-of-infinite-loan#t5Wh1_note-5\">\u2075</a> I wrote it down. <br /><br />Summary: lend a <a href=\"https://indieweb.social/tags/book\">#<span class=\"p-category\">book</span></a> from your personal library<a href=\"https://tantek.com/2024/120/t1/library-of-infinite-loan#t5Wh1_note-6\">\u2076</a> to a friend, on the conditions that they do not donate sell or dispose of it, and instead when they are done with it they return it or lend it to someone else who agrees to these conditions.<br /><br />My goal was to create a book lending system that:<br />* preserves books \u2014 effectively in a giant <a href=\"https://indieweb.social/tags/distributed\">#<span class=\"p-category\">distributed</span></a> communal <a href=\"https://indieweb.social/tags/library\">#<span class=\"p-category\">library</span></a><br />* makes lending easier fiscally, psychologically, emotionally for both parties<br />* encourages direct person-to-person lending without intermediaries<br />* grows a culture of non-zero-sum sharing, preservation, and longterm thinking<br /><br />The basic steps to create a Library of Infinite Loan:<br />1. Create a separate space (like a particular bookshelf) for <a href=\"https://indieweb.social/tags/books\">#<span class=\"p-category\">books</span></a> to infinite lend. A small shelf in a guest room or common space like a hallway works well.<br />2. Move books there that you are ok lending out and never seeing again<br />3. Label that space your \u201cLibrary of Infinite Loan\u201d, or invite guests to borrow from your \u201cLibrary of Infinite Loan\u201d<br />4. When visitors ask what that means, explain the Rules<br /><br />Rules for borrowing from a Library of Infinite Loan (\u201cthe Rules\u201d)<br />1. Keep it as long as you like<br />2. Do not sell donate or otherwise dispose of it<br />3. You may give it <br />\u00a0a. back to the person you borrowed from <br />\u00a0b. or back to its original purchaser if they wrote their name and web address inside<br />\u00a0c. or (lend it) to someone else who agrees to the Rules<br /><br />There are several ways to extend / expand the Library of Infinite Loan:<br />* custom book plate: design a custom book plate for yourself with room for your name (and web address) on it e.g. \u201cFrom Tantek\u2019s (<a href=\"https://tantek.com\">@tantek.com</a>) Library\u201d (with space), print it on longterm adhesive paper, and place it inside new books you purchase. When you move a book to your Library of Infinite Loan, amend the book plate to say \u201d\u2026 Library of Infinite Loan\u201d and attach a copy of the Rules. <br />* add a \u201cborrowers log\u201d with blank lines for anyone you lend it to or they lend it to, transitively, to optionally add their name, web address, and a date of borrowing. Then amend the rules to allow returning a book to who you borrowed from or anyone in the borrower log or original purchaser.<br />* more media: CDs, vinyl records, DVDs, LaserDiscs, VHS, cassette tapes, video game cartridges etc.<br />* other things<br />\u00a0 * large tools \u2014 which usually come in a box with instruction manual, so there\u2019s a logical place to put an \u201cowners plate\u201d, \u201cborrowers log\u201d, and copy of the rules.<br />\u00a0 * artwork \u2014 a great way to rotate art among a community<br /><br />This is what I remember off the top of my head and with a little web searching. I know I have a bunch more notes in various places of my thoughts (and conversations) over the years about a Library of Infinite Loan. As I find those notes, I\u2019ll post them as well.<br /><br /><a href=\"https://indieweb.social/tags/infiniteLoan\">#<span class=\"p-category\">infiniteLoan</span></a> <a href=\"https://indieweb.social/tags/libraryOfInfiniteLoan\">#<span class=\"p-category\">libraryOfInfiniteLoan</span></a><br /><br />References:<br /><br /><a href=\"https://tantek.com/2024/120/t1/library-of-infinite-loan#t5Wh1_ref-1\">\u00b9</a> I\u2019m looking through old personal logs for earliest mentions of \u201cinfinite loan\u201d<br /><a href=\"https://tantek.com/2024/120/t1/library-of-infinite-loan#t5Wh1_ref-2\">\u00b2</a> In my 2019 personal log I found a note that I \u201cmoved some books as library of infinite loan to guest room\u201d where I had previously setup a small bookshelf for such books.<br /><a href=\"https://tantek.com/2024/120/t1/library-of-infinite-loan#t5Wh1_ref-3\">\u00b3</a> <a href=\"https://indieweb.org/2020/Austin/reading\">https://indieweb.org/2020/Austin/reading</a><br /><a href=\"https://tantek.com/2024/120/t1/library-of-infinite-loan#t5Wh1_ref-4\">\u2074</a> <a href=\"https://chat.indieweb.org/2023-10-01#t1696202307311300\">https://chat.indieweb.org/2023-10-01#t1696202307311300</a><br /><a href=\"https://tantek.com/2024/120/t1/library-of-infinite-loan#t5Wh1_ref-5\">\u2075</a> I was also inspired by sharing the idea again to a couple of friends in an espresso-making livestream this morning<br /><a href=\"https://tantek.com/2024/120/t1/library-of-infinite-loan#t5Wh1_ref-6\">\u2076</a> <a href=\"https://indieweb.org/personal_library\">https://indieweb.org/personal_library</a>\n<a class=\"u-mention\" href=\"https://tantek.com\"></a>",
"text": "The Library of Infinite Loan is a physical world practice I conceived of many many years ago\u00b9, implemented in minimal prototype form 5+ years ago\u00b2, shared a summary with the #IndieWeb community at least four years ago at the #IndieWebCamp Austin in 2020\u00b3 and last year in IndieWeb chat\u2074, so it\u2019s about time\u2075 I wrote it down. \n\nSummary: lend a #book from your personal library\u2076 to a friend, on the conditions that they do not donate sell or dispose of it, and instead when they are done with it they return it or lend it to someone else who agrees to these conditions.\n\nMy goal was to create a book lending system that:\n* preserves books \u2014 effectively in a giant #distributed communal #library\n* makes lending easier fiscally, psychologically, emotionally for both parties\n* encourages direct person-to-person lending without intermediaries\n* grows a culture of non-zero-sum sharing, preservation, and longterm thinking\n\nThe basic steps to create a Library of Infinite Loan:\n1. Create a separate space (like a particular bookshelf) for #books to infinite lend. A small shelf in a guest room or common space like a hallway works well.\n2. Move books there that you are ok lending out and never seeing again\n3. Label that space your \u201cLibrary of Infinite Loan\u201d, or invite guests to borrow from your \u201cLibrary of Infinite Loan\u201d\n4. When visitors ask what that means, explain the Rules\n\nRules for borrowing from a Library of Infinite Loan (\u201cthe Rules\u201d)\n1. Keep it as long as you like\n2. Do not sell donate or otherwise dispose of it\n3. You may give it \n\u00a0a. back to the person you borrowed from \n\u00a0b. or back to its original purchaser if they wrote their name and web address inside\n\u00a0c. or (lend it) to someone else who agrees to the Rules\n\nThere are several ways to extend / expand the Library of Infinite Loan:\n* custom book plate: design a custom book plate for yourself with room for your name (and web address) on it e.g. \u201cFrom Tantek\u2019s (@tantek.com) Library\u201d (with space), print it on longterm adhesive paper, and place it inside new books you purchase. When you move a book to your Library of Infinite Loan, amend the book plate to say \u201d\u2026 Library of Infinite Loan\u201d and attach a copy of the Rules. \n* add a \u201cborrowers log\u201d with blank lines for anyone you lend it to or they lend it to, transitively, to optionally add their name, web address, and a date of borrowing. Then amend the rules to allow returning a book to who you borrowed from or anyone in the borrower log or original purchaser.\n* more media: CDs, vinyl records, DVDs, LaserDiscs, VHS, cassette tapes, video game cartridges etc.\n* other things\n\u00a0 * large tools \u2014 which usually come in a box with instruction manual, so there\u2019s a logical place to put an \u201cowners plate\u201d, \u201cborrowers log\u201d, and copy of the rules.\n\u00a0 * artwork \u2014 a great way to rotate art among a community\n\nThis is what I remember off the top of my head and with a little web searching. I know I have a bunch more notes in various places of my thoughts (and conversations) over the years about a Library of Infinite Loan. As I find those notes, I\u2019ll post them as well.\n\n#infiniteLoan #libraryOfInfiniteLoan\n\nReferences:\n\n\u00b9 I\u2019m looking through old personal logs for earliest mentions of \u201cinfinite loan\u201d\n\u00b2 In my 2019 personal log I found a note that I \u201cmoved some books as library of infinite loan to guest room\u201d where I had previously setup a small bookshelf for such books.\n\u00b3 https://indieweb.org/2020/Austin/reading\n\u2074 https://chat.indieweb.org/2023-10-01#t1696202307311300\n\u2075 I was also inspired by sharing the idea again to a couple of friends in an espresso-making livestream this morning\n\u2076 https://indieweb.org/personal_library"
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"published": "2024-04-30T01:53:00+00:00",
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{
"type": "entry",
"published": "2024-04-27T01:09:01+00:00",
"url": "https://werd.io/2024/where-im-coming-from",
"name": "Where I'm coming from",
"content": {
"text": "I\u2019m paralyzed by the world. We seem to be at a kind of crossroads.\n\nThere\u2019s so much to be appalled by, so much to be worried about, and I worry that not saying something might be considered to be acquiescence or approval.\n\nSo, in this moment, I thought I\u2019d actually take a step back and explain what my worldview actually is. It\u2019s perhaps overly ambitious, but I want to declare I think is important, and what drives me to say the sorts of things I do. And, yes, these same factors also drive the decisions I make about where I work and how I build software.\n\nAs always, I would like to read yours.\n\nMy view on the world \u2014 as is true of yours, and of everybody\u2019s \u2014 is a function of my lived experiences, and the lived experiences of the people I care about.It\u2019s not about leading the world; it\u2019s about living in a peaceful oneI was born in the Netherlands, grew up in England, spent time in Austria, went to school in Scotland, and have been in the United States since my early thirties. My dad is Swiss-Dutch-Indonesian; my mother was American on one side and Ukrainian on the other. They met in Berkeley in the early seventies and were heavily active in various progressive causes as activists. My dad in particular, who was drafted into the US Army after his family moved to America as a teenager, organized Vietnam War protests in the Bay Area, and was often harassed by the police.\n\nMy parents intentionally left the US to raise me. The closest thing I have to a hometown is Oxford, famous for its universities, where academic families are constantly coming through. My peers at school came from all over the world \u2014 including from behind the iron curtain \u2014 and experiencing the different smells and tastes of peoples\u2019 homes was completely normal.\n\nAt the same time, I was a third culture kid for almost all of my childhood and early adulthood, and identified with no national identity. I never felt any real ties to any particular geographic place for its own sake. I was raised an atheist and have never felt religious ties (even though, as a child in England, I went to a Church of England school where we were made to pray every day). What I did identify with, very strongly, was family.\n\nMy dad is one of the youngest concentration camp survivors: he spent his early years in a Japanese-run camp in Indonesia, which still colors the way he sees the world. His mother had nightmares every single night for the rest of her life; I will remember hearing her screams though the walls forever. His father, who I never got to meet, was a resistance leader who was forced to dig his own grave multiple times. I\u2019ve heard stories about the camps and what happened afterwards for my entire life. Even when they returned to the Netherlands, Indo people like my dad\u2019s family were an ethnic minority and treated poorly. They eventually moved to California, thanks to a local sponsor, where they ran a gas station on highway 12 in Sebastopol. My uncle was severely beaten up for daring to serve Black people. The gas station itself was routinely shot at \u2014 once killing the family dog \u2014 simply because it was run by immigrants.\n\nMy great grandfather escaped Ukraine twice. His village was destroyed by the White Army as part of vicious Pogroms. When he emigrated to the US, he secularized, changing his name in the process in order to sound less Jewish. Eventually he became the General Manager of the Pennsylvania Joint Board of the Amalgamated Shirt Workers. I\u2019ve previously posted excerpts from my grandfather\u2019s obituary that discuss that experience as well as my grandfather\u2019s experience as a Jewish POW in Germany during WWII.\n\nMy grandfather, by the way, ended up translating Crime and Punishment into English, and taught in the Slavic and Eurasian Studies and History departments at the University of Texas at Austin for forty years. He met Albert Einstein, had coffee with Sylvia Plath, discussed philosophy with Hannah Arendt, and never quite realized his dream of being a poet. In the end, he married into an institutional American family: my great grandfather was a WWI test pilot and eventually became a diplomat who negotiated the US withdrawal from Haiti. (This fact of my family history is, I want to be clear, not an endorsement of the US\u2019s behavior overseas, including in Haiti.)\n\nSo, all of this is to say: I have no interest in patriotism, let alone nationalism. It\u2019s not a value I hold, and I\u2019m not excited by any country having a leadership position in the world. I find flag-waving to be petty. What I care about are values: the democracy, inclusion, and co-operation that can lead to a lasting peace. I\u2019m repelled by military strength, because I\u2019ve seen what various militaries did to my family. I\u2019m repelled by anti-immigrant sentiment, because I come from refugees and immigrants. I don\u2019t like the idea of assimilation, because I\u2019ve seen the richness inherent in lots of cultures. Forced assimilation \u2014 which is usually into a conquering culture \u2014 is tantamount to subjugation.\n\nNational exceptionalism \u2014 American exceptionalism, or European exceptionalism, come to that \u2014 is ridiculous on its face. Cold wars and imperialist foreign policies are things to avoid, not things to perpetuate. No country is the \u201cbest\u201d, and even the idea of \u201ca best country\u201d is narrow-minded. No religion is the \u201cbest\u201d; please enjoy practicing yours, but please don\u2019t impose it on anyone else. There are definitely people who think McCarthy\u2019s witch hunt against communism was right in spirit, even if they condemn the historical event itself \u2014 let\u2019s just say they and I harbor some very different ideas about what an open, democratic society should look like.\n\nNations aren\u2019t what\u2019s important. Principles are. Specifically, the principles of openness, inclusion, fairness, peace, equity, and democracy.\n\nWhat matters is that everyone can live a good life, wherever they are, whoever they are, and however they identify, free from threat of violence or exploitation. Ideological or national superiority aren\u2019t useful values. What matters is the experience of being a human, everywhere. What matters is avoiding the killing and horror of war. What matters is honoring the beautiful diversity of the world.A strong operating system for allI was only half-joking when I compared governments to operating systems. While they certainly don\u2019t map perfectly to actual software operating systems, I do think they provide a very similar purpose: to create a bedrock of services and infrastructure in order to ensure society runs smoothly.\n\nWhat does \u201csociety runs smoothly\u201d really mean? I\u2019ll return to my definition above. What matters is that everyone can live a good life, wherever they are, whoever they are, and however they identify, free from threat of violence or exploitation. Freedom of expression, association, and to pursue one\u2019s best interests are important here: what John Locke called the pursuit of happiness. To ensure the safety of that pursuit, I think John Locke\u2019s version of a social contract \u2014 the idea that we surrender a little personal liberty in order to make evolving common agreements in the best interests of everyone \u2014 is important.\n\nI can\u2019t be a libertarian because I see the importance of the trade-offs here. One role of the operating system is to prevent the vulnerable from exploitation: public goods like universal healthcare, public education, and integrated public transit ensure that people who are not wealthy have the opportunity to build a great life. One of the most visceral reactions I\u2019ve ever had in my life was discovering Ayn Rand, and then, to my horror, discovering that beyond just getting into her novels, some people actually believed in her ideology of everyone for themselves.\n\nHealthy communities are an important part of all of our well-being. Once again: every person deserves to live a good life. We all live in a complex, interconnected network of people, and what happens to someone else also affects us. Caring for the whole network is also in our own best interests. It can\u2019t be everyone for themselves.\n\nIt\u2019s hopefully obvious from my definition, but I don\u2019t think GDP (or money at all) is a great way to measure a society, either. It doesn\u2019t say much about what an ordinary person\u2019s experience actually is. It doesn\u2019t measure human well-being, and that\u2019s how we should be thinking about how well we\u2019re doing. I\u2019m less interested in is the stock market going up? than is being poor a death sentence? as a question \u2014 and I don\u2019t think the first necessarily leads to a reduction in the second. More and more people agree.\n\nOne important function of the social operating system is welfare, which ensures that people don\u2019t fall though the cracks. There are others, some of which I\u2019ve already mentioned: education, transit, and healthcare.\n\nI couldn\u2019t have founded my first startup if I hadn\u2019t had the benefit of the excellent National Health Service. Millions of PR dollars have been spent in the US to paint social infrastructure as being a bad thing, but I never once had to worry about going to the doctor under universal healthcare. I didn\u2019t have to worry about losing health insurance when I quit my job. I could just do it. Say what you want about free markets, but I think that freedom of optionality \u2014 having broad choices regardless of income or personal net worth \u2014 comes closer to real personal freedom than a world without that kind of social infrastructure.\n\nHere in the United States, it doesn\u2019t come automatically: you need people to fight for you. I\u2019ve lost five members of my family to an incurable genetic disease. One of them was my mother, who I helped care for over the course of a decade \u2014 which was, in fact, the reason I moved to the US to begin with. She was a teacher, and the great medical care she received was only possible because of the incredible negotiating power of her teacher\u2019s union. While there should have simply been universal healthcare to look after her, their incredible negotiating power literally lengthened her life by eight years. Unions can be amazing institutions; while not every union is great, the concept of them is. And in a world without the social infrastructure to care for the vulnerable, they are vital.\n\nThis should be the purpose of the law, too: to prevent harm and exploitation, particularly of the vulnerable, in service of maintaining the ability to have a good quality of life. But the law itself, alongside tradition and the twin ideas of unity and stability, often does the opposite. It has often used as a way to maintain a status quo where vulnerable people are exploited for other peoples\u2019 benefit.\n\nThis runs deep: some of the earliest police forces in America were slave patrols. A law that only benefits the powerful or upholds an unjust status quo is, in itself, unjust. Unity that depends on adherence to the values of the powerful (and on the silence or silencing of the vulnerable) is a sham. Stability based on prioritizing the needs of an in-group to the exclusion of others is definitionally fascism. A claim that moderate values are more reasonable only makes sense to people who don\u2019t need more radical change in order to achieve equity.\n\nBeing awake to those injustices is not a binary: it\u2019s not something you either are or not. It\u2019s an ongoing, uncomfortable process of education and coming to terms. There are lots of ways to deal with and redress them, the comparative merits of which are up for discussion. What\u2019s clear to me, though, is that dismissing their existence outright, and painting them with a reductionist brush in order to rob them of importance, is in itself a perpetuation of those injustices.\n\nWhen people started talking about being \u201cwoke\u201d and taking to the streets to demand restorative justice, I was relieved and excited. This is what moving forward looks like. In contrast, I see people harping on about the harms of \u201cwoke-ism\u201d as being part of the dying gasps of the twentieth century: that adherence to tradition and unity and stability in service of the same old inequalities. Change is good; particularly here.\n\nChange can also be easy. Using a preferred pronoun costs you nothing except for letting go of a tradition. The tradition, in other words, gets in the way of someone\u2019s chosen identity being recognized. Same-sex marriage costs you nothing except for letting go of a tradition. The tradition once again gets in the way of someone being able to realize their needs. Your religious beliefs might forbid same-sex marriage; then simply don\u2019t get same-sex married. Practice your own religion to your heart\u2019s content, but don\u2019t enforce your traditions on anyone else. Refer to someone as they would like to be referred; treat everybody with respect. It seems foundational. A fear of change or adherence to a tradition should not be a barrier to making the world more just or treating our fellow humans with respect.\n\nLet\u2019s return again to the core idea: every person deserves to live a good life. Of course, who we consider to be a \u201cperson\u201d is important. Thomas Jefferson incorporated Locke\u2019s version of a social contract into the Declaration of Independence, even going so far as to say that \u201call men are created equal,\u201d but he famously kept slaves. These days, we might ask about our spheres of concern: do we care about people in our families? Our neighborhoods? Our towns and cities? Our churches? Our ethnicities? Our value structures? Our states? Our countries? Our regions? The world? How do we relate to people outside of those spheres?\n\nFor reasons I\u2019ve tried to explain above, I\u2019d love it if we considered the world to be what we care about; the welfare of a person in Gaza is just as important as the welfare of a person next door, even if we might not share a religion or care for the regime they live under. In fact, depending on their context, their welfare might be more important, because they need more help to bring them to that reasonable standard of living, free from violence and exploitation.\n\nBecause our definitions of what a good life is vary, and because no government can possibly claim to represent or understand the complete set of needs and lived experiences in its populace, participative democracy is the only equitable model for government. What\u2019s important here: everyone can vote without hindrance, votes are fair, anyone can become a representative, decisions are actually made at the ballot box rather than in court, and there is real choice. (If there\u2019s a candidate whose values you hate, do what you can to persuade your fellow voters to vote for someone else. That\u2019s what democracy is.)\n\nThose principles are core. It might surprise you to learn that I\u2019m not inherently against the idea of billionaires, and certainly not against the idea of starting businesses and finding success in doing so. But it must be done without exploiting other people and preventing them from being able to live a good life. It must be done without perpetuating injustices, for example by eroding workers\u2019 rights, forcing a minimum wage that is too low to live well on, lobbying for unequal laws, or fighting against their ability to negotiate for better working conditions. Can it be done without those things? I don\u2019t know. But if it can\u2019t, then it shouldn\u2019t happen.So what does this have to do with the internet?I see the web as a platform as being rooted in the kind of internationalism I believe in. The internet itself is a physical manifestation of the idea that we are all connected.\n\nAnyone can publish, anywhere, and be read by anyone, anywhere. That\u2019s amazing! Anyone can start a business and find users all over the world. That\u2019s also amazing! It\u2019s the most borderless, open platform we\u2019ve ever created. The potential to learn about the lives of people we would never otherwise meet, in places we would never otherwise visit, is colossal. We can share ideas and, even more importantly, build empathy globally. I couldn\u2019t be more excited about that. That\u2019s what keeps me building.\n\nIt\u2019s harder to dehumanize someone you don\u2019t know. The internet has the potential to allow everybody to become knowable. I see that as a route to peace, and to a better world where exploitation can no longer happen in the shadows.\n\nWhat I\u2019m not enthused by is the idea that the internet is here as an exercise in furthering any one country\u2019s interests: that one nation\u2019s worldview should trump another\u2019s. At its best, it\u2019s an international commons: an overtly progressive space by design.\n\nI support the indieweb and the fediverse because those technologies harness for the benefit of the public, rather than for the profit and entrenched power of a tiny few. I see silos and centralized services as being anti-democracy, because the whims of a monarch-like figure can have a profound impact on which information we\u2019re allowed to see. We\u2019ve seen that most obviously recently with Elon Musk\u2019s acquisition of Twitter, but it was previously also true of Facebook, and of every large service that aimed to intermediate peoples\u2019 connections with each other. If one entity controls what we see and can learn about, they will abuse it, always.\n\nI\u2019m imperfect. Of course I am. I\u2019ve made terrible mistakes and, from time to time, I\u2019ve hurt people. But that doesn\u2019t mean I can\u2019t try.\n\nI\u2019ve built open source platforms for organizing educational institutions and non-profits; I\u2019ve supported newsrooms that help to create a more informed voting population; I\u2019ve worked in newsrooms that help speak truth to power. It\u2019s not because I love social networking in itself, or because I want to get rich by building software.\n\nIt\u2019s because I remember the sound of my Oma having nightmares through the walls. I see the nationalists and isolationists as trying to divide people into in-groups and out-groups. I see hoarding wealth as akin to building walls. I see conservatism as being a way to preserve the kind of bigotry that can grow and explode into the kinds of hatred that swallow whole families. Quixotic as it might be, I see connecting people as a way to help prevent it all from ever happening again.",
"html": "<p><img src=\"https://werd.io/file/662c500b5b2e6472a3094702/thumb.jpg\" alt=\"The silhouette of a man walking downhill\" width=\"1024\" height=\"641\" /></p><p>I\u2019m paralyzed by the world. We seem to be at a kind of crossroads.</p><p>There\u2019s so much to be appalled by, so much to be worried about, and I worry that <em>not</em> saying something might be considered to be acquiescence or approval.</p><p>So, in this moment, I thought I\u2019d actually take a step back and explain what my worldview actually <em>is</em>. It\u2019s perhaps overly ambitious, but I want to declare I think is important, and what drives me to say the sorts of things I do. And, yes, these same factors also drive the decisions I make about where I work and how I build software.</p><p>As always, I would like to read yours.</p><p>My view on the world \u2014 as is true of yours, and of everybody\u2019s \u2014 is a function of my lived experiences, and the lived experiences of the people I care about.</p><h3>It\u2019s not about leading the world; it\u2019s about living in a peaceful one</h3><p>I was born in the Netherlands, grew up in England, spent time in Austria, went to school in Scotland, and have been in the United States since my early thirties. My dad is Swiss-Dutch-Indonesian; my mother was American on one side and Ukrainian on the other. They met in Berkeley in the early seventies and were heavily active in various progressive causes as activists. My dad in particular, who was drafted into the US Army after his family moved to America as a teenager, organized Vietnam War protests in the Bay Area, and was often harassed by the police.</p><p>My parents intentionally left the US to raise me. The closest thing I have to a hometown is Oxford, famous for its universities, where academic families are constantly coming through. My peers at school came from all over the world \u2014 including from behind the iron curtain \u2014 and experiencing the different smells and tastes of peoples\u2019 homes was completely normal.</p><p>At the same time, I was <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_culture_kid\">a third culture kid</a> for almost all of my childhood and early adulthood, and <a href=\"https://words.werd.io/no-nationality-no-religion-6a556d718e3e\">identified with no national identity</a>. I never felt any real ties to any particular geographic place for its own sake. I was raised an atheist and have never felt religious ties (even though, as a child in England, I went to <a href=\"https://www.churchofengland.org/about/education-and-schools/church-schools-and-academies\">a Church of England school</a> where we were made to pray every day). What I did identify with, very strongly, was family.</p><p>My dad is one of the youngest concentration camp survivors: he spent his early years in a Japanese-run camp in Indonesia, which still colors the way he sees the world. His mother had nightmares every single night for the rest of her life; I will remember hearing her screams though the walls forever. His father, who I never got to meet, was a resistance leader who was forced to dig his own grave multiple times. I\u2019ve heard stories about the camps and what happened afterwards for my entire life. Even when they returned to the Netherlands, <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo_people\">Indo people</a> like my dad\u2019s family were an ethnic minority and treated poorly. They eventually moved to California, thanks to a local sponsor, where they ran a gas station on highway 12 in Sebastopol. My uncle was severely beaten up for daring to serve Black people. The gas station itself was routinely shot at \u2014 once killing the family dog \u2014 simply because it was run by immigrants.</p><p>My great grandfather escaped Ukraine twice. His village was destroyed by the White Army as part of vicious Pogroms. When he emigrated to the US, he secularized, changing his name in the process in order to sound less Jewish. Eventually he became the General Manager of the Pennsylvania Joint Board of the Amalgamated Shirt Workers. <a href=\"https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/scjs/news/sidney-monas-noted-scholar-and-critic-has-passed-away\">I\u2019ve previously posted excerpts from my grandfather\u2019s obituary</a> that discuss that experience as well as my grandfather\u2019s experience as a Jewish POW in Germany during WWII.</p><p>My grandfather, by the way, ended up <a href=\"https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/326618/crime-and-punishment-by-fyodor-dostoyevsky-with-an-intro-by-leonard-stantonjames-d-hardy-jr-trans-by-sidney-monas-and-afterword-by-robin-feuer-miller/\">translating Crime and Punishment into English</a>, and taught in the Slavic and Eurasian Studies and History departments at the University of Texas at Austin <a href=\"https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/slavic/news/in-memoriam-sidney-monas-1924-2019\">for forty years</a>. He met Albert Einstein, had coffee with Sylvia Plath, discussed philosophy with Hannah Arendt, and never quite realized his dream of being a poet. In the end, he married into an institutional American family: my great grandfather <a href=\"https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1990/06/19/387090.html?pageNumber=30\">was a WWI test pilot</a> and eventually became a diplomat who negotiated <a href=\"https://read.dukeupress.edu/hahr/article/49/1/1/157062/The-American-Withdrawal-from-Haiti-1929-1934\">the US withdrawal from Haiti</a>. (This fact of my family history is, I want to be clear, not an endorsement of <a href=\"https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/vincent-bevins/the-jakarta-method/9781541724013/\">the US\u2019s behavior overseas</a>, including in Haiti.)</p><p>So, all of this is to say: I have no interest in patriotism, let alone nationalism. It\u2019s not a value I hold, and I\u2019m not excited by <em>any</em> country having a leadership position in the world. I find flag-waving to be petty. What I care about are values: the democracy, inclusion, and co-operation that can lead to a lasting peace. I\u2019m repelled by military strength, because I\u2019ve seen what various militaries did to my family. I\u2019m repelled by anti-immigrant sentiment, because I come from refugees and immigrants. I don\u2019t like the idea of assimilation, because I\u2019ve seen the richness inherent in lots of cultures. <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_assimilation\">Forced assimilation</a> \u2014 which is usually into a conquering culture \u2014 is tantamount to subjugation.</p><p>National exceptionalism \u2014 American exceptionalism, or European exceptionalism, come to that \u2014 is ridiculous on its face. Cold wars and imperialist foreign policies are things to avoid, not things to perpetuate. No country is the \u201cbest\u201d, and even the idea of \u201ca best country\u201d is narrow-minded. No religion is the \u201cbest\u201d; please enjoy practicing yours, but please don\u2019t impose it on anyone else. There are definitely people who think McCarthy\u2019s <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism\">witch hunt against communism</a> was right in spirit, even if they condemn the historical event itself \u2014 let\u2019s just say they and I harbor some very different ideas about what an open, democratic society should look like.</p><p>Nations aren\u2019t what\u2019s important. Principles are. Specifically, the principles of openness, inclusion, fairness, peace, equity, and democracy.</p><p><strong>What matters is that everyone can live a good life, wherever they are, whoever they are, and however they identify, free from threat of violence or exploitation.</strong> Ideological or national superiority aren\u2019t useful values. What matters is the experience of being a human, everywhere. What matters is avoiding the killing and horror of war. What matters is honoring the beautiful diversity of the world.</p><h3>A strong operating system for all</h3><p>I was only half-joking <a href=\"https://werd.io/2024/the-three-operating-system-models-of-government\">when I compared governments to operating systems</a>. While they certainly don\u2019t map perfectly to actual software operating systems, I do think they provide a very similar purpose: to create a bedrock of services and infrastructure in order to ensure society runs smoothly.</p><p>What does \u201csociety runs smoothly\u201d really mean? I\u2019ll return to my definition above. What matters is that everyone can live a good life, wherever they are, whoever they are, and however they identify, free from threat of violence or exploitation. Freedom of expression, association, and to pursue one\u2019s best interests are important here: what John Locke called <a href=\"https://www.pursuit-of-happiness.org/history-of-happiness/john-locke/\">the pursuit of happiness</a>. To ensure the safety of that pursuit, I think <a href=\"https://www.britannica.com/topic/social-contract\">John Locke\u2019s version of a social contract</a> \u2014 the idea that we surrender a little <em>personal</em> liberty in order to make evolving common agreements in the best interests of everyone \u2014 is important.</p><p>I can\u2019t be a libertarian because I see the importance of the trade-offs here. One role of the operating system is to prevent the vulnerable from exploitation: public goods like universal healthcare, public education, and integrated public transit ensure that people who are not wealthy have the opportunity to build a great life. One of the most visceral reactions I\u2019ve ever had in my life was discovering <a href=\"https://world.hey.com/horses/my-frustratingly-appreciative-feelings-on-ayn-rand-aa46e1c8\">Ayn Rand</a>, and then, to my horror, discovering that beyond just getting into her novels, some people actually <em>believed</em> in her ideology of everyone for themselves.</p><p>Healthy communities are an important part of all of our well-being. Once again: <em>every person deserves to live a good life</em>. We all live in a complex, interconnected network of people, and what happens to someone else also affects us. Caring for the whole network is also in our own best interests. It can\u2019t be everyone for themselves.</p><p>It\u2019s hopefully obvious from my definition, but I don\u2019t think GDP (or money at all) is a great way to measure a society, either. It doesn\u2019t say much about what an ordinary person\u2019s experience actually is. <a href=\"https://hbr.org/2019/10/gdp-is-not-a-measure-of-human-well-being\">It doesn\u2019t measure human well-being</a>, and that\u2019s how we should be thinking about how well we\u2019re doing. I\u2019m less interested in <em>is the stock market going up?</em> than <em>is being poor a death sentence?</em> as a question \u2014 and I don\u2019t think the first necessarily leads to a reduction in the second. <a href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/03/12/supply-side-economics-scam/\">More and more people agree.</a></p><p>One important function of the social operating system is welfare, which ensures that people don\u2019t fall though the cracks. There are others, some of which I\u2019ve already mentioned: education, transit, and healthcare.</p><p>I couldn\u2019t have founded my first startup if I hadn\u2019t had the benefit of <a href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jul/02/is-the-nhs-the-worlds-best-healthcare-system\">the excellent National Health Service</a>. Millions of PR dollars have been spent in the US to paint social infrastructure as being a bad thing, but I never once had to <em>worry</em> about going to the doctor under universal healthcare. I didn\u2019t have to worry about losing health insurance when I quit my job. I could just do it. Say what you want about free markets, but I think that freedom of optionality \u2014 having broad choices regardless of income or personal net worth \u2014 comes closer to real personal freedom than a world without that kind of social infrastructure.</p><p>Here in the United States, it doesn\u2019t come automatically: you need people to fight for you. I\u2019ve lost five members of my family to an incurable genetic disease. One of them was my mother, who I helped care for over the course of a decade \u2014 which was, in fact, the reason I moved to the US to begin with. She was a teacher, and the great medical care she received was only possible because of the incredible negotiating power of her teacher\u2019s union. While there should have simply been universal healthcare to look after her, their incredible negotiating power literally lengthened her life by eight years. Unions can be amazing institutions; while not every union is great, the concept of them is. And in a world without the social infrastructure to care for the vulnerable, they are vital.</p><p>This should be the purpose of the law, too: to prevent harm and exploitation, particularly of the vulnerable, in service of maintaining the ability to have a good quality of life. But the law itself, alongside tradition and the twin ideas of unity and stability, often does the opposite. It has often used as a way to maintain a status quo where vulnerable people are exploited for other peoples\u2019 benefit.</p><p>This runs deep: <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_patrol\">some of the earliest police forces in America were slave patrols</a>. A law that only benefits the powerful or upholds an unjust status quo is, in itself, unjust. Unity that depends on adherence to the values of the powerful (and on the silence or silenc<em>ing</em> of the vulnerable) is a sham. Stability based on prioritizing the needs of an in-group to the exclusion of others is definitionally fascism. A claim that moderate values are more reasonable only makes sense to people who don\u2019t need more radical change in order to achieve equity.</p><p>Being awake to those injustices is not a binary: it\u2019s not something you either are or not. It\u2019s an ongoing, uncomfortable process of education and coming to terms. There are lots of ways to deal with and redress them, the comparative merits of which are up for discussion. What\u2019s clear to me, though, is that dismissing their existence outright, and painting them with a reductionist brush in order to rob them of importance, is in itself a perpetuation of those injustices.</p><p>When people started talking about being \u201cwoke\u201d and taking to the streets to demand restorative justice, I was relieved and excited. This is what moving forward looks like. In contrast, I see people harping on about the harms of \u201cwoke-ism\u201d as being part of the dying gasps of the twentieth century: that adherence to tradition and unity and stability in service of the same old inequalities. Change is good; particularly here.</p><p>Change can also be easy. Using <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferred_gender_pronoun\">a preferred pronoun</a> costs you nothing except for letting go of a tradition. The tradition, in other words, gets in the way of someone\u2019s chosen identity being recognized. Same-sex marriage costs you nothing except for letting go of a tradition. The tradition once again gets in the way of someone being able to realize their needs. Your religious beliefs might forbid same-sex marriage; then simply don\u2019t get same-sex married. Practice your own religion to your heart\u2019s content, but don\u2019t enforce your traditions on anyone else. Refer to someone as they would like to be referred; treat everybody with respect. It seems foundational. A fear of change or adherence to a tradition should not be a barrier to making the world more just or treating our fellow humans with respect.</p><p>Let\u2019s return again to the core idea: <em>every person deserves to live a good life</em>. Of course, who we consider to be a \u201cperson\u201d is important. Thomas Jefferson incorporated Locke\u2019s version of a social contract into the Declaration of Independence, even going so far as to say that \u201call men are created equal,\u201d but <a href=\"https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-dark-side-of-thomas-jefferson-35976004/\">he famously kept slaves</a>. These days, we might ask about our spheres of concern: do we care about people in our families? Our neighborhoods? Our towns and cities? Our churches? Our ethnicities? Our value structures? Our states? Our countries? Our regions? The world? How do we relate to people outside of those spheres?</p><p>For reasons I\u2019ve tried to explain above, I\u2019d love it if we considered <em>the world</em> to be what we care about; the welfare of a person in Gaza is just as important as the welfare of a person next door, even if we might not share a religion or care for the regime they live under. In fact, depending on their context, their welfare might be <em>more</em> important, because they need more help to bring them to that reasonable standard of living, free from violence and exploitation.</p><p>Because our definitions of what a good life is vary, and because no government can possibly claim to represent or understand the complete set of needs and lived experiences in its populace, participative democracy is the only equitable model for government. What\u2019s important here: everyone can vote without hindrance, votes are fair, anyone can become a representative, decisions are actually made at the ballot box rather than in court, and there is real choice. (If there\u2019s a candidate whose values you hate, do what you can to persuade your fellow voters to vote for someone else. That\u2019s what democracy <em>is</em>.)</p><p>Those principles are core. It might surprise you to learn that I\u2019m not inherently against the idea of billionaires, and certainly not against the idea of starting businesses and finding success in doing so. But it must be done without exploiting other people and preventing them from being able to live a good life. It must be done without perpetuating injustices, for example by eroding workers\u2019 rights, forcing a minimum wage that is too low to live well on, lobbying for unequal laws, or fighting against their ability to negotiate for better working conditions. Can it be done without those things? I don\u2019t know. But if it can\u2019t, then it shouldn\u2019t happen.</p><h3>So what does this have to do with the internet?</h3><p>I see the web as a platform as being rooted in the kind of internationalism I believe in. The internet itself is a physical manifestation of the idea that we are all connected.</p><p>Anyone can publish, anywhere, and be read by anyone, anywhere. That\u2019s amazing! Anyone can start a business and find users all over the world. That\u2019s <em>also</em> amazing! It\u2019s the most borderless, open platform we\u2019ve ever created. The potential to learn about the lives of people we would never otherwise meet, in places we would never otherwise visit, is colossal. We can share ideas and, even more importantly, <em>build empathy</em> globally. I couldn\u2019t be more excited about that. That\u2019s what keeps me building.</p><p>It\u2019s harder to dehumanize someone you don\u2019t know. The internet has the potential to allow everybody to become knowable. I see that as a route to peace, and to a better world where exploitation can no longer happen in the shadows.</p><p>What I\u2019m not enthused by is the idea that the internet is here as an exercise in furthering any one country\u2019s interests: that one nation\u2019s worldview should trump another\u2019s. At its best, it\u2019s an international commons: an overtly progressive space by design.</p><p>I support <a href=\"https://indieweb.org\">the indieweb</a> and the fediverse because those technologies harness for the benefit of the public, rather than for the profit and entrenched power of a tiny few. I see silos and centralized services as being anti-democracy, because the whims of a monarch-like figure can have a profound impact on which information we\u2019re allowed to see. We\u2019ve seen that most obviously recently with Elon Musk\u2019s acquisition of Twitter, but it was previously also true of Facebook, and of <em>every</em> large service that aimed to intermediate peoples\u2019 connections with each other. If one entity controls what we see and can learn about, they will abuse it, always.</p><p>I\u2019m imperfect. Of course I am. I\u2019ve made terrible mistakes and, from time to time, I\u2019ve hurt people. But that doesn\u2019t mean I can\u2019t try.</p><p>I\u2019ve built open source platforms for organizing educational institutions and non-profits; I\u2019ve supported newsrooms that help to create a more informed voting population; I\u2019ve worked <em>in</em> newsrooms that help speak truth to power. It\u2019s not because I love social networking in itself, or because I want to get rich by building software.</p><p>It\u2019s because I remember the sound of my Oma having nightmares through the walls. I see the nationalists and isolationists as trying to divide people into in-groups and out-groups. I see hoarding wealth as akin to building walls. I see conservatism as being a way to preserve the kind of bigotry that can grow and explode into the kinds of hatred that swallow whole families. Quixotic as it might be, I see connecting people as a way to help prevent it all from ever happening again.</p>"
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