Berry: Bare Code: Net Art and the Free Software Movement

Bare Code: Net Art and the Free Software Movement by Josephine Berry, is an essay on the NetArt Commons: Slash Site about net art projects and the free software movement. It is part of OPEN SOURCE ART HACK, which I think is a NetArt Commons topic (but I am still figuring out the site) and an exhibit at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York.
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Village Colleges

The design, decoration and equipment of our places of education cannot be regarded as anything less than of first-rate importance – as equally important, indeed, as the teacher. … We shall not bring about any improvement in standards of taste by lectures and preachings; habitation is the golden method. … The school, the technical college, the community centre, which is not a work of architectural art is to that extent an educational failure.

viewing Impington – Henry Morris and the idea of the village college is an extended essay in an encyclopedic site on informal education: infed.org. The essay on Morris and village colleges talks about the attention to balanced space for these community education centres. The Village College combined children’s education with lifelong learning and community spaces.

It would take all the various vital but isolated activities in village life – the School, the Village Hall and Reading Room, the Evening Classes, the Agricultural Education Courses, the Women’s Institute, the British Legion, Boy Scouts and Girl Guides, the recreation ground, the branch of the County Rural Library, the Athletic and Recreation Clubs – and, bringing them together into relation, create a new institution for the English countryside.

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Amin Maalouf: Books I forgot were good

In today’s The Globe and Mail there is a review essay about terror that included a review of In the Name of Identity by Amin Maalouf. I knew that name was familiar and, browsing his site, realized he had written two great novels I had forgotten, one a historical novel, Leo the African and the science-fiction novel, First Century after Beatrice. I’m embarassed that I didn’t connect those two novels. Time to read more of his work, especially on identity and terror as an antidote to the possible orientalism of Western writers like Bernard Lewis.
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Futurist Programming

  • Structured programming = slow.
  • Modular = bloated.
  • Extensible = late.
  • Reusable = buggy.
  • Object-Oriented = slow and bloated and late and buggy.

Imagine Futurist Programming – well Paul Haeberli and Bruce Karsh have and it is the opposite of object-oriented. See The Manifesto of the Futurist Programmers which is based on Boccioni’s The Manifesto of the Futurist Painters. Though not sure, I think they see the irony of a “futurist manifesto” that looks back to the past of futurist manifestos.
See also the Futurist Programming Notes for lots of slogans and stuff like the quote at the beginning. Does anyone know if they have kept this up or is it a joke?
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