Which treats of meaningless open source projects, meaningfull ones, and piping hot buns.
Here is a quote I have from a man named Walter De Maria. I don't know who this man is or how you can find more of his writings. I got this particular quote from an Architect who gave a lecture about his buildings at a church in downtown Kansas City. I don't remember the architect's name, or what he was lecturing about, though I do remember that in the bathroom at that church, above the urnal, there was a sign that said "God is watching."
Meaningless work is obviously the most important
and significant art form today. The aesthetic feeling given
by meaningless work cannot be described exactly because
it varies with each individual doing the work. Meaningless
work is honest. Meaningless work cannot be sold in art
galleries or win prizes in museums--though old fashion
records of meaningless work can make you sweat if you do
it long enough. By meaningless work I simply mean work
which does not make you money or accomplish a
conventional purpose. For instance putting wooden blocks
from one box to another, then putting the blocks back to
the original box, back and forth, back and fort etc., is a
fine example of meaningless work. Or digging a hole, then
covering it is another example. Filing letters in a filing
cabinet could be considered meaningless work, only if one
were not a secretary, and if one scattered the file on the
floor periodically so that one didn't get any feeling of
accomplishment. Digging in the garden is not meaningless
work. Weight lifting, though monotonous, is not
meaningless work in its aesthetic sense because it will give
you muscles and you know it. -Walter De Maria
Yeah, I know. It seems like there should be more to that quote. Well, if there is and you know it, you should let me know because I would be really interested to put this quote into some kind of context.
We've been having some hot days in Kansas recently. Not just hot, but really hot! It feels like piping hot bread is stuffed down your pants. People run from air-conditioned oasis to oasis with their hair ablaze. Stores sell polos with lighter colored fabric in the pits so when you put them on and "pit out" your pits match the rest of your shirt (a much more comfortable solution than the old fashioned maxi pad pits). The other night I looked out the window at 3 am and there was this crazy heat lightning going from cloud to cloud. Of course, with this kind of latent energy it doesn't take much to get a huge thunderstorm going, and last night that is what we got. Relief! It is amazing to watch those storms draw the energy from the air around them. Anvil shaped clouds spring from thin air and rise miles. UP, like giant souffles chocked with wind, rain, and lightning they rise. Mmmm.
Open source development reminds me of that. The world marketplace has become more and more saturated with IT professionals since the .com bust. These days it takes very little for an open source project to become gigantic. Like thunderclouds they develop out of thin air. Ideas like Linux and Wikipedia channel the energy from the latent developer power around them into amazing products. Yeah, corporations are starting to take advantage of this energy too, but at least we all benefit.
There are some projects, like apache or wikipedia with profoundly useful goals. Those are the ones you hear about. Recently though I have stumbled across one for which the goal seems to be less important than the journey. I'm talking about the OEDILF. Originally it stood for "The Oxford English Dictionary in Limerick Form", but after careful consultation with the Oxford Universiy Press's legal team it has been changed to "The Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form". Here is a bit of background for those of you who don't know what the heck I am talking about. The Oxford English Dictionary or OED is a famous project from the 19th century. It was essentially an open source project without the internet. They had to use snail mail, but they did have contributors from all over the world and a lofty goal: to create the definitive english dictionary covering the complete etymology of all english words. Try doing that without the good old WWW! Well, back to the present, somewhere on the web in an especially energetic forum called Wordcraft a guy named Chris Strolin came up with the idea of writing the OED in limerick form. It was a joke. Not even he took himself seriously, but then something happened, and like a thundercloud over a sweltering Kansas praire, the idea took off. This is just the first year of the project and they have knocked off over 17,000 limericks and are up to 1,000 contributors (of which I am one).
The benefits of this project to society and our posterity are questionable. Limerick definitions for words? But who cares about usefulness, I love it. There is a real sense of community around the project. The people involved have undertaken a massive task for almost no reason. But they are working hard, and by Jove they are doing a fine job. This work is not quite meaningless in the sense that Walter was going on about because I suppose there is some glory in building such a stupendously unlikely and beautiful monument, but it comes close enough to meaningless work for me to feel comfortable saying "The OEDILF is obviously the most important
and significant art form today."
And now I will shamelessly publish some of my own limericks from the OEDILF. They haven't been fully accepted by the dictionary's editors yet, but I think they are on the fast track to get in. Here are definitions for ancoral (anchor like) and Alg. (the abbreviation for Algiers).
"No, don't!" yelled the captain, aghast,
To a deckhand who acted too fast.
Off the edge fell what looked
Like the anchor unhooked,
But 'twas ancoral ballast he cast.
"To Alg..." cried the lass, then she died
As she flagged down a cab for a ride.
Quoth the driver "ssh honey,"
As he took the gal's money.
And drove to Algiers at low tide.
2 comments:
JC!
did you ever read Ted Kazinsky's (sp?) i.e. the unabomber's Manifesto?
what you and De Maria referred to as 'meaningless work', K called 'surrogate activities'. Much of that Manifesto was concerned with what that is. Namely, other stuff we do 'at work' usually -- but anywhere really -- that doesn't have anything to do with the job description. F'r example, the babysitter tells the kids to go outside and play and calls the boyfriend or watches tv or plays the nintendo while the kids set fire to the neighbors' mailbox; OR the IT-er spends his time hacking into the pentagon's system or generates viruses for the entertainment value ONLY rather than developing software systems etc. He decries this lack of focus in american 'work-ethic' as indicative of our moral lapsing and that if we as a people had something to really focus on, rather than filling our time up with surrogate activities [or even wishing we could be doing something else while we do what we're supposed to] much of our problems would dwindle away. Indeed, this is a problem and something business is wont to solve, but knows it really can't -- hence the preponderance of soft solutions like 'motivation seminars', or hard solutions like probationary periods and quotas. the unabomber's solution of course was ridiculous: withdraw completely from the dominant paradigm and subvert it from without by any means necessary. But the initial thrust and idea of the depth and breadth of teh problem of surrogate activities IS an interesting one I think.
Here then is an example of some context for what you were talking about . . .
Hey, I think this blog qualifies as a surrogate activity!
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