@adamgreenfield@social.coop
@adamgreenfield@social.coop avatar

adamgreenfield

@adamgreenfield@social.coop

Endurance athlete, heavy-music fan, compulsive greeter of cats. My next book is “Lifehouse: Taking Care of Ourselves in A World on Fire,” coming from Verso mid-'24. #syndicateofinitiative

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adamgreenfield, to random
@adamgreenfield@social.coop avatar

A friend spotted this in Hackney this morning. Just putting folks on notice that if I encounter one of these, I will take preemptive countermeasures, believe it.

adamgreenfield,
@adamgreenfield@social.coop avatar

What made this even creepier (given its obvious video-capture capability, the propensity for children to be attracted to it, etc.) was that it was being operated by a middle-aged dude between two schoolyards. I dislike stranger-danger hysteria as much as anyone sane, but sometimes the red flags wave harder than the Brezhnev-era Kremlin on May Day.

adamgreenfield,
@adamgreenfield@social.coop avatar

We should all take lessons from these civic-minded workers. https://www.technologyreview.com/2015/08/04/248225/robo-sabotage-is-surprisingly-common/amp/

adamgreenfield,
@adamgreenfield@social.coop avatar

@neonsnake @passenger There’s a reasonable argument to be made that Hackney is the Philly of London boroughs. ❤️

adamgreenfield, to random
@adamgreenfield@social.coop avatar

Anybody care to hazard a guess as to the significance, if any, of the paperback copy of “Dhalgren” that chap is ostentatiously carrying around in “3 Body Problem”? Don’t worry about spoilers: I’ve finished the series, and reread the book every few years.

luis_in_brief, to random
@luis_in_brief@social.coop avatar

Missed this Sunday. I think some sorts of engineering projects are very hard to make welcoming in this way, but I should probably still sit with the challenge rather than rejecting it out of hand.

https://social.coop/@adamgreenfield/112150560235170951

adamgreenfield,
@adamgreenfield@social.coop avatar

@luis_in_brief @edsu Very rich seam here, and you make some great points. The first thing I want to pick up (and I treat this explicitly in “Lifehouse”) is that invitationality in the Occupy Sandy case absolutely depended on the abundance and availability of labor, to the degree that an uncharitable observer might characterize some of the things I saw people doing at 520 as the nonhierarchical equivalent of makework, i.e. people doing self-directed, low-intensity things that may not have been

adamgreenfield,
@adamgreenfield@social.coop avatar

@edsu @luis_in_brief in material furtherance of the OS mission, but neither interfered with that mission, alone or in very small groups disconnected from the main functional areas of the hub. I’d wager that this in itself lent the space a quality of being easy to participate in, and, as you suggest, it meant too that there were always bodies available to greet, do intake and indoctrination, etc.

adamgreenfield,
@adamgreenfield@social.coop avatar

@edsu @luis_in_brief Uhh, let’s see: as far as “looking over someone’s shoulder” goes, someone I’d like to properly credit (but who I can’t, due to the broken search up in this place) yesterday posted a response to the thread that offered the example of “legitimate peripheral participation,” and that felt right to me – though, again, as you observe, far easier to realize in some contexts than in others. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legitimate_peripheral_participation

adamgreenfield,
@adamgreenfield@social.coop avatar

@edsu @luis_in_brief Right? I found it a super-helpful framing.

adamgreenfield,
@adamgreenfield@social.coop avatar

@cfiesler @edsu @ldodds @luis_in_brief lol. I’m glad someone said it.

adamgreenfield,
@adamgreenfield@social.coop avatar

@edsu @luis_in_brief @cfiesler Yes, I want to be clear that @ldodds was clearly responding in optimism and good faith! The fact that I don’t, personally, think OSM is the greatest model only speaks to the very great difficulty technical initiatives face in being anything like invitational as I’ve tried to define it here.

adamgreenfield,
@adamgreenfield@social.coop avatar

@cfiesler @edsu @ldodds @luis_in_brief See, I don’t understand what that means. And I’m someone who tried to contribute locational information for 12,000 Chicago bus stops to the project, unsuccessfully.

adamgreenfield, to random
@adamgreenfield@social.coop avatar

In a low-diligence culture like the UK – a term I’ll explain shortly – overlaying digital systems (like these smart meters) over the processes of everyday life results not in efficiency or productivity gains, but in just the opposite: compounded failures that take extra time, effort and resource to correct. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/mar/26/smart-meter-rollout-number-faulty-machines-leaps-great-britain

adamgreenfield,
@adamgreenfield@social.coop avatar

Here’s what I mean by “low-diligence”: Of the five cultures I’ve lived in as an adult, the American, Japanese, Korean and Finnish in addition to that of the British Isles, the UK is on the lower end of the scale in terms of the care and attention to detail people bring to bear on everyday tasks. As we’ve discussed before, this is true across classes, backgrounds and occupational sectors here. It’s true in the NHS, in the academy, in the trades and above all in business. I can’t explain it –

adamgreenfield,
@adamgreenfield@social.coop avatar

I only observe it. People you rely on for important things lose critical documents. A task that you’d expect to be done right the first time needs to be redone and then redone again. The wrong kind of emulsion is specified, or the financial support is deposited in someone else’s account, or the wrong form is filed, or the referral is lost in the mail. (These are all real examples from the past year of my life.) And when you layer brittle, overspecified and inflexible digital processes over this

adamgreenfield,
@adamgreenfield@social.coop avatar

rather slapdash comedy of errors, the result is not improved accuracy or streamlined process flow. It’s a new and supervening set of faulty readings, with its own particular kind of plausibility and authority, that people must somehow summon the energy to challenge and counter. Occasionally, this has literally lethal effects - if you do not live in the UK, prepare to be shocked speechless by the Post Office/Fujitsu scandal. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal

adamgreenfield,
@adamgreenfield@social.coop avatar

Sure, some of this can be accounted for by the deskilling, outsourcing, shoddy lowest-bidder automation and responsibilization that are part and parcel of neoliberal governance/management/governmentality. But much of it feels deep to the culture, in a way that absconds from awareness or visibility. And I don’t, actually, want to bellyache about this state of affairs: I would like to find some ways for us to do something about it together. But it’s daunting, “vaster than empires and more slow.”

adamgreenfield,
@adamgreenfield@social.coop avatar

@sarajw I am sorry, I didn’t want to be one of those insufferable “everything’s better in the States” people. If it makes you feel any better, we’ve thrown in our lot here. We’re on Shite Island for good!

adamgreenfield,
@adamgreenfield@social.coop avatar

Heya! I’m really grateful for your interest in the question of a diligence spectrum, but for those of you who have asked or suggested, I’m afraid there’s no real way one could quantify the appearance of this quality in a culture – other, I suppose, than doing the kind of thing that brash and overconfident management consultants do, i.e. collating a few proxy statistics, and calling it a finding. These are simply anecdotal and partial observations, drawn from my own experience.

adamgreenfield,
@adamgreenfield@social.coop avatar

@Loukas I think that’s absolutely correct. It’s a stretch, but I wouldn’t be surprised either if some everyday solidaristic institutions here (and here I’m thinking primarily of pubs) derive some of their motive power from the fact that they offer a platform for commiseration and low-key mutual aid in the face of it.

adamgreenfield, to random
@adamgreenfield@social.coop avatar

I buy this thesis completely. Ackman (ptui) I didn’t know about, but I’ve been saying for months that Elon (ptui) broke hard right when he couldn’t deal with his kid transitioning. https://publicseminar.org/2024/03/psychosis-bill-ackman-elon-musk/

inquiline, (edited ) to random
@inquiline@union.place avatar

Oh cool it looks like @dasharez0ne mastodon.social is blocking people who respond to their posts accusing them of stealing their schtick

(edit, someone else can provide receipts of their stealing; I don't have them but recall finding them convincing when they went by earlier, so I willingly participated in said accusations and am now blocked)

(edit 2, receipts in replies here)

adamgreenfield,
@adamgreenfield@social.coop avatar

@julieofthespirits @inquiline What kills me? The people who find her stolen witticisms amusing would still be laffing if she cited the original sources! It takes a lot of effort to collate dad-jokey liberal fodder from across the internet! I’m sure her audience would appreciate that for its own sake, without anyone having to deceive anyone!

adamgreenfield,
@adamgreenfield@social.coop avatar

@richpuchalsky @inquiline @julieofthespirits are there? really?? i believe you, i’m just surprised. because it is as you say: “clout” here basically means popularity among catgirls, german cargo-bike enthusiasts and people who know what Figma is.

adamgreenfield,
@adamgreenfield@social.coop avatar

@richpuchalsky @julieofthespirits @inquiline oh her?

FredKiesche, to random
@FredKiesche@dice.camp avatar

And there it is…the first novel-length installment appearance of the BOMB-PUMPED X-RAY LASER!

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image/jpeg
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adamgreenfield,
@adamgreenfield@social.coop avatar

@FredKiesche @KarlSchroeder @hendric @sudnadja @SteveBellovin @cstross @isaackuo @nyrath Peter Watts’s Theseus did this, in “Blindsight.” I found it wonderfully convincing.

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