Cyblog, the blog of the Cyborg Institute

A Report from the Institute

2010-06-02T00:00:00-04:00

It has been too long since I’ve updated the cyborg institute, and arguably, too long since I’ve been able to seriously dedicate time to Cyborg Institute projects, but things have happened. And, I think there’s worth in outlining some of these developments and projects.

The biggest project that I’ve been working on for a while around these parts has been to simplify and consolidate things. When I started at this project a bit more than a year ago, I had scads of free times, broad unfocused interests, and I desperately wanted to play with the cool technology and website that I had at my disposal. The end result was a site that had lots of infrastructure, but nothing of significant consequence. Breadth without depth is a leading problem, and I think this has–over the past year–made it hard to really answer the question of “what the Cyborg Institute” really does.

I’ve consolidated most of what I think of as “blah blah blah” pages in the wiki, into a few overview pages, covering software freedom, Cyberculture and theory, and technological practices. Perhaps I’m still attached to the “bla blah blah” content, but I’ve made a big point for using the wiki to do other things, which have purpose and direction, and are (comparatively) concrete. This is progress.

The biggest projects at the moment are: Sygn, my plan for a distributed database system to support some kind of awesome federated social networking directory, job listing board, or other massively distributed database/content system. For more information regarding Sygn, consider these external discussions. Then there’s the Tumble Manager project, which is to be a system to sanely automate the publication of tumble-log, in a way that emphasizes the sense of play in the form and the important editorial purpose that such sites might play in the “independent Internet content” space. My goal, is also to have a system that generates websites in a lightweight, minimalist manner. These are big projects that will require more of my time, as I have it, and some help from awesome people.

I’ve also done some moving and shifting. The “Cyborg Institute” blog, is now located at http://www.cyborginstitute.com/blog/, and the http://cyblog.org domain now points to another project here. That project, is to build a piece of software called “Cyblog” that will replace Jekyll with a more efficient and easier to use system for generating static sites, like the Cyborg Institute (minus wiki), tychoish.com, and other related projects. If you’re interested in contributing to cyblog, please get a git checkout and be in touch with us regarding your work.

And that’s about all that’s going on around these parts. In the life of Sam Kleinman, I’ve been working a lot on “tycho garen” projects many of which can be seen on tychoish.com, day job projects, and there’s always fiction writing, folk dancing, and Sacred Harp singing. Such is the life of a cyborg.

Recent Developments

2009-10-01T00:00:00-04:00

I suspect that this will become something of a regular feature, but I’ve realized that given how I tend to concentrate my blogging energies on the tychoish.com project, even for subjects that would be relevant to the Cyborg Institute blog¹, that it would be useful to create a semi-regular Cyborg Institute feature to keep you all up to date on what’s going on beyond the scenes.

On the Wiki

First, I’ve been doing some revisions with the wiki, and the good news is that everything works. I though everything worked when I started out, but it turns out OpenID was a bit buggy, and I had some problems with the git interface, but everything seems to be in order now. My general move has been to de-clutter some pages–the index primarily–split up things that went on too long in a given page (i.e. the current work on Sygn).
I’ve been working on consolidating, clarifying, and tweaking the Sygn System pages to be a bit more organized and descriptive.

If you didn’t notice, Sygn is a project to create a federated social networking data standard. This sounds really geeky and more “technological,” than “cyborg,” but in point of fact the “geeky” parts are (relatively) simple, and the implications and applications Sygn are very “cyborg.” Ongoing work on the wiki and the sygn chat room and we hope to begin work on a test implementation soon.
I started working on some exploration for a wiki project hosted under the umbrella of Critical Futures, to explore the ways to do fiction and creative work using wiki as a tool. This is Cyborg if ever there was one.
I’ve moved the Content Incubator off of the main page, and done a little bit of work to consolidate the initial footprint of the wiki and make the whole thing a bit more approachable.

General Site Things

I’ve enabled a couple of sub-domains to work a little bit better for people who might be interested in various Cyborg Institute related projects therefore (.net and .org domains, at the moment are all identical to the .com):
- The Cyborg Institute Planet: http://planet.cyborginstitute.com
- The Cyborg Institute Wiki: http://wiki.cyborginstitute.com
I’m thinking about giving up the pretense of the blog, as a first class publication of the Cyborg Institute and trying to fold the content into the wiki, and do more posts along the lines of this post.

In pursuit of this I’ve imported the backlog of posts that were really just sketches of one sort or another into a personal sketchpad in the wiki. You can find that here.

Thoughts?

Do be in touch, and thanks for reading.

I suppose one can’t plan for these kinds of things until one tries them.
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reuseable software

2009-08-18T00:00:00-04:00

Donald Knuth, originator of TeX and METAFONT, for typesetting, and for the concept of ”literate programming,” lamented the dirth of reusable software. Knuth is a brilliant guy and a great thinker, and although I’ve yet to read Coders At Work, thinking about software as reusable (which is certainly a prevailing trend,) and the possibility that this might be regrettable has certainly given me something to chew on.

Knuth is without question an Artist and a master craftsman. I suspect that the “regrettable” aspect of reusable computer programs for Knuth, is not that reusable programs are technologically flawed but rather that reusable programs mean that users of computers–cyborgs–can use their machines, and interact with technology without ever needing to know how the underlying technology works.

I don’t know if I can add a lot to this idea. I think it’s interesting and useful to think about addressing technological problems with human solutions in some cases. I think particular around the problem domains of desktop software and systems administration, we’ve stopped “learning how to develop single-use programs,” and have relied on reusable programs. The result is that desktop computer users, don’t know very much about the administration and development of the applications they use, in nearly all cases from advanced users to rank beginners.

My perspective might be skewed because, in the broadest sense possible, my work is focused on answering the claim that “free software is hard to use,” by educating users rather than developing software that makes technology easier to use by removing choice and options.

I think the design philosophy of Arch Linux follows this philosophy. The lack of anything resembling a “standard” configuration in emacs supports the goal of “learn how your technology works,” philosophy.

Returning to “reusable software,” for a moment, I’ll make an argument against myself (in comments), and say that in a lot of situations, the solution to a specific problem is often best solved with specific solutions. If software isn’t going to be reused, and we accept that the writing and rewriting of software is a constant process, I think the result is much more simple programs. Programs that need to only do one thing, or part of one thing well. Programs that are more simple. Better separation of programmatic interfaces and user interfaces. In point of fact, more software that’s built using bits and pieces of existing code.

And above all, more proficient (and arguably happier) users. That’s a good thing indeed.

Current Projects, Sygn and Agile Success

2009-08-08T00:00:00-04:00

It’s the end of the week and although the blog posting has been minimal round these parts (but that’s ok, there’s plenty of other people blogging, to pick up the slack), we haven’t been totally asleep at the wheel, so I wanted to post notices of a few things that I’m working on, for your edification and commentary.

The first project is still very much in progress and needs some better explanation. I’m calling in the Sygn System, and the intent is to build a distributed database/”Social Networking Tool” that would specify a structured format for people to share information about themselves and their work, but more importantly provide a standardized framework for these “profiles” to be aggregated into useful collections of data to address real needs and problems.

The example posited in the document, was the problem of connecting potential users of free software and open source software with potential users of that software. Sygn would be a way to allow these people to connect in a distributed and platform/context-agnostic framework. Read the wiki page for more information.

I should, fully acknowledge the pivotal role that Carlos Perilla (or deepsapwn) has had in the formation and review of this idea. (Thanks!)

My (our?) work on this project is going to be in the direction of addressing:

More example profiles. I created a quasi-fictitious example profile to illustrate what I saw in my mind, and to provide visual context for what a YAML-formatted profile would look like. While this is a good example, I need to generate more as an example to of what this system might be capable.
The beginning of the document describes the entire thought process, and presents a (somewhat abstract) use case. I think at this point what we need is both the broad overview of the projects goals, which the existing text almost accomplished, and a number of more specific use cases.
I need to firm up how the web-of-trust model would work. Full key-signing is a really high burden for a system like this (imagine if everyone you needed to verify legal names and picture ID for everyone you followed on twitter or friended on facebook?) I need to figure out if there’s a way to endorse a sub-key without signing the master key, as a way of making the burden for signing in this context less intense.
The current document proposes deploying specific technologies in the implementation that–upon review–do not seem entirely crucial to the infrastructure of Sygn. While I think YAML (a human readable, cross-language data-serialization format.) is a great technology for this use-case, most other aspects of the implementation are secondary to the functionality, and are included in the current document as touchstones to describe functionality that I think is important. Must edit this out.
I need to write blog posts here and for tychoish describing these use-cases and the project, both to become more clear on the subject myself and to figure out how to communicate this in additional contexts.

If you’re interested in this, feel free to contribute on the wiki, or if that’s too daunting (it should be! :) ), then feel free leave feedback in comments to this post.

The “Agile” part of the title simply refers a little mini-series of posts that I’ve posted at the end of this week on tychoish about “What it means to ‘Be Successful’ on the Internet,” and what this means in context of buzzwordy-concepts like “Community Develop” Those posts are:

”Levels of Success,” about community and the progression of success.
”Agile and Iterative Sauces,” about about the process of development, and the nature of improvement, with lessons from modern software development processes.
”The Collapse of Marketing,” about marketing, self-promotion, and advertising.

I think they all have, at least some appeal from a cyberculture perspective, and also insofar as, particularly the middle one, applies ideas about software development to new realms beyond software development. This sort of expansion and elaboration of technical concepts in new contexts is an incredibly exciting part of this whole “cyborg thing.”

We’ll be in touch. Thanks for reading!

Behind the Curtain

2009-08-05T00:00:00-04:00

The truth of the matter is that, no one really cares how your website works as long as it does. Well almost no one: I think I’m an exception to this rule, but then I’ve been looking at websites for a long time, and have a lot of opinions on the matter. Given that the Cyborg Institute Site is rigged together in a reasonably unusual way, I think it’s worth a bit of (potentially ongoing) discussion.

Lets start with what you can see: the theme. Our theme is a pretty straightforward derivation of the hemmingway theme for wordpress. Mostly I just changed the font and took out a lot of features that I didn’t need or like, and did some minor tweaking to other aspects of the layout. I wanted a simple, basic theme, that was easy to navigate through but that could handle a lot of different kinds of content, and I think I succeeded at that. I’m not a graphic designer, and I prefer to leave that kind of work up to the professionals.

The second thing that you might notice is that the site isn’t powered by WordPress. Don’t get me wrong, WordPress is great software and it’s perfect a great many sites. I recommend and do a lot of consulting around WordPress, but the truth is that WordPress is developed to power blogs, and while you can use it to manage other kinds of blogs, the harder you push the less effective it gets to be. When I’m working on a WordPress project I try to be really mindful of WordPress’ strengths, and it’s never let me down. At the same time, I knew that this site was the kind where I’d have to push a lot, so I took a different strategy.

While the Cyborg Institute has a blog the central focus of the site isn’t the blog. In fact, most of the content on the site is pretty static. Pages about what we do, and our projects take prominence over “the latest blog post.” While these pages might change from time to time, they don’t change much. And then there’s the wiki, which is also full of pages that don’t change very often. Not to mention the rest of my list of “things to do with the website” which are also not-blogs. I fear I’d be spending more time fighting with WordPress than actually working and writing.

I wanted a system that was flexible enough to deal with new kinds of content and information as I needed to deploy them, but that was also lightweight: I didn’t (and don’t) need a modular plugin architecture, database server, and template API to regenerate every page every time someone views it for a website that changes a few times a week (at most.)

My solution? I’m using a number of tools to generate static content that the web-server just hands out as is. The result is a site with pages that load very quickly, and a collection of tools that are all ideally suited to the task they perform, rather than being suitable as a result of their integration with WordPress (or the CMS of choice). I’m using Jeykll and ikiwiki at the moment, and I hope to continue to extend their use and find other tools that work similarly.

I think as we begin to be able to more accurately interpret our needs for websites, as network services mature, and as the web continues to develop, these kinds of “ad hoc”/”lo fi” systems will become increasingly more attractive.

At the same time, there is a cluster of functionality provided by high-powered content management systems beyond simply managing “managing content” that alternative systems need to address in some way.

Editorial administration, content workflows, and user account registration: Traditional content management systems (CMS) make it easy for site owners to administer their sites, to delegate responsibility to an editorial team, and make it possible for users to authenticate with the website.
- Ad hoc systems like the one that the Cyborg Institute uses don’t require users to authenticate with the website, verifying identities by way of Open ID, or direct authentication with the server itself using secure encrypted connections for editing content directly.
- Without user accounts it’s difficult to delegate editorial responsibility without a central administrator needing to review any changes additions. While traditional CMS’s relieve stress on a central editor, they add more than an equivalent amount of stress with regards to their technical upkeep. This trade off is more than acceptable, in the ad hoc case, particularly given that on low volume sites with small editorial teams, centralized workflows are almost always preferable.
Uniformity and Template Systems. Traditional CMS’s make it possible to easily implement a uniform template so that all pages on your site “look the same,” and that if you change the template for one page the entire site can change.
- It turns out that designing an effective template system is incredibly difficult. If it’s too flexible, it’s easy write templates that don’t work consistently across all pages, and if it’s not flexible enough users won’t be able to produce the necessary outputs.
- Generally, the best strategy that leads to separate content from both the structure of the page, and the presentation (CSS), and any content/structure/presentation that’s common to more than one page should reference the same copy of the content. This is quite easy to accomplish using simple includes (transcludes?) and other methods of static page compilation.
Traditional Content Management Systems provide a framework for commenting on content and facilitating other interactive features for readers to participate in ongoing discussions. Which is easier to do with dynamic pages and user accounts.
- Services like Disqus, and IntenseDebate demonstrate that it’s possible to “outsource” some of these features and experience an increase in functionality. Even more, they show that we don’t really need to have “content” and “interaction” in the same system for effective content publication or discussions to take place.
- Facilitating participation is always a social problem rather than a technological problem, and there are ways of facilitating discussions in any technology.

So that’s what we’re working with. While this is very much a “meta” conversation, I think that this site is interesting not just because it’s awesome (heh) but because I think it bucks the conventional wisdom regarding the kinds of web-infrastructure needed to run a site like this, and thus raises some interesting questions about the best ways to present and organize information. Thoughts?

launch ready

2009-08-02T00:00:00-04:00

It’s amazing to be standing here, looking over this awesome site we have here, and be in a place where I feel comfortable enough with where we are to be able to welcome you to the site and introduce you to the project.

Welcome!

The Cyborg Institute is born out of the idea that there are other people in the world, on the Internet, who are as fascinated with how other people use computers as I am. I was talking to Joe about file systems and file organizations a few months back (what do you do for fun?) and I said, “dude, wouldn’t it be awesome if we started some project to figure out these questions and help participate in the solutions.” Or some variant therein.

And then a lot happened. I was looking for more serious employment in this area, but I was working on a number of fairly disjointed projects, and then I upended myself for six weeks for a family thing, and then I was looking for consulting work in cyborg-related areas, and then got a job, and moved across the country, but I’ve been hacking away on this site, on the content, on the systems all the while, and my project list has dwindled down to almost nothing.

That’s a lie.

My project list has dwindled down to the point where I can’t fathom holding anything back on the account of the remaining to-do list. I’ve been doing this website thing for a long, long time and if there’s one thing that’s true, it’s that they’re never really all the way “done.”

Epically this one. With a wiki, a blog planet, and a blog like this one, “constant evolution and development” is the nature of the beast. So I’m going to keep working on things, and I’d be very appreciative of your contributions, comments, feedback, or even simple attention.

I feel as if I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention a few key influences on this project. First to Amber Case for reintroducing me to Donna Harroway’s essay, and expanding my mind about the possibilities of Cyborg Anthropology and scholarship (and also for being generally awesome). Secondly, to Sacha Chua for keeping a really amazing blog that has really helped to advance my thinking in a number of ways.

And of course, thanks to you for reading this and to everyone who I’ve bounced ideas off of during the development process for this site. I’ll be posting things a couple of times a week, so please subscribe and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Inaugural Post

2009-06-02T00:00:00-04:00

Hello and Welcome!

This post has been a long time coming and I’m glad to finally be able to write it.

The Cyborg Institute is this crazy idea I got during the dark winter of 2008/09. I’d been blogging for some time my personal blog about really technical topics, about the interactions between culture and technology, about using technology more effectively, and about working “better.” And I was getting the feeling that a lot of readers (and friends) were getting a little tired of hearing me blather about these somewhat esoteric topics.

I took this as a sign, and this is the first inspiration for the site you see before you. Thus the Cyborg Institute is a platform to explore these ideas in greater depth, and provide a context for people to record their thoughts and learn more about these issues.

The second kernel of inspiration was a growing–and at the time, somewhat disorganized–consulting practice that I was surprised to find myself in the center of. Working with technology and cyberculture is nearly reflexive for me, and never thought “I think I should do consulting work,” nevertheless, there I was. As it turns out, I find working with amazing people to help them achieve their goals more effectively to be an amazingly rewarding and educational experience.

In this vein the Cyborg Institute is an attempt to make this consulting practice more concrete and make it possible to collaborate with other awesome people who have supplementary and complementary skills and specialties.

The final piece of this puzzle is about communities:

Since I started ”doing this website thing,” many years ago, when I was embarrassingly young, my projects have mostly been about coordinating efforts with other like-minded souls, collaborating with awesome people, and building infrastructure to promote communities. A significant portion of what I hope this site will become originated when I said, “wouldn’t it be cool, this happened,” or “hey, we should do this,” and so via the Cyborg Institute, I’m stepping up to bat and doing these things.

One of these “wouldn’t it be cool, if” things is this blog, which I hope to update a couple times a week with cool links, meditations, suggestions, and reflections on “cyborg stuff.” Another is the wiki which I hope will become a collection of knowledge, forum for discussion, and platform for the development of grounded theory. Others still in their infancy include a white-paper series, git-hosting, discussion listservs, and regular group-chats. Time will tell. If there’s a project that you’d like to contribute to, or if you’d like to join our team, do be in touch.

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned!