Read & Repair feat. Minimal Viable Learning

Read & Repair feat. Minimal Viable Learning

In the last months, learning, with all its communal and convivial aspects, turned into an online-only endeavour. This sudden transition didn’t leave much room to make a judicious choice of modes of interaction, communication tools, utilised services and platforms. Within educational organisations, we witness a double movement: on the one hand, a centralisation of all activities by means of the software suite (e.g. Microsoft Teams); on the other hand, the standardisation of a maximalist mode of communication meant to replicate class interactions (e.g. Zoom meetings).

Both aspects deserve scrutiny: are we sure that activity centralisation is a good idea in the long run, letting others decide how digital tools shape our educational environments? And are we fully convinced that the video call mode is the best mode of exchange, to foster the relationships of the class setting? In both cases, technological maximalism takes over: more is more.

We believe that minimal, frugal solutions can prove more effective than hi-tech, hi-bandwidth, baroque ones. The latter can be an opportunity to renegotiate online presence. During this residency we focused on exploring and rediscovering the principles of calm technology and minimal computing, and accommodate different rhythms of engagement.

Two references are important departure points for this residency. The first is the solar-powered Low-Tech Magazine website <https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/>, where all design choices (ranging from hardware to layout) contribute to a setup that runs on a radical low amount of energy. Another resource is the work of the Minimal Computing workgroup <https://go-dh.github.io/mincomp/> which expands the notion of computational minimalism with methodologies that maximise access and appropriation. They do this for example by favouring documents over databases, static sites over dynamic websites and recycled hardware over new computers.

In order to be able to closely engage with our tools of choice we will work with Free Software, which enables us to not only use a tool, but also modify it, combine it with other tools, or transform it into something new. We look forward to be in the position of negotiating our digital learning environments, by closely engaging with its systematics, structures, logics and (not to forget) layouts.

Minimalism is for us a departure point to make space for other possible forms of technologically mediated learning. Important for us is to understand how minimal technologies can maximise a learning experience. Varia has been working on different experimental learning tools over the last years. One of the tools that we use most often is an Etherpad installation, a collaborative text editing software that we have installed in our server at Gouwstraat 3, Rotterdam. Around this tool, a set of learning methodologies emerged; some carried over from the self-organised summer school Relearn, others from the monthly Varia hosted Read & Repair sessions.

During this residency we experimented with the impact that magic words, alternative skins and file format pipelines have on the scenography of digital learning environments. These sessions resulted in a public event whose traces are part of this publication.

Etherpad Workshop

The guests for this Read & Repair are a subgroup of Varia (Manetta Berends, Luke Murphy, Joana Chicau, Cristina Cochior and occasionally Silvio Lorusso) who are currently doing a School of Commons residency <https://www.schoolofcommons.org/labs/minimum-viable-learning> where they consider the question: How can minimal technologies maximise a learning experience? Welcome to our *pad* , aka Etherpad, an open-source, web-based collaborative real-time editor, that allows authors to simultaneously edit a text document, and see all of the participants' edits in real-time. As you may be noticing it also displays each author's text in their own color. Etherpads typically also have a chat box as another form of communication between editors. Padtiquette: » Be supportive and curious. Consider that nobody knows you besides what you write. Meaning, be extra nice with your words. » If you have a question, ask. This is an experiment in doing a workshop together textually from a distance. » Don't delete text from other people, you can add your thoughts next to their sentences or even in between. The text message below is what you would usually encounter when making a new Etherpad on the Varia server. It tells you about the conditions of using this particular Etherpad version: ---------------------------------------------------

varia_etherpad_asci_letters2

Welcome to the etherpad-lite instance hosted by Varia! You are most welcome to use it but please take note of the following things: VISIBILITY: - The pads are not indexed by search engines, but anyone that knows its URL is welcome to read and edit it. PRIVACY: - The contents of the pads are not encrypted, meaning that they are not private. - Anyone with access to the server has the possibility to see the content of your pads. RETENTION: - We make our own backups, meaning the the contents of all pads sit on our harddrives potentially indefinitely. - Because the identity of a pad author cannot be confirmed, we don't respond to pad retrieval requests. ACCESSIBILITY: - If you rely on the content of these pads, please remember to make your own backups. - The availability of the pads is subject to cosmic events, spilled drinks and personal energies. CODE OF CONDUCT: - Both the physical and digital spaces of Varia are subject to our Code of Conduct <https://varia.zone/en/pages/code-of-conduct.html> If you wish to publish a pad to the Varia etherdump <https://etherdump.vvvvvvaria.org/> add the magic word __ PUBLISH __ (remove the spaces between the word and __) to your pad.

Welcome to this pad. To begin with, we will do a few warm up exercises to get acquainted with the place we are in. → Who is in the pad? Fill in one line of the pad with your preferred (nick)name, your pronouns, and anything else you would like to share with the group about yourself. Danny / he-him/ having a coffee :D there is no webcam staring, so I can turn on music. Micaela / she-her / experiencing real sunshine for the first time in months Silvio / he-him / having coffee, slow start of the day for me :) glad there is no camera Witold / he-him / covfefe Michael / he-his / drinking nescafé ;) Joana / she-her / at Varia feeling the morning sun Cristina / she her, currently at my second cup of coffee today, enjoyed a sunny bike ride this morning Rallou/she-her/having first coffe of the day and cold pizza from last night:) Doi / he-him / Manetta / she her / connecting from an unstable wifi point in the south of NL :) Cat /she-her/coffee & music 2 here Valentina / she-her / very groggy can confirm uffa! decentral1se / he-him / coffee vibes also, bitta sun out there, ASCII excitement arc / she-her / Jasmin/she-her/joining late after reading a text Jasmine/She-her/joining after having a walk outside while thinking the session started at 12 (and not an hour earlier when I joined) Item / he-him / Sunday-po-punday, late + just lurking :)

→ Activate your keyboard: Select the keyboard keys 'Ctrl+F' (Windows, Linux) or 'Command+F' (MacOS). Type in the word 'pad' in the search input field. Then press Enter to navigate through the Etherpad by following the trace left by the search term. You can determine your own speed. Now that we have warmed up, we want to speak a little bit about what Minimal Viable Learning might mean. As part of our residency at the School Of Commons, we've been diving into the Etherpad as a learning environment, as a place for collective learning with/from each other. If you have participated in other Read & Repair sessions, you will be familiar with this space. The Etherpad is close to Varia, it being the place where we take notes from meetings, write emails together, generate applications from, create indexes for various tools, hold workshops in it and so on. The Etherpad is a space for variability: this text we are writing now together can be exported in multiple formats. It doesn't only sit in a database. The engagements of Varia and our friends (Constant who uses the Etherdump, Relearn with the function the Etherpads can have in self-organised education, Amy Pickles with welcoming people in Etherpads) with it made us want to continue the exploration further. In this session, we'll be attempting to consider the following questions: → How can minimal technologies such as the Etherpad maximise a learning experience? → How could minimal and viable tools shape collective learning? → How could collective learning shape minimal and viable tools?

Magic Words

Magic Words were brought into the software ecology of Etherpad by Michael Murtaugh, a member of the Brussels-based arts organisation Constant. Magic Words are used by this collaborative text editor to enact certain commands; using __PUBLISH__ on this pad indexes it on this page: https://vvvvvvaria.org/etherpump/ They are little spells that can be used anywhere on the pad to indicate how we want to interact with the text. We would like to think together with you what kind of social incantations magic words can evoke. What kind of relations between text & reader, reader & reader, place & text, place & text & reader could the magic words provoke? If we see magic words like small instructions that can be activated during a collective reading experience, how would that affect our being together? We will be adding, using and reusing new magic words during the reading time that will follow. . - * Spellbook for Reading through Magic Words . - * .. Here are a few examples of what the magic words could look like. Think of them as launching a specific kind of interaction with the text fragment that it sits next to. This will be our collective spellbook that everyone can add, edit or use at will. __CANWEDISCUSS__ If a sentence or paragraph is raising questions or you would like to know what others think about it, we can use this incantation to take it with us into discussion. __ALOUD__ This magic word is used to encourage those encountering it to read aloud the text fragment that it sits next to. __REUSE__ This magic word invites the reuse of the text fragment that it sits next to in an unexpected context. __VANDALIZE__ This magic word invites the creative alteration and/or destruction of the text fragment it sits next to __???__ This magic word invites another reader to rephrase the sentence it marks. __NOFILTER__ This magic word indicates and/or encourages stream-of-consciousness writing __(G)HOST__ This magic word invites the participants to reflect on their physical state in conjunction to the text at hand <3 __REMINDSMEOF__ This magic word is meant to connect the paragraph to other pads or highlight mental connections __TOOTABLE__ This magic word indicates parts of the text that fit social-media sharing, esp. Mastodon <3 __TRANSLATEME__ This magic word invites others in the room to translate the word/phrase into other languages __BOILING__ this magic word can be used when something is in the process of 'cooking'; when a word is heated to its boiling point inviting other for a heated discussion. __CABALISTA__ invites furious and passionate feelings for political organising __Q*__ this magic word invites for reformulating/multiplying/complexifying a question __FILLIN__ This magic word emphasizes gaps in the text and invite readers to fill them in __COUNTERFOIL__ the chance to consider we've gone too far __TL;DR__ short summary of the text __DAE__ invites other members to share their personal experiences relating to a particular text fragment __putonyourdancingshoes__ an invite to get up do a small dance and return to your chair __OST__ Invites the reader to suggest a soundtrack for that part of the text (love this! frank zappa here we come) :>) __((̲̅ ̲̅(̲̅C̲̅r̲̅a̲̅y̲̅o̲̅l̲̲̅̅a̲̅( ̲̅((>__ a childs tool used for drawing/crossig out or highlighting. (maybe same as Vandallize) __?CONTRADICTION?__ marks a contradiction, and invites for unpacking Take 5 minutes to think about other possible __MAGICWORDS__ you could add to the spellbook. You can continue doing this at any point of this session. While reading, you can use these magic words to insert into the texts that we will introoduce shortly. Feel free to use any of them.

We will be reading together extracts from two texts. They are written in the context of the Minimal Computing workgroup of the GO::DH. GO::DH stands for Global Outlook::Digital Humanities. It is an initiative that promotes collaboration between digital humanities scholars from over the world. We will read two texts from their Minimal Computing blog. We will give you the links to these projects at the end of the session. The User, the Learner and the Machines We Make __OST__ https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=dy77ioKI4lQ <3 The first text is called The User, the Learner and the Machines We Make and is written by Alex Gil. It has been posted in 2015 as the first post on the Minimal Computing blog and gives a nice introduction to minimal computing and what it could be. It is written from the perspective of digital humanities scholars, but if you replace all mentions of 'digital humanities' with 'pedagogical environments', it immediately speaks back to online learning. Alex Gil is Digital Scholarship Coordinator for Humanities and History at Columbia University. His research focuses on Aimé Césaire, global digital humanities, and experimental humanities. At Columbia he is one of the founders of the Studio@Butler and the Group for Experimental Methods in the Humanities (xpmethods), which focuses on minimal computing. He currently serves as co-chair of the Global Outlook::Digital Humanities (GO::DH) initiative and is actively engaged in several digital humanities projects at Columbia and around the world. After this text, we will read a bit from another post on the blog, but we will tell you more about that later. :)

  • The User, the Learner and the Machines We Make
  • by Alex Gil - 21 May 2015

  • In general we can say that minimal computing is the application of minimalist principles to computing. In reality, though, minimal computing is in the eye of the beholder. A Raspberry Pi could be understood as an example of a minimalist piece of hardware because the creators reduced computing components to what they saw as a bare minimum to achieve simple tasks. __DAE { The pi is indeed the bare minimum hardware to run Linux, which is not really "simple tasks", but rather a full fledged operating system with a history of practices that provides a continuity for new (and old) computer users -- this preservation seems another kind of minimalism, but not one about simplicity of tasks} The learning curve for using one, though, can be threatening to beginners, and therefore requires more than minimum effort.__ { yes indeed, although a raspberry pi is indeed a nice "simplified" computer, when starting it up you end up in the terminal, which is not a familiar environment for everyone and can be quite alienating at first. }{What about finding the Pi on the network of a university first, while most student macs lack any form of network tools (nmap etc)}{The Pi4 is not minimal at all}
  • On a user interface, on the other hand, eliminating clutter (unnecessary buttons, distracting design, etc) can also be understood to be part of a minimalist approach, making it easier for users to engage. Google’s success, for example, may be owed to the reduction of the search function to one box. In order to achieve this feat, though, we estimate that Google uses an enormous amount of code and data in the back end, needing enormous computing power in turn. { Code that also embodies assumptions about what / how people "should" search, assumptions that additional UI could make explicit/negotiable }
  • I prefer to approach minimal computing around the question “What do we need?” If we do so, our orientations vis-a-vis ease of use, ease of creation, increased access and reductions in computing—and by extension, electricity—become clearer. In this sense, we aim to understand ways of building that could be referred to as “architectures of necessity” as Ernesto Oroza would call them.
  • Oroza tells us the story of a man who wanted a little bit more space. Here’s his story:
    • He lived with his mother in a space that was so small that it couldn’t legally be considered a house. He expanded into the hallway, built a kitchen and refurbished the bathroom. He changed the status of the property and acquired a title for it. He got his hands on a permit to build on the roof, as he thought about moving out on his own. In order to do this he had to build an exterior stairway. He set to work on the structure indoors and started the paperwork to divide the property. The appearance of an exterior stairway before the process of dividing the house was finished could be considered a violation, and he could be fined or even lose all property rights to the house he had built.
    • He understood that the description of the house and its parts depends on the cultural understanding that we have of it, that laws depend on this understanding.
    • Then, what is a stairway? How does one describe it? Could he build a structure in front of his doorway that looks nothing like a stairway but serves the same function? Maybe just objects stacked in such a way that one can climb and descend them? Or an object by Ettore Sottsass, a stack that includes all of Feijóo’s books, a Franz West sculpture, anything?
    • He decided on a conceptual shortcut: he built the stairway and waited to be fined. In this way, he gained time. The Law demanded that he cease building the stairway until the paperwork needed to divide the property was finalized.
    • Years went by. He used the unfinished stairway.
  • What’s a finished stairway? __Q*__
  • When I ask “what do we need?” I’m asking scholars around the world—librarians, professors, students, cultural workers, independent: What is enough? What’s your finished stairway? Needless to say, workers in the humanities have many diverse goals, so we can focus here on what we consider the most important shared one: the renewal, dissemination and preservation of the scholarly record. I take for granted the intersections of our work with the human record writ-large, and the pressing work of scholarly critique of the present, our teaching and the public humanities.
  • My own posing of the question “what do we need?” comes from an acknowledgement of the hybrid and global future we see being shaped for the scholarly record: parts digital, parts analog. In this new mediatic environment we continue to protect, study and renew the analog, as we attempt to harness the new media in smart, ethical and sustainable ways. For several reasons, this implies learning how to produce, disseminate and preserve digital scholarship ourselves, without the help we can’t get, even as we fight to build the infrastructures we need at the intersection of and beyond our libraries and schools. This means that my minimal computing does not stand in as a universal call, but rather as a space for new questions and practices, an injunction to constantly repeat the question, “what do we need?”
  • Most scholars need to write and make public. That is one of our core activities, the renewal of the scholarly record, and yet, the writing done today using proprietary tools like Microsoft Word or Google Docs, often required by editors, __REUSE__ create a disconnect between scholars and the socio-technical mechanisms that are needed { "create a disconnect between learners and the socio-technical mechanisms that are needed" } to go from the file formats generated by these proprietary applications to a relatively accessible record. As Dennis Tenen and Grant Wythoff put it in “Sustainable Authorship in Plain Text using Pandoc and Markdown,”__???____FILLIN__
  • __TOOTABLE More than causing personal frustration, this reliance on proprietary tools and formats has long-term negative implications for the academic community. __In such an environment, journals must outsource typesetting, alienating authors from the material contexts of publication and adding further unnecessary barriers to the unfettered circulation of knowledge.
  • The culture of “user friendly” interfaces that helped popularize computers for almost three decades now, and which underlines the dominant role of .docx, .pdf and .epub files today, has also led to some basic misunderstandings of what computers can and should do.__REMINDSMEOF{https://medium.com/message/the-great-works-of-software-705b87339971}__ In the case of writing, the expectation that you should get what you see continues to distance producers from their tools. __TOOTABLE As with any human tool, we need to understand computers a bit more intimately if we’re going to use them with any degree of critical awareness, and in order to avoid falling into what Matthew Kirschenbaum dubs the “haptic fallacy,”__(G)HOST__ or “the belief that electronic objects are immaterial simply because we cannot reach out and touch them.”__/caressing my keyboard In our case this need comes with some urgency because what has remained invisible or grossly misunderstood to producers of scholarship in certain parts of the world are the material conditions of their own knowledge production—digital and analog—with noxious effects for labor and ecological practices.
  • In “Sustainable Authorship,”__putonyourdancingshoes__ Tenen and Wythoff recommend a workflow that goes from the creation of a text to the generation of different file formats for web and print that involves open technology that is relatively easy to learn, to share and to preserve. Minimal computing of the Wythoff and Tenen variety represents then a return to basics that opens up the possibility of understanding small, but more complete “technological stacks” in order to reconnect producers of scholarship to the tools they use. __???In their case, minimal computing reconciles minimal knowledge with the production of a minimal artifact,__ without creating necessary friction for the readers. The learning curve may seem steep, though, for a large number of scholars, despite the reassurances and encouragement of those who consider them minimal. Again, we must ask, “what do we need?” Scholars don’t strictly “need” to use the minimal approach recommended by Tenen and Wythoff (as in, they are not required to use them by those who promise to take care of the rest). And yet if we do, we are on our way to fulfilling the need to write and publish in sustainable and ethical ways.
  • Another consequence of reconnecting with our knowledge production is an increased awareness of the cost of scholarly and human memory on the molecular arrangement of the planet. As Stefán Sinclair and others reported on Twitter, in a recent talk at the joint ACH & Canadian DH Conference 2015 in Ottawa, Wendy Chun prompted the audience to “print it out and delete it,” citing the ecological cost of storage for digital preservation. Minimal computing shares these concerns, prodding a creative practice that seeks to reduce our impact while achieving our needs. “Print it out and delete it” is a radical answer. __NOFILTER__ > kinda reminds me of some Fahrenheit 451 sort of practice, towards different needs though I kinda like this idea of forcibly wrenching things out of the digital realm into material existence and then deleting the traces I have a folder of first pages of PDFs I have that I find important -- at some point I started printing out (first) pages just to have something to accidentally come across and remind me of the texts. We, of course, are concerned about the whole tree, not just the root. The alternative futures implied by Chun’s call implies a minimal computing practice where we open up scholarly artifacts for dissemination for a window of time, say one year, then we intentionally shut them down after interested parties have had a chance to “print.” The resulting impact on the consumption of paper and other materials would clearly lead to other problems. This is precisely why minimal computing cannot be a set of decisive answers focusing exclusively on the digital, but rather a set of tentative answers and provocations around the hybrid analog/digital ecologies of the world to come.
  • A purpose dear to us at GO::DH is access. If we believe that we should have a robust scholarly record available to scholars everywhere through that global library we call the internet, we eventually must agree that the burden of cost should be lifted from the reader. No model we see, though, convinces us it can give vast-scale access to all networked scholars around the world other than the simplest model:__DAE producing our own scholarship ourselves. To do so, we may just have to displace the reliance on “user friendly” mechanisms, and learn how to make our own, imperfect as they may be__.i think this is an interesting question. where does one begin, knowing nothing? Valentina and i were talking about this at some point - is it important to 'learn to code' at least on a basic level? to understand what's going on? to be able to actually create and/or access minimal alternatives to proprietary software? if you've used Word all your life, everything else seems complicated. and whatever is available in terms of learning resources is never political, just geared towards people getting coding careers or something. __CABALISTA__ what i want is a coding for commies course! - the "learn to code" discourse is a bit of a swamp because of the competing interests of bosses and the rest and ive often not known how to unpack it. personally, think i may be on the way to abandoning "user friendly" as an emphasis in program building but with some newer feeling which places more focus on making it possible to allow all the people i care about be able to use it with me - hence "imperfection"
  • learntocode __REMINDSMEOF{https://www.dazeddigital.com/politics/article/50747/1/a-brief-explainer-on-the-government-dystopian-fatima-cyber-ad}__haha yeah. it's a toxic idea, of course, that people should simply abandon things they care about to do something more 'productive' (i.e. profitable) by coding. but there is a big gap between the kinds of skills required to make coding your job and achieving some kind of 'basic literacy' in it, i imagine? and maybe there are real political opportunities in the latter. although I dunno
  • Yes there is deffo a difference! I like this concept of computer pioneer alan kay, who said that ppl should develop read-write literacy on computers where "write" means being able to build or tweak their own tools. (nice!) Now society is generally in full "read" mode, as "writing" content is not "computer writing" (according to kay, at least :) )
  • and it's not even very sophisticated 'reading' that we're doing... more uncritical consumption than literary theory :))
  • __DOUBT__ What does "producing our own scholarship ourselves" mean, you think? IDGI :( IDGI?
  • In the process of learning how to do so, we may also learn how to leverage institutional and extra-institutional structures for preservation and discovery. But even more importantly, we may yet regain our class consciousness as workers of memory.__OST {https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eqX1W3Rbiw}__ :D blasting this now (same here) someone just asked "is that a christmas song?" __ALGORITHMIC_DIRECTIONS__{https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJkw5PUKtvM__
  • __NOFILTERWhat about you? What’s your finished stairway?___OST_https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXQUu5Dti4g ahah purrfect
  • Bibliography
  • Kirschenbaum, Matthew. “Materiality and Matter and Stuff: What Electronic Texts Are Made Of.”__ADDTOSTACK__
  • __THISWASFUN!__

__HEREWEGO__ The second text that we will read now is titled Minimal Definitions, written by Jentery Sayers. The text is written in response to the previous one we read. It unpacks the notion of Minimal Computing into short proposals of how the term could be interpreted and applied to computational, design and programming practices. We will not read the whole text, but instead go through a couple of snippets, through which we can start gathering multiple understandings of "minimalism". A short note about the author: Jentery Sayers is Assistant Professor of English and Director of the Maker Lab in the Humanities at the University of Victoria. His interests in minimal computing include media history, physical computing, experimental media, and technologies and social justice. At the Digital Humanities Summer Institute, he co-teaches a course on physical computing and fabrication in the humanities. He has also published and given various talks on physical computing and computational culture. With John Simpson, he co-chairs GO:DH’s Minimal Computing Working Group.

  • <snippets>
  • Minimal Design
  • To me, minimal computing immediately suggests minimal design, especially as it pertains to workflow and communication. Following the Unix philosophy of DOTADIW (“Do One Thing and Do It Well”)__DAE__ I do many things at once and mostly unsatisfied with all of them :((( our society overrates specialization as a consequence of division of labor under capitalism. we should embrace generalism too. !! in other situations, doing & thinking many different things (semi-)competently is really great and perhaps more useful than doing 'one thing well';,__ALOUD__ Do Some Stuff And Be Kinda Ok With Some Of Them, DO NOTHING AND DO IT WELL __REMINDSMEOF__Ne travaillez jamais! <3 oh my fav____REMINDSMEOF{https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/debord/1963/never-work.htm} guy is pissed__ minimal design applauds and even fetishizes simplicity; it boils practice down to necessities. The Jekyll site generator is an obvious example: “No more databases, comment moderation, or pesky updates to install—just your content.” From a technical perspective, this design strategy entails responsiveness across devices, optimization, __OST{https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3cu8sDa90Y}few dependencies{compiling dependencies forever}__, and an investment in plain text, unembellished layouts, and basic templates. Changes to the style and structure of a project should be few and far between. Both conceptually and practically, __DAE__ {design should be in the background; it should not be pronounced or assertive}. i don't know how i feel about it. i am suspicious of 'frictionlessness', of design that hides from you - it also makes itself difficult to criticize, camouflages its own assumptions (indeed!!). maybe design actually should be more assertive. __BOILING__ { more assertive > more negotiable (see line 182)} __Q*__ { How to design interfaces in a negotiable-rich way? } Sites and software should not be feature-rich, either. __?CONTRADICTION?__ { modernist ideals of minimalism and seeminglessness? hmm

... } While a given pr oject may r equire some programming (e.g., in Ruby), tech nical detail s and confi gurations are rendered less significant than the message or s ubstance of composition __BOILING__ {woops, my slow internet connection is causing merge conflicts in the text i think :) } conflict away! : “just you r content.” It's also a bit of an ideology; have you ever tried updating your Jekyll/Ruby installation after years? Extremely difficult. I think "fetishizes" catches the gesture well. What is minimal will depend on who is using something, and how it integrates with their prior experience and context. BTW: that part about Jekyll above turned beige, although I didn't write it (it was white before), seems a "glitch in the pad" :)

  • (...)__FILLIN__
  • If nothing else, minimal design matters for minimal computing because it surfaces the motivations and ideals of __ALOUD praxis __putonyourdancingshoes__ __OST https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXj-LM93G_A__ through attention to aesthetics, which may not be explicit about the contingencies of their aims. In addition to, “What do we need?”, minimal design also asks, __CABALISTA“What don’t we need?”__ Perhaps the answers to these two questions are identical, yet they may spark different conversations en route.__REMINDSMEOF{https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/wwa-marie-crop-1550070191.jpg}
  • Minimal Externals
  • Minimal computing also brings to mind histories of do-it-yourself (DIY) or do-it-ourselves (DIO) production involving minimal external intervention (e.g., self-publishing). Practitioners may steward their own data, publish their own content, write their own scripts, build their own hardware, or avoid proprietary technologies. Of course, the cultures of DIY and DIO may range from radical to socially conservative (see their variants in punk, indie game dev, and “slow computing,” e.g.); however, a key issue across this range is __Q* how control is articulated . Is a project seizing the means of production because its practitioners have been silenced, ignored, attacked by, or excluded from existing norms, forms, and outlets? Or is the desire for control more about possessive individualism or free will? __???__ { How are cultural values assigned to the means as opposed to the mode of production }, and under what assumptions about whether/how technology changes culture?__
  • At stake here are the ways in which practitioners determine how stages of production (such as fabrication, circulation, exchange, consumption, and use) mediate social relations and agency. While this observation may sound rather theoretical, attendant issues of power and self-organization shape an array of minimal computing practices, such as where repositories are housed, who maintains and contributes to them, who moderates and reviews them, and how they are accessed now and down the line.
  • __ZONINGOUT__ __NEEDCOFFEE__ __THE_PARAGRAPHS_KEEP_COMING__ __PLSSTAAP__ hey yes take some coffee, also we will be wrapping up with the reading in 5' min and continue with a collective discussion ( : no worries if one can't finish reading it all !__NOGUILT__
  • Minimal Internet
  • Following projects such as Gil and Dennis Tenen’s No Connect (a static site generator that works on a local machine or a USB key, without an HTML server), perhaps minimal computing is computing off the internet. This approach retains the affordances of new media when practitioners cannot or do not use the internet for distribution and exchange. As Gil and Tenen suggest, histories of “sneakernets” (exchanging files via removable media) are points of comparison here. These histories may inform how practitioners reduce the attack vectors and vulnerabilities (e.g., cross-site scripting, SQL injections, and directory traversals) of activist projects targeted for hacking and other forms on online violence. (For an example project, see #feminism action defense.)
  • __VANDALIZEAs the GO::DH mission reminds us, the distinction between choice and necessity is significant in this instance. When is minimal computing a trend (e.g., in high-income economies), and when is it a reality (e.g., where people cannot physically/socially access the internet)? How do we practice minimization without romanticizing life before or without the web? Through shared capacities, how do we collaborate across economies and settings instead of appropriating cultural forms and practices?____Q what do we mean by 'appropriating cultural forms and practices' in the context of digital tools?__
  • Minimal Barriers
  • Given its associations with open software and hardware, minimal computing may be defined as a reduction in barriers to entry and access. For example, it may use source materials that can be modified and are licensed for distribution (e.g., Creative Commons). In this case, an important question is how much knowledge “open” assumes prior to participation. That is, access to source materials alone does not equal democratization; people still need to know how to participate in production. Also, as Chris Kelty (2008) demonstrates, openness is part of a social imaginary steeped in technical and moral practices. It cannot be reduced to a technical feature. Such technical features may include paywalls as well as file formats, both of which are frequently referenced in debates about open access.
  • Of course, minimal computing may also rely on design strategies and standards that strive for universal access (e.g., by everyone regardless of disability; see the W3C) and avoid or reduce features, such as hover states and animations, that are not easy to see, read, hear, navigate, or find. These approaches tend to underscore consistency, the fundamentals of design, shared accessibility guidelines, a healthy skepticism of early adoption/implementation, responsiveness across devices and platforms, personalization, clarity, description, and regular evaluations (or user testing) of content across needs, audiences, and settings (e.g., the use of WebAIM, JAWS, Dragon, and W3C Markup Validation Services). They also position exclusionary design as bad design. While this position may differ from the legacy aesthetics of minimalism (e.g., refinement through the use of essential elements), design performed according to accessibility guidelines increases the robustness and overall quality of projects.
  • From yet another perspective on entry and access, minimal computing engages social approaches to materials and built environments (e.g., Sara Hendren’s Adaptation and Ability group at Olin and Hannah Perner-Wilson’s Kit-of-No-Parts [2011]). Here, “minimal” implies low-tech methods whereby materials are responsive and even shape themselves to the needs of specific people or situations. These methods redirect physical computing research from an IoT extraction of data (or the treatment of environments and people as data) toward social and cultural praxis premised on negotiations with materials and structures. If an IoT is motivated by reducing barriers to data gathering (through the use of sensors and addressable objects) for social/scientific progress, then adaptability and negotiation paradigms seek to reduce barriers to mobility and participation. Of course, this scenario need not be a zero sum game (e.g., surely there are various manifestations of an IoT; contrary to the vernacular, it is not the IoT). Nevertheless, there is, at least historically speaking, a tension between progress and negotiation as frameworks for technology and action.
  • Across these examples, minimal computing as minimal barriers foregrounds the motivations for rendering content and computing accessible, including how “entry” and “access” are defined and which barriers are reduced or removed.

Before we go into discussion mode, let's take 5 minutes to look at the different magic words in the pad that others have contributed. You can choose a specific magic word and follow it through the text using Ctrl+F or Command+F search command. For the MAPP project of the School of Commons, we explored how we could stretch the potentials of magic words. As they carry the legacy of software ecologies such as the Mediawiki software, they are scripted operators. During the residency we wondered how we could use magic words as annotation and/or learning tools. How could __MAGICWORDS__ become triggers for different kinds of programmable operations? A structuring tool? A marker tool? An annotation tool? What could they do? We tried to consider some of these questions through the interface that we mentioned earlier: Etherpump. Etherpump is a friendly fork of Etherdump (from dumping to pumping), which makes magic words visible. This work is still in progress. We introduce it only at the end because we don't want to constrict the imagination of what Magic Words can be, while we are ourselves still trying to figure this out. We will keep working on the magic words as scripted operators. Currently we're thinking how they could play a role in the Etherpump index page, as navigation tools, as reading tools across a page, or as activators of executable pieces of code. Simmering these ideas together is something we enjoy a lot. And the etherpump is a very open ended tool, we can think of all sorts of other usages and creative magical hacks :). Have a look at the Etherpump here: https://etherpump.vvvvvvaria.org/ And particularly at how this pad is rendered by the Etherpump here: https://etherpump.vvvvvvaria.org/p/rr-minimal-viable-learning.magicwords.html

[Discussion — 20min]

in the beginning we introduced these questions, wondering what your thoughts are on them: → How can minimal technologies such as the Etherpad maximise a learning experience? → How could minimal and viable tools shape collective learning? → How could collective learning shape minimal and viable tools? i really liked using the magic words! they seem to function as interesting prompts to stimulate different kinds of discussion / thinking approaches. it is also very playful. you don't just debate ideas. but there is also room for all the quirky stuff in your brain. also a fan of these magic words, which also provide interesting syntactical challenges! being a fan of footnotes, magic words allow not only to insert links but make differentiations to the additional thoughts that occur during interaction with texts. yes this is lovely indeed, also to see that there is no social hierarchy between different magic word interventions (iow: traditional footnotes are not appreciated more as a link to a song :)) Interested in the way MAGIC WORDS lead to different emotional response to a text. differences between BOILING and CABALISTA are small but definitely there. Allows also for different reactions to texts that can't be expressed in writing. Suchs as OST it's funny. working together on a text like this, with room for the expression of emotions and 'non-substantial' responses, makes it easier to process a text for me. especially when it's not entirely within my comfort zone. i wouldn't really have cared to read this by myself. but as a collective process, it's much less daunting. (nice) so rarely get a chance to just free form blast thoughts on a text with a group - if you try this with speaking you run all over each other - and it feel nice. it allowed for equal participation but also random tangents and deep dives etc. there are multiple "stages" so no one person sucks up all the air ;) re: introvert-friendly, feel somehow that when i speak out loud, i kinda already thought what i would say before so it is not so vulnerable but with typing i am not really thinking about it so then i just blast something out and it is totally half baked and not well worded according to what i would like - so somewhat exposing in that way ;) maybeee. but anonymity also might help with this right? oh yeah totally and largely agree with you but i dislike when the extroverts relegate the mode of operating as "introvert" and then it can be dismissed haha i really liked this, anyway ambivert life By keeping it minimal (pad only, text only) I felt my Sunday was much more my own. (beautiful!) No need to worry about active participation, camera angles, sounds (+1, totally agree) __AGREE__ yes, it's a very introvert-friendly form of collective learning. i've always preferred being able to think a little bit about the way i want to formulate my thoughts before having to SPEAK UP OR LOSE THE MOMENT like in live settings → We were wondering what kinds of 'MINIMALISM' start to resonate? The "music on" comment at the very beginning was revelatory to me: minimal learning can be rich, because you can retain control towards your environment without being trapped in the maximalist camera mode (no music, no distraction, no zoning out). IN other words: minimal constriction, maximal autonomy (cool!) I was also wondering how much work goes in the "social backend"__TOOTABLE :P__ to make this a smooth experience (moderation, palimsest, etc.). You did a great job btw <3 <3__OST{https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04854XqcfCY}__ Yes we did prepare writing the different "snippets" of welcome texts, exercises, pre-reading the texts and questions etc. Much of this style of working we learned from our friends, shout out to Amy <3<3!!!! we have a back-channel pad and a back-back-channel xmpp chat too as well as a few server side terminals running I am wondering if there would be a way to collectively organise such moment in the moment. Just as an experiment :). Or another version: doing this over a longer period of time asynchronously. > It would be really interesting to try something like this asynchronously while the interface is very simple and plain, i wonder if this way of working was actually that _minimalist_ - there was a lot going on at the same time, some of it much more eccentric than the average zoom convo. what resonated was the reduction of sensory overload (no camera, no sound, etc) allowing for different thoughts and processes to take place instead of the usual self-consciousness. the MAGIC WORDS give you a wider range of options to engage with the text and each other than you might otherwise have. We would like to take a short moment for a 'cool-down' exercise. To rest you eyes, and stretch your body, activate your joints and muscles. While looking at this pad, read the instructions below:

  • close your eyes ⏲ for 5 seconds ⏲ and when you open them follow as below:
    • focus on the in between, how much space is there in between each sentences;
  • close your eyes again, breathe in and out ⏲ for 5 seconds ⏲
    • focus on the colours; then focus on the white space;
  • close your eyes again ⏲ for 5 seconds ⏲
    • which words to you encounter? focus on one; (magic) :) (pumping) (links) (ownership)(wider)
  • close your eyes again ⏲ for 10 seconds ⏲ let your thoughts drift, spontaneous thoughts, impressions..
    • look in at the most distance spot from your laptop;

[Links Pool]

<https://go-dh.github.io/mincomp/> - Minimal Computing Blog <http://go-dh.github.io/mincomp/thoughts/2015/05/21/user-vs-learner/> - The User, the Learner and the Machines We Make <https://go-dh.github.io/mincomp/thoughts/2016/10/02/minimal-definitions/> - Minimal Definitions <http://go-dh.github.io/mincomp/thoughts/2016/10/03/tldr/> - Minimal Definitions (tl;dr version) <https://etherpump.vvvvvvaria.org/> - Etherpump <https://git.vvvvvvaria.org/varia/etherpump> - Etherpump Git Repository <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Magic_words> - Magic Words in the Mediawiki software <https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=26821> - Plain Text - The Poetics of Computation, by Dennis Tenen (the 1st text referred to this book a couple of times) <https://www.schoolofcommons.org/> - School of Commons

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