[ox-en] Hi there.
- From: "Mervyn Robert Hammer" <mervyn.hammer ephorate.com>
- Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2002 10:21:03 +0200
Hello there people.
I feel I should introduce myself. My name is Merv and I have been
researching and writing about the relationship between the computing
experience and (democratic) freedom for a while now. Naturally, I am a free
software advocate and a free software developer myself, as well as a
professional developer for a small Norwegian company here in Cyprus, near
the Middle East.
Of special interest to me are the ways in which the architecture and design
of both software and hardware can be shown to impact directly and
indirectly on the freedom of the user, in the context of computer-use and
also in a broader social framework, most notably by re-locating
conventional sources of legitimate behaviour and redefining what are
acceptable choices and what are not. I study the effects and trends in
both proprietary and free software from phenomenological/ontological and
epistemological angles in particular, paying most attention to the ways in
which our evolving use of computers and the evolution of computers
themselves are changing us as social collectives and as individuals in a
democratic world-view. In relation to free software, I am interested in
the ways in which it may be possible to demonstrate the importance of the
role of free software in defining and safeguarding freedoms that we have
formerly entrusted to broader, more conventionally ideological/policitcal
methodologies such as the electoral system and the ways in which free
software may become a catalyst for future, more 'constructivist' systems of
knowledge and information that have a spontaneous, non-heirarchical, 'free'
form. My writing and research has formulated around the ways in which
software and computers, the computing experience itself, is both the
product of and a medium for a pernicious social engineering that is
increasingly threatening our universally recognised human and civil rights
to privacy, freedom of choice and the sanctity of our individually and
collectively chosen identities. The implicit and consistent working thesis
underlying my writing is therefore that free software shall and should
feature prominently in our grass-roots defense of our freedoms and in our
critical re-appraisal of social models and systems of knowing for the
future.
I guess, therefore, that my interests concur mostly with the *implicit
possibility* of your second proposition: that of value/importance of free
software in the construction of a new social framework. I hope,
nevertheless, to be able to contribute something useful to your global,
egalitarian and hope-inspiring discussion forum.
Yours in anticipation of many exhilarating debates and ideas,
Merv Hammer
_______________________
http://www.oekonux.org/