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''Primary source writings by [[User:Nthmost|Naomi Most]] on anarchism as theory and practice at Noisebridge, drawn from the noisebridge-discuss mailing list (2010–2015). Preserved verbatim.''
#REDIRECT [[User:Nthmost/Things_I_Said]]
 
The through-line: anarchism as ''culture and practice'', not as an absence of accountability.
 
__TOC__
 
== 2010: Culture, Not Mandates ==
 
'''Date:''' July 17, 2010
'''Thread:''' [https://lists.noisebridge.net/pipermail/noisebridge-discuss/2010-July/thread.html Noisebridge-discuss, July 2010] — "Charging for classes at Noisebridge"
 
<blockquote>
This being quite the lively group discussion, I'm going to quickly respond to some points from various people all in one email. It's brisk and snappy.
 
To summarize my own position: I'm pro for-pay classes as a means of attracting and keeping nifty people at Noisebridge, and I don't see any downsides to allowing it.
 
The realistic/boring fact about anarchy: people are still free to do things the boring way too. Especially if they work and they don't step on anybody else's toes.
 
But there's no way at Noisebridge to "force" the paying of a fee anyway!
 
Nobody's talking about "setting" any kind of policy. Except for a few people on this list who seem to ALWAYS reach for rule-setting despite it being totally unreasonable in the context of Noisebridge and having no effect whatsoever.
 
What's happening in this discussion is a fleshing out of our culture, not a movement towards mandates.
 
Members already pay for the space with their dues. What they do with the space while they're there is a matter of informal consensus as to whether it's acceptable or not.
 
And, added bonus: it's the only model that actually WORKS at Noisebridge. Holding for-pay classes at Noisebridge, where there are no actual space restrictions, means we end up with good teachers who feel valued, students who feel they're truly invested in being there, and the knowledge in actuality still being free.
 
--Naomi
 
ps. Leif, your Kickstarter model idea is pretty brilliant.
</blockquote>
 
== 2013: A Tribe Running on Clan Rules ==
 
'''Date:''' March 23, 2013
'''Thread:''' [https://lists.noisebridge.net/pipermail/noisebridge-discuss/2013-March/thread.html Noisebridge-discuss, March 2013] — "member" culture, not policy"
 
<blockquote>
Your criticisms are fair. I hope you will consider, though, that what you observe at present wasn't always the case.
 
The idea that members should have some sense of privilege or separateness from non-members, creating the class structure that you are observing, was exactly what the NB founding philosophy was hoping to avoid.
 
I believe (as one might deduce from other of my emails to the list) that Noisebridge is attempting to operate a Tribe with the same cultural "rule" set that worked (sort of) for a small clan. And that's the big problem.
 
--Naomi
</blockquote>
 
== 2014: Openly Biased Towards Anarchism ==
 
'''Date:''' March 13, 2014
'''Thread:''' [https://lists.noisebridge.net/pipermail/noisebridge-discuss/2014-March/thread.html Noisebridge-discuss, March 2014] — "why would hackers come to noisebridge?"
 
<blockquote>
I am openly biased towards anarchism and lack of top-down control. But we can't keep shouting down the idea of "oversight" to address problems that Noisebridge has had for YEEAAARRRSSS when we've certainly given the Noisebridge traditional methods that long to fix things.
 
For the record, I don't agree with the idea of direct people-management or in changing the way we arrive at decisions at Noisebridge. My idea of a positive change would be to have the board managing facilities and facilitating participation -- e.g. forming working groups. I believe these improvements will make a lot of the other crap die down naturally.
 
And as it turns out, that's what we're going to do first.
 
--Naomi
</blockquote>
 
== 2015: Different Forms of Anarchism ==
 
'''Date:''' February 22, 2015
'''Thread:''' [https://lists.noisebridge.net/pipermail/noisebridge-discuss/2015-February/thread.html Noisebridge-discuss, February 2015] — "Fantastic article about Noisebridge"
 
''Responding to Mitch Altman sharing a New Worker article titled "Anatomy of an Anarchist Hackerspace."''
 
<blockquote>
Pretty amazing, especially the part where it discusses different forms of anarchism.
 
Definitely worth the read.
 
--Naomi
</blockquote>
 
== 2015: Anarchy ≠ No Control, Man ==
 
'''Date:''' February 23, 2015
'''Thread:''' [https://lists.noisebridge.net/pipermail/noisebridge-discuss/2015-February/thread.html Noisebridge-discuss, February 2015] — "Unfairly removed, banned without consensus, and given no warning"
 
''A person had been asked to leave Noisebridge and was appealing publicly, invoking "this is an anarchist public space" to assert that community concerns didn't apply to her.''
 
<blockquote>
OK, this has gone on long enough and is a waste of everyone's time.
 
First of all, Jeanine is not a "regular" and I don't care how long she says she's been at Noisebridge. No one knew her at the meeting she showed up to 2 weeks ago, where we welcomed the transgender violence mapping project she mentioned. That was pretty much everyone's first knowledge of Jeanine.
 
Then we have Jeanine writing well-written letters to the community basically characterizing everyone as being super mean to her and just being a reasonable person and trying to do the right thing. Right.
 
This "propaganda" she's hyping -- notice how she's not mentioning any of what it actually says in her emails. Because she knows that if she did, she'd be laughed at.
 
"Die techie scum" in a horror font is not propaganda, it's artless schlock. Particularly when placed at Noisebridge, a place created to lower the barrier of entry of tech education and resources to the wider community.
 
But that's totally besides the point. We're annoyed at Jeanine because she's using cheap shots to try and wedge herself into the community, such as characterizing Torrie as just a big meany out to get her.
 
When we interacted with her the other night -- when she came to Noisebridge looking for brushes she could borrow so she could wheatpaste the Mission -- her response to our concerns about the flyers being simply mean and lacking in any useful outcomes was to say, "I'm not having this argument right now" (shutting down the conversation) and then to follow with, "This is an anarchist public space" (asserting that the concerns of the community don't matter, she can do whatever she wants, because you know anarchy == no control man!).
 
So here we have someone who's playing all the boring regular cards we've seen so many times in an effort to get attention and win unintelligent friends to her side, so that she can continue to not spend the $10 it costs to poster the Mission.
 
Whatever.
 
--Naomi
</blockquote>
 
----
 
''The following are drawn from the [https://discuss.noisebridge.info Noisebridge Discourse forum], archived via the Wayback Machine before the instance went offline. Links point to the Wayback Machine archive of each thread.''
 
== 2018: Self-Introduction ==
 
'''Thread:''' [https://web.archive.org/web/20210730/https://discuss.noisebridge.info/t/please-introduce-yourself/16 Please introduce yourself!] — Discourse, December 2018
 
<blockquote>
Howdy humans!
 
I've been "around" Noisebridge for about 10 years so I SEEN SOME SHIT.
 
Lately I've been collecting what I call Social Technologies in order to better understand our society (Noisebridge, SF, and beyond). You could also call these "lenses" through which to see relationships, governments, religions, and civilizations.
 
Tech wise I do a lot of bioinformatics-related python and I'm passionate about Open Source software.
 
I'm ramping up my involvement in academic publishing activism and environmental activism.
 
I believe in anarcho-syndicalism, consensus, and bullshit performance art For Great Justice.
 
Beep boop,
 
Naomi (aka nthmost aka pandora)
</blockquote>
 
== 2019: Membership as Anarchist Trust Architecture ==
 
'''Thread:''' [https://web.archive.org/web/20220522/https://discuss.noisebridge.info/t/abolish-membership/447 Abolish membership] — Discourse, March–April 2019
 
''Opening the thread with a full analysis of what Membership is and what would be lost without it.''
 
<blockquote>
OK, so there's the legal issue, "what do we tell the fuzz when they come looking for those Members we mentioned on our bylaws."
 
Since reality is made of words – and legal entities, double so – I will assume that the solution to this is a matter of manipulating words in one way or another. E.g. if we say, "everyone who walked through the door between one hour ago and the next 10 minutes is a Member", that seems pretty soluble.
 
(Note: not saying we should literally do that, only that this would constitute one possible working solution out of a very large set of possible coding-in-English solutions.)
 
The deeper question would be around evaluating what would be lost and gained by dropping the institution of Membership.
 
We've had part of this conversation in a few places (on Discuss, in person, Slack) already. If I were to sum up the arguments:
 
- Linguistic constructs like "Membership" only exist insofar as people can discern the concept from other concepts and feel the presence of that concept in a meaningful existential way.
 
- Since Noisebridge's inception, it was supposed to NOT matter that any given person was a Member in terms of everyday reality.
 
- Since post-Reboot, the creation of the "Philanthropist" concept has induced the concept that there are statuses that DO matter in terms of everyday existence (to wit: RFID tokens).
 
- If becoming a Philanthropist "matters" in some way, then so too must Membership…
 
- …but in a Noisebridge where formal Consensus items have been supremely minimized, it's very unclear how becoming a Member matters, or is distinct from Philanthropy.
 
- Membership as a concept is confusing in relationship to Philanthropy. At a recent General Meeting, it became obvious people couldn't readily discern the idea of one from the other, which is a problem, since – the Philanthropist level being far easier to accomplish – why should anyone brave the more involved process being a Member if it appears to offer nothing over being a Philanthropist?
 
- Largely because of previous, but also because of a coherent campaign of attack on the integrity of existing Members and/or the integrity of the institution of Membership itself over the past 2 years, Membership has greatly dwindled to the point where it is unusual for newer people to even make contact with people who are Members.
 
In sum, the arguments I have heard (some of them coming out of my mouth) for abolishing Membership revolve around status confusion, or even status resentment.
 
The main arguments for keeping Membership:
 
- Membership at its best represents a longer-term trust network for community that is capable of withstanding the normal ebbs and flows of Noisebridge culture.
 
- Without it, we might not have a fully functional Consensus organization without entrusted individuals who've been vetted for the trust required for them to be able to potentially Block something.
 
- Without it, we have to come up with a replacement concept required by our 501c3 legal status.
 
I wrote all this to help set up the conversation. ''Now it's your turn!''
</blockquote>
 
<blockquote>
In short: the Philanthropy construct isn't actually as simple as it seems on its face.
 
It's a bit like saying, "websites are as easy as putting HTML in a directory!" and neglecting to think about the fact that computers don't just serve up HTML pages when asked unless there's a web server there.
 
"Why do we need Apache, anyway? It's just taking up a bunch of space…"
</blockquote>
 
<blockquote>
Membership is an unlimited resource we can and should scale to as many people as we can confidently extend trust to.
 
We've never had a "too many Members" problem. Right now we have a "way too few" Members problem.
 
Occasionally we have a "that person shouldn't have become a Member" problem, which is a problem that, if it is occurring at high frequency, is best solved by improving the vetting process. If it happens once a year or less, that's probably an optimal tuning.
</blockquote>
 
<blockquote>
I'm not sure it's accurate to say Membership itself has ever been much of a problem; it's how we handle what Membership represents and how we award it that fluctuates and generates problems in various ways.
 
There was a period of time in which people tried to incept the "Council" as a construct, wherein Members became more like Philanthropists are now, and actual participation in Consensus would entail becoming a "Council Member."
 
This was a very unpopular move, but it gave way to the invention of "Associate Members" later on, which eventually became "Philanthropists".
 
The reason some people wanted to create a specific "Council Member" designation at the time was that it was felt there were "too many" people who'd achieved Membership and thus "too many" people entitled to being able to block Consensus.
 
The evidence for there being "too many Members" was that a lot of Members were turning out to be drama queens and shit disturbers. This was early 2014; check the Meeting Notes and you'll see a huge upswing in Consensus Proposals that have something to do with banning a relatively recently-made Member.
 
The learning we took was that vetting new Members required much more discernment than we'd previously been giving it.
 
(The Reboot followed a few months after that, which provided sort of a "fresh start" feeling to fleshing out the Membership.)
</blockquote>
 
<blockquote>
IMHO, a hackerspace should always endeavor to keep the sense of agency in the hands of individuals.
</blockquote>
 
== 2019: Executive Functioning under an Anarchist Flag ==
 
'''Thread:''' [https://web.archive.org/web/20190817/https://discuss.noisebridge.info/t/executive-functioning-under-an-anarchist-flag/1115 Executive Functioning under an Anarchist Flag] — Discourse, July 2019
 
<blockquote>
Question: Noisebridge has successfully lived for 11+ years, but are we even as mature as a 5-year-old when it comes to executive functioning?
 
What I mean when I say "executive function" is right at the top of the Wikipedia definition:
 
<blockquote>
Executive functions (collectively referred to as executive function and cognitive control) are a set of cognitive processes that are necessary for the cognitive control of behavior: selecting and successfully monitoring behaviors that facilitate the attainment of chosen goals.
</blockquote>
 
HEREIN I wish to ask the question, is it possible for an Anarchist organization to wield such control over its own selectivity (i.e. ongoing choices of what to do and what not to do) as to ascend to better levels of overall health and well-being?
 
A frequently used business analogy about what takes to take a team of individuals and transform them into a coherent ''unit'' revolves around crew racing – you know, the 5AM training that yuppy kids do in order to get a scholarship to business school.
 
Let's start with the notion that it's easy for one person to row a boat by themselves. Varying amounts of skill in that one person will make the boat travel quickly or slowly, but suffice it to say all of the decision-making rests in one body. One body to do the seeing and hearing, the same body to process that information and turn it into action.
 
One person won't drive a boat very quickly across a lake nearly as quickly as 8 people, however. Even if 1 of those people happens not to be rowing at all.
 
To achieve maximum power and speed, it takes envisioning the team as one organism whose executive functioning lies mostly with the leader (coxswain) as informed by the leader's eyes and ears as well as the split-second reaction-time adjustments made by the rowers themselves. The rowers, meanwhile, have more of their cycles to devote to being the perfect machines for turning calories into the movement of a boat across water.
 
That's all fine and good, you say, but aren't you implying something distasteful about formalizing some kind of ''hierarchy'' at Noisebridge?
 
While I would agree that this is the usual first solution, it's only the most common one. Perhaps we can do better.
 
The thought experiment I have been playing with is the concept of '''FORMATIONS.'''
 
The concept of a formation can be found in military history (armies) and tactical movement (small groups), in the movements of grouping animals like pelicans and wolves.
 
The idea is that each individual practices to be part of the formation so that when the time comes, one only has to name the formation in order to mount the proper team response.
 
Unlike animals, whose individual behaviors have been shaped by evolution – being a bad teammate is bad for you and also bad for your whole family and thus all your related DNA – in the case of military tactics and other human grouping behaviors, these skills emerge not out of "instinct", but rather out repeated studying of situations and effects. The development of tactics requires a willingness to try new things, which in turn requires the existence of a team willing to try out the formation to see if it works.
 
After all that, assuming that some tactic has been developed in which a group of people at The Anarchist Hackerspace know their place in the formation and are ready to execute it, there still remains the issue of '''how to determine when to deploy the formation.'''
 
In order to evince ''Excellent Executive Functioning'', an organism must:
 
* be a dutiful collector of information by attuning the senses to the proper inputs.
* be a calm organizer of information by moderating emotional reactions.
* be a judicious sharer of information – uncareful sharing can get you in trouble, while some information should always be shared.
* be a pattern-recognition machine BUT avoid overfitting.
* know when existing patterns aren't sufficient and new models are needed.
* know which responses are appropriate for which patterns.
* know when is the right time to get into formation for efficiency.
* recognize when the job is done and end the formation.
 
When all of these tasks are contained within one brain, shit's easy. You can paddle your own canoe. Just not all that fast.
 
Now imagine Noisebridge is one organism, a multicellular colony with a spread-out nervous system. Are we fit to survive?
 
Can we take each "step" in the Excellent Executive Functioning list and have it make sense as an assigned role to a cell in the colony?
 
Can we teach ourselves "formations" to get into at the right times – without the usual modern baggage of who's ruling whom?
</blockquote>
 
<blockquote>
The time is quite ripe for us to innovate. We have pushed pure DIY-ism to its limits.
 
We told everyone they can 3D print their own guns and now we are shooting ourselves in the collective feet.
 
The benefit of this crisis/opportunity is that – IF WE DO THIS RIGHT – we can become a community capable of so much more!
 
And if the community FEELS capable of producing so much more, then we will give everyone permission to dream bigger.
</blockquote>
 
== 2020: Guilds as Syndicalism; On Blocking ==
 
'''Thread:''' [https://web.archive.org/web/20201203/https://discuss.noisebridge.info/t/towards-an-anarchist-hackerspace/2123 Towards an Anarchist Hackerspace] — Discourse, October–November 2020
 
<blockquote>
We have found that if we don't [reinforce Consensus] as a ritual, people lose touch with how it's supposed to work – especially when we don't have any formal consensus proposals for a while.
</blockquote>
 
<blockquote>
When the assumption is "this person will leave if we don't resolve his block", then it becomes a de facto method of running roughshod over that person.
 
Putting up a block doesn't indicate a single state; it indicates two potential states. One state is that the person would like to stop the community from doing something they see as ruinous, and they care enough to talk about it; the community really should consider that the block is well-intentioned and that the person ''wants'' to stay.
 
The other state could be that the person has had enough of this community and is making their final stand to see if anyone will listen to reason before they leave.
 
Neither state is a problem on their own. The problem is that you cannot know which position the person is taking when they issue their block.
 
If the community treats a block as saying "I will leave if this goes through", then the community may take the easy (and ruinous) road of not trying to resolve the block and instead forcing that person out by going forward with consensus.
 
Forcing people out through a funky legalistic interpretation of what a block means, instead of trying to understand where that person is coming from, is a great way to detonate a nuclear bomb in the community that you won't recover from for a long while.
 
This isn't theoretical, by the way. This happened in 2018.
</blockquote>
 
<blockquote>
What problem does subleasing and ownership solve, though?
 
All I can see is more problems being injected into the social space, as property ownership creates a feeling of entitlement. And what might usually be petty disagreements blow up to knock-down-drag-out fights when there is actual material property at stake.
</blockquote>
 
<blockquote>
The advent of Guilds at Noisebridge is explicitly an attempt to capitalize (if you will) on natural human grouping tendencies within the hackerspace, with an eye towards being able to expand the concept of What Is Noisebridge into a more distributed model of governance as well as syndicalism-oriented forms of ownership.
 
In years past, Noisebridge ''has'' fractured and spawned new hackerspaces. Since property at Noisebridge is 100% donated, the idea of "taking our toys and going somewhere else" hasn't introduced further strife into what were, at times, already stressful social situations.
</blockquote>
 
<blockquote>
You seem to think one person leaving is merely about one person leaving. It's not just about that. These events have knock-on effects. They shake the rest of the community's faith. They often take chunks of the community down with them, or at least make people feel disenfranchised to the point where they retreat from the meeting table, which makes communication across the community far worse.
</blockquote>
 
== 2020: Anarchist Decision-Making Under Pressure ==
 
'''Thread:''' [https://web.archive.org/web/20220522/https://discuss.noisebridge.info/t/temporary-delegation-of-space-magic-powers-to-the-board-members/1542 Temporary delegation of space magic powers to the Board members] — Discourse, March 2020
 
''Context: the COVID-19 shelter-in-place order had just hit San Francisco. A proposal was on the table to temporarily give the board fiat authority to act without consensus.''
 
<blockquote>
I believe in Noisebridge.
 
I believe we have a strong community that is capable of making hard decisions under duress.
 
I do not believe we should put even temporary fiat powers into the hands of the board.
 
Putting fiat powers into the hands of the board was never the expectation of people who accepted the position of being on the board, and it is not the culture that we have encouraged here at Noisebridge for many, many reasons.
 
We have decided quickly to take radical action, as a group, under very similar circumstances – the Reboot (2014), when we were in danger of being shut down by the city AND we had a lot of people in Noisebridge who seemed intent on ruining our space or rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic (the board).
 
We are capable of deciding quickly when we need to. Have trust.
</blockquote>
 
<blockquote>
We risk just as much loss of time, or more, by seeking to get consensus on this rather than focusing on the essential decisions at hand.
 
There are significant cultural consequences for this transfer of power (even "temporary"). Blocks and dissent are already evident. How long might it take to get everyone to a Consensus on this?
</blockquote>

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