Hope in Source: Recent Episodes

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How can we think about digital communication, let alone silence? Is it possible? Michael Sacasas is back to chat about a few of his last newsletter posts: the nature of silence, attention not as a resource, on hope vs. expectations, the arms race of escalation, manufactured needs, askesis or discipline, the commons vs. the public, and trustlessness and codes of law. (Recorded in July 2021) Transcript: https://hopeinsource.com/silence.

Previous: https://hopeinsource.com/limits, https://hopeinsource.com/convivial
Michael: https://twitter.com/LMsacasas
Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad

Sections:

• [00:00] Impossible Silences
• [07:03] Silence as a Commons
• [15:10] Attending with the Body
• [23:27] Hope vs. Expectation
• [25:48] Vendor Lock-in
• [29:15] Rat Race or Arms Race?
• [32:33] What in Fact Do We Need?
• [36:33]Askesis of Perception
• [41:28] Isn't Just Something You Can Code into a Program
• [43:29] The Commons vs The Public
• [55:40] Trustlessness and Codes of Law

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Why read Ivan Illich today? What does the thought of this radical historian have to bear on our modern tech world? In this episode, Madhu Suri Prakash and Dana L. Stuchul of Penn State University interview Michael Sacasas on his work as being a sort of bridge or interlocutor of Illich's thoughts. They talk about schooling and inequality in COVID, ways of thinking about technology, a life of planning vs. gift, convivial tools, redemption of work, and more. (Recorded in December 2020) Transcript: https://hopeinsource.com/illich

It's a guest podcast, as I just edited it!

Previously: https://hopeinsource.com/convivial, https://hopeinsource.com/limits
The International Journal of Illich Studies: https://journals.psu.edu/illichstudies/index

Sections:

• [00:33] Working within the Christian tradition
• [03:04] Why start the newsletter?
• [07:16] Lost year of schooling
• [09:00] Inequality in COVID
• [14:03] What's Compelling about Illich?
• [17:28] Resisting the frame of control and embracing gift
• [22:03] Tesla as a "solution"
• [26:29] The challenge of needs
• [28:12] Progeny
• [30:24] Redeeming work
• [33:16] The body and senses
• [34:50] Playfulness
• [36:34] Why read Illich today?
• [40:43] Making Illich accessible
• [44:24] Starting point to his work?
• [47:27] Illich in Conversation

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How does the digital life shape our perceptions of ourselves? Maggie Appleton starts us off on a discussion of school in pandemic times which lead to a discussion of the disembodiment that technology can create, somehow bringing us further towards our thoughts on time and space? (Recorded in November 2020) Transcript: https://hopeinsource.com/disembodiment

Previously: https://hopeinsource.com/embodied, https://hopeinsource.com/process
Maggie: https://twitter.com/Mappletons
Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad

Sections:

• [00:00] Deschooling Society
• [09:42] Disembodied By Technology
• [20:11] Perceiving Time
• [21:43] Space And Silence

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How is the state of modern software like losing at Tetris? Stephen Kell joins Henry to chat about Ivan Illich's thought (counter-productivity, radical monopoly, critique of institutions) applied to modern software culture! We talk about the software/hardware arms race, how our default is more is better, tech being all-consuming, the tyranny of updates. (recorded in Dec 2020) Transcript: https://hopeinsource.com/tetris.

Stephen: https://twitter.com/stephenrkell
Talk slides: Software against humanity? An Illichian perspective on the industrial era of software
Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad

Headings:

• [0:00] The Software/Hardware Arms Race
• [3:37] Solving a Crisis by Escalation
• [5:31] The All-consuming Tech Industry
• [7:06] Counting the Costs
• [9:37] The Politics of Open Source
• [13:06] Software Convergence to Pi
• [14:45] Never Obsolete
• [16:59] Communicating with Aliens
• [19:25] The Radical Monopoly of the Recent
• [21:48] The Tyranny of Updates
• [24:07] End-user Programming
• [26:43] Thresholds of Automation
• [30:33] Software Slogans
• [33:04] Corruption of Christianity
• [35:56] Need to Care for One Another
• [38:50] Monasticism

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What happens when we open up browser APIs like a filesystem? Omar Rizwan joins Henry to chat about his latest project, TabFS! We discuss possible extensions, tinkering with scripts vs being a whole "project", writing it yourself, few dependencies, determining your 1.0, literate documentation, and maintaining a newly popular open source project! (recorded in January) Transcript: https://hopeinsource.com/tabfs.

Omar: https://twitter.com/rsnous
Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad

Headings:

• [0:00] TabFS or BrowserFS?
• [3:40] Project Boilerplates vs. Toys
• [6:42] Doing It Yourself is More Fun
• [11:25] What is a 1.0?
• [16:05] Getting Help, Literate Documentation
• [20:37] Taking Phrases Seriously
• [25:11] Community Response

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How do we think about ourselves and the communities we move into? Sonya Mann and Henry continue a chat about the nature of conversion: about using jargon within a community, individuation, and transformation. Topics include the tools of a worldview, flavors of faith, the good of questions, essence and discovering yourself, hierarchies of reality, interwoven histories. (Recorded in September) Transcript: https://hopeinsource.com/essence.

Sonya: https://twitter.com/sonyasupposedly
Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad
Part 1: https://hopeinsource.com/reconversion

Support Sonya's writing and zines at https://www.sonyasupposedly.com/membership!

Sections:

• [00:00] Microsoft Word as Worldview
• [7:16] The Legitimacy of Questioning
• [12:16] More Porous Than We Think
• [14:23] Individuation
• [17:49] The Grafting of our Identity
• [20:03] Interwoven Stories
• [22:51] Emergent Bodies
• [25:01] The Language of Discovery
• [30:13] Extensions of the Body
• [40:22] Agreeing to Disagree

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How does one come to faith, let alone come back to it? Sonya Mann graciously shares some raw thoughts on her re-conversion to Christianity. We cover a lot of ground, going through doubt and spiritual malaise, the phenomenology of faith, fractal reality, "happeningness". (Recorded in September) Transcript: https://hopeinsource.com/reconversion.

Sonya: https://twitter.com/sonyasupposedly
Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad

Support Sonya's writing and zines at https://www.sonyasupposedly.com/membership!

Sections:

• [00:00] Coming Back to the Faith
• [04:53] God Encompasses Doubt
• [08:52] Imitate Me
• [10:44] Open Source Generosity
• [12:18] Desiring Duty
• [14:20] Reality as Fractal
• [19:20] Compassionate Judgement
• [21:51] Truth and Fact
• [24:48] Socially Distant Liturgy
• [28:06] The Irreducibility of God
• [31:19] Happeningness

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What is Advent anyway? Alex Kim joins Henry to chat about the season of waiting, memory, our loss and discovery of tradition, teaching ritual as meaningful, a Christian conception of time, and opening ourselves up to hope. Transcript: https://hopeinsource.com/advent

Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad

Sections:

• [01:06] A Season of Double Vision
• [03:47] Reenacting Our Memory
• [11:17] Being Cognizantly Ritualistic
• [15:33] Living as Portals
• [18:26] History as Both Cyclical and Linear
• [21:11] Meaning-"full" Ritual
• [25:44] Augustine Has Gone Before Us
• [30:25] For Whom Should We Open Up To?

Related Episodes:

• https://hopeinsource.com/liturgy (habits and open source)
• https://hopeinsource.com/city (cities and liturgy)

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Is technology just of chips and gadgets? Maggie Appleton joins Henry again in a 2-part chat to discuss how tech isn't such a static thing, building off of Mcluhan's thought of media and Dan Wang's article, "How Technology Grows". We cover how tech itself contains it's own process knowledge involving how it is used, built, and maintained as well as going into digital immortality and the protestant work ethic, and chat about how our cultures are intertwined with tech. Transcript: https://hopeinsource.com/process.

Part 1: https://hopeinsource.com/embodied
Previously: https://hopeinsource.com/metaphor, https://hopeinsource.com/gift
Maggie: https://twitter.com/Mappletons
Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad

Sections:

• [00:00] Technology is Dynamic
• [01:33] Technology as Tools, Instructions, Process
• [03:50] You can't hide the age of physical objects
• [05:44] Dates on websites
• [09:05] Immortality: Digital and Physical
• [10:20] The right to be forgotten
• [12:11] Creating a Disembodied God
• [15:14] The Denial of Death
• [16:43] Protestant Work Ethic
• [19:50] Capitalist cosmology and self-help
• [21:58] Doing the One to Many for the One to One
• [25:03] Over-participation
• [27:57] Platform Support
• [30:21] Process Knowledge takes time

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Can there be knowledge without a knower? Maggie Appleton joins Henry again in a 2 part chat to discuss how knowledge can be intimately personal, through the work of Michael Polanyi. We cover how knowing is an activity, ambient technology, dualism, Bruno Latour, knowing as faith, learning through liturgy, Jesus as the embodiment of God. We end by asking how we should navigate the post-truth world. Transcript: https://hopeinsource.com/embodied.

Part 2: https://hopeinsource.com/process
Previously: https://hopeinsource.com/metaphor, https://hopeinsource.com/gift
Maggie: https://twitter.com/Mappletons
Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad

Sections:

• [0:00] Indwelling
• [2:05] Ambient Technology
• [3:28] Digital Affordances
• [4:43] Paperclip Thought Experiment
• [7:39] Knowing is Subjective
• [8:55] Bruno Latour: hybrid objects
• [11:37] Understanding Someone in Bits and Pieces
• [12:42] Knowing as Worship
• [15:27] Truth through Ritual
• [18:31] The Incarnation as Skin in the Game
• [21:40] The Stability of Beliefs

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What does a convivial society entail? Michael Sacasas joins Henry in the second part of a conversation about Illich and his views of the common good. We speak about Illich's critique against institutions, autonomy and interdependence, the story of the Good Samaritan, learning through apprenticeship and intimate participation, and outsourcing our choices. Transcript: https://hopeinsource.com/convivial.

Part 1: https://hopeinsource.com/limits
Youtube version (unedited): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fojoWc1oCeQ
Michael: https://twitter.com/LMsacasas
Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad

Headings:

• Conviviality as Autonomy
• Conviviality as Interdependence
• Schooling and Credentialism
• The Good Samaritan
• The Master-Practitioner Relationship
• Learning to Name the World
• Capacity for Attention
• On Surrendering Our Experience

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Can we consider our limits as a gift? Michael Sacasas and Henry discuss an understated concept in our modern times, namely our limited nature. We are limited in our ability to control others (parenting), our speech (social media), and our bodies (morality). We pass through a mix of (sometimes heavy) topics: violent games and virtue ethics, parents as gardeners rather than carpenters, the issues of unprecedented scale, modernity as the application of technique, our inclination to believe more is better, and the art of dying. Transcript: https://hopeinsource.com/limits.

Part 2: https://hopeinsource.com/convivial.
Youtube version (unedited): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fojoWc1oCeQ
Michael: https://twitter.com/LMsacasas
Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad

Headings:

• Games and Virtue
• Social Gaming
• Gardeners and Carpenters
• Technocratic Parenting
• Capability and Responsibility
• Natural Scales and Limits
• Two Watersheds
• Escalation as Default
• Limits as Heresy
• Attractive Limits
• Iatrogenesis
• Being Mortal
• Death as a Technical Problem

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What can we learn from someone's last tweets? Omar Rizwan joins Henry to chat about the Dynamicland way of thinking: communal, involving the whole person, user agency. We discuss user control, the problem of lists, industrial open source, materiality and embodiment, knowing through doing, and being aware of your emotions when programming. Also (of course) screenshots. (recorded in August) Transcript: https://hopeinsource.com/emotional.

Omar: https://twitter.com/rsnous
Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad

Headings:

• That's A Dynamicland Sort Of Thought
• What's Wrong With Lists?
• Dictating Terms To You
• Giving The User Control
• Industrial Open Source
• A Project You Identify With
• End User Programming
• "Personal" Computer Like A Personal Warehouse
• The Materiality Of Books
• Practical Solutions That Turn Into Rituals
• Optional Daycare Surveillance
• Skeuomorphism To Flat: Building Off Of Digital Literacy
• A Way Of Knowing By Name vs. A/B Test
• Tacit Knowing, Constructivist Education
• Tractability
• Respecting User Behavior
• Help People Do What They Want To Do
• Really Fine Grain Open Source
• Emotion-Aware Programming
• Being Immediately Useful
• "Open Input" Spaces

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What's life after removing yourself from social media? Philip Gee joins Henry (the last in the "trilogy") to chat about LAT, life after Twitter. We discuss being irrelevant, forcing yourself to think about different things, treating a newsletter like email, restraining your growth, moving to the digital suburbs, engaging with the past, directing your attention and production, being particular and local, making it normal again to not have to create. (recorded in July) Transcript: https://hopeinsource.com/digital-death.

First chat (MA 7): https://hopeinsource.com/growing-old
Second chat (MA 15): https://hopeinsource.com/unlisting
Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad

Headings:

• Intro to the Trilogy
• A Movie Review By a Random Person
• Forcing Your Own Hand
• Email Is a Newsletter without an Archive
• Restrained Growth
• Convenience Over Everything
• Quitting and Twitter Brouhaha
• From City to Suburbs
• Stepping Back By Not Producing
• Conflating Consumption and Production
• Engaging with The Distant Past
• Getting the Last Word
• Showing Charity to Those Things
• Spewing Out Stuff, Undirected
• After Influence, Staying Niche?
• Generality (Mega Church) and Particularity (House Church)
• The Small Scale is the Only Scale
• It's Not Weird To Not Make Anything

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Why would you choose to leave the public internet on your own terms? Philip Gee joins Henry (for the 2nd time) to chat about his recent choice to make a minimal public web presence after being on the web for many years. We discuss the logistics of removing social media (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube), moving to longer forms of media (podcasts, essays, books), making introductory content, recognizing different stages of your career, being out of touch, freeing your mind for the next thing, not being ashamed of previous work, taking time to reflect, and friction. (recorded in May) Transcript: https://hopeinsource.com/unlisting.

First Chat (MA 7): https://hopeinsource.com/growing-old
Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad

Headings:

• "He took everything down!"
• A Long Time Coming
• Erasure: a minimal public web presence
• Unlisting Yourself
• When I was young, I was in a rock band
• Naturally Transitioning Out
• Tenure as a forcing function
• High School Debut
• Out of Touch
• Ownership Over Our (Digital) Selves
• Posting about Quitting
• No One's Going to Cry
• Making Introductory Content
• More Beginners in a Growing Field
• The Business of Patrons
• Doing the Work vs. Funding It
• Staying or Stepping Away
• Seinfeld and Ending at the Top
• Freeing Your Mind for the Next Thing
• "It's all I've Known"
• Graceful Degradation
• A Time to Reflect
• Acting on Our Beliefs
• Quitting Should be Boring
• Intentionality
• We Are As Athletes
• Adding Friction

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What does it mean to be code adjacent? Shawn Wang joins Henry to chat about not just open code but open thinking with his experience in community managing, the idea of tumbling, moderating /r/reactjs, starting the Svelete Society meetup, documenting and learning in public, being historians of our field, fresh notes vs. awesome lists, the meta language, and adoption curves. (recorded in June) Transcript: https://hopeinsource.com/open-knowledge.

Shawn: https://twitter.com/swyx
Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad

Headings:

• Intro: Tumbling as an Alternative to Community Manager
• Specific, Limited-term Maintainer Roles
• Separation of Maintainer Concerns
• Babel W18, like YC W18
• Becoming a Moderator for /r/reactjs
• Learning with "I Promise to Answer Every Question"
• History and Memento Mori: A Time Before Git
• Where's the Story of How Projects Get Started?
• A Culture of "Document Yourself More"
• Learning Gears: Explorer, Connector, Miner
• Finding A Vision People Can Rally Around
• Being Code Adjacent
• Maybe We Need a JavaScript Community Manager
• Cheat Sheets and Awesome Lists
• Personalized Docs, Documentation Levels
• Open Source Knowledge, Proof of Work
• Twitter as a Permanent Hallway Track
• Find the Intersection of Two Communities
• Documenting Underlying Assumptions
• "Fresh notes"
• Starting a Meetup: Svelte Society
• Keeping it Alive
• Taking Part in Category Creation
• The Meta Language
• Parenting and Figuring Things Out
• Not Everything Needs to be in Public
• CSS 4: Does It Even Matter if No One Knows?
• Adoption Curves: Focusing too much on the head
• Removing the Learning Curve with Better Defaults
• Philosophy of Technology
• Spatial Software, The Mind

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Do we think about how the places in which we live are passed down?

Bernardo Robles Hidalgo (architect) and Marianita Palumbo (anthropologist) join Henry to chat about living as maintenance. We discuss Bosch, responsibility of taking care of the places we live in, on our desire for comfort, the right to repair, the aesthetic of maintenance, and communal living. (recorded in February) Transcript: https://hopeinsource.com/heritage

MAMA: is a developing spatial practice to whom maintenance matters.

Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad

Headings

• Intros: An Architect and Anthropologist
• Meeting at the Interdisciplinary Maintainers III Conference
• Bosch, a Co-housing project in Brussels
• Inhabiting as the Best Form of Maintenance
• Learning to Better Inhabit What is Already Built
• Proactive, Responsible Relationships with a Space
• 7 Floors, 70 People
• What is Comfort?
• Outsourcing Dampens our Sense of Curiosity
• Right to Repair: Freedom vs. Independence
• "First of all, do not touch"
• To Live it is to Understand How it Works
• Code as Archeology: Who Wrote this? Oh I did..
• Was Code Better in the Old Days?
• House of Dependencies
• Invisible Labor is Perceived as Unaesthetic
• Future of Bosch: A Space Dedicated to Collective Domestic Activities
• Valorizing Repair as Moments of Learning
• Self-managed, Informal, Shared Spaces
• The Shared Interests of All
• A Message to the Neighborhood

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Is more (information, people, code) always better?

Nadia Eghbal joins Henry to chat about her new book, Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software, a deep-dive into the of open source community and how it may paint a picture of online communities in general. They talk about her 2x2 model of communities, the public web (Twitter) to private groups (group chat), the turn to individual creators, and the importance of moderation and boundaries. Transcript at https://hopeinsource.com/overparticipation.

Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad

Nadia: https://twitter.com/nayafia

The book (out now), Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software

Headings:

• Five Years Looking At Open Source Communities
• Our Common Wisdom Encourages Participation But..
• Pushing Back on the Definition of Participation
• 2x2 of Contributor/User Growth
• Victims of Success
• It's a Good Problem, Let's Adapt to Changing Circumstances
• Liberalism and "Don't Read the Comments"
• Questioning Hypotheses and Norms
• Salvation By Maintenance
• Welcoming Communities, Seeker Friendly Churches
• The Importance of Moderation: Saying No
• Inversion of Authority
• Whose Responsibility? Platforms?
• GitHub Isn't a Creator Based Economy, Yet
• Open Source and Content Creation
• Maintenance is Inherently Not Top of Mind?
• Modes of Production: Niche and Growth
• Beyond Zoom: Designing For Conversation
• Cozyroom
• Tools Vs. Apps: The Tyranny of Grids
• Simulating Walking Through a Park
• Digital Fidgeting Through Removing Video
• Focusing Through Distraction?
• Shaping to Future of The Social Web
• Creating the Suburbs of the Internet
• The Beautiful Dance of Norms

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What happens to religion when it meets the Internet? Tara Isabella Burton joins Henry to chat about her new book, Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World. They chat about our failing institutions, taking fandoms like Harry Potter seriously, how we all remix religion, how consumerism infects all of life, on embodiment and givenness, and most importantly, what is our freedom even for? Transcript at https://hopeinsource.com/online

Tara: https://twitter.com/NotoriousTIB
Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad

Headings:

• Intro: Charles Taylor Meets Marshall McLuhan
• Who Is This Written For?
• Taking The Internet Seriously
• Narcissistic Millennials Vs. Institutional Failure
• Not Dismissing The Strange
• Becoming Religiously Unaffiliated
• Growing Up With Fandom Culture
• Change It, Rewrite It, Reimagine It, Make It Yours
• We're All Remixers Now
• Maybe Not Hexing Kavanaugh, But Doing A Meditation App
• On Escaping Our Givenness
• Resisting The Neutral Public Square
• Struggling Against While Embodying Neoliberalism
• Personal Brand As Religion
• Illusions Of Intimacy
• Commodifying, Contentifying Your Life
• If You Didn't Tweet It, Did It Really Happen?
• Corporations Seeking Authenticity
• A Complicated Life, Mediated Through Brands
• Individual Change And Privilege
• What Is Our Freedom For?
• Where's A Theology Of The Internet?
• On Bad Traditionalism: Choice, Will To Power, Evopsych
• On Valid Criticisms And First Principles
• On Neutral Epistemology, Polanyi's Personal Knowledge
• Embodied Knowledge, Embodied Hope
• Institutions Being Intuitional, "Be A Good Person"
• A Vision Of The Common Good
• We Are As Gods
• End: Again, What Do We Do With Our Freedom?

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What does flourishing look like? Nicole Williams joins Henry to chat about faith in a less reductive way (than many of us may of grown up with): on rationality, the Church as a body, education, liturgy, family, being productive, and simply doing things for it's own sake. Was rather hard to say what we were getting at until the very end, all tying back to a picture of shalom! Transcript at https://hopeinsource.com/shalom

Nicole: https://twitter.com/nwilliams030
Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad

Headings:

• Faith in Public
• Apologetics and Rationality
• Church as a Body
• The Machine Stops and Pandemic
• Remote Work and Education
• C.S. Lewis on Living and Dying
• Secular/Spiritual Distinction (1 Corinthians 10:31)
• On Disrupting Church: Reductionism
• "Family": Unity and Humility
• Non-neutrality of Technology
• Liturgy and Senses
• Productivity and Fun
• Education, Learning is Autotelic
• Professionalization
• Shalom

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Why do we so easily forget where we come from?Dr. Timothy Patitsis joins Henry again to chat about the affect of legacy on our lives through the language of standards, language diversity, being a melting pot or mosaic, Chesterton's fence and legibility, Jane Jacob's tripartite society, algorithmic control and agency, sanctification and faith as an adventure. Michael Polanyi says that "a society which wants to preserve a fund of personal knowledge must submit to tradition". (Recorded in January) Transcript: https://hopeinsource.com/legacy

• Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad

Headings:

• I'm from there 7,000 years ago
• Legibility and Fractal Societies
• Melting Pots and Mosaics
• Responding to Fences
• Outsourcing our thinking to data
• Amusement, Novelty, and Jacob's Tripartite Society
• The beauty of Knowledge
• Tradition as recovering what was lost

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Why attempt to faithfully recreate the past? Jordan Scales joins Henry to chat about 98.css, design systems, being pixel perfect, accessibility, the Microsoft Windows User Experience reference manual, using VMs, MSPaint and Figma, whimsy and having fun with coding, creating satire at no one's expense, and even how Babel's Guy Fieri meme could of been Jeff Goldblum in another universe. Transcript: https://maintainersanonymous.com/nostalgia

Jordan: https://twitter.com/jdan
Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad

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Is programming all digital/cerebral or do we still have embodied roots? How does this affect how we write, teach, and learn code? Maggie Appleton joins Henry to discuss everything metaphors (basically everything). We chat about mental models and abstraction, Polanyi, Cartesian dualism, auto ethnography, knowledge, cats! Transcript: https://maintainersanonymous.com/metaphor

Maggie: https://twitter.com/Mappletons
Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad

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Is the open source community a gift economy? What even is a gift? Maggie Appleton joins Henry to discuss open source as a gift economy (versus a market economy), why we participate in open source and exchange gifts, rituals and habits, patronage and crowdfunding, quantified self and disembodiment, our role in tech. Transcript: https://maintainersanonymous.com/gift

Maggie: https://twitter.com/Mappletons
Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad

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Why not record an conversation while getting a haircut?Fellow friend and developer Jonathan Tsao cuts Henry's hair and they have a spontaneous conversation about a variety of topics covering faith and culture, living in NYC, creativity, narratives, sharing in vulnerability, and embodiment. Transcript at https://hopeinsource.com/haircut

• Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad

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How should we think about saving something forever? Jonathan Farbowitz (Guggenheim) continues the on-going discussion of software preservation with Henry in talking about the goals of museums, the hard (and maybe impossible) task of keeping something intact, norms and steps of conservation, comparing physical and digital artwork, the importance of authors in conserving a piece, emulation vs. language porting (rewrite), a discussion of legacy/dependencies/testing, and deprecations/breakages in environments/standards. Transcript: https://maintainersanonymous.com/conservation

Jonathan: https://twitter.com/jfarbowitz
Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad
Guggenheim: https://twitter.com/Guggenheim

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In our pursuit to create products for the future do we neglect the past? Wendy Hagenmaier (Georgia Tech) discusses with Henry on the importance of maintaining our history, especially in software itself. They chat all about archival: what is it, what should concern an archivist, differences b/t physical/digital, artifacts/process, value/worth of things to preserve, struggles, places where archival can happen (personal, libraries, companies, museums), and our shared responsibility and knowledge. Transcript: https://maintainersanonymous.com/preservation

Wendy: https://www.library.gatech.edu/wendy-hagenmaier
Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad
Software Preservation Network: https://www.softwarepreservationnetwork.org/fcop/

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Why play or even make games? Anthony Giovannetti (MegaCrit) joins Henry to chat building video game Slay the Spire with the community. They discuss games an a interactive medium, immersion, player incentives/tradeoffs, emergent gameplay through roguelikes (procedural generation, permadeath), player mastery/difficulty, Steam early access, user feedback, importance of testing, data-informed balancing, and player accessibility driving features via streaming, translations, and UX. Transcript: https://maintainersanonymous.com/games

Anthony (MegaCrit): https://twitter.com/megacrit
Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad

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Do we learn in a vacuum, or does it involve our whole selves? Philip Gee (UC San Diego) joins Henry to chat about maintaining a web presence since its beginnings. We discuss some of the points made in Nadia's post on ideas carrying us forward, even beyond what we are known for, the greater intimacy of podcasts and vlogs, attaching ideas to people, science as subjective vs. purely objective and in community, knowledge as opening up possibilities, embracing whimsy and being random (haircut podcasts), embracing spontaneity and cities, understanding our bodies and mortality and it's relation to our digital lives and rest. Transcript: https://maintainersanonymous.com/growing-old

Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad

Show Notes:

• Tyranny of Ideas (Nadia)

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Why should we standardize? Jory Burson (Bocoup) joins Henry to talk open source and standards: what they are, why we need them, what should be standardized, lifecycles of standards, past/future accessibility of participating in the process, and more! Transcript: https://maintainersanonymous.com/standards

Jory: https://twitter.com/jorydotcom
Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad

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How can we be free? Evan You (Vue.js) chats with Henry about the complexities of funding people vs. projects, non-monetary perks of oss, Patreon potentially just a payment processor, the honing in on the uniqueness of open source (being free, flexible, organic/emergent, self-motivated, distributed/remote), full time not being for everyone, the importance of side projects and off-pressure moments and just having fun. Transcript: https://maintainersanonymous.com/freedom

Evan: https://twitter.com/youyuxi
Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad

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How old is open source anyway? Mikeal Rogers (Protocol Labs) joins Henry in talking about making friends through podcasting, conference organizing as maintainer-ship, patronage and fundraising, old/new school open source, deprecating packages and ecosystem health, new ideas and becoming a maintainer by being the "first", and parenting! Transcript: https://maintainersanonymous.com/getting-old/

Mikeal: https://twitter.com/mikeal
Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad

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What do we treasure? Stephanie Hurlburt (Binomial) joins again to chat about inherent vs. perceived value, success breeding success, psychology around hiding information, code versus money, a holistic/explicit view of business, everything as marketing, confidence, money as idolatry, the nature of giving, our biases around people/status, people want to see you succeed, communicating how people can help you. (recorded in February) Transcript: https://maintainersanonymous.com/value

Stephanie: https://twitter.com/sehurlburt
Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad

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How is business development relevant to open source? Stephanie Hurlburt (Binomial) joins Henryto chat about understanding learnings from success, setting health boundaries, what "networking" really means, conversations/pitching, and more! (recorded in February) Transcript: https://hopeinsource.com/boundaries

Stephanie: https://twitter.com/sehurlburt
Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad

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What's beyond simply beating a video game? Eric "Omnigamer" Koziel joins Henry to chat about speedruning as an optimization problem (code golf), game knowledge as discovery, access as a result of technology, issues of game preservation/archival, coordination issues, obscure/popular games, versioning/patches, and more! (recorded in January. Since then, Eric has a new book out, Speedrun Science). Transcript: https://hopeinsource.com/speedrunning

Eric: https://twitter.com/TheOmnigamer
Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad

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Is the city a toaster (an object) or a cat (a living organism)?We are joined by Dr. Timothy Patitsis to talk about how our physical and digital spaces, like liturgy, can be understood as "the work of the people". We discuss science as organized complexity, the meaning of knowledge, recursive societies, fractal hierarchies, and implications for governance. Transcript at https://hopeinsource.com/city

• Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad
• Nadia: https://twitter.com/nayafia
• Timothy: https://www.hchc.edu/faculty/timothy-patitsas-phd

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Why do we trust anyone?We talk about trust as an act of faith, trusting people versus trusting code, and the relationship between trust and work. Transcript at https://hopeinsource.com/trust

• Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad
• Nadia: https://twitter.com/nayafia

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How do our rituals shape us?We talk about where habits come from, why we use them, and whether they strengthen our belief systems. Transcript at https://hopeinsource.com/liturgy

• Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad
• Nadia: https://twitter.com/nayafia

Links:

• Liturgy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liturgy
• Approaching God through negation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophatic_theology
• Communion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucharist
• The Medium is the Message: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message
• Liturgy of the Ordinary: https://www.amazon.com/Liturgy-Ordinary-Sacred-Practices-Everyday/dp/0830846239
• You Are What You Love: https://www.amazon.com/You-Are-What-Love-Spiritual/dp/158743380X

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Does authority have a place in religion?We talk about authority in decentralized organizations, listening to others versus trying something new, and when to fork or leave a community. Transcript at https://hopeinsource.com/authority

• Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad
• Nadia: https://twitter.com/nayafia

Links:

• Universal Priesthood: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priesthood_of_all_believers
• Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: https://www.amazon.com/Exit-Voice-Loyalty-Responses-Organizations/dp/0674276604

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How do symbols and stories foster culture?We talk about stories as a way to onboard new contributors, the mythology of leadership, when leaders step down, and how traditions evolve over time. Transcript at https://hopeinsource.com/myth

• Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad
• Nadia: https://twitter.com/nayafia

Links:

• Babel and Guy Fieri ("Favorite Moments" section): https://github.com/open-source/stories/hzoo#favorite-moments
• On Fairy Stories (Tolkien): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Fairy-Stories
• "Time to Leave" blog post: https://medium.com/@mikeal/time-to-leave-a68294ccb2af

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How do communities handle money?We talk about money and centralization, tithing systems, how much funding is too much, and when to contribute money versus time. Transcript at https://hopeinsource.com/money

• Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad
• Nadia: https://twitter.com/nayafia

Links:

• Tithe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tithe
• Sponsor Henry: https://github.com/sponsors/hzoo/

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How do we evangelize our ideas?We talk about evangelism in religion and tech, meeting people where they're at, living one's values in public, and maintaining humility in the face of conviction. Transcript at https://hopeinsource.com/evangelism

• Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad
• Nadia: https://twitter.com/nayafia

Links:

• 2017 Open Source Survey: http://opensourcesurvey.org

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Can everything that matters be measured?We talk about measuring the output and health of a community, competition between groups, growing a community without losing authenticity, and embracing "holy inefficiency". Transcript at https://hopeinsource.com/inefficiency

• Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad
• Nadia: https://twitter.com/nayafia

Headings:

• What makes an organization healthy?
• What Is a Church's Output?
• Latest Activity (Commit) As Heuristic
• Church Hopping: What's in It for Me?
• The Internet: One Big Happy Family?
• On Losing a Coherent Story with Growth
• McDonaldization of Church
• Balancing Local and Global Affiliation
• Narcissism of Small Differences
• Eternal Students: On Showing vs. Telling
• Working in Public!
• Holy Inefficiency: A Pokémon Story
• Intimacy with Martha and Mary
• Relationship Building
• Learning to Be (Not Do)

Links:

• Methodologies for measuring project health: https://nadiaeghbal.com/project-health
• Call to Commitment: https://www.amazon.com/Call-commitment-Church-Saviour-Washington/dp/B0006AYJSS

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Why do we do what we do?We talk about intrinsic motivation, the role it plays in creative work with uncertain outcomes, motivating new contributors, and sustaining motivation over time. Transcript at https://hopeinsource.com/motivation

• Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad
• Nadia: https://twitter.com/nayafia

Headings:

• Finding Your Inner Quiet
• Being in the Present Moment
• Natural Spaces for Encouragement
• One Way Communication
• Fear Driven Development
• Working Through a One-Way Mirror
• When Do You Open the Floodgates?
• How Do I Know You Care?
• Mutual Benefit
• Intentional, Consistent Help
• General vs. Specific Questions as a Signal
• Fear as a Habit of Mind

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What does it mean to join a community?We talk about casual versus committed membership, and how maintainers and leaders manage expectations around trust and collaboration. Transcript at https://hopeinsource.com/membership

• Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad
• Nadia: https://twitter.com/nayafia

Headings:

• A Call to Commitment
• Membership as an Affirmation
• On Rejection
• Membership Composition
• From Contributor to Maintainer
• Definitions are Hard
• Not Everyone Will Be a Member
• Beyond the In-Group
• Maintainer Therapy
• Building Trust Through Professionalism
• Church as a Hospital

Links:

• Call to Commitment: https://www.amazon.com/Call-commitment-Church-Saviour-Washington/dp/B0006AYJSS

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How are faith and open source even related?We talk about our backgrounds and motivation for doing this podcast, and why the practice of faith seems so prevalent among open source developers. Transcript at https://hopeinsource.com/faith

• Henry: https://twitter.com/left_pad
• Nadia: https://twitter.com/nayafia

Headings:

• What is your faith background?
• Faith as restorative
• Giving without expectations
• What drives us?
• The conflicts of public service and sustainability
• Giving as a habit
• Self-sacrifice and accountability
• Tithing and a sense of ownership
• Seeing faces regularly
• "Everyone else is going to be there"
• Learning when to step away

Links:

• Henry's ZEIT Day talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sPDcVYX3g8
• Nadia's Helium Grant: https://www.heliumgrant.org

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