User:Nthmost/Things I Said

An archive of things Naomi Most has said at Noisebridge — on mailing lists, in Discourse threads, and occasionally in person. Preserved verbatim. Organized chronologically.

For the best-developed essays from this collection, see:

• Anarchy Is Not "No Control, Man" (2015)
• Membership as Anarchist Trust Architecture (2019)
• Executive Functioning under an Anarchist Flag (2019)
• On Blocking (2020)

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2010: Culture, Not Mandates

Date: July 17, 2010 Thread: Noisebridge-discuss, July 2010 — "Charging for classes at Noisebridge"

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.

2013: A Tribe Running on Clan Rules

Date: March 23, 2013 Thread: Noisebridge-discuss, March 2013 — "member" culture, not policy"

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

2014: Openly Biased Towards Anarchism

Date: March 13, 2014 Thread: Noisebridge-discuss, March 2014 — "why would hackers come to noisebridge?"

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

2015: Different Forms of Anarchism

Date: February 22, 2015 Thread: Noisebridge-discuss, February 2015 — "Fantastic article about Noisebridge"

Responding to Mitch Altman sharing a New Worker article titled "Anatomy of an Anarchist Hackerspace."

Pretty amazing, especially the part where it discusses different forms of anarchism.

Definitely worth the read.

--Naomi

2015: Anarchy ≠ No Control, Man

→ Full page

Date: February 23, 2015 Thread: Noisebridge-discuss, February 2015 — "Unfairly removed, banned without consensus, and given no warning"

2018: Self-Introduction

Thread: Please introduce yourself! — Discourse, December 2018

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)

2019: Membership as Anarchist Trust Architecture

→ Full page

Thread: Abolish membership — Discourse, March–April 2019

2019: Executive Functioning under an Anarchist Flag

→ Full page

Thread: Executive Functioning under an Anarchist Flag — Discourse, July 2019

2020: Guilds as Syndicalism; On Blocking

→ On Blocking — full page • Guilds and Anarcho-Syndicalism — full page

Thread: Towards an Anarchist Hackerspace — Discourse, October–November 2020

2020: Anarchist Decision-Making Under Pressure

Thread: 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.

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.

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?