Homelessness and the web

[Kurt Cockrum]

Reference: <199801092340.PAA29905 at scn4.scn.org>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.96.980109162325.22857B-100000 at eve.speakeasy.org>

Anitra said:
>[...]
>For me, these were the major factors that led to me living at the
>Speakeasy instead of at SCN (virtually and almost literally for awhile.)
>[...]
>2) Shell account.  One of the features of a standard account; I don't
>have to be anybody special to be trusted with one, and Speakeasy is
>able to handle the security.
>[...]

Yeah, unix does by default, and well, what FreePort does very poorly.
It's very ironic to be "protected" from the good stuff that really
serves users nicely, by a klugey simulation of an old-style BBS that
does a whole lot of hard-to-maintain non-standard stuff that easily
breaks.  In contrast, the unix OS itself (and all of its evolutionary
offshoots, including creaky SunOS and *especially* Linux), is way more
robust and functional.

Does speakeasy use Linux?  Bet they do :) :)

>	Unsophisticated users are, at least at first (while still
>unsophisticated users) quite content with a menu and even pathetically
>grateful for one.  Any true computer geek, which unsophisticated users
>tend to mutate into rapidly, develops manic withdrwal symptoms when
         ^^^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^^^^
>cut off from shell account access.
>[...]

Amen!  I've always thought it was a grave error to fall into this
protect-the-consumer-from-what's-under-the-hood business.  IMO it
reinforces a pernicious and unhealthy set of dysfunctional social
relations.  Everybody ought to have shell accounts by default.
At least it ought to be a menu pick on FreePort.

The philosophy of catering to unsophisticated users by providing them
with an impoverished environment with limited capabilities is more
suited to commercial consumer software vendors and shopkeepers
than something like SCN.  It tends to solidify unhealthy
dependency-type "dumb-down" style relations between providers and
consumers (not exactly "equality" or "empowerment", wouldn't you say?).

We can look all around us and see on the scale of society, the nasty
side-effects of such a philosophy.  Frankly, I think it's helped greatly
to send this society pretty far down the tube.

The tears and travail of keeping FreePort going demonstrate the fallacy
of using poorly engineered and non-robust software to "protect" ignorant
users from each other, keeping them from the robust, relatively well-
engineered unix sw that shell-users use, that *does* the intended job of
FreePort *way* better (the job of protecting users from each other, anyway),
by *default*.  Commercial ISP's have discovered this and seem to be
profiting by it.

The problems of Pine interfacing with FreePort are one example of what
I mean by "tears and travail".  None of those problems would've occurred
if Pine was just used as another unix app.  All of those problems came
from having to hammer the Pine sw into the FreePort mold, a wholly
artificial problem with artificial constraints ("don't let the users
have access to the shell").  Pine runs everywhere nicely on unix shells
all over the world without giving people problems.  

To the extent SCN has fulfilled (and is fulfilling) it's mission,  I
wouldn't say that FreePort has been a lot of help.  I think we did and
are doing that despite the FreePort obstacle.  It's the fora and the IP
activity that makes SCN worthwhile, not FreePort.  I mean, nobody
picks SCN as an IP because of the FreePort interface or sw.
Of course, I don't mean that the decision to use FreePort was a bad one;
It did get us off the ground; we did it and that's that.
I don't see how we could've acquired the experience to make that judgement
any other way.  But IMO now we know better, and if we had to start SCN
over again, I think we would offer shell access from the git-go, with
optional FreePort access for those who want it.  Or so I would hope.

>[...]                                                Realistically,
>however, I think that for many users you are going to always be the
>"onramp" to the Internet -- the place where we get our feet wet, learn
>how to use the tools -- and then we go find someplace where the cars
>move faster.  I don't know how much you can change that.

I'm not sure I'd want that to change at all.  I don't think we should
get rid of FreePort;  I think that shell-access ought to be available
to FreePort users on request.  Besides, we have to keep FreePort around
as a real, live, working example of how *not* to do things.  It should
just be another shell/application/utility, just like everything on a
unix system.

FreePort shouldn't be regarded as anything but a way to *view* the
thing that is SCN and the rest of "cyber-space" (apologies for using
a c-word), and a minimally functional one at that.  SCN is not
FreePort, any more than SCN is /bin/sh, or Lynx, or any other
user-interface.  SCN is the thing interfaced *to*.

>                                                          By the nature
>of SCN, you are a network cobbled together out of donated equipment by
>dedicated volunteers working for too much coffee and not enough
>peanuts.  Being able to serve as the most basic entry point to the
>internet for the widest part of the underserved population,

The core mission of SCN IMO...

>                                                            *and*
>compete with fully staffed commercial businesses is, I believe,
>unfeasible.

The conjunction of the 2 ideas was what I call the "Doug Tooley"
fallacy.  SCN is loose and sloppy, just the way a pro bono volunteer
thing should be.  Some of us prefer freedom to security and slickness.

>             I would rather see SCN focus on serving those who do not
>have available choices yet -- and go ahead and let them move on when
>they do have choices.  There will *always* be more where they came
>from. 

And just as training wheels for bicycles are still made and sold,
so too will we always need FreePort and Lynx.  But they
ought not to be the procrustean beds that current SCN policy forces
all non-volunteer, non-IP users to lie in, just as training wheels
ought not to be permanently attached to their bicycle.

And the metaphorical equivalent to detaching the training wheels
should be "letting scn users get shell access on request", *not*
"scn users departing for more functional ISP's".

Besides, if we had a large pool of shell-knowledgable users,
maintenance/enhancement chores might be a lot easier, because
more of the volunteers might be likely to have a clue about what
needs getting done.  They would be more like colleagues than
customers (the latter being a pernicious concept IMO).

Kudos to Anitra for one of the most perceptive posts I've seen on
this list in a long time.  It cuts right to the bone.
--kurt
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