Filed under: Meta-Everything
Okay, so the above idiom’s officially washed out.
Never you mind; I was going to say something in response to this lengthy blog post by Aaron Swartz, roving citizen journalist and apparently co-creator of Really Simple Syndication. He’s a big wig in the open-source world, so his post caught our attention particularly quickly (and he says this isn’t a place for hackers. Piffle, I say). I wanted to say my piece here, rather than add to the large pile of comments on Aaron’s site, not because I am afraid of getting my boots dirty but because it’s only going to make particular sense to other Oliners. Firstly, a comment on our comments on Aaron’s post:
“Lex and her circle” ARE Olin cultists, in a way.
Hey, they’re not cultists, they’re MechE’s!* Seriously, though, as much as it fails to surprise me at this point how un-cohesive Olin’s becoming now that at we’re at capacity (it is in fact a sociological inevitability), the conflict in views held by my classmates here made me feel a bit sad. That we could already be too big to remain synch’d and pluralistic is a big part of our growing pains. We weren’t a fascist cult, you see, but a family–more like a hackers’ commune. The above quotation is particularly poignant, moreover, because those who know Lex well know there is absolutely nothing wrong with her circle.
When I think ‘pro-Olin zealot’ they aren’t even the people that come to mind, and so I wonder could people be jumping to conclusions? (not you, Sean–but the young’ns, and perhaps Aaron) I’m sorry, but Oliners who claim to love fun and insanity can’t have their cake and eat it too–you gotta recognize, nub. The outside world would like to project all these utterly ridiculous traits onto Lex because of attributes that are skin-deep and/or beyond her physical control*, so have a care, you who have a chance to do better.
Also, the whole time I was reading people’s posts I kept thinking how easily we could change Aaron’s mind if we just handed him a torrent of Yellow Lights insisting that that is how the college looks to equally many of us. I can only assume KTTK would frown on this practice as they made the film on very little money with their own blood, sweat, and tears–pity, though, it’d make great admissions material (and would be a much more appropriate venue for espousing Olin’s values than, say, the yearbook. I’m not even gonna get started on that shit).
*UPDATE: not terribly important, but it points out some flaws in the above statements. “Lex” outed herself in the course of internal discussions, and was not actually who I was thinking of. A lot of the same points hold; some do not (not a MechE, not by any stretch of the imagination). And here I thought I’d nailed it, from the prominent mention of the rootbeer kegger. She is something of a memetic guru, though–in somebody’s world I suppose that might translate into “Olin cultist”. Now I’m much more bothered instead by the fact that he was able to look right past her and not see a kindred spirit.
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DJ, so you liked our portrayal of Olin as the fictional “Isaac Newton College” in Yellow Lights? Cool!
I wouldn’t be against making a torrent of our movie at some point in time, just not yet please, since that might disqualify us from film festivals.
Comment by Kevin Tostado 10.10.06 @ 6:35 pmNaturally–besides, we wouldn’t want to deny you and Tom the honors of releasing your baby to the world. Best of luck at the festivals. I look forward to purchasing and/or downloading when it does become available.
Comment by daniel.j.gallagher 10.10.06 @ 7:33 pmThanks DJ! We’ll be sure to let you all know when the DVD is available in late winter/spring.
Comment by Kevin Tostado 10.11.06 @ 12:28 amI’m trying to clear up the case of mistaken identity (and have already done so via internal mail at Olin and on Aaron’s blog) so I might as well here; I’m Lex. (And yes, I’m actually an electrical engineer who’s relatively tall and deep-voiced for her demographic profile.)
Apparently a lot of Oliners jumped to (incorrect) conclusions on who Lex was – some with much less kind words than your post here, which saddens me. No matter how much you may disagree with someone’s philosophies, they still deserve respect.
Moving on with life, though, and back to changing things – more working on making stuff better, less whining about why they suck.
And I’m off.
Comment by Mel Chua 10.11.06 @ 3:34 amDJ, first off let me say: nice blog! I hadn’t clicked through from my reader to see your design before, but it’s quite cool!
Now, on to the point: I didn’t think that people would take the “Olin cultists” comment from me in such a negative way. I guess I should have thought more carefully about the common connotations of cultist. What I really MEANT was that Mel is VERY involved in Olin-building on many levels. Much moreso than someone like me, who tries to exist here and contribute to things that I feel well-qualified for. It seems to me like Mel jumps in and gets her hands dirty with just about everything to do with Olin’s curriculum, culture, organization, etc. That’s what I meant when I thought cultist.
“…the conflict in views held by my classmates here made me feel a bit sad.” Finally, I wanted to address this quote (a general sentiment that I keep hearing echoes of around Olin mailing lists and such.) Our student body has held conflicting views since the day we started! That’s the nature of getting more than one person together in a place. And it’s good, and very much a part of the real world, that people should hold different views and not all agree with each other or remain in solidarity. This is what fosters interesting discussion and makes the world go round. What we need in a small community like Olin is for people not to get so up in a tizzy when they find out that not everyone loves everyone in the world as their own children. I don’t believe that everyone within the Olin community has to love or even like each other. I DO believe that we need to keep treating each other as we would want to be treated in spite of whether we like each other or not.
Comment by Sean McBride 10.11.06 @ 12:41 pmThat’s a good point – one thing I am learning this week is that not everyone uses terms like “cultist” quite the same. I am sometimes guilty of having knee-jerk reactions to such terms, esp. when used by outsiders, as if Godwin’s Law applied to them. Coming from you I might have understood it was meant as a comment on Mel’s degree of involvement in the school, had I realized that it was Mel. In Aaron’s original phrasing, I’d taken it for a remark on certain people’s idiosyncracies that are quite orthogonal to their vested interest in the school. I guess that’s neither here nor there.
And yeah, lively debate is in fact a hallmark of healthy intellectual cameraderie. My centrist impulses and aversion to potential flamewars aside, I want us to move forward. But it reminds me of just how close we were (maybe not in opinions but in other ways) when I knew every single Olin student, and I wonder if we aren’t really just a little too big for our own good.
In a perfect world, we could do like some tribes and corporations do, and just fork every so often. I rather admired the description of Piratbyran in _Steal This Film_, which basically says that they grow by budding. When a project is big enough to stand on its own, they cut the cord and set it free. Olin does, after all, need to spread its ways. Pity you can’t exactly “fork” a $400M college and ship half of it to Texas or something.
Comment by daniel.j.gallagher 10.11.06 @ 3:45 pmLeave a comment