Re: <nettime> nettime as idea

["Michael Benson" <Michael.Benson {AT} pristop.si>]

I haven't posted to nettime in what a Slovene friend would no doubt 
call "the age of a dog," but read it quite regularly and still 
consider it a kind of ongoing online cornerstone, and have to say that 
my vote (be it worthless for the above reasons, or not), is in kinship 
with David Garcia's eloquent mail today. In my experience when 
something's really very definitively _not_ broken -- and not broken 
for the good reason that some few people have made damn sure that it's 
in a good state of repair -- then "fixing" it runs the real risk of 
breaking it. So why do that? In other words, a proposal can be concrete 
without being constructive, and (as Garcia says) can also seem 
disrespectful and denying of achievement. Felix Stalder writes of 
personal abuse as being part of the job, and part of the problem in 
general with work, be it for free (and let's recognize how hard _that_ 
is in super-streamlined 21st century hypercapitalism) or for money, is 
that there's always a given quantity of thoughtless abuse that has to 
be endured, while praise is (or seems) comparatively rare. Nettime's 
excellent ongoing health, it has to be said, is due to its contributors 
but also its moderators.

Cheers from wind-swept Ljubljana, where the East has moved East (but 
Beauty lives on).

Michael Benson  


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