Guidance for writers
- but im not really a tech person: dont worry everyone thinks theyre "not a tech person", its actually one of the biggest fieldwork findings in all our research the last few years and will poss be the title of the book i write if i get around to it. why does everyone think theyre not a tech person despite spending 12 hours a day looking at screens and using them to earn a living? because tech has been deliberately obfuscated so other people can own the means of production!
- but im not really a politics person / on the left!!: ok but everyone hates self styled political stuff and i think this idea that the "real activists" are the scary people at the boring meeting is something we need to collectively get over. communism is a verb (tshirt slogan?) - we are all trying to build a better future piece by piece (that's why i invited you here!) but we are collectively quite bad at writing about the process and not the outputs. the left is dead, long live all the people just trying to make their community a bit nicer / more fun / more just. etc.
- im not sure what to write about: the important thing is the documenting what youre already doing and think is too boring to write up but might inspire other people to do the same bc yeah for me thats the only reasonable future i can see for politics, just a grassroots bottom up thing of people who have never organised before and always thought politics was too scary. making a poster for a group youre in is a compeltely different process to making one as a client for example. trying out coding for the first time for a social outcome is completely different to starting a tech bootcamp with the goal of getting a job. the idea is to show simple ways people can start to take control of their lives and the easiest way to do that is to show the radical potential of these day to day things.
- im working on something now and will share it when its done: the problem we have esp as autistic people is this tendancy to sit on our own in our room and make these perfect creations we put a ton of time into but then i dont think thats actually very good for other people thinking "i could have a go at that". i think the taser report is my biggest example of that, it was cool and good to do but i think it set the bar impossibly high for anyone to follow