I caught a short bit of an NPR news piece the other day, in which they 
invterviewed the author of a book about the Los Angeles Library fire of 
1986 [1].  The fire destroyed some 200,000+ books and left the library 
closed for several years.  In addition to the obvious sadness about losing 
so many books, what struck me was a comment the author made about the loss 
of a public space.

This caught my attention because it resonated with previous ideas I've 
heard about public space from Noam Chomsky and more generally in the social 
science literature.  According to some, decreasing availability of public 
space in modern society corresponds to the marginalization of 
citizen-directed forms of social organization.  When individuals organize, 
they are powerful -- and that power is often "inconvenient" for 
un-democratic forces.

Public spaces in modern society traditionally include things like town 
squares, public parks, streets, and libraries.  In these places, 
connections can be made; things can happen; people can organize in support 
of actions that communities want.  But generally, there aren't a lot of 
expectations about what you're "supposed to do" there.  There are some 
pseudo-public places as well, like shopping malls; but these come with the 
expectation that you will be a well-behaved consumer when you're there.

Although I hadn't made this connection before, the notion of public access 
gnu/linux systems [2] as public spaces feels good to me; systems like SDF 
or CS.  They have the characteristics of a public place, but one not 
bounded by geography.

But like physical public places, many non-commercial online public spaces 
have been largely squeezed out by commercially-oriented pseudo-public 
places such as Facebook.  It takes more effort, more openness, more 
thought, to use CS or SDF, and the path of least resistance is probably one 
reason places like Facebook are so popular.  But they're bad for democratic 
society, and they've lost something important compared with their older, 
non-commerical, command-line-based counterparts.

This gopher entry is really just a mental bookmark for me on this topic.  
I'd like to come back to it and put some deeper thought into it.  And as 
always, I'd also be curious to hear what others think about it.

Not surprisingly, Wikipedia has an entry on public space too [3].  It would 
be cool to see some type of representation of public access gnu/linux 
systems there.

--

[1] https://www.npr.org/2018/10/13/656896695/mystery-of-a-massive-library-fire-remains-unsolved-after-more-than-30-years
(full disclosure: I still haven't heard more of it than I caught in my car)

[2] I've taken to calling them public access gnu/linux systems after a 
valuable and highly appreciated interaction I had with Richard Stallman on 
a paper I previously wrote.  The more common term is, of course, public 
access unix systems; but I increasingly support the significance of 
highlighting GNU, especially in modern systems.

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_space