Step 0

Uncluttering your life

Are you working flat out just to stay afloat, and not getting anything "important" done? Does it seem like there aren't enough hours in the day? Is your trash can full? Do you feel overwhelmed? No time to spare? No time to unwind?

Determine the cause. It could be (too) busy schedules getting in the way, temporary overload as an effect of changes, lack of motivation (what was labeled "important" may not be that important to you), not being able to let go of stuff (for various reasons), or it could be a lack of know-how in organisational skills. People in IT are usually overorganised down to the nitty gritty details, and that can be a clutter cause as well: over-organisation and super-rationality.

Case study: Uncluttering your life There is so much written about cluttering and uncluttering [1], some of it may be useful for you, some of it may not. Just use what you need. Here I describe three steps for uncluttering in highly generalised form that worked for me, and afaik for many others as well.

Methodology

Step 1 Make a decision to unclutter your life Once you decide you have had enough of mental clutter [2][3], you can build a practice of removing yourself from any and all contexts that attempt to add to your mental clutter.

Step 2 Rewrite your rules All of us live with inner rules about how to live our lives. Some of those come from our imagemakers (parents, family), some from our teachers, our (school) friends, and later experiences. Beliefs and rules can act like post hypnotic suggestions (spell casting) and filter our experience of reality. Some indigenous call those "pretender voices", like:

  "I don't think I can ...." 
   "I must make others happy" 
   "It doesn't matter ..." 
   "You can't make me ..." 
   "It's not fair ..." 
   "I'm a [label] if I ..." 
   "What now?" 
   "It's [label] fault!" 
   ... 

Alter wording the spell you are apparently casting on yourself:

   State your rule 
   Choose the most significant verb or noun in your rule 
   Choose at least two words that rhyme with that word 
   Choose a word that's opposite 
   Choose a freely associated word that has nothing whatsoever to do with the words in your rule 
   Restate the original rule, substituting the new words and read the rules out loud to yourself 
   How is that old rule doing? 

When learning something mechanical, like driving a car or changing a rule, at first you have to pay attention to the details of shifting gear, until you no longer have to. That happens when your body "knows". But it only "knows" for that (type) of car or gear shift. When driving another car, shifting gear may need your attention again. This is like that. For a while, monitor what happens closely in health, relationships, passion, growth, and contribution dimensions, and make changes until you no longer have to.

Step 3 Dealing with the past and others

Something happens. Trace what just happened and what might be related, what you ate, who you met, what was seen, heard, read, smelled, what meanings you made (and what other possible meanings can be made) and meanings about meanings made, what significance you assigned to the meanings made, and practice (other) responses in a safe setting, or the next time the situation seems to reoccur. And don't be hard on yourself when you do not do what you have set as intent for a "next time". All that slack and understanding you gave others because you think it's okay to make mistakes? Give it to yourself now. People from your past may reappear and may attempt to unjustly write karma in your book. Investigate and pull out the plank again if need be! Some good questions to ask when people seem to try to write karma in your book may be: Is what happened then relevant now? Was it even that serious? Was that situation even in my control? Does what I heard that person just say actually have any validity or are they just trolling me to get me to react in for them familiar and comfortable ways?

Synthesis

Focus on your priorities, make efficient use of your time on this planet, choose a design for your life that allows for relaxing and replenishment, and make it so.

References

[1] 27 Great Tips to Keep Your Life Organized http://zenhabits.net/27-great-tips-to-keep-your-life-organized/ [2] The Single Principle You Need to Clean Out the Mind Clutter for Good http://www.becomingminimalist.com/declutter-your-mind/ [3] Clutter Clearing Anxiety http://www.fengshuivermont.com/pubart/five.html

Exercises to map your data production and management and how data and devices/media interconnect

Before entering in the wonderful pathway to become a zen user and developer of technologies, and in order to adopt better privacy and digital security practices, you should first reflect and understand what are the things (data, devices, other) you want to protect. To do so, you will need first to map, assess and analyse your production of data and how this data relates to your documents and personal folders, your social media accounts and on-line identities and/or your physical devices you have at hand. One way of doing that is to draft a table in order to map your production of data. To do so you can for instance try to answer to the following questions: What kind of data do you produce and or manage? With whom?

There is data that you produce yourself (documents, emails, images, videos, design etc) and because you are the one producing those you can decide under which conditions they are released, shared, made available online for new uses by third actor parties. And there is data you manage that has been given or send to you by others, or that you have downloaded from somewhere.

We propose you to draft first a list of the data you produce yourself. This can include the documents your produce for your work, activism, personal pleasure moments. It can also include the data you produce when writing emails, publishing tweets, drafting posts in your blog etc. Then you can draft a list of data you are managing but is produced by others, this can encompass from information given to you by your colleagues, friends, relatives etc. And finally, you can also list the type of data you are sharing with others, for instance if you share specific devices such as your mobile, external hard drive or computer with other persons, or if you are sharing social media profile or email accounts with other persons such as your family, partner, colleagues.

Where is this data? Back up?

This question is about understating where do your host your data and by data we are talking about the data that is produced by you and also the one that is produced by others but under your management. First of all, when answering this question you should clarify where is hosted the data, is it inside your computer, an external drive, your phone? Is it hosted in somebody else server (for instance if you do not download all your mails, then those are leaving in a server owned by a company) or somewhere in the cloud (a dropbox or a social media account for instance)? When answering those questions in relation to all your data, you should then ask yourself how do you keep your data? For instance do you keep your personal/professional/activist data together? And in complement, is this data hosted offline or online? This last dimension is very important as sometimes because of new applications that enable to sync data between your different devices or between your devices and applications hosted online, you might not realise that the data you thought was only leaving offline is indeed present also somewhere online. We will come back later on the sync dimension and which step you should take into account in order to always know where is your data really leaving.

How sensitive is this data?

You can answer to this question by asking yourself for each type of data you have listed in your map of data, what would happen if this particular data would suddenly disappear? For instance, if your email account is closed down, if your computer or external hard drive is stolen or break up, if you erase by mistake a folder, etc?. The other side of this question, is what happens if this data is seen and copy by third actor parties you did not intend to share information with? In that sense, the question is to evaluate how much personal data about you and others rest in the different type of data you manage? Imagine that you handle sensitive data of others persons you are working with, name health records, personal emails, love letters etc.

When assessing those different questions, you will ask yourself about the back up you have for the sensible data you really do not want to lose or see in the hands of non intended third actor parties. This should enable you to take decisions about which type of data you want to regularly back up and to decide also where those back up will leave. Besides, it will also enable you to deal with the question of what to do with your data when traveling? What type of data you need with you, which one is too sensible for carrying it with you, which one you can easily access online, etc?

How do you build trust in relation to your data and how you store it?

To be developped

Sync (online/offline) – apps permissions

Uncluttering your machine

Is your desktop a shining example of neatness and cleanliness? Or is it a big heap of icons only fit to be sorted in some manner? How many files are in your Documents folder? What does your directory structure look like? Easy to work with and a natural fit for you and what you do? Can you easily find what you are looking for or does the way you organise suck totally and drain your energy? Graphical user interfaces (GUIs) are helpful for many tasks, but they box you in in the tasks the designer designed the GUI for. M$ systems come with a preset set of directories, and so does Linux (if it isn't stripped). Like beliefs and rules, such predefined organisations can act like post hypnotic suggestions (spell casting) and filter our experience of reality and affect us in undesirable ways. Not only that, standard default folders tend to fill up with junk files and folders that are not at all important.

Case study: Uncluttering your machine

There is so much written about cluttering and uncluttering your machine, about (re)organising your files and directories [1], some of it may be useful for you, some of it may not. Just use what you need. Here I describe steps for reorganising your machine in highly generalised form that worked for me for building a resilient machine that allows me to focus on what I want to do with it and quickly recover from intrusions and crashes.

Methodology

Step 1 Make a decision to unclutter your machine

Cluttered systems are reflections of cluttered lives. From having chosen to unclutter your life, you can choose to also unclutter your machine.

Step 2 Create your own file system from scratch!

Our personal data (documents, photographs, emails, etc...) is the most valuable component in our interaction with computers, because it can be irreplaceable if lost. The most minimalist and safe implementation is putting all files you wish to keep and all files containing personal data on an external harddrive that you only mount when you need access to it. In a public space put the machine offline before mounting any external disk (preferably do not connect in public spaces at all).

Step 3 Separate application files from data files

On a Linux system this is already the case. Most applications make directories with a dot in front of its name that are default not visible (you have to set "Show Hidden Files" in your "View" menu when using a GUI). Apparently, in M$ there is no such separation and the My Document directory gets a lot of junk added to it by just about everything. Remove your icons/links to “My Documents” in your menus and desktop (everywhere) and replace them with links to the folders you created and you care about, fake or not!

Step 4 Customise and accessorise

Having unique icons for each folder does allow you to more quickly visually identify which folder is which, and thus saves you time when you’re finding files. You can get some beautifying stuff for Linux from gnome-look, kde-look, xfce-look and many more sites.

Step 5 Regular backups

Data backup is something that everybody should do, but unfortunately, few people do it on a regular basis. Synthesis Focus on your priorities, make efficient use of your time on this planet, choose a design for your life that allows for relaxing and replenishment, and make it so. References

[1] Zen and the Art of File and Folder Organization http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/15677/zen-and-the-art-of-file-and-folder-organization/ [2] Permissions http://linuxcommand.org/lc3_lts0090.php [3] How to Backup Linux? 15 rsync Command Examples http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2010/09/rsync-command-examples/ [4] Unison http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/

Uncluttering electronic waste

What is e-waste? How do I dispose of my "old" computer(s)? Can I reuse (parts of) it?

E-waste refers to electronic products nearing the end of their "useful life": “Mom, there’s a new game. Can I have it?””Your birthday is coming up. What is it called?”

The huge cardboard box the game DVD is sold in shows requirements for running the game. The latest M$ windows operating system. Meaning, need that too. And oh dear, the hardware either doesn’t run the latest M$ operating system or it is too slow, killing the fun of playing the game. Need to replace that too. “Oh mom?” Make that new machine x number of children.

Case study: Uncluttering e-waste

There is so much written about e-waste, about (re)using (parts of) it [1], some of it may be useful for you, some of it may not. Just use what you need. Here I describe how we can use the M$ cycle as opportunity, and recycle “outdated” PC hardware. And depending on context, women can build small local businesses with it, charging for the costs of collecting old machines and time and energy spent on rebuilding machines and installing software.

Methodology

Step 1 Collect "old" machines

It is often possible to collect old machines from family and friends, give-away stores, 2nd hand stores, (online) markets, you name it, and then use some machines for parts to repair the others. PC's are easy to find thanks to the M$ consumerism cycle, routers are not that often replaced and are harder to find. Phones seem to be replaced even faster than PC’s in Europe and the US, but not elsewhere in the world. If possible, ask for the "story" of the machine, why it is no longer being used. It gives clues as to what works and what doesn't.

Step 2 Take out (re)useful parts

If the machine is *really* e-waste, as in, its disk has crashed or the processor got fried, open it up, and take out the harddrive, ethernet card(s), graphic cards, and any other cards and components that may be reuseful. Test the parts you took out by putting them in a functional linux machine. Build new machines out of old machines.

   Step 3 Put firm- and/or soft-ware on it 

Linux expands the life of hardware by reducing overhead and needing less system resources, which is why it runs fine on older machines. Routers and other non-PC boxes: Some firmware are non-rewriteable while others are upgradeable, meaning that it is possible to upgrade the firmware of the device by connecting it to your PC in a particular configuration and then running the “flashing” software. Many routers can be flashed with openwrt or dd-wrt firmware. You can easily “jailbreak” a phone with tools such as Pangu or evasi0n.

   Step 4 Giveaways 

The art of giving comes to mind. Thanks to the insane commodify-everything western mindset, giving away stuff may make a receiver feel indebted. Giving in a way that this doesn't happen is an art in and of itself. One "safer" way is to have a table "on the side" (bazaar, not a cathedral) during events, where people can anonymously "leave" machines and others can "take" machines freely. Add notes as to the history of the machine: whether it is broken, repaired, and if so what was repaired. If anything fails, the new steward has clues where to look. The care with which these notes are made, the OS was installed, and how the machine is presented on such a table, presets the first connection a new steward of the machine makes. The new steward is not receiving crumbs that fell off a (big) business plate, not a watered down whiskey, not a feature deprived OS … she gets stewardship over a full-blown, complete, freakishly configurable and flexible intuitive ready OS with hardware having a second life. It only gets better!

Synthesis

Focus on your priorities, make efficient use of your time on this planet, choose a design for your life that allows for relaxing and replenishment, and make it so.

References

[1] The Big Question: How big is the problem of electronic waste, and can it be tackled? http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/the-big-question-how-big-is-the-problem-of-electronic-waste-and-can-it-be-tackled-1908335.html

Our physical and well being relation to data and devices

While working on computer, smart phones and other devices, we tend to forget our body. Our body freezes. Fingers, eyes and ears follow the rhythm of our clicks, scrolls and swipes. In almost motionless, staring at the screen, the user forgets the possibilities of movement, pause or improving posture and even is imposing on the body pains and discomforts. While some senses get paralyzed, our brain becomes intertwined with the machine: processing a lot of data and information, multi-tasking and executing creative, administrative challenges while managing our engagements and multiple identities... our neurological activity increases. There is a risk in becoming inseparable of our hardware technologies. Actually we can do almost everything with a machine: communicate, getting ourselves organized, informed, be entertained, play, have sex, ... To have a healthy relationship with our machines is hence a key for our well being.

“Around 2000, I made a video installation “Does Technology ever end or does it restart automatically?” it was the moment when there was fear that the machines' clock would crash on the number 2000 <Y2K problem, the Millennium bug>: display of dates and the automated ordering of dated records or real-time events would get twisted. The media media hysteria around the potential failure of our electronic and digital devices which were surrounding us, made me reset (reboot in another distro). In the ecstasy of integrating tech in my daily life, exploring avatars and audiovisual creation, design to communicate political struggles, my hand was hurting, and I couldn't click the mouse anymore. I had to change my daily routine, care about my body and cure myself. I couldn't hold my keys nor masturbate :), .. what was I going to do with my right hand.”

SHOW THE PAIN open mouth and lips as wide as possible simultaneously raising your eyebrows as high as possible, hold while counting to 5 repeat a few times

(A/ A,separation/séparation) (1) strategies of prevention SCHEDULE: Work out a regular pattern for your day, and stick to it. Your brain will relax a bit if it knows “what comes next”. Plan non-digital activities.

PROCESS: If you get an idea or think of something you need to do, write it down. Your brain is actually a bad early implementation of Calendar reminders, Email Notifications and Associative Tagging. Brain reminders aren’t timed, so they will pop up at the most inconvenient moments. By writing it down you literally tell your brain that it’s ok to let go of the thought.

WORKFLOW: Interrupt Driven Work is a hassle. You do some work from your todo, but mainly you keep getting interrupted by new email, IRC and instant messages and phonecalls. Ideally, turn off the immediate notification and just check your email/social media/IRC / … once or twice a day.

PROCESS: If you get an idea or think of something you need to do, write it down. Your brain is actually a bad early implementation of Calendar reminders, Email Notifications and Associative Tagging. Brain reminders aren’t timed, so they will pop up at the most inconvenient moments. By writing it down you literally tell your brain that it’s ok to let go of the thought.

CHARGING: Charge your devices in a place which is not easy reachable. Do some stretching while reaching them.Go a Bit Off the Grid and use alternative energies to charge your devices so we reinforce the relation between technology and nature.

DAYLIGHT: You need about to get some decent daylight (20-40 minutes daily) to reset your body clock. Sitting in front of the window and sunlight can be limiting your screen view. Going outside can increase your healthy look... you will look better on the screen after! The quality of light also influences your sleeping/dreaming.

SLEEPING: Let's not take our daemons and shells scripts into our state of dreaming. Not having your devices next to your bed works wonders for your sleep well and good morning rituals.

FOOD & DRINK: Water can safe plants! And if you drank to much, don't forget to go to the toilet once in a while.

(2) Exercises to disconnect

Create performative events for a human understanding of technology. Probably besides of becoming an icon or a symbol of a visual interface, I guess you have to be minimum 2 people: 0 en 1 to make the process into a social momentum. # Let's go analogue – physical.

_ make props for all the hardware components in the computer

  (from cardboard, scrap, .. take your time to make them) 

_ distribute props over the #actors, _ create a script to enact the process (scenario)

exemple scripts: Screensavers, sleep mode, hibernate, standby or off. In this performative event the switching on and shutting down of a computer is (re)enacted through a collective body. What is happening with our hardware and software when we go to sleep or other modi of existence. Link:

Home Is a Server In this performative event we install a webserver and understand about Wiki's and it's recepies on a virtual machine SSH? Doors to open, commands to learn to activate our space into a home while baking pancakes. Link:

Crypto Dance ! In this performative event security is at stake in a dance which introduces basic crypto like in bob and eve do a lambada. (need still to be developed by Hacking with care)

Strategies of care

Chair Strike installation at the Academy of fine Arts Vienna, PC-Lab, in the framework of Strike, she said, by GirlsOnHorses (Auer, Egermann, Straganz, Wieger).

By paying more attention to the body and ICT work experiences, 'WORKINGSTILLWORKING” developed a variety of micro-movements and creative habits, tactics, gestures and practices, consciously or unconsciously to break free from motionless postures, painful or stultifying. Together with HACKING WITH CARE, they published a zine: http://workingstill-stillworking.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/AttentionSomaticTheZine1.3.pdf, Attent!on som(t)a(c)tics: With the micro movements of our bodies when using our devices, we improvise and explore forms of embodied emancipation within a digital context.

describe your (intimate, pleasant, difficult or binding…) relationships with computers and propose ways of subjugating those routines.

http://hackingwithcare.in/wiki/doku.php/projects : Online Resources for psychological and physical well-being, health, self-care, caregiving, in general and in the specific contexts of activism and hacking. Material to explore and raise awareness on related political issues, among caregivers, hackers-who-care, and friends of a good fair world, with the purpose of inspiring alliances. Caring for one self can be a collective emancipatory process to produce a collective platform of liberating instructions, gestures, movement or poetry.

SOMATIC EXPLORATIONS AND LIBERATING EXCERSISES RE-EMBODYING RELATIONS TO OUR DAILY TECHNOLGIES: TRICKS OF SELF AWARENESS(3)(4)(5) ???strategies of curing ???

We know adjustable chairs, but what about adjustable software to different cognitive capabilities.

disable auto-login check cognitive capacity Using short cuts Organize a Hands massage workshop Switch between commandline and graphical Interface … lalala, do do, reeeeeeee: Technology accelerates to find solutions of interfacing to the human body Technology can be used to persuade people into a behaviour change. We can change our behaviour in relation with technology.

State of inertia & Red Light Reflex Long hours hunched over your hardware can cause the muscles of the front of the body to contract while the body pulls inward. The Red Light reflex is a protective reflex found in all vertebrate animals and is a response to fear, anxiety, prolonged distress or negativity. Rounded shoulders, depressed chest and the head jutting forward can lead to chronic neck pain, jaw pain, hip pain, mid-back pain and shallow breathing. The inability to breathe deeply deprives your brain, blood and muscles of the oxygen they need to function properly. This in turn can cause fatigue, depression, anxiety, sleep problems and exacerbate allergies.

Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) http://www.workrave.org/ Workrave is a program that assists in the recovery and prevention of Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI). The program frequently alerts you to take micro-pauses, rest breaks and restricts you to your daily limit.

(1) Annie Abrahams,separation/séparation http://collection.eliterature.org/2/works/abrahams_separation/separation/index.htm# (2) http://bluehackers.org/howto (3) http://workingstill-stillworking.net (4) Anne Goldenberg, Hacking with Care : Attention, bien-être et politique de l’ordinaire dans le milieu hacktiviste: http://dpi.studioxx.org/en/hacking-care-attention-bien-%C3%AAtre-et-politique-de-l%E2%80%99ordinaire-dans-le-milieu-hacktiviste (5) L'ERSE POSTURE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Va0ZLaZHQlU (6) http://networkcultures.org/blog/2007/04/23/linux-for-theatre-makers-embodiment-and-nix-modus-operandi/