Hacker News Reader

Comment by mycroftiv | Hacker News Reader

While this is here and visible to the public, I would like to see if I can get someone connected to the EFF to tell John Perry Barlow that an old outsider hardcore Deadhead may have done something interesting in the world of computers. Also, I trolled IBM about a patent (see http://9fans.net/archive/2013/03/173) and there might be some matters of professional interest in terms of patent law. A very personal document that makes the connection between the psychedelic anarchism of the 60s and the software design of ANTS is found at http://9fans.net/archive/2013/03/206

Professional colleagues of the late University of Wisconsin Law Professor John Kidwell might also have a vague personal interest in knowing what his son has been up to in the world.

I don't like facebook or any of those things, so I'm not well "networked" in the world. Kind of isolated actually. Me and a basement of Plan 9 machines. Figured I should reach out a bit.

View on HN

I am not well versed in Plan9, but it looks to me like this can be significantly more important than we think now. Personal Clustering might very well be the PC of the future, especially with the proliferation of many small personal devices and in the path to a more ubiquitous computing environment. I also think that this could very well be just the opening to a more decentralised/democratised internet. Finding out how the intersection of the crypto/cyberpunk movement and personal clustering and open access could emerge is a very interesting concept and I would be glad to contribute or even be a simple observer in this. If someone has similar thoughts/ideas, do not hesitate to shoot me an email. I will reach out to the OP too.

I've had a lot of ideas like that also, but be warned - the Plan 9 landscape is absolutely littered with speculative, half-baked amateur ideas that go absolutely nowhere. I know this because I was part of one when I first got involved in Plan 9. As a result of that, I have tried to make the Advanced Namespace Tools something that usefully expands the capabilities of Plan 9, but the gap between the current reality of "nobody uses plan 9" and the blue-sky possibilities is huge. For right now, it's probably best to think smaller and keep that bigger picture in the back of the mind. That's my conclusion from practical experience. I do like the ideas, but reality is a hard place for ideas.

Outsider art is an important part of the ecosystem. Nice work.

Even if you aren't into "Facebook or any of those things', you could have found John Perry Barlow's mail address on his home page : https://homes.eff.org/~barlow/ - barlow@eff.org and the AT&T cell phone he lists there is probably still valid since it is also the one he lists on his Facebook page...

I always figured that it wasn't my place to bug anybody about anything. My comment was more or less meant as, "I think this might interest him, if you happen to have a personal connection, you might point it out to him" - it seems like that is a different kind of thing. See I can't really put what I've done and what is going on into any kind of meaningful context in my head, so I feel like I'd just be some crazy person knocking on the door if I tried to email and explain myself.

I just have a general sense of the world working through personal connections. I have never considered trying to contact a "public figure" as something which made sense to do as a random individual. Maybe I'm mistaken in that feeling though. I honestly haven't figured out how to interface with the world very successfully and maybe my instinct that I'm not allowed to try to contact human beings I don't know personally is wrong.

You went far enough to post this to everyone here, and follow up on it with comment(s). Most everything here is contacting human beings we/you don't know. It's OK. Don't feel so bad about it!

If he lists it on his homepage, an email concerning a project of interest is certainly not overly intrusive. Worst case it gets ignored, better case you go back and forth about your implementation.

Hey mycroftiv, https://twitter.com/JPBarlow/status/313356240237506561

Very cool work. I am glad there are people still working on Plan9 and its concepts. I think it is a very underappreciated OS but its time will come atleast its ideas. Kudos!

From one head to another, nice job.

I have heard that we are everywhere. I'm having kind of a personal crisis after having brought this project to this stage, and I feel like my personal VW has overheated and is broken down by the side of the road on the way to the show, and I could use a little bit of that famous Deadhead community helping hand to keep myself from losing it.

Thanks my friend.

We are. If you ever want to share some old tour stories, please send me an email - I'd love to hear them. Bands like the Dead and Phish are so consistent with the hacker ethos. I wonder how most people miss it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com