During my research residency at Ink & Switch, I discovered a thing called the tadi web. It’s the old idea that there are lots of different ideas out there for how to make computing better. For example: local-first, permacomputing, IndieWeb, blah blah blah.
The tadi web is the combination of all of them: It’s a challenge: How do you fulfil all of those different ideas at the same time? How can you possibly do that?
I had a few theories for how to do this. One of those theories was the slippy mindset and I’ve been doing it ever since and so far so good. What it means is:
When you adopt the slippy mindset, you let go of all attachment to your code. You need to be ready to lose it all at any time. Colloquially, a good measure of how slippy you are is: Imagine you wake up tomorrow and all of your code is completely gone from the face of the universe. How fucked are you? If you’re not fucked at all, you’re slippy as fuck.
Of course, one of the best ways of being slippy is having and using as little code as possible. Code brings problems. Every piece of code is a burden. You’re better off without it. So a slippy mindset does tend to mean using code less.
And hey hey, if you’re like me, then “code” also means natural code. In other words, I see all language and symbols and docs and specs as code. I can’t rely on that either within a slippy mindset.
Instead, I have to rely on cultural practice and skill and speed and habit. I have to get very quick at rebuilding things from scratch.
I suppose you might be wondering: why would the slippy mindset help you to solve the tadi web? How would “being prepared to lose your code” help with conforming to every single “better computing” idea?
The truthful answer is that I don’t know why and I don’t need to know why. The more important part is that it does seem to help, or at least it has so far. I certainly have some theories about why it works though: My hunch is:
The slippy mindset forces you to be adaptable. This makes it easier to bend your work into weird enough shapes to let you dabble with as many different philosophies as possible.
The slippy mindset makes you avoid code and technology and written record altogether. That’s one way of avoiding the problems that technology brings: Just avoid technology altogether.
The slippy mindset keeps you humble. It prevents you from getting carried away with building stacks upon stacks of your own idea that would trap you emotionally. The whole point of the tadi web is to fulfill other people’s ideas, not your own, and the slippy mindset keeps you focused on that.
But I don’t know really. And there is a strong chance that the slippy mindset doesn’t let you complete the tadi web. I haven’t got there yet: There’s still plenty more to do.
On the other hand, it hasn’t failed yet either: Things continue to move in the right direction and it’s gone much further than I ever could have imagined.
I always thought / knew it would be a good idea to try to “do the tadi web”, but I never knew exactly why. I took it on good faith that all the people behind all of these “better computings” had good reasons behind them. That’s the nice part of the tadi web: I don’t need to make all of these discoveries from scratch: There is plenty of work done already: People already understand: People have already figured out why you should do local-first, permacomputing, IndieWeb, etc… I don’t need to know why they’re good: I only need to do them and reap the rewards.
Of course, as I started to fulfil more and more of these better computings, I started to discover what those benefits were by receiving them directly. For example, I started to be able to make much more personal software for myself, and I didn’t fully know or expect how important that would end up being to me. And what’s more, I didn’t foresee how freeing it would be to opt out of the normal big-tech ecosystems. But hey, in the grand scheme of things, these benefits were definitely on the more obvious end of the spectrum.
The more unexpected (to me) benefits centered around people. I finally realised why there were so many of these better computing groups: It’s not because of the tech: It’s because of the community. By giving your idea a name you create a flag that everyone can gravitate around. It’s like shooting up a flare for everyone to meet under. Its a signal: It doesn’t matter what the idea is or how good it is or whether it’s already been done: It only matters that there is an idea and people want to believe in it, even if it’s hopeless or not very achievable. In fact, the worse the idea, the stronger the community, because it means they’ll be stuck together even longer trying (but never succeeding) to complete it.
This realisation gave me a growing disdain for the entire “better computing” world, including the now-renamed “future of coding” community. Everyone there is trying to fix tech as some noble act. But really it’s none of that: It’s a social club: That’s ALL it is. The future of coding community is not ever going to fix anything because then everyone would have to go home. If anything it’ll only cause more problems. And it can’t even leave Slack because it sees it as a tech problem rather than a people problem, which is ironic because it’s a people-centered community, not a tech one, but I guess this disconnect is exactly its problem.
The recent name change to “feeling of computing” represents a wish for this to change, but that’s all it is: a wish.
I’m no saint. I was part of this problem too. In my arroost essay, I started to understand this (shamefully late): I wasted so much time coding coding coding something complicated when what I really needed was people and their help.
In my luck, the tadi web accidentally helped me with that: It invited people in to be part of a group. It introduced me to many other like-minded people over the internet. It didn’t matter what we were doing. What mattered was we were doing things together.
Another unexpected benefit appeared.
I never quite imagined the extent of possibilities that become available to you if you truly adopt the slippy mindset. But now I know:
If you’re genuinely happy to lose ALL your code at ANY moment then certain barriers completely dissolve. If that is TRULY the case then suddenly there’s no need for any authentication or security on ANYTHING you do. If you’re slippy as fuck, then it doesn’t matter if someone hacks into your computer and deletes or vandalises EVERYTHING you own. This means… mass collaboration becomes available.
We’re still working out what that means.
All in all, I think the tadi web project has taught me everything and more than what I wanted / needed to learn from it. It has exceeded my expectations and it feels less important now / compared to now: the place it has taken me to. In that sense, my work on the tadi web is over.
Occasionally I mention it to people within its successor project but no one cares that much about it. That’s okay. It’s good I think.
So, as normal, I’ll leave my old project behind and move onto the next one and the new people who discover me will continue to associate me only with the one project they saw me working on at the time. Depending on when you found me you might have a different name for me. Am I the “sand guy” or the “cellular automate guy” or the “fractal guy” or the “dreamberd guy” or the “tadi web guy” or the “pastagang guy” or the whatever’s next guy. Either way I’m the guy. and either way I know I’ll keep moving on from one project to the next: Otherwise I’ll die.
But hey, when I finish a project I like to finish with a final artifact or final piece or something to mark the end. And sometimes that takes even longer!
With the tadi web, the final piece has gotta be the browser, surely! That’s how it all started, believe it or not: My frustration with the browser monopoly. I need to make a browser! I need to make a browser!
Whether it’s me who does the coding or not — that’s another matter.
But even when the project is finished, will the tadi web be able to die?
I mean, the tadi web itself remains unsolved. I think that might always be true. This means the cycle continues: It’ll keep reforming until it clicks. But the halting problem is real and we don’t know if it’ll get stuck in a loop or not. The tadi web may go on forever and ever and ever or it may not.
I think it’s more likely that the tadi web does die (for real: forever) though, as I’ll no longer be there to keep resurrecting it. and that’s gotta be the tadi web’s biggest weakness: it never left my grasp. That’s quite unlike something like pastagang, which I’m currently on a mission to destroy but don’t know how to (yet).
I tend to have two main projects on the go at the same time. That way, they get to do a hand-off: They get to talk to each other a bit and influence each other in both ways: on the way out / on the way in.
With the impending death of the tadi web, there’s room for something new. What will that be? Where do we go from here?
I don’t know but it’s certainly very interesting working at wikipedia right now against the backdrop of pastagang and all its nonsense.
I know the inspiration will come: (It’s already started) so I don’t feel inclined to rush.
Therefore, the tadi web can die as slow as it wants. Let it rot.