[Reader-list] Sam Miller on Sarai

[sam miller]

mmm, Kshmendra - I've changed my mind since then, and Sarai has certainly changed. It has sadly become a platform for bigotry and curse-swapping.

 

I'd now quite like to see a bit more post-modern jargon, and a lot less willy-waving. 

 

And yes - I strongly agree with the note Monica just sent - surely there has to be a greater emphasis on finding and investigating common ground, and, I would add, on collaboration.  

 

Sam

 

   
> Date: Tue, 11 Aug 2009 02:26:02 -0700
> From: kshmendra2005 at yahoo.com
> To: reader-list at sarai.net
> Subject: Re: [Reader-list] Sam Miller on Sarai
> 
>  
> "Many of these discussions are suffused with post-modern jargon, but usually they are worth the effort."
> 
> 
> --- On Mon, 8/10/09, Naeem Mohaiemen <naeem.mohaiemen at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> From: Naeem Mohaiemen <naeem.mohaiemen at gmail.com>
> Subject: [Reader-list] Sam Miller on Sarai
> To: "sarai list" <reader-list at sarai.net>
> Date: Monday, August 10, 2009, 9:18 PM
> 
> 
> On Sarai, excerpt from Sam Miller's book...
> 
> In the basement of a modern building at the foot of the Ridge, ten
> minutes from the site of Ludlow Castle, are the offices of an
> organisation that calls itself ‘Sarai’. Anyone who asks the simple
> question ‘What is Sarai?’ may not get such a simple answer. It is a
> place, but it also an idea. Sarai is Delhi at its most modern, its
> most virtual. It exists in a series of rooms in Civil Lines, but it
> also orbits in cyber-space.  According to its own publicity
> literature, Sarai ‘encompasses an inter-disciplinary research
> programme, a platform for critical reflection, a screening space, a
> convivial context for online and offline conversations and a media
> lab’. I have known about Sarai for several years, as an unashamed
> lurker on its e-mail groups – receiving regular updates on a eclectic
> range of subjects, often about Delhi, ranging from ‘the Culture of
> Telephone Booths’, through ‘Society and the Soap Factory to ‘Locating
> Sexuality through the eyes of Afghan and Burmese Refugee Women in
> Delhi’. Many of these discussions are suffused with post-modern
> jargon, but usually they are worth the effort.
> 
> Sarai – the non-virtual part of it – consists of three rooms: a
> private inner sanctum where individuals have their own workstations; a
> glass-walled public access computer area (the media lab), and a large
> meeting room with a café. No-one looked up when I walked in and sat
> down, eavesdropping. There was a three-way discussion about French
> philosophers (Foucault and de Certeau), a young man was retying his
> pony tail as he watched cricket on a wall-mounted TV (not quakeproof –
> a potentially lethal missile, I decided), and a young woman was
> sitting at a table staring at her coffee mug as if it were an object
> of worship. I interrupted her to ask for help getting access to the
> Sarai online archive (I needed to find out more about Ludlow Castle).
> She gave me a split-second look of exasperation, before getting to her
> feet and handing me over to the resident computer expert. He took me
> into the media lab (with only one of the eight computers free), sat me
> down in front of a terminal and began logging me in. ‘Username: guest.
> Password: guest. You do know Linux and Mozilla Firefox[1], don’t you?’
> ‘Er, yes - a little.’ I was lying. I suppose I was rather proud of
> myself for having heard of them, and too embarrassed to admit that I
> hadn’t ever used them. I knew that they were the main software
> competition to Microsoft, and that they were, in some way that I
> didn’t quite understand, alternative, democratic and trendy. He’d put
> me on to a local area network where I could now access the archive. I
> entered ‘Ludlow Castle Delhi’ in the search box, and the entire screen
> went white. So did I. My usual solution, ‘Ctrl-Alt-Del’, had no
> effect, I panicked. And looking surreptitiously around, knowing I was
> doing something very naughty, I pressed my finger down hard on the
> on/off key. With a tell-tale squeak the screen went blank. I looked
> around again; no-one was staring with disdain in my direction. I’d
> escaped detection, and thirty seconds later I turned the computer on
> again, to a profusion of messages about how sinful I’d been to turn it
> off improperly.
> 
> [1] Mozilla Firefox – Netscape’s successor and the main rival to
> Explorer as an Internet browser. A firefox is a red panda still found
> in India. Mozilla is a contraction of Mosaic Killer (Mosaic was the
> first widely used Internet browser). Linux is an open-source operating
> system, invented by Linus Thorvalds, a rival to MS Windows and Apple’s
> Mac OS.
> _________________________________________
> reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city.
> Critiques & Collaborations
> To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header.
> To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list 
> List archive: &lt;https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/>
> 
> 
> 
> _________________________________________
> reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city.
> Critiques & Collaborations
> To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header.
> To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list 
> List archive: &lt;https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/>

_________________________________________________________________
Sports, news, fashion and entertainment. Pick it all up in a package called MSN India
http://in.msn.com