[Reader-list] Sam Miller on Sarai

Jeebesh jeebesh at sarai.net
Tue Aug 18 11:28:57 IST 2009 

Confusion. Confusion.

Sarai hosts many lists. This list is only one of them.

So comments on the content of this list should be limited to this list  
only. Not all of Sarai.

And further Sarai is not a assemblage of lists. It has many offline  
practices.

And thanks monica for your reminder to think beyond freedom of speech  
binaries.

warmly
jeebesh
On 18-Aug-09, at 11:08 AM, sam miller wrote:

>
> 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.
>> _________________________________________
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>>
>>
>> _________________________________________
>> 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
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>
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