<nettime> Hacker Culture and the fear of WYSIWYG

[Eric Schrijver <eric@ericschrijver.nl>]

Dear net-timers,

Earlier this year I found myself at the conference ‘Off the Press’, organised in Rotterdam by the Institute of Network Cultures as part of the Digital Publishing Toolkit.

It was great to have so many perspectives on digital publications, and to be able to reflect together on standards and workflows for digital publication that allow collaboration between authors, editors and designers.

It made me want to write a blog post to contribute to this, reflecting on a tendency that has since long bugged me. For me, in the field of New Media Studies, there is sometimes an undue reverence for plain text—a reverence that is appropriated from Hacker Culture. In Rotterdam, this tendency was for me exemplified in the proposal to use a plain text format called Markdown as a basis for a workflow. 

The article is called ‘Hacker Culture and the Fear of WYSIWYG’ and it appears on my blog ‘I like tight pants and mathematics’
http://i.liketightpants.net/and/hackers-culture-and-the-fear-of-wysiwyg

I would be curious as to your feedback!

Maybe in person at the ‘Post digital scholar’ conference this week—
Cheers!

Eric Schrijver

write //w// http://i.liketightpants.net/and/
design //w// http://osp.kitchen/
make //w// http://ericschrijver.nl/




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