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Was talking with a friend of mine in academia here in Ireland about introducing one of the universities in Dublin to the concept of the Small Web and Small Tech. She asked her faculty if they’d be interested.
Their response?
“We’re not looking to change things.”
I shit you not.
(In case you’re wondering why we’re fucked or who exactly is complicit. These are folks that have multi-million euro relationships with Big Tech.)
@aral I guess the "never change a running system" mentality goes a longer way the further you are from technical understanding of what is actually going on. 
@aral I'm sorry to say this kind of thing only works when it comes from the grass roots up. Universities are the Establishment. Continue to evangelise ... but yes, it's disappointing to realise how much energy is wasted stopping things from happening to support vested interests.
@aral Not being willing to change things is another way of Saying „don’t want to trouble myself.“ I know them too.
@aral@mastodon.ar.al I constantly run into this same exact attitude here in India too.
It is incredibly frustrating as an educator when you get stonewalled with no room for discussion because the people in charge just want to coast along and not actually do anything.
@axel @aral I agree on the frustrating experience. but let's look at it from the other side: we're asking for more work, possibly requiring more qualifications without any educational support, more responsibilities, for the same job and wage. why any sensible person would respond to this with something different than "no, FCK you"?! we must move a few levels up: this must be a legal requirement, with a suitable budget.
@joe_vinegar @axel Not sure what you’re on about: they said no to even hearing about it. I was going to give a talk about it to them and see if we could work together on something. The budgetary and time requirement for them was exactly zero. So they should have told me to “fuck off?” Nice. (Don’t worry, they did tell me to fuck off in their own way so the world’s not all bad.) Would it be great to have budget/funding from a higher level? Sure. But take a wild guess what the asshats at the higher level think when they’re in the pocket of Big Tech too. And then in a few years time, they’ll all turn around and cry “buh, why did the fascism happen?”
@joe_vinegar@mastodon.bida.im @aral@mastodon.ar.al I get stonewalled and dismissed about classes that I am going to be teaching. I'm not asking anyone else to get qualified or take on more responsibilities. I'm willing to put in the extra effort by myself for the already agreed upon price, but I still get a ton of resistance when I want to introduce new concepts.
The message I constantly get from most corporate clients is always to stick to their pre-approved topics list and to explicitly not teach them anything outside of those topics even if it would make their lives easier or help them make better decisions in the future.
In academic settings they're slightly more flexible, but if the program is sponsored by a corporation (most of these programs are) the usual restrictions apply.
There's literally classes where I can't even freely talk about the open source movement because clients freak out about it.
@joe_vinegar@mastodon.bida.im @aral@mastodon.ar.al I got yelled at once for having an open discussion about software ethics in one of my my classes one time.
They told me that it was "not an appropriate setting for that discussion".
Like, where else would I talk about software ethics if not a programming 101 class? smh
Christophe S.
IceEnchanter
@aral I remember I discoverd Linux and free software at my university (ULB where FOSDEM happens), for our sections we had a room with DOS-Win3.1 / Linux dual boot, and a Solaris room where I learned emacs and Lisp. I could even phone the lab to get mail from home. When I was about to leave, I heard about renewing stuff with Windows...
I am glad I was there in the timeframe that shaped my computer life, but I am sad it shifted. I don't know about today, but comm' is within the corporate medias.
@aral you’re trying to get them to drop MS office for libre office or something?
@cpdxdev “introducing one of the universities in Dublin to the concept of the Small Web and Small Tech”
Small Web:
- https://ar.al/2020/08/07/what-is-the-small-web/
- https://ar.al/2024/06/24/small-web-computer-science-colloquium-at-university-of-groningen/
Small Tech:
@aral Not surprised! Another example this time embedding corporate cultures in a “radical” software engineering course: https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/tech-companies-team-up-with-ul-for-radical-computer-science-programme-1.4493307
@aral It's especially disheartening when you compare it to how instead they move quickly to change things to use AI in academia and in the classroom.
@aral you'd have better luck with the students I bet. Faculty are entrenched in what worked for them.
