Disclaimer:
This pad is part of our attempt to collectively study a platform. No exhaustive knowledge precedes it, nor wishes to reach a point of full understanding, but to combine with the lived experience of the software.
These are questions not to be answered one by one, but to spend time with. Although of course if you have answers, please go ahead ;)
Can be used as a group, not as isolated questions -- so more like a questioning atmosphere?
These questions can also be applied to a group of software, more or less nameable "videoconferencing tools"?
Thesse questions might invoke other tools for comparison and extension: please welcome those in!
This is a growing list of questions, please rewrite and add as many as you wish!

Some notes from the free conversation:

no time to reflect
task system
xpub different infrastructures
pedagogy + infrastructures
split
infrastructures as smth technical that needs to work + no reflection
concepts of efficiency
do people care? (what tools they use)
invisible infrastructures (no care about how its hosted)

no critique - user "friendliness" - friendy to what?
user models: user that behaves as a model.
the "average" user
friendliness as a natural trait... specific idea of behaviour
generic and normative
same as birocracy/ bigger structures that we are a part of (politics)...
user-centered idea
care, consciousness, awareness ...
deviant different ideas on how we want to relate w/each other

spaces to talk about these issues ... > how to create the space
policies that we are enavting in link to technical tools we are using
technology + policies
bigger institution preventing diy technological iniciatives
solutions
carving out a space to use our own tools
acknowledging the need to use and to reflect on tool
task = protocol broken down to its performative tasks
criteria of success
policies broken down into goals

using your own tools > searching for it

everyne using the same tools so there is no confusion, everything streamlined

mode of education, masters freedom

criteria, grades for specific exercises
conforming to the grading systems
preventing cheating ... if not: friction with the dominant policy ... software tools - enforcing cheating prevention
plagiarism in texts, keeping a camera on, impossible screenshot making
POLICING, enforcing protocols through tech solutions
"proctoring"
private - public

monitoring on a bigger scale
speaking about software is speaking about socio-political mechanisms/protocols
non-monitoring
Greece, loans, 2008
corruption, politicians and bankers

greed, ignorance, short-sightedness (temporal)
grab, grab, grab

establishing conversations?
injecting thoughts around
organising time as a group
struggle of defending this time
creating space = creating time (1day per month/week/ ...)
to function within a sea of tasks and expectations

"Counter-productive" time right now : in the machine of productivity: making space to reflect.
Only accepted by management if the reflection produces something that enhances productivity.

Stategies of sabotaging?
Are the infrastructures we are using suitable for the tasks?

is this the most suitablke tool for the tasks we have to do? are these significant tasks? why do we do them? what protocols are we re-producing? how do the protocols enforce themselves through task and tools?

too many tasks > no time to question the tools > mechanic labour
not questioning the essentiality of the task - regardless of the tool

user-given instructions
subverting instructions
not playing along
if you have the luxury ...

- 5/ Relationality

• • what expectations and technological promises are part of being a user or maintainer? 

• • for the infrastructure to work without difficulties (troubleshooting). Maintaining difficulties - problems that generate activity/feeds the work. Gap and bridging it.
  • Expectations: having a computer, an stable internet connection, a webcam, time, willpower, enthousiasm, ... 
  • Technological promises: efficient communication, exchange of data/information, ...
  • Maintainer: functioning infrastructure, to organize the platform, to take into account the users' wishes (?)
  • maintainer can be/is a user > best option: responding to the needs in real-time (upgrading, 

• • what modes of being-with-others are more likely?

• • more likely than what?
  • comparing physical and digital being-with-others?
  • what are the affordances of the digital interfaces?
  • Dynamics between people: saying nothing (not showing your face) and putting stuff in the chat.., sharing screen, writing questions in the chat, raising your hand before speaking, 
  • Choosing a format, choosing your own level of interaction - less for granted, up to choice/conditions (not having a webcam, choosing not to show your face), anonimity: create a character/ an username. mysteriousness.

• • :::: lecture-format: listen, Q&A
  • :::: conversation: everybody is invited to speak (do they?)

• • ... taking notes obsessively and choosing not to.

• • where are boundaries between private and public appearing?

• • seeing peoples' private living/working spaces (fake book-cases), desktop (screensharing), sudo su (ssh), remote acess to a device, time in the day, video conversations in bed, no makeup, pijamas, restricting the entrance to other rooms in the livingspace, ... listening-in, joining conversations
  • hiding/obfuscating your identity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2N3GoewgC8&feature=emb_logo   (PRIVCHAT - Advancing Human Rights with Tor)

• • How is this tool able to affect a learning experience? Can you speak of positive affects as well as of negative ones?

• • +: dynamic experience, more collaborative, new models of interaction being developed, shyness (scared to pose questions) > chat function, 
  • -: distraction, 

• • Where do yo find evidences of a culture based on digital comfort, environment familiarity, ease of use, optimization, seamless and naturalized atmospheres? How do you suspect that culture settled?
  • Are there meaningful differences regarding the individual vs the groupal experiences?

+  need/assumption of being always available


---


mix of policies and things that counter the policies..
different ways the instiution thinks of its pedagogic roles
how official documents are distributed assesments are recnogized..

relation/tension between digital infrastructure that the whole uni (willemdekoning) uses and the smaller autonomous infrastructures (in thecase of xpub)..

TASK is the organising principle, tehre is no space for refelction in there on the momde of efficiency one is trapped in. 
reflection is counter 
the task-protocol as organizational-policy element meets its interpretation in software..

policy is broken down in goals which is broken down in tasks

Chronos-GHETTO! :) why use word ghetto?

individual-subject-institution

police<->monitoring<->individuals

f.e. preventing cheating is a policy, expected to be applied by teachers.
the policy-policing is moving onto software in this moment

software is taking over the policing tasks of teachers
policy through software
context in which children are growing up with now, observation becomes norm, surveillance becomes norm, seeing real friends is not norm, stimulates brain differently

some interfaces allow some counter-policing: ie removing colors
also an assumption,, people can both see colors and associate colors with anything // blue have the same impact if someone cannot see blue?

etherpad would already be out of certain 'policies' such as attribution to users..

the needs are included in the development.. especially when self-hosted/maintained by users
>> what are the relations between the self-hosted and the centralized institutional? is it a source of tension..
maintaining the problems as generative activity

in case of Xpub relying on theirselves
studentsstaf use install +maintain (?)

in the moment of assessments the school asks "what's up?"
then the compliance to the bigger infrastructure comes..
generate a pdf from the proposal ...

><checkpoints><
the moment of meeting the 'margins' of the practices..

... and upload to some proprio platform. that is ot the regular interaction with the platform
this might be the moment wher ethe friction appears but that was a moment that was expected
... + you don't get a degree if you don't make the pdf
^ no context explained to the user, why use pdf, where pdf come from, what makes accessible pdf, what is pdf meta, how pdf can be preserved, why preserve it, who will own it

unresolved tactical decision..
*proposing different way of doing things but also being compatible with the norm..

the medium can allow more anonymity too. video/audio can hide some things too, that cannot be possible phisically..

push to have camera's on

the platform proposes 'camera's on' as an 'option'.. but becomes quickly de facto compulsory.