Ahmet Alphan Sabancı's Blog, page 4
October 27, 2020
From the Mail – 27.10.2020
I was not expecting a book pre-order turn into an almost two month adventure but life in Turkey is full of surprises.
I’ve been not pre-ordering dead-tree books from abroad for a while, mostly because I have trust issues with Turkish postal service. So many bad memories I don’t want to remember. But for some reason I’ve thought getting a paperback copy of this book is a good idea.
It’s published in September 10th and the publisher sent it the same day. After about one month without any book, decided to reach out to the postal service. But instead of an apology or any type of help, they just recited the Wikipedia definition of how postal services work. Not even the already getting old “sorry, it’s the pandemic” excuse. So I turned to the publisher and their customer services was way too nice. They apologized for something they have no control over it and offered another copy sent via UPS courier. I was surprised but happy.
And finally, the book arrived yesterday. UPS was quick to get the package out of customs and deliver it to me. Now I’m waiting for the weekend to dive into it. If that looks like something you’d like to read, here’s the book’s website.
(Sidetone, I’ve learned that iOS and macOS recognizes their tracking numbers and directs me to the tracking page with one click. Sadly, none of the Turkish companies are included in their list.)
Why I’ve told you all of this? Mostly because it’s the perfect example to explain my love for ebooks. One click and I have the book. And since most of the publishers I buy from regularly sell their ebooks without DRM, I don’t have to deal with anything extra too.
So, if you ever consider sending me ARCs —which is something I’d love to receive more but looks like I should be a member of a secret club for that to happen— or gift me books, either make sure the publisher sends those via a courier company or just go for the ebook version. I’m totally fine with ebooks.
September 28, 2020
Passwords: 0
One of the things I enjoy doing most is think about the terms we’re using. Not sure if that’s because how my brain makes sense of the world around me or something that comes with my philosopher side but thinking and writing about the words, ideas and systems feels like a game to me.
That’s why, time to time, I wrote about the terms that seemed worth writing it down in the blog. But the more I went deeper thinking about the world we’re in and what’s going on, some words or concepts started to appear more and stronger. So I’ve decided to collect my ideas about these, collecting the words in the meantime.
I’ve started this blogchain with 0, because I wanted to talk about the term “passwords” first. The term I’m stealing from Baudrillard. He defines it like this:
Passwords – the expression seems to me to describe quite well a quasi-initiatory way of getting inside things, without, however, drawing up a list. For words are bearers and generators of ideas – perhaps even more than the reverse. As weavers of spells and magic, not only do they transmit those ideas and things, but they themselves metaphorize and metabolize into one another by a kind of spiral evolution. It is in this way that they are ‘passers’ or vehicles of ideas.
Passwords – Jean Baudrillard, p. IX
What I do —or want to do— with the words and concepts in this series (or experiment?) is quite similar to what Baudrillard does in the book Passwords.
We think we advance by way of ideas – that is doubtless the fantasy of every theorist, every philosopher – but it is also words themselves which generate or regenerate ideas, which act as ‘shifters’.
Passwords – Jean Baudrillard, p. X
Like he says, words we use to think and generate ideas shapes those ideas and change how it can evolve. This is why we’re seeing more and more examples of discussions based on definitions or how should we define what we’re going through. Because the words we use to define our ideas and experiences plays an important role, most of the time without us noticing it.
The words we’re using, how we’re using and who defines what it can or should mean is an important power. Letting the words defined for us to shape our ideas also means giving up our imagination.
This is especially important today. No one can deny that we’re going through some paradigm shift globally. Whether it’s the jackpot or something more positive, there’s a radical change going on. This change requires new words and concepts to think about it and discuss the meaning of the old ones.
Because words pass, then; because they pass away, metamorphose, become ‘passers’ or vehicles of ideas along unforeseen channels not calculated in advance, the expression ‘passwords’ seems to me to enable us to reapprehend things, both by crystallizing them and by situating them in an open, panoramic perspective.
Passwords – Jean Baudrillard, p. X
That’s why I feel the need for passwords. Passwords for the weird and deadly interesting times.
September 27, 2020
Röportaj Derlemesi (Haziran – Eylül 2020)
Eylül ayı ilginç bir şekilde arka arkaya röportajlar gerçekleştirdiğim bir dönem oldu. Bununla birlikte blogda paylaşmayı unuttuğum birkaç daha eski röportaj/görüşü de topluca bir post hâlinde paylaşmak iyi olur diye düşündüm.
E-Bültenler
Üzerine yoğun bir şekilde konuştuğum ve görüşümün alındığı konulardan birisi e-bültenler oldu. Bunda elbette asıl sebep 100 bülteni ve 2 yılı geride bırakan NewsLabTurkey Ne Okuyor. Bu konu üzerine Journo ve NewsLabTurkey’de toplu röportajların bir parçası olarak konuştum.
E-bültenler: Eski dosttan, gazeteciliğe yeni soluk – Journo Gazeteciliğe yeni bir soluk: E-bültenler – NewsLabTurkey
Ayrıca Kadir Has Yeni Medya Bölümü’nın gerçekleştirdiği “Yeni Medya Söyleşileri” serisinin de konuğu olarak e-bültenler ve NLTR Ne Okuyor üzerine konuştum. Bu keyifli sohbet için de Gülin Küpelioğlu’na çok teşekkürler.
DEHB
Geçtiğimiz haftalarda DEHB tanısı alma ve DEHB ile yaşamanın zorlukları üzerine Twitter’da yazdıklarım kayda değer bir ilgi toplamıştı. Bunun üzerine Gökhan Korkmaz bana sorduğu soruları haberleştirdi. Bu sayede ben de kendimi daha detaylı bir şekilde ifade etme fırsatı bulmuş oldum.
Ahmet Sabancı: DEHB’ye Karşı Önyargı Hayatı En Çok Zorlaştıran Konulardan Biri – Pressenza Türkçe
Sosyal Medya Yasası
Çok konuştuk, konuşmaya çalıştık ama maalesef bu yasa da geçti ve artık internetimizin bir parçası. Bu haberlerde de en azından benim perspektifimden nasıl etkileri olabileceğini ifade etmeye çalıştım.
Turkey’s president cracks down on social media – The Economist Torba yasa teklifi siber özgürlükleri kısıtlıyor mu? – Yeşil Gazete
September 22, 2020
Rethinking How I Use Internet: 8
Goodreads today looks and works much as it did when it was launched. The design is like a teenager’s 2005 Myspace page: cluttered, random and unintuitive. Books fail to appear when searched for, messages fail to send, and users are flooded with updates in their timelines that have nothing to do with the books they want to read or have read. Many now use it purely to track their reading, rather than get recommendations or build a community. “It should be my favourite platform,” one user told me, “but it’s completely useless.”
Why Goodreads is Bad for Books
Goodreads is one of those platforms people really hate but feel like there’s no other option. Especially with Amazon buying it years ago and only adding Kindle integration and not dealing with anything else (such as their major spam account issue and not even being able to report them) it’s turning more and more into a website which is used by Amazon for selling more stuff.
There has been some discussions I’m following about what could be done about it. Tom Critchlow‘s “Library JSON“. Decentralized projects always gets me excited but at the same time I know that it’s practically impossible to turn it into something adoptable by everyone. Mostly because decentralized projects generally think about people who are technically more capable.
This doesn’t mean that I’m not going to test it when Tom makes a more robust version of Library JSON. I’m sure I will. But right now I have a new possible favorite called TheStoryGraph. There are many things I like about it and it really solves a lot of the personal problems I have with Goodreads.
From there, The StoryGraph recommends books, marked by thematic tags and length and accompanied by well-researched synopses. But beyond the design and descriptive tags, there is one major difference Goodreads users will notice: ratings are almost unnoticeable, deprioritised to the bottom of the page.
Why Goodreads is Bad for Books
TheStoryGraph is definitely more social but not like Facebook or Twitter, which are focused on playing you with their algorithms and not actually caring about what you want from these platforms. They’re actually focused on helping people to find new books.
Of course there are things TheStoryGraph has to be careful about while growing up. Tom’s quote on this summarizes it beautifully:
But Tom Critchlow argues that a “better Goodreads”, with functionality such as The StoryGraph offers, must avoid falling for the “seductive and imaginary ideas about social networks” that doomed a long list of previous competitors, including his own. “So many people dream of disrupting Goodreads,” he says, “[but] focus on the wrong things, myself included.”
Why Goodreads is Bad for Books
So far it seems like they’re not going to fall into it and I hope I’m not wrong.
Right now I moved all my Goodreads data to TheStoryGraph and will be using it actively. You can check my profile and see how it works and looks like, you can do it from here.
August 24, 2020
ADHD/DEHB Önyargıları ile Mücadele Etmek
Geçtiğimiz hafta içerisinde Twitter’da yazdığım uzun bir thread ile bir yetişkin olarak ADHD (DEHB – Dikkat Eksikliği ve Hiperaktivite Bozukluğu) ile yaşamanın ve buna karşı önyargı ve bilgisizliğin ne gibi zorluklar getirdiğini anlattım. İnsanların gerçekten bu konuda daha fazla konuşmaya, paylaşmaya ve desteğe ihtiyacı olduğunu da görmemi sağladı bu tecrübe.
Bu konuda daha sık yazmayı ve bir şeyler yapmayı düşünüyorum ama bir yandan da yazdıklarımın yalnızca Twitter’da kalmasını istemediğim için kişisel bloguma da bir kopyasını almak istedim. Tweetler bu linkte, buradaki versiyonu sadece okumayı kolaylaştırmak için ufak düzeltiler yapılmış hâli.
Geçtiğimiz günlerde yabancı ADHD topluluğunda tartışılıyordu ADHD konusunda bilgi edinmekten yardım almaya kadar birçok sürecin neredeyse ADHD düşmanı olduğu konusu. Çok ciddi bir sorun bu. https://t.co/n3Q8l7YnPA
Mesela:
You want the real ADHD experience?
— Pina
Most ADHD resources: pic.twitter.com/M4lxVLy5Q2
August 16, 2020
[WaDI Newsletter] Embracing the SNAFUBAR
July 17, 2020
Sosyalkafa’da Özgür Hocamı Andık
11 Temmuz, benim için çok önemli insanlardan birisi olan ve “Özgür Hocam” olarak andığım Özgür Uçkan’ın ölümünün beşinci yıldönümüydü. Bunun anısında 17 Temmuz akşamı Sosyalkafa ve Türk-İnternet.com ortaklığında çok değerli bir canlı yayın gerçekleştirildi. Özgür Uçkan’ın ailesi ve eski arkadaşlarının yanı sıra internet aktivizmi ve hak mücadelesi alanında beraber çalıştığı birçok isim de yayına katıldı ve hem Özgür hocayı hem de birlikte geçirdiğimiz süreçleri, yaptıklarımızı ve anılarımızı paylaştık.
Dürüst olmak gerekirse, böyle önemli bir ismi bu şekilde anabilmemiz fazlasıyla önemliydi. Ayrıca turk-internet.com’un bu yıldan başlayarak her yıl vereceği “Türk İnternet’ine Katkı” ödülünün ilkini de Özgür Uçkan’a bu yayında vermesi, Türkiye’deki internet kültürüne ve alanın gelişimine katkılarını anmanın güzel bir yolu oldu.
Kendisine ve bizler üzerinde bıraktığı etkiye dair söylenecek çok şey var. 2 saatlik bu yayında bir kısmını anabildik ama bunları unutmamamız ve üzerine daha fazlasını inşa etmemiz gerektiğini de hatırladık bu yayın sayesinde. Umuyorum ki bu yayın güzel bir ivme yaratacak.
Bir de küçük duyuru ekleyeyim. Geçtiğimiz aylarda Özgür hocamın kişisel sitesinin bir şekilde kaybolduğunu ve alan adının alakasız kişilerce satın alındığını farkedip üzülmüştüm. Alternatif Bilişim Derneği’nden arkadaşlar sitenin arşivini derleyip orjinal hâliyle tekrar yayına aldılar. Bu değerli arşivin tekrar internete döndüğünü görmek çok mutlu etti beni. Çok teşekkürler emeği geçen herkese.
Daha Önce:
Özgür Hocamın Ardından…My Interview in “Speaking Freely”SosyalKafa – Aaron Swartz Özel BölümüÇıta yükseltme oyunu (Evrensel)
July 9, 2020
Summer is Here and Change Comes With It
July 2, 2020
The Need for Private Digital Places
Today Jay Owens wrote a really good Twitter thread on the problems of blaming private social places like Facebook and WhatsApp groups for everything.
Couple of rather strange articles lately arguing that Groups Are Bad And Everything Should Be Public.
— Jay Owens (@hautepop) July 2, 2020
First disinfo scholars Nina Jankowicz & Cindy Otis, arguing against Facebook Groups (17 June)https://t.co/e1GDqiy6sI
Which already explains so many of those problems but I want to focus on two specific sides of it. One of them is the fact that those who claim that private groups are causing the fake news/extremism/everything wrong with the internet are not aware of the privilege they’re living in. Thinking that we can fix everything if we make it public can easily traced back to early 2010s anti-privacy argument “I have nothing to hide.” Most of these people never been in a situation which they needed a safe and/or private space to talk and discuss about their world views and ideas and it clearly shows.
Also thinking that we can solve everything if all of these groups are public (which because of my MA thesis I read similar arguments a lot), means that we can track and analyze what everyone is talking and detect the ones causing the problem early. Which is not just a really bad remake of Minority Report but also taking the side of the surveillance capitalism and one of the main reasons behind these problems.
Which brings me back to the recent discussion in Turkey related to “evil social media”. As a tradition we’re now discussing once again how to control these platforms and people doing evil things online from the government’s perspective. Which boils down to several options such as:
Track everything and everyoneMake platforms delete everything government doesn’t likeBan all of themAnd my personal favorite (and this is real), make a law forcing everyone to enter these platforms with their national ID numbers.
If you’re one of those people who’s against the private channels and groups, you should think that these are all amazing ideas, except banning them. But most of the people writing those pieces would think these proposals are authoritarian, anti freedom of speech etc. Because that’s what they actually are.
So let me just ask, how do you think that making everything public will solve these problems you’re aiming to solve? Do you really think that all of these are happening just because it’s private, or what you really want is some authority to control everything people are doing online? If it’s the first one, you should do some actual research about those issues you’re dealing with and then start writing only after that. And if it’s the latter, thanks for helping many governments around the world to feel like they’re doing the right thing by surveilling and censoring their people all the time.
Aside from the fact that forcing every conversation into public and making it available to surveillance and censorship, this whole argument just dismissed many of the real reasons behind the current problems we’re facing online. I know those people will probably won’t change their minds or think about these issues in a more nuanced way because, like Jay said, no one wants to publish those. Who has time to think about the complex problems in a nuanced way when you can blame one thing and get the clicks.
There’s also another problem with this approach to private groups. Thinking that people only go to private places because they want somewhere to spread their “dark” ideas is just dismissed the problems platforms causing. Just think about how algorithmic timelines, forced interactions, surveillance based ads and economic models, context collapse and doomscrolling affects people.
While all of these happening, it’s more than normal for people to look for a place which they can have more control over. A Facebook group which includes only the people interested in a specific topic, WhatsApp groups for family/friends/neighbors, locking their social media accounts, returning to newsletters and blogs to have a conversation about the topics you want with only the people interested in it. Even Discord just recently changed their branding because there is a big wave of people who creates channels to talk about things other than gaming.
It’s clear that whatever is motivating people to be more private online is something much bigger than any scapegoating attempt we see. It’s also getting more and more clear that people want more control on their digital interactions and want private spaces to talk about things which they want to keep inside a smaller group. If people who can’t (or don’t want to) fully understand what is really going on will have the power to influence how to act on this, I don’t think anything good will come out of it.
June 25, 2020
How I Work Right Now (June 2020)
I’m always interested in reading how people work, what type of workflows they have. It’s probably because for so long I felt like I didn’t really have one or the ones I tried didn’t stick with me too long. Now I know why that was the case but it deserves its own post (spoilers: it was undiagnosed ADHD).
Since I’ve been redoing almost all of my workflow, I also wanted to write about it. Not just to say these are the tools I’m using but also have a conversation about it because, like I said, I love talking about tools and workflows.
Roam Research: Currently the backbone of my workflow is Roam Research and I have to thank Johannes for pointing that tool out for me. Other than being the perfect tool for me to research, take notes and manage all that stuff I’ve been doing; it also changed my approach to the tools I’ve been using and how I should be choosing them instead. And I’m not exaggerating when I say that Roam is what I needed because I’ve tried Evernote, Workflowy, Notion, Simplenote, Notes.app, Google Keep, random text files everywhere, just physical notebooks and many other method and tool you can probably think of —and yes, I also tried the “Roam alternatives” but none of them sticked with me. Only Notion had some potential but it didn’t worked for my own personal case, probably because it’s more team focused.
Task Management: But when it comes to task managing I’m still sticking with Things for pretty simple reasons like reminders, automation, pulling tasks directly from the other tools I’m using etc. Also it’s Upcoming tab with calendar events makes easier for me to see what’s up next.
Reading and Research: It all happens in four main place and a helper to keep things under control.
Newsblur for RSS, which in my case where I mostly keep up with the internets. Also decided to forward news-related newsletters to it so I can only keep personal ones in my inbox.
Pocket to read online articles and highlight, Kindle for most of my book reading. These two basically where “the reading” happens. Other than the paper books of course.
DEVONthink is my own personal library. Most of my research materials and other files I want to keep organized goes inside it.
When I highlight things or take notes in any of them I usually pull them to Roam now. At this point, another tool Johannes recommended comes into play: Readwise. It’s a tool that collects all of my highlights from everywhere you can think of and then I can review them, add tags and notes to them and organize however I want. With that, I organize all that notes from Kindle and Pocket —which otherwise would be left to collect digital dust— and export them to Roam. In DEVONthink’s case, it gives me a really easy way to take all of my annotations and use it however I wish.
Writing: My go-to was Ulysses since I moved to macOS. But both subscription thing and noticing some aspects of it not really working for me, I’ve decided to move to iA Writer. Since I enjoy writing in Markdown and it also makes it easier to export however I want, a tool like that is just what I need. If the thing I’m writing is academic or needs some extra formatting and/or MS Word stuff, I just export it when I’m done and continue from there. And so far, iA Writer does all of these just the way I want. (For example I wrote this in iA Writer and posted it to my blog as a draft.)
Right now the current flow seems working just fine for me. With help of little bit scripting and automation, adjusting some settings here and there and using Alfred‘s powers when I’m on the laptop, I think I’m getting there.
In the meantime, I’m also thinking writing about Roam and my personal experience with it. And then maybe a personal piece on the stuff I mentioned at the beginning.
