gemini://subphase.xyz:1965/users/flow/gemlog/5-naming-machines.gmi

The bulk of my early (u)nix learning took place at some hacklabs in South London, and a big part of my learning from the start had been setting up little DIY servers - in social spaces and also at home. The person I knew who was a bit of a mentor to me when I was first approaching (u)nix systems was a long-standing familiar face on some parts of the anarchist squat scene, having lived for years in a bunch of DIY squat situations before moving to live on a boat down on the South coast. I wouldn't say this person was necessarily always artistically or passionatley minded about things - instead more direct, straight forward and thinking more technically about stuff - but one thing that they were quite passionate about and passed this passion on to me is in naming conventions for systems.

They put it to me that naming systems should be like naming boats - you don't just pluck a name out of the air, you take care in your decision and in the naming you also imbue these things with some kind of good will or intention in their naming. I think this is quite fun and legit - and even though I approach this idea with a pinch of salt, I do appreciate the sentiment.

Ever since then, anytime I'm setting up a new system, I do notice that I will step back and spend a little bit of time thinking about the naming of the thing, with a similar care to how I might think about naming a little boat. I usually zone out a bit into some wikipedia pages on words and concepts until I'm happy with something new. Lately I often end up drawing on concepts in natural science, in particular biology. These include names or species-names of plants, or types of cellular structure, microscopic aspects of cells, etc. And there are a few variations of plant-like concepts that fill up the bulk of most of my hostnames; neither pet nor cattle but more like a garden or a forest - servers and devices as little life forces of their own that I help to tend and cultivate.

I have two exceptions: I was recently setting up a VM to self-host useful Web tools for some local activists, and the day I was first setting it up was a day of widespread anti-racist protests around the UK, where protesters pulled down the statue of a slave trader and rolled the thing down the streets and into a watery grave in Bristol city harbour. I marked the occasion and named the server 'Avon' after the river that runs through the harbour.

The second exception is this place: subphase. This place was set up to house my gemini capsule, and I wanted the name to match some of the threads flowing through the concept of this space. I draw on the philosophies of technology of Gilbert Simondon, whose work explores how considerations of technology should focus on their 'becoming' rather than their 'being' and that becoming or invention occurs when a kind of 'phase shift' occurs within a realm of material potentiality. For Simondon, the act of invention (itself one aspect of 'becoming') is the drawing of the future *into* the present - or, to put it another way, the drawing into the present future functionalities that potentialise *the new*. So I was interested in this idea of a 'phase', and also interested in what was happening with gemini not purely as some kind-of 'fixed' space in between port-70 and port-80/443, but as containing something else too - something about change, motion, difference, emergence; digital cultures in flux.

Why the 'sub'? The subsection of a phase. Some place within a flow, like the calm spot at the centre of a storm in motion. Felt like a neat fit. I also like how the name has a bit of a retro terminal-based Internet vibe to it.

A song just came on that sparked a memory. The song is 'The Staunton Lick' by Lemon Jelly. The memory: my nineteenth birthday - I had just been out to some bars and then into an alternative/grunge night club in town with friends. I'm on the night-bus, gliding for an hour-or-so out of the sleepy city and into the sleepier suburb. A friend I'm sitting with on the top deck of the bus puts one headphone in my ear, and the other in their ear, and plays me this tune. It's the first time I've heard it. My whole body is buzzing from being out all night, and I'm slipping in and out of that euphoria that comes on the other side of sleep you never had, with this song as my backdrop. Later that year we all left our hometown and went off to various universities around the country. That tune was a favourite of mine for a few years there.

re: naming machines

Aside: a memory