In 2001 (before, actually, but set forth on a page as definitive errata in the year 2001), one of the several people responsible for what is today known as ‘Scrytch’ wrote of its purpose and intent, thusly:
scrytch, then, can be considered “What creation would be like if all results were covered under the GNU General Public License.” it is, after all, software for our wetware; the leap isn’t so great.
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scrytch — the idea is simple: appropriate as appropriate. insert the signifier “scrytch” into a chunk of prose [or a graphic or a sample], and watch it live well beyond your years. any scrytchlet can be drawn from, added to, re-drafted, altered in any form and combination, so long as it remains attributed scrytch forevermore. indeed, how can it not? locate a piece of scrytch which has been ill-attributed to a solitary author, and experience the freedom to re-appropriate the entirety of that author’s would-be missive into the larger body of scrytch!
scrytch is a way to keep ourselves from spending another slim dime on what has been called Entertainment, so that we can pool those resources towards the acquisition of the tools to create, the engines of innovation.
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scrytch is also a strategy for making certain that no word is ever final; that we have as many chances as possible to create a future we want to inhabit, rather than a living prison, through our ability to change “The Last Word on CyberCulture” to something that gives us a fighting fucking chance.
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the key: only a freely-flowing and adaptive mythos or legacy can provide the ideodiversity necessary for survival of the human species millennia hence.
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the fruit of this stew, then, is scrytch. to join the project, donate scrytch [in any medium or format] to the scrytch archive, and APPROPRIATE AS APPROPRIATE.
oddly enough, this whole ‘world wide, welcome and be welcome, appropriate as appropriate’ ethos is… a lie.
believe me, no one was more surprised than i to discover it.
i suppose there are a number of people who will immediately jump up and down and start screaming about all the ulterior motivations and ill intent from which i say this.
they would not be correct. but that’s a lost cause and i’m no longer trying to communicate what will not be heard.
besides, i don’t need to convince anyone in order to make this point.
what is ‘this point’?
i’m glad you asked.
there is no way that this effort can ever be what it is purported if *EVEN ONE* person who would participate is forced out of participation.
by its very nature, scrytch makes mincemeat of ownership. that’s its point. its purpose.
of all people, how do you forget this? how is it that this has gone from being open to all to having the stench of urine on the doorway, marking territory and setting up ‘no trespassing’ signs?
don’t get me wrong… i am very well aware there will be no reasoning with you about MY participation. and i don’t need your permission to scrytch… i participate from the sidelines, in spite of the spite, and in this manner what scrytch i write continues and will continue, even if only as it’s own alter branch in the greater scrytch-time-continuum.
but, apparently, i do need your permission to do so with the others who believed you when you wrote that manifesto. and yes, i’d like to be able to… when the day comes that you’re as willing to treat me as a stranger as i am you.
consider what you’ve done… really look at it, because it is the same mindset that put intellectual property rights and copyrights and the like on the map.
it is the same mindset that this very manifesto most stridently claims to be against.
from what i read in the history of scrytch, personal dislike never got in the way of scrytch before… though perhaps there were times when it tried and almost succeeded (or so i hear).
the way i figure it, either someone has chalked it up as a failure and thus, it’s ok to sell out the dream and be just as control-hungry as the rest of the world…. or someone has lost sight of their own dream… in which case it’s likely only a matter of time before it turns into a graveyard of memories, where people who ‘were there in the day’ play amongst themselves and the long-term vision for it all just… doesn’t matter anymore.
forgive me for saying it, but that seems a damn shame.
so i’m asking, with all due respect — is this really what you want scrytch to be?