#the operating system

[fairydusks]

Btw from now til the end of November AK Press is giving away ebooks for free 🤍

Your friendly anarchist publisher. No bosses, no bullshit.

[anarkittyuwuuniverse]

"Like a state, an operating system “governs” the programs and applications under it and networked with it as well as, to some extent, the individuals who avail themselves of these tools and resources. It defines us in relation to itself, and each other, as “users,” and can reward us, reject our requests, or even bar us from access according to its needs. It can also monitor and surveil us. Referring to giant metaplatforms like Android and Apple, the German sociologist Philipp Staab observes, “Their own systems are continuously optimized for maximum convenience, to reduce the need to switch to another system. On the other hand, they make it as difficult as possible for users to use certain services outside their own ecosystem.” This is our starting point for understanding the State. Its central feature is the legal, administrative, and decision-making structure we refer to as government. But the State is a much larger, more complex phenomenon, a comprehensive means of organizing and exercising power that, once it’s launched, expands to cover more and more aspects of existence according to a direction and logic of its own. “The state could never be the means for any special or definite end, as liberalism conceived it to be,” the German anarchist Rudolf Rocker wrote in his classic, Nationalism and Culture ; “it was rather, in its highest form, an end in itself, an end sufficient for itself.” At the same time, and again like a computer operating system, the State is not a material object or entity. The various pieces of “hardware” we associate with it—big, imposing neoclassical buildings fronted by Greco-Roman columns quite often come to mind, along with military bases, roads, and monuments—are merely material containers and symbols of the immaterial reality. An operating system is soft ware, a collection of embedded commands that direct a machine called a computer. The State, too, is “software”: a collection of ideas, doctrines, commands, and processes that direct the deployment of human beings and their deployment of physical resources. The State is at once a political, social-cultural, and economic entity. Like an operating system, it networks together institutions, organizations, and less formal groups including government but also many others: corporations, banks, other financial institutions (state-chartered, as it happens), and other underpinnings of capitalism; eleemosynary (nonprofit and charitable) institutions; so-called civil society groups and political parties (especially “established” parties like the Democrats and Republicans in the United States, which have evolved into quasi-state institutions); and even basic units like families and households. Other institutions and groupings that form part of the State furnish cultural and even paramilitary support to the social order, strengthen organized religion, and reinforce racial and gender stratification: for instance, the extreme wings of the nativist Alternative for Germany; the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in India; and the American Legion, the Ku Klux Klan, the National Rifle Association, militia groups, the Proud Boys, and the Southern Baptist Convention in the United States." -The operating system: An anarchist theory of the modern state

[natureintheory]

Hello!

I'm an artist & designer who enjoys creating scientifically-informed & fantastical visuals.

@natureintheory ← follow my art tumblr

OlenaShmahalo.com

Linktr.ee/NatureInTheory

[breezesummers]

The Operating System’s Open Access Library

Since a lot of people in my sphere of Tumblr are particularly interested in literature/the arts and in social and political activism, I wanted to shout out a newly updated and expansive resource: the Open Access Library, presented by The Operating System!

On this database, the Operating System provides free access to a large range of works from a diverse collection of artists (of varying gender identities, sexualities, races, ethnicities, etc). These works include books, chapbooks, and a series of small publications known as “field notes.” Once again, these resources (many of which speak to anti-capitalism, anti-racism, resistance, etc.) are free, but the OAL also provides methods to purchase works or directly support artists.

More about The Operating System below the cut:

The OS is an independent publication whose mission is “a community where permission is freely granted, where access isn’t behind lock and key (perceptual or actual), where tools, information and resources are equitably shared and made easily available. Creative people from all disciplines are encouraged to work with one another, to explore every and all media freely and without fear. Both creative output and practice / process are equally valued. Those who are new to creative practice are encouraged to engage, explore, make mistakes, and play, without shaming. Degrees can be useful but do not grant any special privileges — rather, it is the responsibility of those of us with resources (be they intellectual or more classically capital in nature) to gather, document, make accessible, and pass along skills, information, and other salient lessons to those without.”

The OS's mission “is primarily archival in nature. On the surface, this often looks like “being a publisher,” but it misses the point: the Operating System makes “books” as a radical act of canon correction. We actively seek out and make room for work that might have in another time been referred to as “avant-garde” but the label is unimportant; what is critical is that the most groundbreaking, unorthodox, visionary work produced in any era is all too often in danger of being lost, and we are committed to carving out space for those voices.”

[Image description: A screenshot of the Open Access Library homepage, displaying a search function and the covers of some titles available for free access on the site.]

[rachelmcleodkaminer]

Here’s where you can find the book Attendance, which I wrote with Rocío Carlos.

Order through your local brick-and-mortar bookseller. IndieBound can sometimes help with this, but going straight to the source is ✨✨✨. The ISBN is 9781946031327 / 1946031321.

Find it at a library with WorldCat. Ask your local library to add it! I’m especially happy it’s at the Los Angeles Public Library, since it was mostly written in and of Los Ángeles.

Straight from the publisher, The Operating System.

The big online stores have it too.

Show up at an event where Rocío or I are reading or facilitating! We usually promote those on twitter [@rachel_kaminer / @ninabruja7] or instagram [@rachel_kaminer / @ninabruja].

I also wrote a book called As in the dark, descend. Here!

[mrf34r4rch1ve]

meet THE OPERATING SYSTEM - 1/?

Nihilism - aka Nile

internal self-helper

fronts “only when necessary”

born when the body was in middle school

very good at impersonating elliot

sees himself as: deity/shadow person

identifiable by: british accent, overall calm demeanor

[smallpressdistribution]

Hurry! Time’s running out to get 20% off July’s SPD Staff Picks! Use code SPDPICKS.