Thesis Outline

I want to write a report about contemporary system administration and server maintenance practices. The intended audience is artist-run collectives entangled in the tendrils of Big Tech due to systemic failures. In terms of the style of writing, the audience will be engaged through accessible language, concise, positive sentences and an active voice. Why would debating knowledge concerning system administration and server maintenance matter to this audience to the point of bringing about habitual change?

While undertaking the research, I wish to conduct qualitative interviews with people working in European locations that provide digital infrastructure for others. I would seek consent from interviewees to record the discussion and to include the transcribed material in an appendix which will not be published. People taking part in interviews will have the option of withdrawing their consent at any time for any or no reason.

Documenting Knowledge

This is a pressing matter for system administrators (Hofmüller cited in Berends et al., 2022). What knowledge do system administrators need to document?

Sharing Knowledge

According to Us(c)hi Reiter (cited in Berends et al., 2022) “[s]haring knowledge sounds easy, but it is not”. It “is also a long-term commitment”, Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2008, p.16) points out. How might system administrators pool, in accessible ways, their knowledge of sustaining community activity?

Freeing Knowledge

Secretly, this is a thesis about Linux. It seeks to persuade artists to integrate free software into their collaborative practices. How could sysadmins contribute towards a proliferation of libre computing?

References

Berends, M., Diakrousi, A. and Gryllaki, A. (2022) ‘Hosting With’, Debug, Linz, Varia [Online]. Available at https://varia.zone/archive/2023-03-Hosting-with-others/hosting-with-zine-booklet.pdf (Accessed 16 October 2024).

Smith, L. T. (2008) Decolonizing methodologies: research and indigenous peoples. London, Zed Books.