In which I am officially in too many book clubs

[bloodygranuaile]

One of my DSA comrades has started a Stafford Beer reading group, and as I have previously been very interested upon hearing this comrade talk a lot about Stafford Beer, I decided to join. The first book we've read has been Designing Freedom, for which I will be missing the actual discussion due to a CC meeting. C'est la vie. It's unfortunate, though, because I'm definitely not any sort of systems design person by natural inclination, so I think I'd have a better time setting the concepts properly into my brain if I took the discussion to hash it out with other people. 

 

Designing Freedom is basically a bundle of lectures, which means it is nice and short, and also you can listen to it on audio from Mr. Beer himself. The audio versions are actually quite nice to listen to, especially if you find people making very dry jokes in a British accent soothing, which I do. Which is good because I might have to listen to the lectures multiple times, which I might actually be able to do, whereas there's no way I'm going to read the book more than once. 

 

As far as actionable items to take away from it to reimagine how to distribute labor and feedback-taking in DSA so it's less exhausting and makes people happier to be involved, well, I'm not quite sure I'm there yet, which is part of why I'm a bit bummed about missing this discussion. Hopefully the later discussions will help me learn to start thinking more concretely about socialist operations management.