You don't reboot a sailing boat like you reboot a computer.
S4G n'est ni une agence de voyage, ni une résidence d'artistes, mais l'équipage d'un bateau à voile, à l'écoute des besoins, des désirs, des nécessités, des savoir faire, des compétences du bateau et des membres d'équipage, qui navigue dans l'esprit du "libre" vers un projet collectif, et pour qui toute production est en "creative commons", ça va sans dire.
S4G isn't a travel agency, nor an artist's residence, but a crew on a sailing boat, acute to the boat and other crew members needs, desires, necessity, know how, ability, who sails in the spirit of free software towards a collective project and for whom all production on board is under creative commons, that goes without saying.
Real life and virtual life : sailing for geeks is about physical reality and its connections to digital perception--about the collision of representation and the concrete world.
Risk and dangers : In industrialized countries, deception and scare tactics are used in the media. Stories geared toward the middle-class viewer tell about faraway war disasters edging closer to home, about terrorism, hordes of migrant workers invading our territories. Security has became a necessary item in our governments' political agenda.
Yet in the daily experiences of our so-called "first world", the real risk is job security — and now we are headed for massive social dumping. In other words, the issue here is precarity. Meanwhile, work accidents have become invisible. Manual labor becomes office drudgery; accidents become symbolic. We all have experienced some form of symbolic accident—accidents we can't speak about, lest they render us unemployable. On-the-job accidents that are a form of symbolic assassination.
Sailing can be dangerous. It is certainly the slowest and most uncomfortable way to go from one point to another.
Sailing is about knowing how to strike a balance between safety and the excitement of pushing a boat to its limits by fine-tuning the sails in all kinds of weather. Sailing is about navigation in many different settings. It's about a certain kind of problem-solving.
Problem solving and types of technological minds : Sailing for geeks explore two different technologies, two different states of mind, two different logics: mechanical physics (sailing) and cyber technology (wireless, streaming, GPS, radar). Each technology demands a radically different approach to solving problems. The geek goes by trial and error. Perfection isn't the point, but perfectibility is the process. The sailor cannot use the method of trial and error (no ctrl/alt/shift or delete). The sailor has to prepare ahead, to pre-visualize, to be attuned to many different sorts of sensors and indicators, to look at all her options and be flexible enough to go with what ever happens and do her best.
Uncertainty : Forget security. Forget insurance. This project is not a sure thing. It depends heavily on natural factors like weather, wind, sea movements, the tiredness of the crew and their ability to work through elements that cannot be foreseen. Uncertainty is also a determining factor of the technology we use, debugging is one of the processes. Failure is always a possibility, but because it may take us somewhere else, it isn't considered failure. Alternative plans always need to be at hand.
Leisure and work : if for most, sailing is a luxurious leisure or a sport, this project is an attempt to displace the leisure/work relationship.
Collaboration : sailing a boat is a collaborative act, the geeks we are talking about here, are known to have created a new collaborative economy. Hence the insistence of s4g for acuteness to the boat and other crew members and the necessity to produce all materials under creative commons. The process is as important as the outcome.