Nadia is a writer and independent researcher in the technology field, who has worked as a full-time researcher at Protocol Labs and has also received funding from the Ford Foundation to study open source culture, collecting unique firsthand experiences on GitHub, and published the book Working in Public. She has also worked at Substack as their second employee, focusing on the writer experience on the platform. Nadia's work has had a positive impact on the entire open source community and the field of technology culture.
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Contents#
Zero: The Pure Spirits at Dinner
One: Research Topics of Nadia Asparouhova
Tech’s social and political influence
Open Source Communities
Two: Nadia's Library
Three: Nadia Asparouhova Herself
Room Tour to Nadia’s Study
Welcome to the second article in the "Researcher's Study" series.
The Researcher's Study is the first column of Uncommons' crypto research section, based on a community-built database of researchers in the crypto humanities field from both industry and academia, selecting one researcher for an in-depth introduction each time, focusing on the researcher and the issues they care about in current tech humanities topics like crypto.
The study aims to answer "WHY ARE THEY HERE in crypto" and provide real, human reasons for "WHY ARE WE HERE in crypto."
To co-build the study, please directly enter the Uncommons TG Community, Co-build Study Notion, or contact @方庭 Fangting @Fangtingeth.
Nadia Asparouhova (this issue)
Angela Walch (next issue)
Anonymous Peer Review Group: Cross-Pollination Community | UnResearch
All quotes in this article, unless otherwise specified, are from Nadia Asparouhova. The "Bookshelf" section will include links to the works mentioned in this section.
Zero: The Pure Spirits at Dinner#
To live a life in which one purely subsists on the airy cream puffs of ideas seems enviably privileged: the ability to make a living merely off of one’s thoughts, rather than manual or skilled labor. But it also means all that bantering and reading and thinking and writing isn’t really about “having fun” anymore, so much as singing for one’s supper. We’re like Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind: our gowns are impressively fashioned from velvet curtains, but our hands are still rough from the farm.*
Nadia Asparouhova is a sincere author. The "truth" in her creation lies not only in being honest about the knowledge she holds most dearly but also in retaining the will to withdraw endorsement at any time, and more importantly, in always looking back (to the source of the story), always turning to trace why she "lives this way." She has written many articles about the living conditions of intellectuals in a broad sense, especially in connection with the tech world and crypto, producing thoughts on technology and humanities that approach a kind of intellectual obligation.
But for honest people, thinking about thinking itself is also an obligation. It is a personal knowledge archaeology, never anchoring or solidifying, always maintaining a healthy drift.
The symbol of her personal website is a cloud: like most researchers, creators, and others living a "reading and writing life," she has the privilege of being exempt from direct social production, living high above the ground in the clouds.
In her discussions about her own situation, she often mentions this point: What kind of labor is it to live on pure thought, or to live on pure creative work? Under what circumstances does invisible labor yield tangible rice? How will researchers appeal to the knowledge production process to confirm the legitimacy of their thoughts?
"Here and now" (why are we here) and "this kind of thinking" (why would you think that) have always been dangerous, turbulent, and not stable paradises; and the only way to remain honest in "here and now" is to make questioning a constant. In the following introduction to her research topics, we will continuously touch upon her own thoughts and the habitual reflexivity contained within her thinking.
Bookshelf:
[1] Being basic as a virtue, https://nadia.xyz/basic
[2] Idea Machine, https://nadia.xyz/idea-machines
*The quote at the beginning of this article is from her work "Being basic as a virtue." As seen in this quote, at the end, Nadia compares those who live on pure thought to Scarlett in Gone With the Wind: Our gowns are made of soft velvet, but we still have rough hands from the farm. They work in the virtual realm, preparing today’s dinner. And the best thoughts always emerge from dispersion, like the spirits at the dinner table: the part that remains pure beyond labor.
One: Research Topics of Nadia Asparouhova#
UnResearch has organized this section into two main recommended areas (four articles) and current research topics. The content is based on public works and Nadia's own statements, with a focus on blockchain, community, and tech humanities.
Here are the main research areas we selected from Nadia:
Tech’s social and political influence
#1 Remembering GitHub's Office, a Monument to Tech Culture
"The golden age of Silicon Valley has passed, and the old spirit is scattered everywhere. The entrepreneurial palaces that once lined Market Street are no longer in existence. Although the best days of startups are over, I still believe that technology has just begun to rewrite the rules of our social order with its potential values." This article starts from the relocation of GitHub's offline office (where Nadia worked for a while to research open source culture) and discusses the social impact of technology and its values as a public heritage.
Bookshelf: https://www.wired.com/story/github-tech-values/
#2 Out of the Valley
In this article, Nadia mentions that technology is not an industry but a way of interacting with the world. Charity, like tech startups, is also a form of venture capital, except that the latter is a risk investment in personal careers, while charity should be viewed as a risk investment in public causes. If we do not know how to re-release the massive wealth accumulated in the last tech cycle back into society through public investment to increase the chances of others' success, we may very well revert to some form of aristocratic politics. Charity is also an industry that requires serious self-organization, a system that we must build, just like those spectacular incubators.
Bookshelf: https://nayafia.substack.com/p/out-of-the-valley
Open Source Communities as Public Infrastructure of Open Source Software
This section features Nadia's published work on open source software.
#3 Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software (Stripe Press)
In Working in Public, Nadia explores the development of modern open source software, its evolution over the past two decades, and how the internet has repositioned individual creators, among other topics. By describing the structure of open source projects, she explores for the first time the costs of production and maintenance that software brings to its developers. Through hundreds of developer interviews and analyses on platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Twitch, and YouTube, she argues that studying "who" produces things on the internet, rather than just what they produce, helps us understand the value of online content today. This book has also received a recommendation from GitHub CEO Nat.
Purchase the book: https://press.stripe.com/working-in-public
In addition to the main research areas we recommended, Nadia's following two writings are also worth reading:
If you are interested in self-training outside the academic system (Reimagining the PhD): → Read Reimagining the PhD
Bookshelf: https://nadia.xyz/phd
During my work, several professors actively suggested considering pursuing a PhD. I seriously considered this idea. My main concern is to have an impact on public discourse, so if I thought this was a better path, I would absolutely be willing to pursue a PhD. In the end, I decided not to pursue a PhD, but even considering this option meant I had to clearly tell myself why I thought the independent path was more meaningful than entering academia.
If you are interested in her views on Balaji's network state and the American spirit → Read Silicon or Carbon
Bookshelf: https://thepointmag.com/politics/silicon-or-carbon/
Like a soul without a body, the Bits are drifting towards the stratosphere, searching for a new home. Their skyscrapers will not be built on American soil but on the digital frontier. These entrepreneurs and investors, like Balaji, are attracted to social software, virtual reality, the maker economy, cryptocurrency, and web3.
Two: Nadia's Library#
This section will introduce the reading materials recommended by Nadia and her comments on other works, centering around Nadia, where you can find more interesting content related to technology and culture, as a curatorial effort.
A home page undoubtedly seems increasingly lazy—disconnected from society, disconnected from real-time notifications, appearing desolate. But there are benefits to this—it's as if you can truly control the rhythm there. It's like going to your home—a forest path—or more appropriately: your candy store, like the one you mentioned in Reclaiming Public Life, "where people can freely linger, or rush in and out, with no additional conditions."
I like this imagination: the home page is like visiting a house on a forest path. I absolutely am a hermit living in a cabin.
Two minimalist blogs recommended by Nadia in interviews
Nadia's Comments
Nadia has a Comments channel where she publishes some articles and recommends good works she has read. Here are two excerpts:
Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis
Nadia's recommendation: Joy is the first landmark that helped Lewis understand what God truly is. Although he initially pursued the irresistible "joy" itself, he ultimately realized that it was the fact of "existing outside of oneself"—rather than his fervent pursuit of "joy"—that ultimately became his proof of divinity. I often think of writing, and more broadly, creative work, as a glimpse of God—touching those indescribable things. But before reading Lewis's description, I wouldn't have described that feeling as "joy," but rather as an abyss.
“Hiatus” (Applied Theology Studies)
Nadia's recommendation: The blog under the pseudonym "Applied Theology Studies" is one of the few good things from the past year; he wrote an article about strange internet bloggers, concluding that "either you work quietly until you die, or you become popular enough to be doxxed by the New York Times." I resonate with this article: it captures this strange tension of loving writing while vaguely feeling that writing is worthless.
Three: Nadia Asparouhova Herself#
Nadia is a writer and independent researcher in the technology field, who has worked as a full-time researcher at Protocol Labs and has also received funding from the Ford Foundation to study open source culture, collecting unique firsthand experiences on GitHub, and published the book Working in Public. She has also worked at Substack as their second employee, focusing on the writer experience on the platform. Nadia's work has had a positive impact on the entire open source community and the field of technology culture.
Nadia Asparouhova's former name was Nadia Eghbal.
Nadia's personal website: https://tobyshorin.com/
Nadia's interview: https://www.kickscondor.com/nadia-eghbal/
Newsletter: https://nayafia.substack.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/nayafia
Room Tour of Nadia’s Study#
Nadia's study address Enter Notion for one-stop reading, no need to separately copy jump hyperlinks:
https://www.notion.so/uncommons/Nadia-Asparouhova-a453965102e04c4cab1e5cba3e0fa74f?pvs=4
UnResearch, Understanding
A researcher is primarily a three-dimensional person. Research works and research institutions, regardless of how renowned they are, are secondary issues in front of "people."
In an era of infinite information and infinite indexing databases, slowing down to understand a person's intellectual aesthetics, why they are interested in current research topics, and further, how to form their personal intellectual history is the best way to enter the real research world. In this sense, intellectual history is the only true history.
Crypto Humanities is a still-maturing field, just like the industry itself. But we live within it, and we need to understand our own digital future. The deeper the understanding, the more precise the actions, and the farther the journey.
Uncommons is a public sphere where a collective of Commons Builders explores Crypto Thoughts together.
Uncommons is a corner of public space within the blockchain world, where a group of public goods builders collide with crypto humanities thoughts. Its predecessor was the GreenPill Chinese community.
Notion: https://uncommons.notion.site
Uncommons TG: https://t.me/theuncommons
Uncommons Twitter: https://twitter.com/Un__commons