Free Software and BeyondThe World of Peer ProductionManchester UniversityManchester2009-03-272009-03-293Final Version09:0000:3014:0001:30University Place 4.204limitationsCurrent limitations of peer productionAnd ideas on how to overcome themLectureEnglish35 years ago peer production being based on openness and
Selbstentfaltung started in Free Software. Today Free Software is an
important aspect of the overall global system. Since some years peer
production expands into other fields. Respective movements are
Wikipedia, OpenAccess and OpenMusic. All these fields have in common
that they are based on information.
However, other fields such as production of material goods are still
not yet subject of peer production projects. Why is this?
This talk gives some insights beyond "copying information is easy". It
outlines current challenges for peer production and sketches some
ideas on how to solve them. The talk is based on the Oekonux drawing
board initiative.Stefan Merten
Oekonux drawing board
15:3001:30University Place 4.204cmmnc,mm,n - open-source mobilityLectureEnglishJacco Lammers
c,mm,n - open source car
15:3001:30University Place 4.206bureaucracyThe social impact of online tribal bureaucracyLectureEnglishInternet-based peer production projects constitute a new form of organisation, stuctured around autonomy and the distribution of authority. This presentation shows how 'online tribal bureaucracy' borrows elements from organisational formats such as corporations and communes, yet differs from them in important respects. It also considers whether the tribal-bureaucratic organisational model is generalisable to other contexts, and whether such as dissemination is desirable.The social impact of online tribal bureaucracy
Proposal for 4th Oekonux Conference
Mathieu O'Neil
Australian National University
Internet-based peer production projects constitute a new form of organisation. This presentation shows how 'online tribal bureaucracy' borrows elements from organisational formats such as corporations and communes, yet differs from them in important respects. Online projects distribute hierarchical control: participants have a high degree of autonomy, so that new entrants to Wikipedia (for example) can rapidly attain positions of power.
This is not new: demonstrating a counter-cultural aversion to authority, the IETF's 'Tao' described the organisation as a anti-bureaucratic collection of 'happenings' with no formal membership. This concern for direct democracy, which still animates contemporary online projects, mirrors the organisational structures of 'communal' or 'collectivist' 1970s groups such as free clinics and alternative newspapers.
But contemporary self-directed online projects are different from communes because they have rules, written records, merit-based promotion processes, and because they separate roles from persons (for example, Debian elects a different Project Leader every year). These characteristically bureaucratic traits are put at the service of democracy. This distinguishes online projects from corporations.
Online projects are also different from corporate bureaus because charismatic forms of authority intersect with collectivist bureaucracy in online projects. Where would Linux, Wikipedia or Daily Kos be without the 'extraordinary vision' of their respective charismatic founders, who wield extraordinary power? In addition to roles still being linked to persons, self-organised online bureaucracies can be defined as 'tribal' because of three defining traits: the high degree of autonomy and self-motivation of participants, the structuring role of conflicts, and the preferred mode of decision-making, deliberation.
This presentation evaluates the economic and political benefits and costs of these characteristics: for example, conflicts may serve to unify participants, and deliberation may make political participation less exciting, by removing the verdict of chance afforded by the result of elections. The presentation concludes by addressing a more general question: is the tribal-bureaucratic organisational model generalisable to other contexts? What conditions would be required for such a dissemination to occut? Is it desirable? What would the potential drawbacks be?Mathieu O'Neil14:0001:30University Place 4.214open_accessOn the affinities and disaffinities among free software, peer-to-peer access, and open access to peer-reviewed researchLectureEnglishStevan Harnad09:0001:30Humanities Bridgeford CordingleyintroOekonux & P2P FoundationTwo introductionsLectureEnglishAn introduction to the most important ideas of the Oekonux project and an introduction to the P2P Foundation.Michel BauwensStefan Merten
Oekonux Project
P2P Foundation
10:3001:30Humanities Bridgeford CordingleystartPeer Production EverywhereHow Can We Do It And Where Can We Start?LectureEnglishI'll talk about how commons-based peer production can be extended to all
areas of life. How might a society based on peer production look like and
which principles will be typical for such a society? I'll also talk about
which steps are reasonable to encourage the emergence of such a society.I've written about how *commons-based peer production,* the new mode of
production which has developed in several related communities -- free
software, free/open content, open access, free community networks, and
others -- can be extended to all areas of life. Extrapolating from the
practices of current commons-based production communities, we can suppose
that any future commons-based society will be a community of people making
up their own rules for creating, maintaining, and handling the commons they
create and use, just like the current communities do. Production will be
organized around a *pool of commons* created and maintained by the
community: the resources required for production and the goods that are
produced will go into this pool, and the goods which people consume or use
will come out of it.
In my talk, I will quickly explain these conjectures and talk about the
principles which I suppose will be typical for such a society:
1. Everyone can give as they like.
2. Taking from the commons means taking something as possession (something
that can be used), not as property (something that can be sold and
commercialized at will).
3. Everyone can take commons into possession, as long as they don't take
them away from others.
4. If taking would mean taking away, the best way of solving this problem
is to produce enough to satisfy everybody's wishes.
5. The second best way is to distribute limited goods in a fair manner.
6. Cooperation will be organized by area and by interest, and units of
cooperation will nest and overlap as appropriate.
7. Production will take place in projects of people who work together on an
equal footing (as peers).
The second half of the talk will be about discussing how we can start to
generalize peer production. Which steps are possible and sensible to
encourage the emergence of a society based on commons and cooperation?Christian Siefkes
Peerconomy Wiki
Keimform Blog
Keimform Blog: Articles in English
12:0001:30Humanities Bridgeford CordingleywomenWomen's Participation to Free and Open Source Software DevelopmentLectureEnglishWhat it the role of women to FOSS projects? What is the significance of the contributions they make? What are the tendencies of the gender imbalance in FOSS? What can we do? These and other relevant questions will be covered in this interactive workshop, to which an important space will be reserved for participants discussion and experience exchange.This workshop aims at giving space to presentation of findings and discussion on the topic of women's contributions to FOSS development projects. The gender imbalance in the world of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is not new, but is raising new questions. The number of women users in FOSS is raising every year, but not within the software development projects.
However, women do participate to FOSS development projects, and yet there are some who are extraordinarily visible. They contribute as much as men in development issues, in graphic design, quality insurance and documentation writing. But how is their role seen in the world of free software? Are they equally considered as men? Are their contributions somehow significant, from the point of view of personal participation, and from technical point of view?
The workshop will be divided in two parts. The first one will be in a form of a presentation including some of the latest findings based on recent interviews made in Quebec with women working in FOSS development projects. It will focus on the gender repartition of work in FOSS projects, on the contribution made by women, as well as some preliminary conclusions on the question of the women's role in FOSS. Examples will include a number of women around the world, as well as women's groups within the FOSS movement (such as linuxchix, debian women and drupal chix).
The second part of the workshop will be made in a form of a joint discussion with the participants, including questions such as:
* sharing their personal experience about women's role in FOSS development projects
* possible improvements in the work environment for involvement of more women to the FOSS movement
* extracting some recommendations for a better sustainable involvement of women into the FOSS movement
Even if focussed on women's FOSS participation, this workshop is open to men and women.Christina Haralanova14:3001:30Humanities Bridgeford CordingleyvillageBuilding the World's First, Replicable, Open Source Global VillageTheory, strategy, practice, and challenges.WorkshopEnglishWe are building the world's first, replicable, open source Global Village. We are a land-based social experiment for creating unprecedented quality of life using on-site resources. Our working assumption is that open source physical infrastructure is the enabling prerequisite of such an experiment, and that the power of efficient, integrated, and ecological production must be seized in order for such a community to thrive and to be competitive with mainstream lifestyles. Initial technology development results have surpassed predictions, and we are currently developing a more rigorous program for a rapid-deployment, open source technology development pipeline. This pipeline relies on design of products that are simple, optimal, high-performance, low-cost, and therefore replicable. We observed clear indications of memetic replicability of such open source, technologically and ecologically integrated communities. Initial results, strategies, crowd-based support methods, and operational challenges are covered in this presentation. End goals are livelihoods beyond the ongoing struggle for survival, and personal evolution to freedom - and the first milestone to this is a complete, 30 person villlage - to be built by year-end 2010.For the physical reality of our experiment, see the Distillation video series for an overview of the technology base:
http://openfarmtech.org/index.php?title=DistillationsMarcin Jakubowski
Overview of OSE work
16:0001:30Humanities Bridgeford Cordingleysocial_movementConfronting the difficulties of learning from the open source for contemporary social movementsLectureEnglishContemporary social movements have been extremely researched and theorised
before. The open source and/or free software movement and its practical and
ideological contribution to social and political change has also been the
preoccupation of many current cutting edge research projects in many
disciplines, in universities around the world. Nevertheless, the reasons,
social movements, especially those still remaining in hierarchical modes and
drawing from archaic practices, resist the lessons offered by the free
software movement have not been explored enough yet. This paper seeks to
discuss the residual resistance in certain social movements to the
'operational magic' of the open source, while at the same time discussing
opportunistic and hurried co-optations of the FLOSS by both specific social
movements and the virtual media elite. From this particular viewpoint, our
understanding of media theory, social movement theory and social movements
empirically would have to be refined to include revelations in both theory
and practice offered abundantly by peer production communities.Athina Karatzogianni17:3001:30Humanities Bridgeford CordingleypatternA Pattern Language Of The Postindustrial SocietyRoadmap for Synergy in Times of ChangeLectureEnglishThe term pattern language was coined by Christopher Alexander and it is quite suitable for the attempt to describe a society in which peer-to-peer principles are dominating pillars of the social fabric. Rather than to be derived from a "principle" the p2p- society is built on the mutual reenforcement of patterns, structures that only in their combination and interaction allow to solve the complex challenges of life.The speech builds on the contribution to the "Open Source Yearbook 2008" but will increase the number of patterns, describe them closer, outline their mutual relations.Franz Nahrada10:3001:30Humanities Bridgeford G7latin_americaFree Software in Latin America, State and Community.LectureEnglishDiego Saravia
Free Voices book article.
12:0001:30Humanities Bridgeford G7end_scarcityThe End of (artificial) ScarcityThe Failures of the Materials Economy and How We Fix ThemLectureEnglishWhat is the functional model of our society and how can subtle changes to it's underlying principles alter it significantly? Are the assumptions we make, often unknowingly, correct, and if not, why are they so readily accepted and what can be done to change that? In this talk I aim to dismantle our conceptions about our sociopolitical reality and propose five alternatives fueled by a single uniting factor, providing a roadmap towards a new monetary system, a new economic model, a new legislative system, a new judicial system and a new executive authority system.The modern materials economy has been marked by an unwillingness to face the subtle repercussions of the industrial revolution. In this talk I intend to play out this future drama of mankind in three parts. First, I will set the stage by showing that we have perhaps unknowingly built several political assumptions into our society in such a way that we cannot see these foundations, let alone replace them when they are sinking into the mire. Secondly, I will show that the failure of these foundations is not merely inevitable, but that it has already happened. Finally I intend to try to describe a couple of methods we can use to build new egalitarian foundations for our societies.
By using tools provided by cybernetics I intend to construct a functional abstract model of our social system and show that everywhere in this system, scarcity is being manufactured to insure the profiteers against the dangers of abundance. Working from Malthus' Lie, the myth of scarcity is being upheld quite vigorously as a fundamental truth about the nature of the universe, while elsewhere in the system people are hard at work disposing of excess production and obstinate themes, color schemes and styles in favor of new. Working from Hobbes' Lie, the myth of chaos is being upheld as a fundamental truth about the nature of man, while elsewhere in the system people are superseding that truth on the basis of manufactured authority which they use to control the actions of people.
In fact, the foundations for the current society are the myths that underlay our entire economy, the lies that structure our mental models, that guide us through the state space. That without a centralised government our civilisation will fragment into particles and humanity will devour itself in a war of all against all, and that without regulations on the distribution of goods we will consume faster than we can produce and exterminate ourselves.
These myths have been compounded, mostly in good faith, by consolidation of power and legislative systems that diminish people's ability to self-governance on the one hand and effective utilisation of resources on the other, effectively the opposite of what these systems were meant to prevent. The resulting system has has five core institutions:
The first of these is the monetary system. We live by a monetary system that has, as Bernard Liataer pointed out1, four core features: money is created out of nothing and have no material backing, money is created as a result of loans between banks, currencies are defined geographically, and interest is paid on loans. These features mean that the sum of the entire monetary system (all debit plus all credit) is much less than zero, and it grows smaller constantly. There is no way to repay all the debt in the system, and as a result money itself becomes a rival good – we are playing a game where the goal is to pay all debts. In this game, to loose is to go bankrupt. If many bankruptcies occur simultaneously we suffer a Markovian explosion of sorts called a depression or crisis.
The second of these institutions is our economy. This is different from the monetary system: the monetary system is the means for exchange, while the economy is the exchange itself. Because the means for exchange are rival goods, the economy adapts by assuming rivalry and scarcity in all goods even when there is abundance. Competition replaces cooperation as each strives to pay off his debts, and companies and individuals use missing information – that is to say, secrecy – to their advantage, to increase their chances of winning, to get the competitive edge. Secrecy causes an inability to accurately measure the state of the economy, an inability to relatively estimate demand and supply, so all companies guesstimate their production requirements and invariably squander resources as a result. Companies are then punished for this by the legislative system for certain types of waste while other types of waste are not punished.
The third system is the legislative system itself: Small groups of people make decisions about a set of rules that guide societies through the state space, and all are made to comply. The law represents the needs of the most influential persons in the economy and legislation is guided by their need to not go bankrupt. With every law which is passed, the Hobbesian lie is strengthened, and the capitalists reinforce their insurance policy at the cost of the poor. Instead of the legal system being a small set of simple rules that everybody can agree to it has become a behemothic beast, our very own Grendel.
The fourth system is the executive authority system. A small group of people is selected to make decisions about the execution of all the ideas they have about how society as a whole ought to be run, and this authority reaches to every niche of society. With regulations and exact control individuals are made to suffer their own individuality, trapped within a vicious cycle produced for that very purpose in concordance with the Malthusian and Hobbesian principles.
Finally, the judicial system has been erected to divvy out punishments to those who act against society, even in some cases for its own good. The executive authorities select judges who make decisions about how arguments should be resolved and these decisions, in many countries, become quite as authoritative for future discourse as the law itself. Judges have become monks who none may question.
This may be done differently. And I intend to show how.Smári McCarthy14:3001:30Humanities Bridgeford G7key_signing"Peer reproduction"?Key signing parties between trust, subtle othering and controlLectureEnglishKey signing parties are a ritual belonging to encrypted electronic communication. Talking about the participants' otherness is an integral part of those parties where the degree of belonging to the free software community is assessed by way of criteria that are deeply embedded in mainstream society.Key signing parties are a ritual belonging to encrypted electronic communication. They take part during congresses or big meetings of the free software community. During a key signing party all participants verify mutually their identity by showing each other their passports. The aim is to enlarge the so called "Web of Trust", a network of individuals who can want to be sure about the 'true identity' of their electronic communication partners.
The ritual is characterized by seriousness, diligence and obedience to rules. The "Web of Trust" appears to unite all those who stress their consciousness of data being "sensitive" against the unaware masses and the transition towards a surveillance society. Ironically the only certificate that proofs one's identity is issued by states: At key signing parties the passport becomes the center of attention. The possibilities it offers to talk about are family background, appearance and gender. Talking about otherness becomes therefore an integral part of key signing. Two sorts of "others" are produced in the ritual: Those who are not trustworthy (enough) and those who deviate from the average participant because of their background or body. Trust is expressed in the graduated cyphers of Gnu Privacy Guard (gpg). I assume that during key signing the degree of belonging to the free software community is assessed by way of criteria that are deeply embedded in mainstream society.
In my presentation I will discuss in how far this practice of othering can be observed also in other parts of the community and what this means for the democractic and emancipatory potential of the free software movement.Silke Meyer16:0001:30Humanities Bridgeford G7moneyMoney and Peer ProductionWorkshopEnglishHow can money and peer-production coexist? If we think peer production as a germ form of a future post-capitalist society, the answer depends on the step considered in the process which leads from the emergence of that new form to the entire reorganization of society according to its new principles. This is an attempt to set the problem and to envisage some answers using the framework of the "Five step model".* Money and peer production relay on different and antagonistic principles: symmetric exchange vs asymmetric exchange (or absence of exchange). How can they coexist and interrelate?
If Peer production is thought as a germ form of a future post-capitalist society, the issue must be dealt with considering the different steps and conditions which may characterize the process which leads to a generalization of peer principles to the whole society.
The "Five step model" provides a useful framework for that.
* Step 1 to 3: (1. Emergence of the germ form of development. 2. Crisis of the old form of development. 3. Germ form becomes an important dimension inside the old form of development.)
Peer production develops within capitalism. Its development is inevitably partially dependent on money.
The key issue is how to prevent that dependence to subvert the core logic of peer production.
Some remarks about the example of free-software writers paid by commercial corporations (IBM, Sun).
* Step 4: (Germ form becomes the dominant form of development. )
Main means of production become part of the Commons and are collectively possessed and managed. But ampleness of material goods is not yet enough to allow free and unlimited distribution ("To each according to his needs/desires"). A transition system is necessary.
A criticism is developed of the solutions based on the principle: "To each according to his labor".
The possibility of using the principle "To each according to the social possibilities" is analysed.
* Step 5: Reconstruction of the entire development process.
Symmetric exchange (and thus the need of money) vanishes or is totally marginalized.
Historically, symmetric exchange developed first not at the center of the primitive communities but at their fringes, through the trade between them. Its movement was from the periphery to the center. The disappearance of symmetric exchange and money should follow the reverse process, from the center to the periphery.Raoul Victor17:3001:30Humanities Bridgeford G7open_street_mapOpen Street Map SessionWorkshopEnglishThe Open Street Map project aims to create a free and open
geographical data set that can be used for many applications including
streetmaps and routing based applications. The project was started
because most maps you think of as free actually have legal or
technical restrictions on their use, holding back people from using
them in creative, productive, or unexpected ways. At Oekenux I would
aim to give a presentation taking perhaps half an hour to 45 minutes
and would then spend another 45 minutes demonstrating how to use the
tools provided by the OSM project to update the data in your area. I
would also invite attendees to ask questions and interact, at any
point during the session, but especially during the latter half.
I have given similar talks before and have found that, depending on
the interest from the audience, the session can easily last for two
hours.John McKerrell10:3001:30Humanities Bridgeford G6socratesSocrates, Truth and Peer ProductionLectureEnglishThe notion of non-commercial peer production has been a constitutive part of
the very definition of philosophy since Socrates insisted - against the
Sophists - that his interlocutors should join him in the common endeavour of
investigating knowledge claims. This is, however, only one part of the
traditional philosophical setup, the second one consisting in Plato's
additional construction of a qualitative knowledge gap between the masses and
the enlightened few. Given this construction it was all too easy for theory
to be developed in restricted environments with "peers" defined as
cognoscenti sharing a particular set of preferences and a predictably
extra-normal background.
The ensuing dualism of ordinary economic transactions and the august realm of
academic research and science has been a permanent feature of the systems of
knowledge production induced by the European tradition. Lately this
demarcation has, however, been severely disturbed as advances in (among
others) chemistry, genetics and software development have proved to be of
extraordinary economic value and have triggered an unprecedented erosion of
the (sort of) Platonic autonomy of scholarly pursuits.
It does, under these circumstances, no longer suffice to simply invoke (the
quest for) "Truth" as a guiding principle of human development. It becomes
obvious that the kind of peer interaction envisaged in a Platonic set of mind
is quite remote from the travails of late capitalism. Philosophers like
Habermas and Rawls have pointed out that we need a revised account of truth
as resulting from the deliberative practice of peer interaction, but this
has, for the most part, remained an internal philosophical argument. This
argument can be considerably strenghtened by challenging the Platonic account
of Truth arrived at by, as it were, "seeing the light" (in contrast to
suffering the common darkness of the cave). Networked peer production of
cognitive goods has become an important force of information society. It can
be regarded as a substitute for the traditional story about advances in
knowledge. The outcome of ongoing communicative efforts would, consequently,
take the place of the embattled traditional concept. Peer review would,
returning to Socrates' initial move, be a strictly non-exclusive activity
extended to a global scale.Herbert Hrachovec12:0001:30Humanities Bridgeford G6ronjaRonja - Darknet of LightsHomebrewed Anonymous Communication through Free-Air-OpticsLectureEnglishRonja is a hardware project for building interent communication through free-air optics. Unlike most other free hardware projects that still exist only in the planning stage, Ronja hackers have produced a fully operational technology from scratch. The whole development process has taken place among a group of hackers that has been active for more than six years. Their experiences give insights into the challenges that lay ahead of a possibly emergent, hardware hacking movement.Ronja is a hardware project for building Internet communication by means of free-air optics. It consists basically of a lamp and a receiver mounted on rooftops. When the lamp is on it sends a "1" and when it is off it is a "0". In this way, Ronja "twinkles through" data transmissions at the speed of 10 mb/s and at a maximum distance of 1,4 km. Unlike most other free hardware projects to date that exist only as good ideas, or, in the best case scenario, as a design, Ronja hackers have produced a fully operational technology from scratch. It is probably as close as a hardware hacking project gets to the ideal of a "bazaar" free software development model. The whole development process has taken place outside both academic institutions and firms. The work has been done by a small group of hackers living in the Czech republic and in Switzerland. As a proof of its sustainability, the technology has been developed for more than six years and it has been diffused to a network of users, though mainly concentrated to eastern Europe. I have been staying in the Czech republic during autumn 2008 in order to study the Ronja project. My particular interest has been questions about how they coordinate their development process and how it is economically supported. The last point is key since the initiator, Karel 'CLOCK' Kulhavy, has repeatedly pinpointed at the necessity to earn a living as the main stumbling block preventing faster development of the technology. Hence, it suggests the centrality of the wage form to channell the activity of engineers in the direction of markets, intellectual property etc. Rather than filling a patent to earn money from the innovation, as mainstream economic theory would have it, the czech hackers have tried to establish a system of donations in order to cover the expenses they have had with developing the technology. One could thus look upon the Ronja project as an intervention creating not just a new gadget, but a different economic model for innovation that enables hacker-engineers to do what they love and release the result under a free license. Of course, the actual project has run into many practical difficulties and ambiguities. From a theoretical/ideological point of perspective, it is possible to raise concerns that this entreprenueral form of self-organisation, though it testifies to an attempt to escape the boredome of the office job, could pave the way for a post-Fordist restructuring and new, precarious forms of self-employement. Such critique nonewithstanding, the expriences of Ronja hackers give insight into the possibilities and obstacles that are likely to confront a future, free hardware movement.Johan Söderberg
Ronja
14:3001:30Humanities Bridgeford G6synergy_economyConditions for synergy between free non-market exchanges and the economyLectureEnglishPhilippe Aigrain16:0001:30Humanities Bridgeford G6talk_guptaEnding Poverty with Open HardwareLectureEnglishWhat would a world without poverty look like? It is not a seven billion person suburbia. We'll examine realistic models for a post-poverty world, and how open hardware fits into that vision.What is poverty? One definition is that poverty is "being so poor you die of being poor." Every year, many millions of people die of poverty. Open hardware has the potential to bring the cost of essential goods and services down to the point where everybody in the world can afford what they need to survive. Some of the critical technologies, and barriers to adoption, will be discussed.Vinay Gupta17:3001:30Humanities Bridgeford G6networkingThe Art of NetworkingNetworking practices in grassroots communitiesLectureEnglishNetworking means to create nets of relations. Since the 80s, the platforms of networking have been an important tool to share knowledge and experience to create works of hacktivism and net art. As a practical example, I will refer to the concept of hacktivism and art through the description of some Italian underground interventions and actions.Since the 80s, the platforms of networking have been an important tool to share knowledge and experience to create works of hacktivism and net art. The concepts of "Openness" and "Do-It-Yourself", today more and more relevant with the diffusion of Social Networks, have been the starting point for the development of punk culture and hacker ethic. Hackers are not just those who destructively intrude computer systems or spread viruses into the Internet (and who should be more correctly called "crackers"), but those who share the good of knowledge, fight for free communication and open access to information, with the objective of a public domain of knowledge. The "hacktivism" concept refers to an acknowledgment of the net as a political space, with the possibility of decentralized, autonomous and grassroots democratic participation. Access for everybody, information as a free good and the conscious, use of hardware and technology, the basic concepts of hacker ethics, are referred as political objectives. According to this point of view, networking means to create nets of relations, by sharing experiences and ideas in order to communicate and experiment artistically. According with this point of view, networking platforms are free spaces in which the publisher and the reader, the artist and the public, act on the same level. Art provides a critical perspective on political imagination; networking projects act inside social interstices and cultural fractures, which apparently seem to be at the margin of daily life, but instead are an important territory for the re-invention and re-writing of symbolic and expressive codes. Imaginative codes which can transform and decode our present. As a practical example, I will refer to the concept of hacktivism and art through some Italian underground interventions and actions, previously described in my book "Networking. The Net as Artwork", recently translated into English and available online under the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3, November 2008 at: http://darc.imv.au.dk/?p=62 (Digital Aesthetics Research Center of Aarhus University).
Tatiana Bazzichelli (Rome, IT, 1974), is a communication sociologist and an expert in network culture, hacktivism and net art. She is a Ph.D. Scholar at Aarhus University, Denmark.Tatiana Bazzichelli
AHA Activism Hacking Artivism website
Tatiana Bazzichelli personal website
Tatiana Bazzichelli - University website
Hack.Fem.East Exhibition
CUM2CUT project website
Download the book "Networking"
09:0001:30Humanities Bridgeford CordingleyscenarionsPolitical Scenarios for a peer to peer worldLectureEnglishPeer is peer, in its broad meaning of the combined open and free,
participatory and commons-oriented practices emerging in every field of
human endeavour, has emerged as a strong seed form, but how much further can
it go. In this talk, we will focus on the political aspects of peer to peer
as a broad social movement for a fundamental overturn of the social order.
What are the tactics and strategies that are available to the movement? What
are possible scenarios for the future? The talk will center around two
scenarios, the high road to a peer to peer society which focuses on the
generalization of green capitalist strategies by the enlightened sections of
the current establishment, and a low road scenario of the emergence of
resilient communities within a general framework of the dislocation of the
current world order. What can we do to steer the next transition phase so
that it emerges in a form which demands the least human cost possible? The
crucial issue of how to conceive of a combination of global open design
communities and relocalized cooperative production will be discussed as
well.Michel Bauwens10:3001:30Humanities Bridgeford Cordingleyclosing4th Oekonux Conference and BeyondClosing plenary sessionWorkshopEnglishAt the end of the 4th Oekonux Conference we want to look back at the conference and forward to the next one.Stefan Merten09:0001:30Humanities Bridgeford G7division_labourAn empirical study of division of labour in free software developmentthe case of the FreeBSD projectLectureEnglishIt has been repeatedly remarked that work in free software projects is not assigned, as contributors undertake the work they choose to undertake. In parallel, it has been argued that there is no limit on the number of developers that a free software project can potentially employ, as a result of which a tendency of mass participation inheres in these projects. Mass participation, in turn, results in significant cumulative improvement: “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow”. The centrality thus attributed to mass participation only reinforces the urgency of posing the following question: How is work distributed within the development community?: how many people write code for new functionality? How many people report bugs? How many people fix them? Are these functions carried out by distinct groups of people, that is, do people assume primarily a single role? Do large numbers of people participate somewhat equally in these activities, or do a small number of people do most of the work?George Dafermos09:0001:30Humanities Bridgeford G6next_phaseThe next phase in civilisation: post-scarcity through open-source design and advanced automationLectureEnglishWe are nowhere near the height of human civilisation - not even close. Our
present culture is conditioned by centuries of scarcity that ought to have
disappeared by now considering our technical capabilities. However
automation is surging forwards in terms of sophistication and ability, and
in parallel we are developing ever more effective ways of collaborating and
openly sharing knowledge. This means it will become increasingly
unacceptable to let needless scarcity continue in the face of what is
possible - new thinking and tools are emerging that could change everything.
Via the internet a new fluid grouping of minds is evolving that is adhoc,
distributed and mutually sharing - a system that is potentially far more
effective at problem-solving and creative technical development than
anything that has come before. This is the new enlightenment. In some areas,
notably software development and knowledge gathering, it is well under way-
but this is just the beginning. These 'open' peer-to-peer activities are
about to burst out into the physical world enabling us to do things both
technologically and economically that have not previously been feasible.Charles Collis