letsfirstgetthingsdone

OVERVIEW OF PADS:
1000 Intro http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/letsfirstgetthingsdone_intro
2000 Division of labor http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/letsfirstgetthingsdone_division
2000 Universalism + situated http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/letsfirstgetthingsdone_universalism
2000 Analysis http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/letsfirstgetthingsdone_analysis
1000 Conclusion http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/letsfirstgetthingsdone_conclusion
Bibliography
Themes + notes delegate Snelting, Femke: http://pad.constantvzw.org/public_pad/delegate_snelting
Themes + notes delegate Gurses, Seda http://pad.constantvzw.org/public_pad/delegate_seda

we are interested in the concepts of:
        division of labor
        specialization of work
        efficiency (market vs. other efficiencies)
        space for conflict, dissensus
        design collectives/designing for collectives
        delegation (delegating to engineers/devs or delegating to technologies)
        expectations (what are expected of activists/activists expectation of ready-made technology)
        universalism vs. situated politics (tech for all the squares in the world)

- we will look at the rise of surveillance as the sneaky moment (this is definitely the post-snowden moment, but also the counter-/post-revolutionary moment in MENA)
- we will do a close reading of applications/tools that have been proposed ever since: security-in-a-box, reset-the-net
        femke: will start on one or two of these tools to understand that how prescribe of division of labor/signify a specialization of work
- seda will make an attempt to read the counter-surveillance discourse through the concepts above (universalism, conflict, delegation to technology)
- miriyam: it would be nice to hear from you if you think you might want to say something about activist collectives and their expectations from technology
        e.g, they should be there, ready to go, work, be safe, fun and efficient etc.
        there is a real pressure for getting things done, what does that mean for the naturalization of division of labor in hegemonic hierarchies

DISCUSSION ON OCTOBER 26th, 2014

To be done: connection between division of labor and the analysis of the surveillance pages

femke: you see suggestion of categories of use, providers...i needed a term to talk about the entities that provide (stakeholders? but that could be users and providers?) providers just like that? ...
- to make the bridge in terms of how that talks about the division of labor

seda: what did you see femke through your comparative analysis?

femke: what was present?

in most cases it is about a communication effort: a perceived urgency of communication
so the most important thing is the urgency around surveillance
how to explain? how to make urgent? and the selection of tools is second
the people in the know explain things to people who don't know - how you bridge the gap?
communication efforts to link/translate one world to another
there are few channels to receive messages from the other end

jara:

immediate translation
maybe this is the thing of the temporality
you need to do it in a sneaky moment, rough translations, whispering translation
it is in real life, you need an immediate translation
it does not have to do with a systemic translation
when you have the time and the reportory
this could be part of the sneaky moment definition!!! YES!
femke: i am not sure this is a time issue
tactical tech: 50 people have worked on it, lots of energy being put into communication in a way that the mssage is going to be heard
methodologically it is well developed
i am not finding how the situation, the short term or long term situation in which an activist may deploy these technologies is being taken back into the project
tactical tech: in their precise retelling of situations, they really try to listen to what is happening
they try to translate it in a way that others can learn from it
even they are in their choice of tone and methods, they remain distant.
so, i was interested in the messy use of us and you on the turkish site
all the other projects are referring to a "you" who is someone else
whereas in the turkish site it is about tools that are also for us, we are also users of it
they use our problem, not about your problem
that shifts the tone, even when it is not consistent at all
seda:
professionalisation: eff has assigned people to do translation roles; not a developer but a communication person in-between, and not the techies themselves. they are not developing the tech, they might not know them so they are also on the receiving end. and eff is actually hands on involved in the development.
reason you want a box that can work in sub-saharan desert and iran ... it is a bit of a helper attitude. There is no space for too much situatedness.

jara: ngo-universalism?
seda: i have focused more on computer tech universalism so far
femke: what would need to happen is to look at the choices that each of the sites made
- each of the sites makes a list of suggested tech
- and that is where you can see differences and repetitions
- i haven't made that, but we need a spreadsheet!
- to identify patterns
- i would like to look at the categorizations, a matrix!
- categories of use and tools proposed
options for organizing the section:
seda gave three options (just ideas)
- notes from seda while reading femke's analysis of different sites:
- her structure is as follows: slow and not so exciting so not end in itself but needed that to somehow compare projects ...
Users: Who is the supposed user
- Categories of use, design, vocabulary
Providers: who provides for this user and why?
- Statements of intention and alliance, endorsements, About Us
Dialogue: In what way are the needs of users being framed, analysed and assessed?
- Expected dialogue users and providers, communication channels
Situations: What situations are being adressed, and what are their limits?
- Scenarios, examples, disclaimers, timelyness (expiration dates)
Technologies: What technologies / how technologies
- Recommendations of software, technologies, platforms both recommended and for own project
  - due to lack of space, we should think about how to best summarize this analysis:
1) note something we recognize in each of the categories with anecdotal evidence from one of the initiatives:
- e.g., while a universal use of tech is envisioned, the tension between the universal and specific is resolved by adding specific characters or descriptions of characters or intended users. as in the case of eff (and tactical tech), but does this resolve the tension between the universal user and the situated person that is yet to be configured as an object of surveillance bla blabla
- 2) summarize each of the categories, show examples of how they deal with it, and then follow with a critique
- i think this is a more boring approach, and may eat up a lot of space that we may prefer to use for analysis.
- 3) describe the above as our method of inquiry, but just stick to the analysis made up of three themes supported with examples .
femke: i would like examples to speak to points we made before that
- i would then pick elements to speak to universalism, division of labor, sneaky moments
- from the anecdotes from the sites, i would group them according to the themes below and we narrate them together
seda: reminder of the issues we said we wanted to address:
- division of labor
- specialization of work
- efficiency (market vs. other efficiencies)
- space for conflict, dissensus
- design collectives/designing for collectives
- delegation (delegating to engineers/devs or delegating to technologies)
- expectations (what are expected of activists/activists expectation of ready-made technology)
- universalism vs. situated politics (tech for all the squares in the world)
  - production and reproduction
- femke: the unspecificity of the proposals, in the interest of the imagined user
  - i don't trust how that unspecificity was constructed
  - there is so little evidence of interaction
  - between the activists and developers
seda: tensions - > don't want to teach how to use facebook or x
chicken and egg: how can people design technologies if they don't know? people articulating what they need to do, how they communicate in the process of trying to do what they want to do
the idea is that the expert has thought for you, what communication means, how it is to be done, and what tools are needed to accomplish this communication privately securely, so how do you become more articulate? urgency means ... straight to doing. the developer has thought of the communication needs of the standard universal user and their tools needs, and now narration of that tool and the usability is the only problem.
jara: when there's no time, there is no time to negotiate who is we and who is you. clarity is important
remember the element of time ... when looking for spanish examples i rememberede the situation podemos. for their growing up as a party, they use "appgree". but it is not free software, but they needed a quick solution, ready, and use the discuours of pragmatism at times of becoming 'serious'. public promise to fix it later ! Podemos is in such is in such a hurry ... realpolitik behaviour is putting them under tension. excuses/explanation: we do not have time now.
FS: interesting as example of greyzone between decisions ... and even one decision
politics means that we need to get our hands dirty
is this for mobilisation, ... legitmacy for an organisation to think through their chices.
Jara: scale of time vs scale of organisation. Betting on / buying time. If government = time?
seda: is it about a loss of transparency, the belief that the tools will make them more transparent, or why is transparency first and foremost the most important thing at stake here?
jara: they say we have to wait because they need to first win the election

the cats ... idiotic behaviour ... 4chan facilitating activists movements
...
femke: none of the sites were clear about when they were written.
- i looked and looked and it is not there.
- you can find it if you look deep.
- but it is only in the fourth and fifth level that you can see
- resetthenet is a campaign, so it has a date on it
- the guardian project
- or security in a box
- nor the eff site talk about time
seda: a lot of the context information is missing in all the pages
femke: since this is about security, to give me advice, i want to know who is giving me the advice
- this is interesting to see and is another sneaky moment
- if you take advice in security: who's giving that advice?

ello: building a social network without doing/changing anything, and calling it privacy preserving, just because anyone can use that language without subtantiating or contextualizing it

delegating of trust; orgs/sites become trusted curators. even when crypto is about trusting noone, you need to trust the tool and than the one picking it for you.
are orgs being responsible about / with that.

femke: telecomix quote: much more poetic and intellectualist then all the other initiatives

i wanted something else, in the conclusion
what all the other sites thre is a lack of humor so there is no space for the fact that it might not work
i think that is important: there is this problem of trust, they have to pretend so hard to show that it is serious
i think there is something that is something else in telecomix that is also unbearable
techniques demonstrating its cleverness
but to speak about things going out of control
then the clubbing and the subterranean dance floor was a breath of air

scaling to global claim .. telecomix ... they are weird interventionists
smells like art spirit

trust a community ... but can you ... need eff/tactical tech so they need to look serious
tragedy of universalism is that you lose touch
in the end of the day ... who solves the problem?
with respect to the problem of surveillance, activism and how to work together in the future?
our main question in the abstract: is this division of labor inevitable?

seda: note to myself: facbeooks and googles do massive amounts of user studies all the time

this is what allows them to adapt their tools and to remain "succesful" in their ambitions of being universal services
but what does this mean for these counter-surveillance tools?

femke: let me try something on you!

head of innovations at university of ghent library
into open data and open source
he is executing the deal they have with google
he was defending that choice
on the basis of that this meant that each book in the university library now gets opened once a year
the second argument was that they would never be able to have that power of scanning and precision of delivering
the 250000 books
now they were able to concentrate on what really matters
i was thinking about our discussions
it is the same argument: in 7 years the contract will be over and they can decide on what they want to do
similar to what podemos is doing
there is more going on then...after 7 years you can do whatever you want
even if your contract is over, you are used to a certain level of service
that your users are used to
that you will not be able to disappoint
that part of the work is to work on the expectation management of your users
in the beginning they may expect convenience, usability, fun but they also expect something else of a public library
and that is harder to ask for: you hope that they should have the courage to formulate proposals
to deal with information in ways that, for lack of a better word, in the interest of the public
if they talk about communication, if they put their effort into communicating these decisions
cause otherwise it is more difficult after 7 years, you will not have more power to make bold decisions
you will have less power
by not making space for doubt
or humor
or dissensus about these tools
there is a suggestion of efficiency that cannot be met
which leads to dangerous decision making
i am telling this story, because i think eff, or other organizations with authority
they have the responsibility not to just confirm their own authority
which is so appealing, but then they fall into their own trap
seda: so, if we go back to the cost of offering universal services, like google, it comes at the cost of the cheap forced labor, so the inability to scan and be so precise is not possible because they cannot afford the slave workers that google so succesfully conceals behind their veils of technology

femke: these organizations should be allowed to be not so sexy...
seda: but then eff and tactical tech are on the right track...
femke: we can now see it as a mistake, as not living up to the first image of authority and clarity that they emit
- if you promise security in a box, then that's really frustrating
- but if you promise security out of the box then there is a different situation
- that is a hard one to ask, but that is the question
seda: we need to ask that question in the context of universal services by facebook and google, the cute cat theory, the we need to get our hands dirty for the revolution (paolo), the way to compete with capital is to use its infrastructure argument, so what does this mean?
femke: library context, i was shocked
- i talked about the mundaneam case
- the librarian made a difference between books scanned by google books, vs. scanning by cultural institute (not ok).
- scanning google books has connection to other libraries, there is a stockholm syndrome of wanting to belong to the others
- that got even more painful when i spoke about the royal library in brussels not wanting to collaborate with google.
- and he slipped, it is not that they didn't want to, they were not chosen.
- that's about something else, it is about confirming your authority by belonging

what does eff want to belong to ... sillicon valley. legitimate, non-radical. freedom of expression
tactical tech: there's a lot of money in this space. foundations are turning to this area

do we need to say sth about google / facebook ... they can fullfill 'universalist' service.

google facebook not universal ...
managers and users, cleaning and developing ... what does it mean for activists to be complicit (that's another story)complicit in the divisions of labor with cleaners in the philipines, managers/ high brow developers in silicon valley, and middle class users spread across the globe.

but how can global actors like eff and tactical tech offer space (as in: location, but also: time) for articulation.
and the words we use for it - language (from communication to mediation)
what's the difference between commnication and mediation:

communication: there is a target/target audience, and you find the best way to communicate that with a communication specialist
- mediation: the way jara talks about it, communication does happen but it is a two way thing and the subjects change as a result
- EXAMPLE?

away from 'being in a hurry' to other ways of dealing with urgency (hmmm)
standing your ground, maybe not sexy, finding other means
ways that allow us to collectively frame our actions (both eff and activists 'on the ground') - eff, tactical tech, global voices

In the end of the day ... who solves the problem?
Is the division of labour inevitable? Or: What do we need so that the division of labor is not inevitable?

claims to feedback

DIGITAL LABOR CONFERENCE:

trebor wants:
Could you send us an abstract (120 words roughly), photo 166 pixels squared, and a short biography?

Short bio:
Miriyam, Seda, Femke and Jara started

DD darmstadt delegation / division / protocol / circle / treaty / coalition /

FIBRECULTURE ABSTRACT:

Due Date: November 3, 2014
Articles should be between 4000 – 8000 words in length (including references). Please ensure you adhere in all matters of style to the full Fibreculture Journal guidelines for authors, which can be found here http://fibreculturejournal.org/policy-and-style/

timeline:
highly recommend reading 1-2 articles from the fibreculture journal for format, length, style, inspiration. Also re-reading Seda's notes from Darmstadt can help refreshing the topic.

october 1st: themes we want to work on: three themes before our next call, add them to etherpad http://pad.constantvzw.org/public_pad/letsfirstgetthingsdone (recommendation: in case of emergency pick themes we already discussed) 1- 2 paragraphs on the description of the theme, and relevance to our abstract about division of labor and sneaky moments
october 2nd: next call NYC 3pm, UK 8pm, EU 9pm: objective: nail down themes and outline
october 16th: submit a raw draft for each section
october 20th: raw draft deadline!!! meaning there is text in every section and the outline is stabilized
october 27th: a comprehensive draft
november 3 - 9th: submission
in between we suppose we will do collective editing in teams of two or three.

Draft compiled by the 27th of oct.

Let's first get things done!
On division of labor and practices of delegation in times of mediated politics and politicized technologies

Abstract:
During particular historical junctures, characterized by crisis, deepening exploitation and popular revolt, referred to here as “sneaky moments”, hegemonic hierarchies are simultaneously challenged and reinvented, and in case of the latter in due course subtly reproduced. The current divide between those engaged in politics of technology and those participating in struggles of social justice requires reflection in this context. We argue that especially the delegation of technological matters to the experienced "techies" or "technological platforms", and the corresponding flattening of politics and all political activities in the process of developing technical tools and platforms, exacerbate this problem.

These tangible divergences in daily practice, however, are not only due to philosophical or political differences. They are also related to the ways in which specialization of work and scarcity of resources leads to a division of labor that often expresses itself across existing fault-lines of race, gender, class and age. Assuming that these moments in which collectives fall back on hegemonic divisions of labor are part and parcel of the divergence between technology politics and social justice politics, we want to ask: are these divisions of labor inevitable?

============================================================================================================

DESCRIPTION

Let's first get things done: on division of labor and practices of delegation in times of mediated politics and politicized technologies

Be it in getting out the call for the next demonstration on some "cloud service", or developing a progressive tech project in the name of an imagined user community, scarcity of resources and distribution of expertise makes short cuts inevitable. But do they really?

The current distance between those who organise their activism to develop "technical infrastructures" and those who bring their struggles to these infrastructures is remarkable. The paradoxical consequences can be baffling: (radical) activists organize and sustain themselves using "free" technical services provided by Fortune 500 companies. At the same time, "alternative tech practices", like the Free Software Community, are sustained by a select (visionary and male) few, proposing crypto with 9-lives as the minimum infrastructure for any political undertaking.

The naturalization of this division of labor may be recognized in statements about activists having better things to do than to tinker with code or hardware, or in technological projects that locate their politics solely in the technology and infrastructures as if they are outside of the social and political domain. What may seem like a pragmatic solution actually re-iterates faultlines of race, gender, age and class. Through the convenient delegation of "tech matters" to the techies or to commercial services, collectives may experience a shift in the collective's priorities and a reframing of their activist culture through technological decisions. The latter, however, are typically not open to a broader political discussion and contestation. Such separation also gets in the way of actively considering the way in which changes in our political realities are entangled with shifts in technological infrastructures.

We want to use this day to resist the reflex of "first getting things done" in order to start a long term collaboration that intersects those of us with a background in politics of society and politics of technology.

CONTEXT

Thinking together
"A transdisciplinary platform for political imagination"
Description, program: http://www.osthang-project.org/projekte/thinking-together/?lang=en
Guests, bios: http://www.osthang-project.org/guests-thinking-together/?lang=en&lang=en
Brochure: http://www.osthang-project.org/wp-content/themes/osthangproject/pdf/thinking_together_program_en.pdf

Seda's version:
http://vous-etes-ici.net/?p=112

Osthang Summerschool
"What does community mean today? What spaces does the community need? What forms and spaces of communal living can be imagined for the future? How will we build for the community or how do we build communally?"
Description, program: http://raumlabor.net/osthang-project/
Brochure: http://raumlabor.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/OP_Program_Complete_LowRes.pdf

Library
https://library.memoryoftheworld.org/#&metadata=Let%27s+first+get+things+done! (URL not always available)

PROGRAMME

Thursday July 31

(arrival Seda)

Saturday August 2

(arrival Miriyam, Jara, Femke)

13:00–19:00
Decoloniality and Border Thinking: Perspectives on a Pluricentric World
Hosted by Madina Tlostanova (RU) with Walter Mignolo (AR/US) and Catherine Walsh (EC)

20:00
Preview Lecture Bernard Lietaer (BE)

Film Program

Sunday August 3

11:00–19:00
Rethinking Currency
With Bernard Lietaer (BE), Jan Ritsema (NL/F), Stefano Harney (SG), Red Vaughan Tremmel (US) & members of the Netzwerk Plurale Ökonomik (Network for Pluralist Economics, DE)

20:00
Some Use for Your Broken Clay Pots
Performance Christophe Meierhans | Afterwards Film Program

~~??? Preview Lecture Let's first get things done~~ ~~[not announced on program]~~

Monday August 4

Morning
Work together, internal

Re-writing abstract together
Publishing stories - discussion, initialising a platform/repository and strategies for doing so
Adding, writing stories from Maxigas, others
Sneaky moments: slipping into divisions at moments of urgency. Time and temporality. Shortcuts.
Let's first ... = When? Before what? Jara: 'Snapshots of the division of labor from the prism of urgency'

13:00–19:00
Let's first get things done: on division of labor and practices of delegation in times of mediated politics and politicized technologies [announced on program as: Mediated Politics and Politicized Technologies]
Hosted by Seda Gürses (TR/US), with Miriyam Aouragh (NL) and Femke Snelting (BE)

Introducing worksession through 'narratives of delegation': Stories that recount experiences about how our political realities are entangled with shifts in technological infrastructures. Being specific about our professional, practical and political positions. 20 mins per story; 1 or 2 stories pp?

Seda Guerses

Meeting on the future of regulating security technologies: future of regulating security technologies, with a number of talking heads in the room. when i brought up the fact that security can also mean national security and, in the us, war on terror, and asked them to take a position, there were rather cold winds in the room. some people distanced themselves from me, others came to say in person that they appreciated what i said. so, i want to use this as one possible entry point, one concrete example to discuss the issues that are possible to speak about in the context of technology and politics and what gets (deliberately or inadvertently) left out, and what that means.
Trust: Consequences of NSA relevations for engineering community. Trust in mathematics and mathematicians. Path dependency

Miriyam Aouragh

The Empathic Expert (?)
...

Femke Snelting

A code of conduct: Complications and divisions of labor around drafting and implementing a code of conduct for Libre Graphics meeting
The Making Of (so far an older anecdote about desire to create a book using Free Software)

Jara Rocha: Extitutional infrastructures (?)

15M movement and tensions between from anti-institution, ex-titution and institution
Kune http://kune.cc/ needs, urgencies, tools, facilitation (forks) "Today you depend on professionals: techies and private companies (Google/Yahoo) to make websites, the same way we used to depend on professional photographers. Why? If you want to be able to make your website and communication spaces for you and your community without these dependencies, use and participate in the creation of Kune."

Kate Rich: Backbone

A (prerecorded?) conversation, statement, report on the Backbone meeting in Calafou -> postponed

20:00
Preview Lecture Ranabir Samaddar (IN)

Film Program

Tuesday August 5

(travel back)

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

PRIOR DISCUSSIONS, CONVERSATIONS

Saturday August 2, room 510

Farocki: "The magazine itself deals with culture, cars, a certain lifestyle. Maybe all those trappings are only there to cover up the naked woman. Maybe it’s like with a paper-doll. The naked woman in the middle is a sun around which a system revolves: of culture, of business, of living! (It’s impossible to either look or film into the sun.) One can well imagine that the people creating such a picture, the gravity of which is supposed to hold all that, perform their task with as much care, seriousness, a responsibility as if they were splitting uranium." (Harun Farocki, Zelluloid, no. 27, Fall 1988)

Monday July 7
Legacy conversation w. Myriam, Seda, Femke

"A lot of people are asking these questions"
"Divisions of labour that recreate themselves, even if they are amongst men"

Myriam reports from Rosa Luxemburg conference. The philosopher and Myriam, the researcher with practical examples.
Philosopher: "So now the empirical angle"
Myriam: "The emotional angle you mean?"

Myriam: Making, doing and analysing together

What kind of situations can make things work? Framing is important. Possibility to go back and forth. Different theories, not hierarchical difference. Groups of theories ...
No preset roles ... you play the role that is shaped for you

("and still architecture and design")

Multiple reports from Calafou

Kate Rich: (many notes, no format yet)
Jara Rocha: "It felt completely alien. Not aggressive, but another planet that I did not belong to. I had no idea what people where speaking about"
Douwe ... "I am not that technical"

A screening from Tactical Tech (coming up)

femke on calafou:
    this suggests that there was setup of a hierarchy between people with situatedness, with knowledge, language, that is naturalized.
    we are trying to break these barriers, to make sure that the roles are mixed (are mixable, mutable), that people can speak with each other with confidence, different ways of engaging in technology and infrastructure

Translation ... daring to ask for translation, interpretation (or space for).

Putting intellectual and activists together ... mixed. High theory immigrant intellectuals accused of being inaccessible
It is not to change your toolset, but maybe ... something else.

M: humor is an important thing - F: but wait, your example is that humor is what is expected of you

M: instead of calling it tensions: see it as productive tensions that come out of diversity (in language, fields, politics)
the way to build on that and to see it as an exercise in spelling out these dynamics and to formulate and describe them
without paralyzing yourself in mentioning solutions: how do we overcome these traps (these are big challenges)
exposing the dynamics, spelling them out, is already part of the process, the ways in which power is being reproduced in the context of academic/techno/activist production
it is an angle to understand these things, to create the space in our hands
we are not accusing people, we are spelling it out to get to a certain point where we can move to another level of solving these issues

F: we get confirmations that this is relevant
my questions are about scope and method
how can we have this analytical exercise of mapping the tensions/pick it apart is useful, but...
today: self-organized summer school, code, theory, arts, music all together
physical situation: people that do geeky hardware installed themselves in the place that had the least flow
they want the least of interference
that is a way to play out the tension and making other spaces possible

M: that is yet another tension
that is part of the division of labor discussion we had in the broader sense
there are two ways of interrogation: the descriptive part, and the problematized one(divisions of labor), is it a problem?
you are forcing me thing outside of the box
we wanted to show through our practice what we mean
i would ideally like that, that however doesn't mean that singular method is wrong
there is a lot of projection going on: between us, between theory and practice, between computer science etc.
so, it would be part of our narrative
to share as our pre-process: of the spelling out process
are we able to transcend that: we are going to show our way and in our fashion, project, activity, we are going to show how it can be done differently?
i like your metaphor of moving, how do you visualize what this means in practice of our engagement with each other

F: we can setup a situation is a way to have a discussion with an interested public
go back to our earlier, the description
we thought it from this idea of infrastructure
there is this layer of setting up platforms for others
hosting, making space for something to happen in the technical sence and the day to day sense

problematised and descriptive, and ...
the box = the setting. concerns and tensions that might become productive?
showing through praxis

delegation: trusting somebody or letting go (and not caring), a rich term to work on
imagined user
scarcity of resources
shortcuts
few
better things to do
(not) outside of the political domain
resist reflex

M: how can we do this creatively
the framework is the session
long term: we want to do a larger intervention

Could we use this as the beginning of a longer collaboration ... would it be large or small? And what decisions flow from that? (how many people or who)
Writing letters?

See the day(s) as a kind of worksession, a recursive mapping session ...
Morning: start working on preparing ... putting the abstract on-line (so this is basically us three?).
Afternoon: reflection, decision

M:
important: :):):) The making of the abstract is the project. An open (?) document, ongoing.

Who has access? Who has interest? Who has time? Who will read? Who will want to make a change? Who will dare to make a change?

Break out of dominant modes of epistomological production (?): What do we mean by creating new knowledge?
You make yourself vulnerable by opening yourself up

Can we consider sharing our abstract with others? Who want to break open the divides. See it as an ethnographic exercise.
Does it make sense what we are grappling with?
Have other think aloud with us. Have them debate, expose or describe...

side issue: we are not the only ones having this discussion and making these points. others are struggling with similar technological and theoretical dilemmas

F: this is important
femke will send an email...

difference practices of opening up a process
keeping track of how we share (what platforms, what technologies, ...)
tracing a division / different way of working / labor

M: once you zoom in about very concrete questions
like 10 yrs ago there was awareness about not using corporate tools
indymedia etc.
now activists in concrete movements are the neoliberal dominant tools
the discussion was both about necessity
when you cannot wait for a reality that is going to come up with alternative tools
you have to deal with reality as it is
the answer to those questions are going to depend so much on which case you are talking about
division of labor: this is a different kind of division as well
activism
among people that are aware and able to use alternative technologies
they are going to reflect the anti-capitalist ethics
activism forces you to deal with mass publics
who are not on that techno level
without wanting it, you can turn it into a very conservative anti-capitalist person
cause you are putting your ethics of changing your reality
that ends up being something very elitist
the way you talk about it relies on what concrete context or your case study is
to make things easier for ourselves
we have to think of a practical case study
that case study will force you to polish and limit your analysis in a way that suits the balance of forces
the power relations
the digital abilities/qualities or talents that are in the context that you are dealing with
paolo was projecting his egyptian experience
i am often projecting my experience with syria
and you are (un)consciously projecting gezi
femke has her own
this has its nice diversity
but also might create problems
cheap solution is to agree on a case study
an intervention that you have in practice
that would impose on us some restrictions

we concluded in that room in london: there was an indignado, he had examples, and an activist with the london 2010 protest of shops that evade tax
where they occupied big shops. they brought us back to the beginning of our discussion
all our parameters are nice, critical analysis makes sense to a certain level
it doesn't make sense at a practical level
unless our practice had some similarities in power relations and familiarity in the public
this needs to be mentioned in our own abstract
the reason why it is difficult to describe this clearly and to find clear answers
is precisely because we cannot universalize it
to add a sentence or two with a question mark, rather than an answer
it would help me practically to interview/ask someone
with respect to who i would share this with
like leila: arab techy group [http://vjumamel.com/works/ for some of her work] and more on the arab conetxt, some describe the revolutions/counter-revolutions with lots of technology related metaphors [e.g.'Egypt's military-dominated deep state had remained the power behind erstwhile President Mohamed Morsi's ostensibly democratic facade. If it felt strongly enough about the need to reboot the post-Tahrir political scene to massacre hundreds and jail thousands of citizens in brazen fashion, there was seemingly little point in the US demanding it continue running now deleted software, even if it had functioned fairly well from a US perspective since its installation.' from http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/06/alaa-abdel-fattah-democracy-vir-201461555134995794.html. it raises an interesting question: what does it mean that the very techies who were the coders/programmers etc. like Alaa Abdelfattah are now rotting behind bars? also very cocnretely what does it mean that i can now not ask him to reflect on our abstract? that is also about 'production of knowledge'...

they have loads of issues
if i would give her the abstract and ask her for a practical experience of how the local situation played out
we can offer something more richer
in concrete: certain challenges are very european, middle eastern, practical violence is a few steps nearer
and we can make that more concrete

"Programming is emancipation!"
"Now let's ask that same question in Bangalore"

When you think about infrastructure ... there is a level of abstraction maybe?

F:

M:
    let's make the abstract more concrete!

Related events early August:

Noisy Square
https://noisysquare.com

Interference

Martino
Anita
...

Critical engineering

Danja
Julian

---------

Let's first get things done: on division of labor and practices of delegation in times of mediated politics and politicized technologies

Be it in getting out the call for the next demonstration on some "cloud service", or developing a progressive tech project in the name of an imagined user community, scarcity of resources and distribution of expertise makes short cuts inevitable. But do they really?

The current distance between those who organise their activism to develop "technical infrastructures" and those who bring their struggles to these infrastructures is remarkable. The paradoxical consequences can be baffling: (radical) activists organize and sustain themselves using "free" technical services provided by Fortune 500 companies. At the same time, "alternative tech practices", like the Free Software Community, are sustained by a select (visionary and male) few, proposing crypto with 9-lives as the minimum infrastructure for any political undertaking.

The naturalization of this division of labor may be recognized in statements about activists having better things to do than to tinker with code or hardware, or in technological projects that locate their politics solely in the technology and infrastructures as if they are outside of the social and political domain. What may seem like a pragmatic solution actually re-iterates faultlines of race, gender, age and class. Through the convenient delegation of "tech matters" to the techies or to commercial services, collectives may experience a shift in the collective's priorities and a reframing of their activist culture through technological decisions. The latter, however, are typically not open to a broader political discussion and contestation. Such separation also gets in the way of actively considering the way in which changes in our political realities are entangled with shifts in technological infrastructures.

We want to use this day to resist the reflex of "first getting things done" in order to start a long term collaboration that intersects those of us with a background in politics of society and politics of technology.

draft 2

leila's reflection

---------

People

Finn Brunton - NYU, philosopher, writes critical texts on crypto and bitcoin, work on obfuscation (weapons of the weak)
http://journals.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3493/2955
Jara Rocha: A report and/or reporter from Calafou Backbone meeting + TEO Infrastructures group + Objetologías research group
A guest invited by Myriam
Maybe: Unitary Networking // Dutch Italian
Maybe: Marcell Mars (about Mamma), and/or maybe Tomi // Croatia
Maybe: A remote contribution by Kate Rich

----------

Infrastructure to important to care about? Leave it to the pro's? Activist out there 'have better things to do' than to tinker with code? Technology should not get in the way.

Delegation both ways: activist leaving technology to technologists (and not considering technology as deeply changing political realities) and technologists ignoring the politics of the infrastructures that they are working towards, or locating their politics in technology, ignoring politics otherwise.

Nothing changes in the actual way things are being done.
Solutionism

Parallel worlds
Pick your battles, life in the middle

Delegation, out-sourcing, distancing
Division is a problem because it creates fragmentation - lack of responsability - visibility (as in awareness)

Changing expectations
Re-aligning (points of reference?) different time frames

We want to use this day to resist the reflex of "first getting things done" in order to start a long term collaboration that intersects those of us with a background in politics of society and politics of technology.

(Experience shows that these securitized utopias are probably too heavy for any near time "mass" take off.)
(Noortje Marres: Activist need to be careful not to pitch themselves as 'pure' against 'real'.)

--------

Be it in getting out the call for the next demonstration, that appears on some "cloud service", or releasing the latest version of a free software project, scarcity of resources and distribution of expertise leads to a divison of labor in which short cuts are inevitable, or are they? The current distance between those who organize their activism our "technical infrastructures" and those who bring their struggles to these infratsructures is remarkable. The consequence can be baffling: we have a world in which (radical) activists organize and sustain themselves using "free" technical products provided by Fortune 500 companies. At the same time, "alternative tech practices", like "free software projects" are sustained by a select (visionary and male) few, and crypto with 9-lives is posited as the minimum infrastructure for any political undertaking. Experience shows that these securitized utopias are probably too heavy for any near time "mass" take off. This division of labor and the paradoxes it brings along are...

We want to use our day to resist the reflex of "first getting things done" in order to start a long term collaboration that intersects those of us with a background in politics of society and politics of technology.

infrastructure

think of different movements we are part of
assuming there is a desire to connect these experiences, networks

experience at left-forum -- gezi

international meetings; connect to greece, syria, us
creating an infrastructure

what are technologies we use and what does that mean
envision/use

language, character, terms, expressions, images -- intellectual property, platform

look at what people do, how they communicate, what tech they use and what it changed/limited/enabled

https://www.tacticaltech.org/film-series-exposing-invisible
Episode 2: From my point of view
Book: Visualising information for advocacy https://visualisingadvocacy.org/

http://backbone409.calafou.org/participants/index.en.html

Critical engineering manifesto http://criticalengineering.org/

preparation would be to step back and think about some group or movement that we are part of: who is this group constituted of what are their struggles, objectives how do they envision their futures and their technologies/their technologies and their futures what are instances in their tech use? to be followed by a critical reading of these technologies and struggles

1. a tech group, and/or design group or project (linked to advocacy)
2. an activist group, localised (syria)
3. an activist group, localised (turkey)

To take this tension of "let's first get things done" vs. long term investment in technological infrastructures and representation, how we experience these tensions, we talk about why we bring this subject to the table. We do it in a precise way with respect to the groups we are involved in. This is not necessarily a case study, but our stories are a way to take this question of division of labor to experiences that we have had, then we have the start of a discussion.

"Putting your politics in command"

https://mayfirst.org/node/46 Radical techies

Unitary networking group
http://www.radical-openness.org/programm/2014/unitary-networking
http://backbone409.calafou.org/index.es.html
https://calafou.org/en/content/backbone409 - please don't bring your dog

Making dirty devices
IPv4 vs IPv6: xxxxx vs. B.A.T.M.A.N
Announce, Discover devices
Radically different structure, web interface looks all the same
We have ten minutes ...
"How is your Python?"
Linking messages to areas = devices
connect hash message to node.
Roel: "But this is surveillance"
Martino: "Or not? Identifying when/by what node message was propagated, but not what node received it"
---------

Critical Engineering Manifesto
http://criticalengineering.org

---------

discussion with Jara Rocha
15 (im)mueble - Reina Sofia

http://ciudad-escuela.org/actividad/seminario-el-derecho-a-la-infraestructura/

---------
Telco with Berno on May 18.:
the format of the whole week:
workshops start at 1pm and end at 7pm
5-6 hours of workshop time
how we structure this time is up to us!

evenings there will be additional lectures, film screenings
mornings are for additional meetings/recreation

audience/participants:

more or less clear who will be there:

academics:
Stefano Harney (SG) management studies, got kicked out for political reasons from queen mary, logistics in a post human regime
Julian Reid (FI), war and liberalism, foucaultian scholar
Damien Cahill (AUS); neoliberalism, political economist
Susan George (FR), political scientist, attack france, lugano report

architects & designers:
Mauricio Corbalán (AR),
Ana Mendez (ES),
Wolfgang Fiel (AUT)

artists:
Ayreen Anastas (PS/US),
Rene Gabri (IR/US),
Ruth Sacks (SA),
Valentina Desideri (IT),
Sarah Vanhee (BE),
Christophe Meierhans (CH/BE)

also:
Madina Tlostanova
Walter Mignolo (will have left by the time it is our session)

second: additional participants who come
third: interested citizens of darmstadt

at some point we may want to address some of these points:
we may do a preview lecture the night before our workshop day so that people know what we are planning on doing.
we need to think about to what extent are we open to being carried away by questions along the way.
how technical will we get? how will we pull along people who may be resistant to the tech and politics we are putting forward?
what do we want to collaborate on in the future?
can we start with an introduction? and then we move more freely.
or we start with a process and in the second half of the day we reflect on it
can we have a short text describe what the session is about?

NOTES FROM OUR DISCUSSION ON UPPER EAST SIDE ON FRIEND'S SOFA

let's first get things done!
on division of labor and practices of delegation in times of mediated politics and politicized technologies

collaborative project:
the division of labor as a macro idea

write an abstract together for a joint project
to make things concrete
using certain tools, experimenting with different ways of collaborating with certain tools
preparation of another project
how does it fit in the bigger picture of our personal principles and commitments in combining our work to making a change
the problem of not connecting all the sides of your academic and political life
by making it part of a larger project or dream
formulate something that should lead to a solution
i give a lot of critique, i don't give a solution, because of the division of labor between the activists and the academics
the epistemology of this thing is an issue
what is the knowledge production of this?
do we want to propose ways to overcome these divisions
maybe we discover that there is a division of labor

can we think of situations where this could work?
we need to have a small problem: in one day, to actually be able to do something

you are saying we need a case study

you say you want to do something, not just critique and offering something
we could maybe tinker with something

you are not just commenting from the sideline but actually be part of something

how to find the object that we could all collaborate on

i thought of abstract: but maybe activists are not laboratories
maybe this kind of experimentation doesn't work out
it should be something we all participate in that we think also in longer terms

does sitting together, writing an abstract together, looking at a tool together: is this something that you can call a collaboration that leads further than the time frame of a conference

if we are talking about activists, if we are talking about tools, which tools, if it is infrastructure, which infrastructure
i would be interested in testing/experimenting shifting divisions of labor

maybe some activism is more accommodating to shifting divisions of labor
or something this is your project: to shift divisions of labor

local to the place, local to the summer school, i am not sure that is possible in a day
it could also be a trap

we want to continue this discussion in some way
helal collaboration tool

we should continue this discussion

surveillance:
        immigrants are those who are most suspect to surveillance
        this is more than a division of labor, but a segregation of topics

division of labor
        standards confine people to different files
        the way that tools and technologies are set up produce certain workflows and how people can collaborate
        you can use an online collaboration document to write together, but you cannot decide on whether to have a password or not
        there is one admin, and she does things

division of labor / worlds and technology

when they are brought together, you get a lot of whatever.

the conditions that give meaning to that thing
anonymity, transparency: the meaning is the result of a condition

hackers would have a hard time understanding that certain things in certain constellations may be very conservative, but in another constellation may have a very different effect

political publishing initiative in madrid
the books are part of the 15mai
so i ask how these books were made
they started working with a free software tool/community
the people installed things, and then they were gone
so things started breaking down
so they started working with what worked
they were sad about it
the design of books as a pleasurable activity stays
the passions stay or don't always go everywhere
there are things i can do, i am not allowed to do

a lot things that we think are political are moralism
if you take it out of the relationships of imperialism, what does it mean

we are also in a different phase: a counter-revolutionary phase
all revolutions are like that, it is inspiring
now we are so much more bitter
so do we constantly have to readjust according to the political power relationships
or do you have a standard position that you stay truthful to
it is hippo critical to not say anything about venezuela or syria, when you were so loud about egypt or tunisia
if you don't take a sides then you get desmond tutu, that is not always pleasant either

gabrielle coleman:
        she was ok
        i asked a question based on noisy square
        who are the hackers, who are allowed to be the real ones
        what happens with dissident voices
        what happens with gender and race

it will be a collaboration

PART 1: DISCUSSION WITH PAOLO
=================================================================================

after some presentations of art works (mostly internet based) by simona lodi and a short presentation by a women from turkey, who is an artist and gezi activist i posed the following question:

can we say that we can distinguish very roughly two types of political engagement (in artistic practice but also elsewhere):
        i) engagements that manifest themselves also online, where an action or social/political struggle is itself the object or the spectacle
        ii) engagements where the technology itself (and how it reconfigures us) is the object or spectacle

in the narration of the art works that she presented, simona lodi often referred to numbers as a way of making her case about the efficacy or success of the art works.
        for example: 200.000 users committed “fb suicide” using seppukoo”…
        can we for example say that in the politics of technology there is a tendency to abstract away people and talk of numbers, a sort of quantification in the political argument?
        further, most of the artworks created a binary that by using certain technology you are complicit with a capitalist system and the way out is to move to other platforms or suicide yourself etc.
        this leaves little space for engagement with technology that takes into account the political or social situatedness of the people (assumption is that we all start from the same place: users)
        we also are confronted with a situation, where political spectacles are constantly represented through the same templates (fb, twitter, etc.) of visualization that flatten out distinctions.

for most political movements, these concerns are secondary. the priority is given to the political project independent of the media.

so when turkish activists and artists decide to create an archive of the gezi, and they also add that they have 800 hours of footage that they are filtering due to ethical concerns.
        what are these ethical concerns guided by:
                the framings provided by internet theorists and their narrative of of tech and surveillance as the primary logic of filtering
                the concerns of political projects and their objectives and framings of publicness
        or is there a way we can be conscious of this process?
        is there so to say a third space which is neither techno-centric or polito-centric, but manages to work through the entanglements of the two?

Paulo responded as follows:

there has been an apparent distinction between ideas like “tactical media” and “political activism"
                the tactical media discourse and practice has been very much about self-reflection on technology
                in this framing, using certain technologies is a sign of complicity with the system
                their objective has been and continues to be in the creation of a cultural critique of the platform
                or making explicit the power dynamics in the platform
                contesting the conditions that form the basis of the world which we live in
media activism, if we look at what happened in egypt, and the two turns (2011 the revolution and 2013 the coup)
                the tactical media critique looses its primacy
                twitter and fb are not platforms to be criticized in the spirit of “the media is the massage” reflex
                but rather the content matters: channels to get to the biggest audience and other instrumental considerations

                this does not mean you like fb or twitter
                but because of economies of scale
                because you want to create a popular movement
                and that compels you to use corporate tools

                these are very different tools than the ones used by the globalization movement in the 90s/00s.
                where the focus was on making your own media, like indymedia
                and corporate media was seen as being contagious, engaging in it makes you sick

now:
        it is much more about occupying mainstream media
        let’s take the space that zuckerberg and others are endorsing
        it is about expropriating back what has been taken from us

        and, yes, i agree that there is a paradigmatic difference between these two approaches

about a third space:
        what could be ideal scenarios?
        if you want equality.
        fb and most existing platforms do not provide an ideal scenario
        but maybe we can imagine a cooperative based social media
        owned by the people
        a commons based social network
        but this is only a long term plan: we are not in that situation yet

where we are now:
        activists are working with constraints, activism is something they do on the side
        it raises ethical and political questions
        we are using tools of surveillance and canalization
        there are some pragmatic decisions to be made: if you want change, you also have to get your hands dirty
        working with a small group, you can only achieve so much

        a third pace would be user friendly and efficient
        people have tried: diaspora
        but these alternatives cannot compete with the other services

PART II: WORKSHOP AT CALAFOU
=================================================================================

User control: Crypto for the masses?!
=====================================

Keywords: Empowerment, specialisation, service provision, DIY, relationship with users

----
Summary: At this roundtable we will discuss the role of the techno-activist within social movements. If the technology that we work on is not widely adopted, how does it help the movement? How can we balance the need for strong cryptographic tools with the goal of widespread adoption and usability? On the other hand, how do we balance the need for ready-and-easy-to-use solutions with the will to share our skills and make our users more autonomous? Do we want to be only service providers?
----

A long standing discussion from the time of Indymedia is *whether media activists and techno-activists provide a service to the movement or they are part of the movement*. Theoretically, we don'??t think of ourselves differently than other activists who work on environmental issues, feminism, anti-fascism, or housing. In practice, however, there is increasingly a divide between the life of techno-activists and other people in the movement. Ideally, techno-activists are integrated into the movement and take part in demonstrations, actions and assemblies.   Nonetheless, technical skills and interests -?? or the lack of it -?? divide users from political minded hackers.

Last year Dymaxion [^nsq] from the Briar Project told hackers at Noisysquare [^nsq] that the most we can do to really intervene in contemporary techno-politics is to build software people actually use. Her declaration that user adoption matters more than the correctness of the crypto (*??we fix them later?*) received wide applause. The critique was directed against a movement of self-absorbed engineers. She pointed out that it is harder to make a widely used software than a well implemented one. Yet, all that conventional companies do to achieve mass adoption is practically missing from most free software projects: user experience design, marketing, business models, etc. But is this the kind of professionalism we really need?

In a somewhat similar vein, Darkveggy asked activist administrators the question in 2006: [^pga] *what was the last time they logged in to the webmail interface they provide for users?* Indeed, now many local techno-activists use default settings on their machines just so they can more effectively discover interface problems, support users, etc. Such tactics emphasise a different approach from the business-minded solutions to the problem which were mentioned above. Instead of researching our users and marketing for them, we live, breath and struggle with our users. While this is a politically appealing idea, the question is if it can scale?

Spideralex from Calafou recently offered the vision of *technological sovereignty* [^ritimo] which can be applied to the idea of a wider network of solidarity between communities of various specialisations. The concept is derived from food sovereignty: the power of communities to choose a biologically and culturally appropriate source of nourishment for themselves, including having a say in how and where it is manufactured.   The thrust of such demands is to empower communities to drive "development" --?? indeed, maybe something to consider for software and services too.

[^nsq]: See the transcript of Eleanor Saitta (Dymaxion)'??s talk at https://noisysquare.com/ethics-and-power-in-the-long-war-eleanor-saitta-dymaxion/

[^pga]: At the Peoples' Global Action (PGA), European gathering, 2006 Dijon.   PGA was a major alterglobalisation solidarity and coordination network.   The gathering in question included a Digital Struggles track.

[^ritimo]: Dossier on Technological Sovereignty, Introduction. Haché, Alexandra, ed. 2014. Technological Sovereignty. Paris: Association Ritimo.

--

PART III:        Turing Complete User (olia lialina, whose work constant exhibited at the last cpdp!)
=================================================================================
http://contemporary-home-computing.org/turing-complete-user/
In “As we may think”, while describing an ideal instrument that would augment the scientist of the future, Vanevar Bush mentions
For mature thought there is no mechanical substitute. But creative thought and essentially repetitive thought are very different things. For the latter there are, and may be, powerful mechanical aids18
Opposed to this, users, as imagined by computer scientists, software developers and usability experts are the ones who’s task is to spend as little time as possible with the computer, without wasting a single thought on it. They require a specialized, isolated app for every “repetitive thought”, and, most importantly, delegate drawing the border in between creative and repetitive, mature and primitive, real and virtual, to app designers.
There are periods in history, moments in life (and many hours a day!) where this approach makes sense, when delegation and automation are required and enjoyed. But in times when every aspect of life is computerized it is not possible to accept “busy with something else” as a norm.
…
There is nothing one user can do, that another can’t given enough time and respect. Computer Users are Turing Complete.

OSTHANG's pad: https://titanpad.com/letsfirstgetthingsdone