Conversation last tuesday on federated access control 
https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/unboundlibraries_FAC


what federation as mode  of organization can 'do' for us and what the implications are.. for collections and libraries,  for social communications and for organizations..    


11.30
paper: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VpXKmxl04cS47fjQQbWvRo2CqvYmmQJHT2pTNvzk6To/edit

Political theory: Proudhon (?)
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/pierre-joseph-proudhon-the-principle-of-federation

federation: smaller units, represented ... instead of nation state
19th century: keep possibility of participation. the local household would be a unit that represents individual throughout the layers up to the government.

conflictual pluralism: this not process of harmony, agreement, but an conflict, way to guarantee peace... n

Roel sees parallel to today's network culture.

peer to peer ... directly talking to each other. 
Federating networks: building groupings...
pragmatic alternatives

decentralisation as stablization of a larger unit (internet history military,,)
"central states are too fragile" (Marx)

Cybernetics as theory of governance

Proudhon: not thinking in absolutes, pure forms: thinking of federation
but pragmatic: how can you arrange the elements 
thinking of institution and power.

Network: what is that common institution?

(sorry its hard to take notes. it's so dense and interesting) I stop now. we have the recording...)




maybe interesting related discussion: https://www.anarchistlibraries.net/history <----> https://theanarchistlibrary.org
This project, AnarchistLibraries.net, forks off from The Anarchist Library project, and serves as an international platform for anarchist sites focusing on publishing and archiving texts.(...)
I think that idea of building THE anarchist library is flawed. I prefer the idea of having smaller libraries (or even sites) loosely connected, even in the same language but maintained by different people, than having THE library. The global search function provided by this site is a step forward in this direction: let's keep the sites (and the folks) separated, but keep them together for the comrades searching for anarchist texts.
ahh super nice ref! I didn't know theanarchistlibrary got forked!

Jacopo: 
I think something that is missing in our conversation about federation is ideology. Form many of the cited 19th century thinkers the method, or the form, itself was in a way sufficient to guarantee a liberated society. We know from Walter Benjamin and the Frankfurt School that the form shapes the content and technology and infrastructure incorporate power structures. Then, as another typical mechanism of capitalism we see the subsumption of practices and modes of organising born in a completely different context, into the modes of production/reproduction of the  capitalist system. The link than anice posted in the chat is a great example of it. So probably we should not only look at federation as a method but at a specific type of it, that means politicise it – to me at least.


cross-point of federation:
- political theory (proudhon, kropotkin, syndicalism..
- network theory as military decentralization ( baran, ..
- cybernetic view of autopoietic systems  ( bateson, ..
- european supra-state decentralization stakes

scale and violence

inherent elevations (of sysadmins), it is not accidental


Q: the ideal p2p or even federated model allows participation and reconfiguring at all levels, but does everyone one to do that? Do you want to be in each and every neighbourhood council? I don't think so personalyl but you want to have the potential of accountability and participation. 


















[trying to find compost + worms! to throw at Baran:

I want to begin by re-turning – not by returning as in reflecting on or going back to a past that was, but re-turning as in turning it over and over again – iteratively intra-acting, re-diffracting, diffracting anew, in the making of new temporalities (spacetimematterings), new diffraction patterns. We might imagine re-turning as a multiplicity of processes, such as the kinds earthworms revel in while helping to make compost or otherwise being busy at work and at play: turning the soil over and over – ingesting and excreting it, tunnelling through it, burrowing, all means of aerating the soil, allowing oxygen in, opening it up and breathing new life into it. Barad, Diffracting Diffraction: Cutting Together-Apart]