- Dec 2022
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techpolicy.press techpolicy.press
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The crucial divide, just as with the Mastodon code, is between the programming haves and have-nots, the coders and non-coders. The openness of the ecosystem means that it is in principle a lot more democratic, as it creates meaningful possibilities to shape it by contributing code. But this ability is not available to the majority of users, leading to a sort of caste society, built on top of an open source infrastructure. There is no realistic scenario in which all users learn to code – therefore participatory governance approaches, which take control of the code away from the hands of the coders, and into collective decision-making processes, is the only way forward.
This comes back to my 'tech smaller than us', governance and technological control over a tool should reside within the context-specific group of users using it. Which does not mean every single person within the group needs all the skills to control the tool, just that the group has it within itself, and decides on how that control is used a group. Vgl [[Networked Agency 20160818213155]] and [[Technologie kleiner dan ons 20160818122905]] n:: This would e.g. imply in Tarkowski's text that a community run instance would ensure having at least 1 member contribute code to Mastodon, and strategically operate to ensure that. Is this also an element wrt the above about Paradox of Open, as the non-monetary benefits of contributing may be well be enumerated as part of the operating costs of a community instance?
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- Sep 2022
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www.promisingtrouble.net www.promisingtrouble.net
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a vision for how hardware and software created by, with and for community organisations:
This is key imo : created by, with and for. Just for is not enough, with is the minimum. By is preferred if possible. If with, not by, then the community involved needs to be able to fully control deployment and settings. It must be within the scope of the user group.
While community tech is important, being a community is a pretty high threshold. For any group that is connected, and shares the same issue, can increase its agency with what is here defined as community tech.
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Alberto says of this https://twitter.com/alberto_cottica/status/1570357027485925378 'most communities gravitate towards tech minimalism: "community tech" is 95% community, 5% tech. And then funders lose interest.' Unless funders are from within the community I suppose. Goes back to networked agency / and the need for tech to be smaller than us, to be within scope of control of the people using the tech for a specific purpose.
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translate those notions into stuff that I can tackle in my own sphere of influence. And to me those then make up the stuff that matters.
Things that matter are a combination of things of interest plus sphere of influence/action radius. This can bring macro issues into a place where they can be addressed by micro actions that have meaning locally and contribute to the issue at scale. Contributes to the invisible hand of networks. Vgl [[Invisible hand of networks 20180616115141]]
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the ancient cathedrals and La Sagrada Familia, though unfinished, are meaningful. They are testimony to the community and community processes over generations that built them. Barn raising is way more important than having a barn built by a contractor, even though the result in terms of barns is the same.
Cathedral building or its more practical and common relative barn raising are expressions of communal effort, and a monument to a community's value/coherence. What a community creates for communal use can be proxy for its meaning. It's a result from community feeding back into community. I've also used the metaphor of mushrooms on mycelium (also comparing orgs to mushrooms)
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branch.climateaction.tech branch.climateaction.tech
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Giving people the tools to live their lives easier and better and having my skills and labor appreciated (and fairly compensated thanks to the union) is a kind of unadulterated joy I want everyone to experience.
Providing agency is rewarding in itself.
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- Aug 2022
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theinformed.life theinformed.life
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he had a concept he called HLAMT: “Humans using Language, Artifacts, Methodology, and Training.” My initial interviews with Engelbart led to a long-lasting conversation with him. And from time to time, he would point out that the artifacts, as I just mentioned, are millions of times more powerful than the ones that he worked with at the Stanford Research Institute. But the language, the methodology, and the training really haven’t caught up with it.
Doug Engelbart used acronym HLAMT wrt augmenting human intelligence: Humans using Language, Artifacts, Methodology, Training. Our artifacts are much more powerful now, language, methodology and training still need to catch up. Rheingold says we're on the verge of that.
Second thought: the A and M roughly map to tech and methods in my networked agency image as design aid. Think about netag in context of Engelbart's basic vision to elicit some more thoughts.
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