[Hacklabs] "hacklabs, open-access spaces and political computing" @ PGA Conference in Belgrade

[darkveggy]

Here's an abstract from the "HACKLABS, OPEN-ACCESS SPACES AND POLITICAL
COMPUTING" workshop that I held during the PGA Conference in Belgrade.
It was published in the daily PGA newspaper.

It was followed by an interesting discussion, that tackled around the
issues of sexism within geek spheres, the difficulty of
knowledge-sharing and the creation of a hacklab in the context of
side-events accompanying the next ESF in London.

<abstract>

A GROWING MOVEMENT ARTICULATING POLITICS & TECHNOLOGY

Over the last few years, there's been a growing number of initiatives
openly articulating technology and politics in Western Europe, grouped
around two networks:

	- Plug'n'Politix, gathering squatted cybercafés and
	  miscellaneous anarchist technology collectives, mostly from
	  northern countries, sharing thoughts and tactics through a
	  "Connect Congress" and a mailing-list,

	- Hackmeetings in Italy and Spain, bringing hacker ethics &
	  culture to occupied social centres through the organisation of
	  yearly self-managed and unsubsidised events, eventually
	  leading to the creation of a number of "hacklabs" in various
	  southern cities.

Not to forget a recent attempt to bring together these two, through the
organisation of a Transnational Hackmeeting, that was held in Pula,
Croatia, June 2004.

                               * * * 

WHAT ARE THESE INITIATIVES ABOUT?

Three key-points of the hacklab/open-access space initiatives:

1 - RECLAIMING COMPUTING AND SUBVERTING TECHNOLOGIES

	- While the capitalist system currently promotes a
	  pan-technological society (that is based upon passive
	  consumption of technological goods, which maintain users in
	  ignorance, grow their dependance and tends to reduce their
	  creativity), hacklabs actively reclaim and subvert those tools
	  (by building new uses for them, other than/against what they
	  were made for, by recycling old-fashionned hardware, and
	  working towards an autonomy based upon free software).
	  
2 - CONNECTING RADICAL LEFT AND FREE SOFTWARE ACTIVISTS

	- Presently, both "scenes" mostly ignore each other, though they
	  have a number of things in common:  
	  
		- the radical left has developped democratic
		  self-organization processes (through direct-democracy
		  practices and egalitarian decision-making techniques),
		  and so has the free software movement (developpers
		  organise independently and voluntarily, share and take
		  decisions through inclusive and transparent
		  mailing-lists and collaborative websites)
		  
		- while political squats actively critisize private
		  property (through squatting, promoting and creating
		  community alternatives), free software communities
		  effectively critisize intellectual property (through
		  sharing, promoting and creating software
		  alternatives).
		  
	- Hacklabs/open-access spaces should allow both cultures to
	  meet, gain interest in each other, and benefit from each
	  other:
	  
		- free software brings the possibility of alternative
		  and secure communication tools for autonomous media
		  (indymedia, independant servers) and horizontal
		  organising (wikis, mailing-lists) to political
		  activists
	  
		- political issues allow free software enthusiasts to
		  insert their practice within a larger perspective, to
		  benefit from the militant experience in upcoming
		  struggles (against software patents, for instance),
		  and opens up a wide range of crucial questions and
		  options (skill-sharing against specialisation,
		  alternative energies, free & ecological hardware?)
		
3 - PUBLIC EMPOWERMENT, POPULAR EDUCATION, DIGITAL ALPHABETISATION...

	- State-society is getting increasingly technological, and
	  mostly uses technology to gain more control over our lives.
	  Most individuals have very little knowledge about those
	  techniques used against them, and are totally disempowered by
	  technology, which obviously serves the interests of
	  institutions and corporations. Open-access spaces allow such
	  people (and others) to learn about computing in a
	  solidaritarian atmosphere, thus working towards reducing
	  individuals' vulnerability to control techniques (by
	  understanding them - first step towards subvertising or
	  sabotaging?).
	
	- The Internet can be a great militant tool (with all those
	  counter-information initiatives such as indymedia.org,
	  squat.net, etc.), but remains unaccessible to large amounts of
	  people, and especially the most socialy-excluded and oppressed
	  (poor, immigrants, womyn, etc.), who could highly benefit from
	  such a tool to voice their message. And when people do gain
	  access to the Internet, they easily get drowned in commercial
	  contents. 
	
	  Open-access spaces try to fill this gap, to build bridges
	  between the physical and the virtual (by providing free
	  Internet access), and to offer gateways to the alternative
	  side of the Internet (by using/creating/promoting autonomous
	  servers and independant contents).

                               * * * 
RELEVANT LINKS

	- plug'n'politix: http://squat.net/pnp/
	- hackmeetings italy: http://hackmeeting.org/
	- hackmmetings spain: http://sindominio.net/hackmeeting/
	- transnational hackmeeting: http://trans.hackmeeting.org/
	- Hacklabs: http://www.hacklabs.org/
	- PRINT hacklab/open-access space://print.squat.net/en/
	- Monte Paradiso hacklab: http://www.monteparadiso.hr/
	- ASCII open-access space: http://a.scii.nl/
	- Genderchangers: http://www.genderchangers.org/
	- Free Software: http://www.gnu.org/
	- Debian GNU/Linux: http://www.debian.org/

                               * * * 
CONTACT

	darkveggy <darkveggy at squat.net>

</abstract>

-- 
d a r k v e g g y - gnupg key @ https://squat.net/darkveggy/gpg.asc

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