Galactic Hacker Partei talk notes: Sunday 16:00

From What The Wiki?!

Notes on Sunday 16:00 talk in tent 4: Galactic Hacker Partei? by Gweeds gweeds AT rotten.com aka user:gweeds

INTRODUCTION

self identify: hacker, activist, chef, anarchist, musician, coder
advocacy developers convergence
class-consciousness hacking
contact me by the wiki: gweeds AT rotten.com
i talk fast, let's talk later and hold questions until the end

HACKER VALUES?

open source values (non-proprietariness, open access, replicability, schisming)
anarchist values (individuality, consensus, questioning all authority)
technocracy- (high premium on learning, having the skills to pay the bills, elite control/communication structures)
social values (friendship, crew, hacker camps, cons, code sprints, trust relationships, learning, selective anonymity)
hacker ethic as "unravelling the social metaphor" in a creative way (even if it seems destructive!)

ACTIVIST VALUES

diversity values (equal access to everyone, voice for the disenfranchised "least of these", inclusion)
progressive values (accountability, support, sustainability)
decision making (some level of consensus, some level of institutionalization/money-driven calculus)
social values (trust relationships, friendship, passion, mental health and sustainability)

CORPORATE VALUES

profit, money, absolute relative value of a human life as dictated by markets
borders for people, none for resources/capital
centralized monolithic illuminati control/communication structures (usually top down for decision making)
people are numbers, not their own agents (lines in a database to be controlled, sold) (focus groups for cultural co-optation)
anti-social (or social in as much as will facilitate consumption)
trust relationships are distorted market value

TECHNOLOGY VALUES?

artists aesthetic response to the world (singing, writing, etc) and getting feedback- inspiring a creative response
technology artists' aesthetic response to the world- a good idea to weight a creative environment
embuing software/tech with the developers' values
users express their creativity within the developers' realm- weighted by the values of the coding effort
corporate tech "good things for the wrong reasons"
- google maps built to entrap eyes
- google search a monolithic perspective (not individual), ranking what is "best" (also ads)
- friendster/orkut trapping a propietary community
hacker tech values
- open source values (non-proprietariness, replicability, schisming, anonymity)
- anarchist values (consensus, individual perspectives)
co-opting of software values
- hacker technology repackaged for corporate business plans (irc, bbs)
- corporate technology values repackaged by hackers (sms)
- activist technology picks and chooses corporate/hacker software based on availability, popularity, other adoption weights
technology's limiting of access
- online/offline digital divide
- a world where people check email over cell phones

ACTIVIST AND HACKER VALUE CLASH/RESOLUTION

conflicting values
- back-biting- how do we get along and collaborate on issues without being divisive, allowing differences to get in the way?
HACKER VALUES vs ACTIVIST VALUES
- inclusion vs technocratic elite
- individualism vs consensus
- non-proprietariness: varying positions
- open-source: varying positions, activists will use anything, and the hardware is all closed-source anyway
conservative fusionism: 1970s USA
- social conservatives, religious, military, financial, corporate, racist- disparate groups packing together for political power as a backlash to the social movements of the 60s
- corporate mailing list technology binding together base of conservative
activist fusionism: NOW
- movements from the 60s and before: womens rights, civil rights, gay rights, labor, environment, anti-war, anti-nuclear, black consciousness, animal rights- disparate groups our parents organized 3 decades ago
our responsibility: to bridge those cultures and their sub cultures into our own base that recognizes and is strengthened by differences in values
communication facilitated by individuals and groups that span multiple sub cultures (eg hip-hop hackers-- environmental and labor people) and can navigate/resolve disparate values systems
overlapping visions and values
- recognize similarities
- contribute common metaphors
- understand and discuss differences
- develop overlapping initiatives that both groups are passionate about- no enslaving via money

THE MORAL/ETHICAL/LEGAL ZEITGEIST

jeweled net of indra- we are the reflection of our communities- metaphor for human context
humanity as a distributed computer network with individual machines = individual humans in one huge context
communication vectors directed by language, media reach, social contexts (subcultures)
our concepts, and our willingness to express them to others, our willingness to listen to others
gigantic cellular automata of humanity- we can know some of the rules that will dictate what the next round will look like, but the problem is irreducible- impossible to know 20 moves ahead.
hackers, politicians, brainwashers, media navigate this zeitgeist- spreading their values
right now, much fear abounds- but also much hope and liberty- asymptotic trends leading towards a) anarchist utopia or b) nuclear war
spread your values as much as you can and pay attention to the factors that help them spread- what works now might not work in a week after another boob-slip, terrorist explosion, economic devaluation
example: corporate news outlets value proprietarya information, therefore they will always float the idea that hacking = crime
combat with: everybody is a hacker- spread across the meatnet, combatting the idea of "criminality" and the "other"

ACTIVIST HACKER TECHNOLOGY GAP

hacker technology is often decades ahead of activist technology
examples: mailing list tools only got to activists in the 90s, forums in the late 90s, chat in the early 00s
what of the future? collaborative GPS mapping/annotation, non-centralized communication networks (peer to peer sms), anonymous distributed social networks-- can we afford another decades-long gap to adoption?

HACKERS AND ACTIVISTS WORKING TOGETHER: SHARED VALUES? GOALS?

Use the increased points of social contact that drive the Empire's capitalist technology network as a tool to build a decentralized counter empire.
Defeat Intellectual property- aka the third world brain drain/patent bullshit
Spread the virus of social inclusion, reinstate/reemphasize individual free will- build support structures.

HACKERS AND ACTIVISTS WORKING TOGETHER: CONCRETE ACTIONS

co-development, training of activist technology to bridge the tech gap
politicize your fellow hackers and listen to activists- discuss the need for an indigenous hackerizing their own peoples.

WHAT IS THE ACTIVIST TECHNOLOGY SPACE

platforms: web apps, cell phones, hardware
the hardest problem: converting online momentum to offline action
indymedia- publishing (blogs, podcasts)
radio stations (cheaply built hobbyist antennas)
cell phone sms networks (filipino model) for direct actions
much corporate worldview- "contact management databases" for organizers only

SOCIAL NETWORKING PLATFORMS

livejournal, yahoo groups- most used social networks on the planet
proprietary networks like orkut, friendster, myspace, etc- owned, cannot export out
people talk about fucking, selling things- we need people to talk about activism, issues they care about, political issues- but there is no forum for this since all social networks are trying to sell your eyeballs to ad companies

INDYVOTER

social network for activists
open source, anarchist values
attempting to convert online social capital into offline social change (political, otherwise)
initial user base is organizers who are cross-pollinating
privacy granularity and encryption to prevent Bad Guys (iranian government, fbi, etc)
1.5 years coding, 30kloc of perl, open source momentum building
just a way to add privacy-friendly social networking to any app so that you get the collaboration and trust relationships set up
also find out what your friensd are working on, who's cute, who you'd like to date, who can help you out with resources, where you can plug in

INDYVOTER DEMO

THE FUTURE: HACKER PARTEI PLATFORM??

how can we hack politics?
break down barriers between parties eg "proprietary communities"- train, ally with disparate parties who are looking to be hackerized
start our OWN PARTY?! like regional 2600 meetings, using existing social structures that are already political (ccc, xs4all, etc)
hacker lobbying: selling out to the "money in political equations" vs education, direct electoral action
non-electoral assistance: indymedia-style, but an extensible, trust network of hacker allies for anti-globalization actions, street protests- taking advantage of the shared value of social trust
can we politicize ourselves?

HACKTIVISM AINT SHIT TO ME

taking down sites? removing access? pretty ridiculous, a concept that goes against the value of open access
activists have great ideas for how to enslave hackers to do some "fucking shit up" without really understanding the hacker values of social learning- "if you want to do this so badly, i can teach you!" "nah i'd rather you just do it for me.." hacker as wage slave
the great activist hope: politicizing hackers? can this be done from an outside group that speaks a different language and is from a different social context
a better solution: activists learning hacker values, hackers politicizing themselves

POLITICIZING HACKERS??

not possible to do without understanding hacker culture, context- can only be done by hackers communicating to each other activist motivations (like this camp where the political becomes social, the social becomes political- us even meeting here is a statement)
autonomy of values- anarchist virtual confederation, allowing individuals to have different motivations/goals/values that help us work together and provide realms of expression for all the intricate social networking (everything i know about organizing online i learned from irc- +o, schisming, moderation models)

HACKERIZING ACTIVISTS??

sharing values, cross-pollinating, joining their movements but recognizing differences

HACKER/ACTIVIST PROJECTS

Safe, anonymous networks: plausible deniability enough for Child Molesters or Terrorists.
Combat third world debt by rm'ing the banks, corporations, markets.
Remove the concept of Intellectual Property, by any code necessary.
Peer to peer sms systems- remove the hierarchical switches frm the equation

CONCLUSION

Self-identify (anarchist, hacker, chef, musician, activist)
politicize yourself and your friends- talk about the issues you care about
communicate your values, bounce realities off of each other
establish a point of contact- something in common- with everyone you meet, and encourage that sentiment's viral spread.
thank you

QUESTIONS