Do we really need to sacrifice privacy for health in the fight against covid-19? The DP-3T protocol can save lives without furthering surveillance capitalism.

• Originally published at n.case.me.
• Download this comic as a .zip!
• Sources: DP-3T, TCN Protocol, Ferretti & Wymant et al

The post How Contact Tracing Apps Can Foil Both COVID-19 and Big Brother appeared first on P2P Foundation.

By creating opportunities for exchange, mutual action and sharing, A4C not only operates as a platform but attempts to create a new commons, a synthesis between arts and political engagement.

A4C intends to explore the  interstitial spaces between power and communities, traditional arts system and society, states and territories. We pursue documentation as artistic practice.

In an historical phase of what Antonio Gramsci named “interregnum” whereas we know what we leave but do not know what we will find, A4C is a space for collective search, experimentation, creation of what post-colonial philosopher Homi Babha named ” a third space”, that transcends traditional definitions of arts and politics. Particular attention will be devoted to building bridges and opportunities for collective work, exchange and dialogue between European and Latin American artists and activists.

Our first steps have moved along the issue of migrations and war, starting with the participation at the Nationless Pavillion at the 2015 Venice Biennale, to the pop-up exhibition “From the shores of Tripoli to the hills of Moctezuma” in Rome-based gallery Ex-Elettrofonica,  to continue with “Dispacci-Dispatches” an exploration in the history of Italian colonial wars in Libya by means of displacements and re-enactment of historical chronicles and documents read in various locations of the Quartiere Africano (African quarter) in Rome, built to celebrate fascist colonies in Africa.

SHOWREEL A4C #ArtsForTheCommons from Rosa Jijon on Vimeo.

The post Project of the Day: Arts for the Commons appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Public trust in the investor-owned platform economy is collapsing. Business models based on selling workers and users to Wall Street are under growing scrutiny, and a small but growing number of cooperatively-owned platforms present a real, positive alternative. How might we seize this moment to show the promise of platform cooperativism?

We invite proposals for creative media interventions that communicate platform cooperativism. These might be 2 minute-long videos, comic books, memes, infographics, games, or more. They might seek to deepen the platform co-op community or draw new people into it.

To apply for funding, submit a proposal through this form by May 5. By May 15, two commissions will be selected for $1,000 in support each, of which they’ll receive $500 upon selection and $500 upon completion of the project as proposed (or amended with approval of the challenge coordinators), provided it is completed and deployed before July 1. Commissions, also, can expect support from the platform co-op community and its promotional resources.

This challenge is funded through royalties from the book Ours to Hack and to Own. It is jointly administered by the Platform Cooperativism Consortium and the Internet of Ownership. The coordinators are Trebor Scholz and Nathan Schneider.

artwork by James Seibold

The post Apply for the 2018 #PlatformCoop Propaganda Challenge appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Jana Pirlein: We, a group of German university students, have just published a magazine about platform cooperativism where we discuss platform-based cooperatives as a kind of counter-movement to the increasingly widespread platform capitalism. In short: An update of the “sharing economy”.

In addition to theoretical discussions, we want to point out the very practical relevance of the topic and encourage readers to think about their own consumption behavior, as well.

The magazine is for all age groups, but especially aimed at people new to the scene. It is written bilingually in German and English and available for free through Creative Commons! Our aim is and has been to present the values, practices and protagonists behind the social movement that is currently forming around the topic of cooperativism.

The post Coops Viadriana. A new illustrated mag about Platform Cooperativism appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Open Map is an open source foundation for a variety of cartographic purposes.  Yet a variety of new organizations are developing projects that document commons based resources.  One such project is TransforMap.

Extracted from: https://discourse.transformap.co/t/transformap-a-short-introduction/289

There are Plenty of Alternatives. TransforMap makes them visible.

It will give everybody the opportunity to map all the initiatives, communities, projects, worker-owned, self-managed, democratically organised companies and other institutions dedicated to meeting people’s needs, serving the common good and/or contributing to a sustainable way of life.

TransforMap will/can show all the places, spaces and networks that work on fostering cooperation and deepening human relationships through (co-)producing, exchanging, contributing, gifting and sharing, for a free, fair and sustainable world.

TransforMap invites all existing mapping initiatives to cooperate and co-create maps based on an open pool of data, a common taxonomy, free software and standardised APIs4. It will be/is published under an Open Data License.

Our world is transforming. There are old and new alternatives all over the planet. TransforMap will show you how to get there.

Extracted from: https://wiki.transformaps.net/wiki/Main_Page

Background about TransforMap:

TransforMap works towards an online-platform for you to visualize the myriads of alternatives to the dominant economic thinking on a single mapping system. It will give everybody the opportunity to map all the initiatives, communities, projects, worker-owned, self-managed, democratically organised companies and other institutions dedicated to meeting people’s needs, serving the common good and/or contributing to a sustainable way of life.

On this mediawiki you are able to view and edit the following TransforMap components in its early beginning. It is called TransformapS to stress the fact that there are many many maps that are showing the transformation. There are three components on this wiki:

• Collection of Points of Interest (POIs) (overview of last edits) – this is where you can add an initiative or an event relevant to TransforMap
• The Atlas – A Collection of Mapping Resources – here you can add existing maps and other mapping resources that are relevant for TransforMap
• Transformap Taxonomy – this is a place to work on TransforMap’s categories of initiatives

Extracted from: https://discourse.transformap.co/t/how-to-get-involved/231

You like the idea of TransforMap? You want to get involved?
Here are a few ways you can choose to contribute! Find the right place and task for you to become part of TranforMap! Add your questions and suggestions. Help us to integrate more people. W E L C O M E!

• You have a database of initiatives:
  • Open your data and get in touch [add contact]: let’s discuss what kind of license will enable both maximum collaboration and the preservation of your interests
  • Why not testing TransforMap’s Taxonomy version 1.0?
• You have programming skills or are an organization with such skills at hand? Contribute with programming, pool your technical resources with the TransforMap community. Visithttps://trello.com/b/adHSEyXl/engineering5 to know what needs to be done on the software side (we’re working on making this more comprehensive, bear with us).
• You are well connected to the local alternatives of your city/region: why not running a local test mapping using TransforMap’s Taxonomy version 1.0. Check out the tools available here!
• You’ve got some other skills to volunteer? Support with any other means and get in touch via our globalmailing list [email protected]

Photo by Anonymous Profile…

Photo by Aline Barreta

The post Project Of The Day: TransforMap appeared first on P2P Foundation.

I arrived at the Transmediale festival late Friday afternoon, which was hosted as usual at Das Haus der Kulturen der Welt (The House of World Cultures) in Berlin. The area where the building is sited was destroyed during World War II, and then at the height of the Cold War, it was given as a present from the US government to the City of Berlin. As a venue for international encounters, the Congress Hall was designed as a symbol of ‘freedom’, and because of its special architectural shape the Berliners were quick to call the building “pregnant oyster” [1] The exterior was also the set for the science fiction action film Æon Flux in 2005. Both past references link well with this festival’s use of the building. I remember during my last visit, in 2010, standing outside the back of the building watching an Icebreaker cracking apart the thick ice in the river. The sound of the heavy ice in collision with the sturdy boat was loud and crisp. This sound has stayed with me so that whenever I hear a sound that is similar I’m immediately transported back to that point in time. Unfortunately, this time round there was no snow, instead the weather was wet, warm and slighty stormy.

Last year’s festival explored the marketing of big data in the age of social control. This year, the chosen format was entitled conversationpiece, with the aim of enabling a series of dialogues and participatory setups to talk about the most burning topics in post-digital culture today. To give it grounding and historical context the theme was pinned to the “backdrop of different processes of social transformation, 17th and 18th century European painters perfected the group portrait painting known as the “Conversation Piece” in which the everyday life of the aristocracy was depicted in ideal scenes of common activity.” In recent years the festival has scafolded its panels, workshops and keynotes to grand, central themes to guide its peers and visitors, along with a large-scale curated exhibition. If we view the four interconnected thematic streams- Anxious to Act, Anxious to Make, Anxious to Share and Anxious to Secure – we might guess that the festival curators are also anxious to save all the resources (and celebrations) for next year, which is after all, Transmediale’s 30th birthday.

So, I was curious to see how my brief time here would unfold…

Off-the-Cloud-Zone.

This review is focused on the hybrid event Off-the-Cloud-Zone. It featured presentations, talks and workshops, starting at 11 am, going on until 8pm. Hardcore indeed. It demanded total dedication, which unfortunately I was not able to give. However, I did offer my attention to the rest of the proceedings from lunch time until the end. It was moderated by Panayotis Antoniadis, Daphne Dragona, James Stevens and included a variety of speakers such as: Roel Roscam Abbing, Ileana Apostol, Dennis de Bel, Federico Bonelli, James Bridle, Adam Burns, Lori Emerson, Sarah T Gold, Sarah Grant, Denis Rojo aka Jaromil, George Klissiaris, Evan Light, Ilias Marmaras, Monic Meisel, Jürgen Neumann, Radovan Misovic aka Rad0, Natacha Roussel, Andreas Unteidig, Danja Vasiliev, Christoph Wachter & Mathias Jud, and Stewart Ziff.

The Off-the-Cloud-Zone day event was a continuation of last year’s offline networks unite! panel and workshops. Which also originated from discussions on a mailing list called ‘off.networks’ with researchers, activists and artists working together around the idea of an offline network operating outside of the Internet. The talks concentrated on how over recent years there has been a growing scene of artists, hackers, and network practitioners, finding new ways to ask questions through their practices that offer alternatives in community networks, ad-hoc connectivity, and autonomous systems of sensing and data collecting.

Snowden Archive-in-a-Box.

Disillusionment with the Internet has spread widely since 2013, when Edward Snowden the US whistleblower leaked information on numerous global surveillance programs. Many of these programs are run by the NSA and Five Eyes with the cooperation of telecommunication companies and European governments raising big questions about privacy and exploitation of our online (interaction) data. This concern is not only in relation to spying corporations, dodgy regimes and black hat hackers, but also our governments. “The idea of privacy has been flipped on its head. People don’t have to disclose their own information voluntarily anymore; it’s being taken from them regardless of their wishes.” [2] (Nowak 2015)

“The NSA’s principal tool to exploit the data links is a project called MUSCULAR, operated jointly with the agency’s British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters . From undisclosed interception points, the NSA and the GCHQ are copying entire data flows across fiber-optic cables that carry information among the data centers of the Silicon Valley giants.” [3] (Gellman and Soltani, 2013)

The above slide is from an NSA presentation on “Google Cloud Exploitation” from its MUSCULAR program. The sketch shows where the “Public Internet” meets the internal “Google Cloud” where user data resides. [4]

Snowden Archive-in-a-Box is based on the PirateBox, originally created by David Darts who made his in order to distribute teaching materials to students without the hassle of email. It is based on a RaspberryPi 2 mini-computer and the Raspbian operating system. All the software is open-source and its most basic setup can run on one RaspberryPi. In his talk Light said that a more elaborate version would use high-quality battery packs and this adds power for autonomy, along with the wifi sniffer that is running on a secondary RaspberryPi and a flat-screen for playing back IP traffic. If you’re interested building your own private, pirate Archive-in-a-Box, visit Light’s web site for instructions on how to.

Snowden Archive-in-a-Box. Cambridge University’s museum piece installation. Evan Light.

Qaul.net and Can You Hear Me?

Christoph Wachter’s and Mathias Jud’s work, directly engages with refugees and asylum seeker’s social situations, policies, and the migrant crisis. They’ve worked together on participatory community projects since 2000 and have received many awards. For instance, take a look at their digital communications tool qaul.net which is designed to counteract communication blackouts. It has been used successfully in Egypt, Burma, and Tibet, and works as an alternative to already existing government and corporate controlled communication pathways. But, it also offers vital help when large power outages occur, especially in areas in the world suffering from natural disasters. The term qaul is Arabic and means ‘opinion, say, talk or word’. Qaul is pronounced like the English word ‘call’.

It creates a redundant, open communication code where wireless-enabled computers and mobile devices can directly initiate a fresh, unrestricted and spontaneous network. This includes the enabling of Chat, twitter functions and movie streaming, independent of Internet and cellular networks. It is also accessible to a growing Open Source Community who can modify it freely.

Wachter and Jud also discussed another project of theirs called “Can You Hear Me?”, a WLAN / WiFi mesh network with can antennas installed on the roofs of the Academy of Arts and the Swiss Embassy in Berlin, which was located in close proximity to NSA’s Secret Spy Hub. These makeshift antennas made of tin cans were obvious and visible for all to see. The Academy of Arts joined the project building a large antenna on the rooftop, situated exactly between the listening posts of the NSA and the GCHQ to enable people to directly address surveillance staff listening in. While installing the work they were observed in detail by a helicopter encircling overhead with a camera registering each and every move they made, and on the roof of the US Embassy, security officers patrolled.

“The antennas created an open and free Wi-Fi communication network in which anyone who wanted to would be able to participate using any Wi-Fi-enabled device without any hindrance, and be able to send messages to those listening on the frequencies that were being intercepted. Text messages, voice chat, file sharing — anything could be sent anonymously. And people did communicate. Over 15,000 messages were sent.” [5] (Jud 2015)

Dowse.

And then, it was the turn of the well known team at Dyne.org to discuss a project of theirs called Dowse, which is ‘The Privacy Hub for the Internet of Things’. They said (taking turns, there was about 5 of them) that the purpose of Dowse is to perceive and affect all devices in the local, networked sphere. As we push on into the age of the Internet of Things, in our homes everything will be linked up.

As these ubiquitous computers communicate to each other even more, control over these multiple connections will be essential. We will need to know how to interact beyond the GUI interfaces and think about who has access to our private, common and public information. A whole load of extra information will be available without our consent.

Dowse was conceived in 2014 as a proof of concept white paper by Denis Rojo aka Jaromil. Early contributors to the white paper and its drafting process includes: Hellekin O. Wolf, Anatole Shaw, Juergen Neumann, Patrick R McDonald, Federico Bonelli, Julian Oliver, Henk Buursen, Tom Demeyer, Mieke van Heesewijk, Floris Kleemans and Rob van Kranenburg. I downloaded the white paper and is definitely worth reading.

The Dowse project aims to abide to the principles stated in the Critical Engineers Manifesto, (2011). Near the very end of the talk they announced to the audience an open call for artists and techies everywhere to get involved and jump into the project to see what it can do. This is a good idea. If there is no community to make or break platforms, hardware and software, then there is a limited dialogue around the possibilties of what a facility realistically might achieve. Not just that, they want artists to make art out of it. I know there are some pretty clever tech-minded geeks out there, who will in no doubt take on the challenge. However, once those who are not so literate in the medium are able to exploit the project, it will surely fly. It’s going to be interesting, because if you look at the 3rd point in the Critical Engineers Manifesto, it says “The Critical Engineer deconstructs and incites suspicion of rich user experiences.” I’m thinking, that this number 3 element needs to treated with caution. If they really wish to open it up to a diverse user base, to engage with its potentialities, creatively and practically; thus, allow new forms of social emancipation to evolve as ‘freedom with others’. There needs to be an active intent to avoid a glass ceiling based on technical know-how. It’s a promising project and I intend to explore it myself and see what it can do and will invite other people within Furtherfield’s own online, networks to join in and play, break, and create.

The Sarantaporo Project.

Our final entry is the Sarantaporo Project which is situated in the North of Greece. A village in the mountains just west of Mount Olympus in Central Greece close to Thessaloniki, Macedonia and Larisa. The country has been in recession for over 6 years now, and many communities have had to create alternative ways of working with each other in order to survive the crisis. Over this troubling period, new forms of grass-roots coexistence, solidarity and innovation have evolved. The Sarantaporo Project is an impressive example of how people can come together and experiment in imaginative ways and exploit physical and digital networks.

Even before the economic crisis the region was already hit by poverty, and with the added pressures of imposed Austerity measures, life got even tougher. All the young were leaving and then migrating to the cities or abroad. Before the project in Sarantaporo, there was no Internet nor digitally connected networks for local people to use. This situation contributed to the digital divide and made it difficult to work in a contemporary society, when so many others in the world have been using technology to support their civic, academic and business for so many years already.

To resolve this issue a group of friends decided to deal with this problem by setting up a community D.I.Y wireless network to provide free internet access to 15 villages in the municipality of Elassona. “Sarantaporo.gr is an open source wireless mesh networking system that relies greatly on voluntary work both for its development and maintenance. Some volunteers are involved in the project by simply installing an antenna on their roof. Others, more actively engaged with the project, are responsible for sustaining the network by hosting meetings and answering technical questions.” [8] (Kalessi 2014) The audience was presented with snippets from a film made by the filmmaking collective Personal Cinema, about the project. It was made so the story of Sarantaporo’s DIY wireless network gets a wider reach, and that others are also inspired to do similar projects themselves.

“Besides maintaining the network in a DIWO (Do It With Others) manner, and creating an atmosphere of cooperation among far-flung communities that were previously strangers, the Sarantaporo network is incorporating different groups of people into the community, like Farmer’s Cooperatives and techies. It is also creating an intergenerational space for learning.” [9] (Bezdommy 2016)

Conclusion.

These projects are dedicated to creating socially grounded and engaged alternatives to the proprietorial, networked frameworks that currently dominate our communication behaviours. These proprietorial systems, whether they are digital or physical are untrustworthy, and control us in ways that reflect their top-down demands but not our common needs. This reflects a wider conversation about who owns our social contexts, our conversations, our fields of practice, the structures we use, the land, the cables, our history, and so on.

Looking at the state of the planet right now you’d be forgiven for betting on a future not far from the director Neill Blomkamp’s vision in the sci-fi movie Elysium where, in the year 2159, humanity is sharply divided between two classes of people: the ultra-rich whom live aboard a luxurious space station called Elysium, and the rest who live a hardscrabble existence in Earth’s ruins. However, in the Off-the-Cloud-Zone talks we encountered an ecology of strategies to protect our own indegenous cultures from the crush of neo-liberalism, we felt part of a grounded movement discovering new conversations and new methodologies that may provide some protection against future colonisation. Perhaps there is a chance, we can build and rebuild stronger relations with each other, beyond: privilege, nation, status, gender, class, race, religion, and career.

The festival this year was less structured and more nuanced than usual. It gave conversation a greater role and a deeper social context, and opened up the process for the many to connect with the ideas being explored. The whole affair seemed to be slowed down and less caught up in the hyper-macho trappings of accelerationism. It seemed less neurotic and spending less effort to impress. I’m sure, next year, on it’s 30th anniversary, all will be sharp and amazing. However, I liked this less glossy, more messy version of Transmediale and I hope it manages to impress the wrong people again, and again.

References:

[1] The Site and its History .
https://www.hkw.de/en/hkw/geschichte/ort_geschichte/ort.php

[2] Peter Nowak Humans 3.0: The Upgrading of Our Species. The Lyons Press (6 Jan. 2015). P.132.

[3] NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers worldwide, Snowden documents say. Washington Post. By Barton Gellman and Ashkan Soltani October 30, 2013. http://wapo.st/1Ty1nTX

[4] File:NSA Muscular Google Cloud.jpgs. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NSA_Muscular_Google_

[5] Mathias Jud: Art that lets you talk back to NSA spies. Subtitles and Transcript. TED.com. September 2015. http://bit.ly/1UkiMPn

[6] Peter Nowak Humans 3.0: The Upgrading of Our Species. The Lyons Press (6 Jan. 2015). P.6.

[7] “Building Communities of Commons in Greece”, Ilias Marmaras. Personal Cinema.
https://en.goteo.org/project/building-communities-of-commons

[8] Theodora Kalessi. Sarantaporo.gr: Bridging the digital divide in rural Greece. August 11, 2014
http://oipolloi.co/sarantaporo-gr-bridging-the-digital-divide-in-rural-greece/

[9] Bezdomny. Sarantaporo Residents Create Commons in Rural Greece Through a DIY Wireless Mesh Network. January 3, 2016.
http://www.shareable.net/blog/sarantaporo-residents-create-commons-in-rural-greece-through-a-diy-wireless-mesh-network

The post Transmediale 2016: Necessary Conversations Off-the-Cloud appeared first on P2P Foundation.

The post reproduced below was the first draft version of the current capitalism/post-capitalism diagrams. These have since been substantially updated and the current versions can be found in this post at CommonsTransition.org

The post Mapping the emerging post-capitalist paradigm, and its main thinkers appeared first on P2P Foundation.

The core elements of the psyCommons proposal are rapport, the quality of felt contact with others, chat, and learning from experience. This inevitably tentative handle on the human condition accounts reasonably well for our capacity to survive, recover and even flourish as a persons. And yet…

And yet… rapport can dry up, chat can oppress, and experience can teach us to hide.

What we bring to the world of work and living together can be facing the same way as our intentions but sometimes we face west when we intend to move east. And the best of intentions can be in collision with the unforgiving intransigence of time, capital and other people.

Other people. People also with intentions and beliefs, and likes and dislikes. When we sit in a room with a group of other people seeking to sharpen the focus on a task, perhaps a commoning task, what helps and what hinders agreement? Or if it is more relevant, creative destruction?

There is no single or simple answer. Complexity unfolds in both familiar and unexpected ways, can we shake out a few ingredients that go into the group mix? This is what the two images below propose. They present two takes on a psychosocial field.

After we meet and greet, when an event begins, whether it is commoning or a papal enclave or a G7 summit, as we come to order, an instance of the psychosocial field flows out of the ingredients we each bring with us. Each person at the meeting brings with them some version of the basic ingredients. After we turn up the heat in the groupwork and bake ourselves afresh, does the meeting have the aroma of freshly baked bread? If not, why not?

Let your intuition loose on the two versions of the psychosocial field below and see what you find.

Click the images for readable, downloadable versions.

The post Messages from the Immaterial Commons: 3) The Psychosocial Field appeared first on P2P Foundation.

“The three key responses we see from the world in crisis can be grouped as the movements around Sustainability, Openness and Solidarity, gives the starting blocks, working into the bridges between them, the political structures (both local and global) and the economic enablement required to assist the transition.”

Watch the video here:

The post Screencast: An Overview of the Transformative Proposals of the P2P Foundation appeared first on P2P Foundation.

The last in the series of free posters about Commons-Based Peer Production produced by P2Pvalue  & designed by Laura Recio shows some of the crazy things we can do with collaborative communities. The poster can be  downloaded below (click on image to go to the downloads page on Wikimedia Commons) & used under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license. The posters are currently available in English, with other languages to be added soon. Enjoy

Download the other posters:
A history of Commons-Based Peer Production communities
One Day Living Through Collaborative Communities

The post Free Commons-Based Peer Production Posters No. 3 appeared first on P2P Foundation.