User:Artemis gryllaki/Writing & Research MethodologiesII

Introduction of Special Issue #08

https://pad.xpub.nl/p/2019-03-27-rwrm 27/03/2019

Group Introduction
We, Xpub1, traveled from home to home by bicycle, setting up homeservers. As friends and companions on this Infrastructour, we chatted over drinks served by our hosts. Where possible we installed our servers at home, in other cases we had to depend on another member of the group. While learning about networks we supported each other, and bonded over shared frustrations. Each of us were drawn to a different set of questions.

What is a network? How is autonomy related to contingency? What is the role of social networks? What is network(ed) publishing? Is it possible to map a network?

We followed our own personal (yet interconnected) routes. Here are our accounts of this experience.

Personal Testimonies

Artemis
My house was the starting point of the Infrastructour, and that made me the first host of the day. I have to admit I was quite nervous, waiting for the Xpub1 group to come to my place. I thought, if the first installation fails, it will bring bad luck to the group! Luckily, the router is located in the living room, so I was confident that there was space for everyone. I had to make sure that I had access to my router because this is the first essential thing for installing a web server. Surprisingly, the password had never changed from the default "1234", so it was about time to change it... Everyone started looking at my router's interface. So many weird terms appeared: LAN, WAN, DHCP, Port Mapping, Port Forwarding and so on...

Most of us felt awkward trying to understand how everything worked. Looking at each other with a question mark on our faces, we started discussing internet connections, the World Wide Web, nodes and paranodes of a network. After a series of questions and answers, and with each other's help, we finally succeeded! My Raspberry Pi took on a new life and was ready to serve. It felt quite rewarding that we could finally continue the bike tour to the other houses for this installation journey. Our collective "suffering" while installing our servers and finally creating our small network helped me understand how difficult it is to "build" alternatives. Not only conceptually, but also materially. Even at an amateur and rudimentary level, it requires quite some dedication and time - and lots of discussions to educate each other.

In the end, why did we create a self-hosted network? Does what we publish through this network have a unique value, precisely because of our suffering on the very first day of its establishment? These questions came to my mind on that day and many more followed, most of which related to broader social aspects around digital networks. A lot of questions about privacy, inclusivity, safety and knowledge of technical tools, which I asked myself during this project, were maybe too big to answer directly. As a strategy, I thought it would be useful to gather them and write small texts expressing my thoughts. Trying to shape and share some of my ideas around these issues would hopefully help me find the "safe and cosy" online corner I was looking for. I wanted a place in which I could host my personal concerns about a frightening post-digital era.

Annotated reader

https://pad.xpub.nl/p/annotated_reader 16/01/2019

Annotations

Artemis
Annotated text: The Ruling Class and the Ruling ideas, Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels (1845) https://pad.xpub.nl/p/annotated_reader_Marx_Engels

— (i) History of the Subaltern Classes; (ii) The Concept of 'Ideology'; (iii) Cultural Themes: Ideological Material, Antonio Gramsci (1929-35) https://pad.xpub.nl/p/Gramsci_hegemony

— Encoding, Decoding, Stuart Hall (1975) https://pad.xpub.nl/p/sh_encoding_decoding

— Sub Culture, the Meaning of Style, Dick Hebdige (1979), Chapter One: From culture to hegemony https://pad.xpub.nl/p/subculture_paloma

— “The medium is the message.” In Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, Marshall McLuhan (1964) https://pad.xpub.nl/p/The_medium_is_the_message

Social aspects of networks

Editing with Lídia Pereira 13/02/2019

Questions

Artemis && Simon

— Is the federated network orientated towards answering a common goal? How is it initiated?

— How is the common goal of the network shaped: is it formed in order to answer an internal need of the group?

— Is being a part of the network as important as being a custodian of it?

— Who maintains the network, what is its lifespan, and how can it be sustained with economic, ecological and time-efficient means? Is scale important in determining the mutual benefit to all members of the network?

— Who are the caretakers of the network? How can their differences support the network, and by extension, each other?

— What are the connections and relationships to those outside of the network, and what channels of communication and resources are available to help include them?

— Is coexistence possible with non-federated networks? What attitudes/approaches will be useful in achieving this? Are they conceived as threats?

— Who owns the data produced/shared within the network? What type of measures are taken to ensure the protection of member's privacy?

Biyi && Bo

— How can we show outsiders to show that the alternatives are valuable than the mainstream? (ex. Facebook or Mastodon - network effect.) What contents this alternative will provide that will radically make everyone feel different? (anciety) (Geert Lovink's text.)

— Is there a critical point of the amount of nodes(users) that network has gathered to determine if it’s mainstream network? This critical point is defined by what? Would it be a market percentage? Or by public's preference? Whati is the consequences? in terms of economy etc..

— Do the alternative federated networks want to preserve itself always as an alternative to mainstream, or do they aim to overthrow the mainstream overall? what are the assumption? Can alternative have this ambition? Should alternative have this ambition?

Sustainability and finalicality of the platform:

— Should the alternative establishes a code of conduct (set rules) to control of its own behaviour to distinguish itself from the mainstream? (Ex. Facebook is gathering the information to sell data, pitching it advertisement… )

— If you don’t do this mainstream, how can alternatives sustain themselves?

Tancredi && Rita

— How can control and freedom co-exist inside a federated network that should allow different levels of moderation of content, choosing between using your identity or anonymity, content advisory …


— Is it possible to have a self-sustainable network? How can the federated systems address common goals of well-being, economic security, …?

— In a future where decentralized and federated networks became the common practice, is there future for centralized and closed networks? Are there any benefits in a co-existence of both? Is convergence possible?

Paloma && Pedro

Economics:

— What will you need to be start a network. What are the resources (money, people, infrastructures) for this network? And to maintain it?

— What does the funding model represent? Who is behind it? Why are they funding this project? (eg. Telegram (APP that is private. Telegram messages are heavily encrypted and can self-destruct. Cloud-Based.), founders are owners of VK, Russian social platform)

— How is my network going to support an expansion? How is it going to grow? How will you deal with a network effect?

Politics:

— Is there any hierarchy? What are the rules? And limits? And who is the one that creates them?

— How to control the decentralisation of Networks and its content?

— What is the governance model of this project? Who establishes the rules, are there any?

Privacy:

— How can you maintain privacy while keeping it possible for you to connect to other people. What is the code that I need to find a user? There is no network if you are not connected to anyone.

— What are your kind of agreements? (In facebook you are either in or out.) How to prevent this? How to give some power to the user, will this mean you will have to create limits to their access?

— How am I going to be linked to other people, categories, in FB you are either a friend or not.

— What kind of relations are you going to allow, and what are you going to label them?