From irwin at creativetechnology.org  Tue Jun  4 00:32:14 2019
From: irwin at creativetechnology.org (=?UTF-8?Q?Irwin_Oostindie_=E2=80=A2_W2?=)
Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2019 15:32:14 -0700
Subject: <unlike-us> =?utf-8?q?Fwd=3A_CFP=3A_Infrastructures_September_20?=
	=?utf-8?q?=E2=80=9322=2C_2019_Toronto?=
In-Reply-To: <CAHhHjkS26S7c6bQkg+6yT8TxmsVvFbWAqkW95jExM2hz4vaCbw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <657A8FB8-7231-4A10-BCB4-0A0CD301B7A7@xs4all.nl>
	<CAHhHjkS26S7c6bQkg+6yT8TxmsVvFbWAqkW95jExM2hz4vaCbw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAHhHjkQ-vrpmsyjOEujq3zPD_qjHe-KB+_t1CnaDJrkaiLyv=A@mail.gmail.com>

https://ournetworks.ca/


RE: Infrastructures September 20?22, 2019 Toronto, Ontario

RE: Infrastructures explores the collective care and maintenance of
alternative networking practices?new protocols, peer-to-peer connections,
offline-first computing, and community-based governance.

How can these emerging Infrastructures provide spaces to imagine radically
different futures, resist easy co-option by the forces of late-stage
capitalism, and work in solidarity as plural networks seeking emancipatory
change? To answer this we draw on insights from organizers, technologists,
artists, and scholars to ensure the focus is not only on the technical
aspects of infrastructure, but also the social and cultural. Their diverse
perspectives suggest ways we can make space for livelihoods, solidarity,
and survival; draw on history and place to bring our fullest imaginations
to this moment; and open ways to think these questions together as we build
transitional forms.



Irwin Oostindie
ioostind at sfu.ca
Instagram / Twitter: @Dutchphoto
SFU School of Communications
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From geert at xs4all.nl  Thu Jun 20 16:24:17 2019
From: geert at xs4all.nl (Geert Lovink)
Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2019 16:24:17 +0200
Subject: <unlike-us> Unlike Us links on social media and their alternatives
References: <20190615113050.ko7pryfzpd7shtmy@oxonia.net>
Message-ID: <0DF1EA41-302B-4A88-BCFF-465C331A1D81@xs4all.nl>


> From: Geoffrey Goodell <goodell at oxonia.net>
> Subject: Re: <nettime> Unlike Us links on social media and their alternatives
> Date: 15 June 2019 1:30:50 pm GMT+2
> To: Morlock Elloi <morlockelloi at gmail.com>
> Cc: nettime-l at mail.kein.org
> 
> Following an earlier thread --
> 
> There are some infrastructures that directly address the points raised below.
> In particular, technology infrastructures that put control in the hands of
> users will generally involve users running free-software code on free-software
> platforms that they control and trust.  This might seem like an insurmountable
> challenge, but it is not; it can be done with sufficent support from
> institutions.  Whether this (infrastructure) support takes the form of project
> funding, regulation, educational initiatives, or some combination thereof,
> remains to be seen.
> 
> Addressing the challenges of metadata privacy and traversal of barriers
> established either for censorship or for price discrimination is a bit harder.
> However, efforts are underway, in the form of projects to build software and
> peer-to-peer overlay networks.  The most accessible examples involve onion
> routing.  (I believe strongly in Tor, as I have indicated earlier.  Objectors
> should note that there are alternative onion routing architectures such as I2P.
> As long as we are speaking theoretically, feel free to substitute the
> onion-routing architecture of your choice.)  My specific responses are below:
> 
> On Mon, Apr 29, 2019 at 03:14:19PM -0700, Morlock Elloi wrote:
>> This is a promising direction. It's impossible to guess/infer at the first
>> attempt what the platform should do, but it's almost obvious what it
>> shouldn't. What we need is a requirements document, the one not produced by
>> techies, as for one reason or another they tend to make bad choices. At this
>> point I wouldn't worry what's 'possible' or 'impossible'. Just imagine the
>> ideal system and then work back to MVP. It may take some time, so the
>> stamina is paramount.
> 
>> How can this be done? I would postpone this discussion at this point, as it
>> leads to multiple dead-ends due to diverse (in)competences of participants.
>> Instead, we should reach some kind of consensus how the ideal system should
>> behave. The rest is a technical problem.
> 
> Agreed.  Let's first specifically identify the key problems that need solving:
> 
> (1) We require a way for individuals to converse directly with each other, at a
> distance (which is to say electronically), in a manner that does not expose
> information about their conversations to third parties.  Three forms of
> communication are perhaps most essential:
> 
> (1a) long-form correspondence (mail).
> 
> (1b) real-time text messages (both bilateral and group chat).
> 
> (1c) real-time voice conversations (phone calls).
> 
> (2) We require a way for individuals to exchange digital content such as
> files and calendars, with the same requirements as (1) above.
> 
> (3) We require a way for individuals to coordinate their activities (projects,
> logistics, meetings, with the same requirements as (1) above.
> 
>> Nextcloud is promising, but there is an infrastructural anomaly that has to
>> be fixed first - direct addressability of every human (smartphone, home
>> computer, etc.) without intermediaries, directories, assistants. Without it,
>> only users with real IP numbers can freely participate (DynDNS is a
>> centralized service prone to corruption). It's explained in the paper I
>> peddled earlier ( https://cryptome.org/2019/02/elbar.pdf )
> 
> For exactly the reasons Morlock offered in a separate thread [1], network
> carriers will always have an interest to control the flow of information across
> a network.  Potential interests include censorship and extraction of surplus,
> for example via price discrimination or tax.  The problem of direct
> addressability of devices is just one manifestation of such control.
> 
> Strategically, users of a network that wish to avoid such control will need to
> shield knowledge about their use of the network from the intermediaries, hence
> the need for onion routing.  Tor onion services [2] can be used to create
> directly accessible services on any device that supports Tor.  So it is
> possible to run web servers, or indeed any other TCP-based Internet services,
> via a Tor onion service, not only on workstations in homes and businesses that
> have not paid for a static IP address, but indeed on laptops and smartphones as
> well.  Web servers available as Tor onion services can run Nextcloud too.
> 
> Suggest that because it is folly to assume that we will be able to trust
> Internet carriers not to block, monitor, or otherwise interfere with our
> traffic, we can expect to use onion routing for this in the first instance.
> This is not to say that those of us with static IP addresses should not feel
> free to run Nextcloud services directly on the Internet, at least as long as we
> are allowed to do so cheaply, which may come to an end before long.
> 
> I would like to suggest that using Nextcloud to solve challenges (1), (2), and
> (3) above will require essentially everyone to run a Nextcloud instance.  This
> is certainly possible, but there are no doubt more practical ways to achieve
> (1a) and (1b).
> 
>> Exactly. Let's do the effort and come up with white paper describing what
>> the hell we think would work. No one else will do it.
> 
> The 'Cwtch' Project as a means to achieve (1b):
> 
> It turns out that there is an interesting article to address (1b) already,
> written by Sarah Lewis of the Open Privacy Research Society in Canada [3].  An
> early prototype of Cwtch, based on the Richochet protocol [4], already exists,
> but it is not yet ready for general use.  Cwtch is a worthwhile effort worth
> supporting, both with time and with treasure, and I think that it is a fair
> response to Morlock's call for a whitepaper.  There are some aspects of the
> design that might be debatable, such as the distinction between Cwtch servers
> and Cwtch peers, although I think that the authors have made good choices.  I
> suspect that some of the software decisions are still crystallising.  (Let's
> hope that the software will allow individuals to manage many different
> identities at the same time.)
> 
> For (1a), I would like to suggest that we can do this with existing email
> clients and email servers, tweaked slightly to run as Tor onion services.
> There are aspects of this that would need elaboration, but I argue that the
> task of retrofitting email infrastructure to work this way would be better than
> starting from scratch.  There are too many useful features embedded in SMTP and
> IMAP implementations that we would not want to lose, and wiring them to work as
> Tor onion services should not be too difficult.
> 
> These are my recommendations for actionable next steps, and I would welcome
> views about alternative approaches that would be both at least as effective and
> at least as practical to implment.
> 
> Best wishes --
> 
> Geoff
> 
> [1] M. Elloi, "<nettime> infonuclear options are coming".  Fri, 03 May 2019
> 13:22:14 -0700, 5CCCA2F6.1030908 at gmail.com.
> 
> [2] Tor: Onion Service Protocol.
> https://www.torproject.org/docs/onion-services.html.en
> 
> [3] S. Lewis, "Cwtch: Privacy Preserving Infrastructure for Asynchronous,
> Decentralized, Multi-Party and Metadata Resistant Applications".  2018-06-28,
> https://cwtch.im/
> 
> [4] J. Brooks, "Ricochet: Anonymous instant messaging for real privacy".
> https://ricochet.im/
> #  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
> #  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
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From christian.fuchs at uti.at  Wed Jun 26 15:00:56 2019
From: christian.fuchs at uti.at (Christian Fuchs)
Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2019 14:00:56 +0100
Subject: <unlike-us> Call: Digital/Communicative Socialism,
 edited by Christian Fuchs, Special Issue of the Journal Communication,
 Capitalism & Critique
Message-ID: <72afba74-8473-bf5b-7aab-76d1aa27cd91@uti.at>

tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique is a Marxist journal of 
media and communication studies. Its special issue 
?Digital/Communicative Socialism? asks: What is digital/communicative 
socialism? The special issue will publish peer-reviewed contributions 
that explore perspectives on digital/communicative socialism in respect 
to theory, dialectics, history, internationalism, praxis, and class 
struggles.

Details:
https://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/announcement/view/35

Abstracts can be submitted per e-mail to christian.fuchs at triple-c.at, 
using the form published at
https://triple-c.at/files/journals/1/CfP_Form_Socialism.docx

Please do not make submissions that omit a completed form.

Submission deadline is Monday, July 15, 2019.

Feedback on acceptance/rejection will be provided at latest until July 
31, 2019.
The deadline for the submission of accepted papers is October 13, 2019. 
The maximum length of full papers is 8,000 words. Articles should in the 
first stage of submission (October 13) not be longer than 7,000 words so 
that there is space for additions as part of the revision process.

All accepted articles will be peer-reviewed and published in a special 
issue of tripleC.

The special issue will be published open access. There are no APCs.

-- 
Prof. Christian Fuchs
Co-Editor of tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique
http://www.triple-c.at
@fuchschristian
christian.fuchs at triple-c.at