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On Betraying Principles
Why Creative Commons must be about more than reducing friction on reuse This week, I had the experience of being told the work we are doing at Creative Commons right now is betraying the founding principles of the organization. This is not the first time and it won’t be the last.
Governable Spaces: Democratic Design for Online Life – Writings and rehearsals by Nathan Schneider
Read the free, open access editionBuy: Amazon, Bookshop, Narrow Gauge Book Co-op, UC Press
Governable Stacks against Digital Colonialism
Critics have been converging around the logic of colonialism to describe the Internet economy. If we are serious about the laden language of the colonial, we should be ready to learn from struggles against pre-digital empires and colonial regimes. Although acts of insurrection may attract more attention, one thing leaders and theorists of anticolonial resistance have stressed persistently is the centrality of self-governance in everyday life as both a means and end of their movements. But the dominant platforms for online communities are not well-suited for durable self-governing. Resistance often relies on the same colonial firms it opposes. What would community-governed technologies look like? This paper introduces the concept of “governable stacks”, a framework for self-governing as resistance to digital colonialism.
Founders' Constitution
The online Founders' Constitution published by the University of Chicago Press. Source documents written and read by the Founding Fathers.
Composable Trust, Part 3: 1 Community, 3 Sovereigns, No Landlords - Eclectic Corvine Muses
An architectural model to yield members, Rosters, and Venues sovereignty over their own domains, and none over each other’s.
Solidarity Syllabus: Indigenous Peoples, Rematriation, and Resisting AI Data Centers — Solidarity Is
For this Solidarity Syllabus, we are learning alongside Indigenous organizers, leaders, and communities whose work offers important solidarity lessons and invitations for how we might understand land, water, sovereignty, and resistance to data centers. Indigenous Peoples Day is observed
Substack writers, you need a website!
Substack is convenient, but treat it as a distribution tool for your content. Your content should live on an independently owned website, which has a domain name you control and own. This way, you …
Root Systems: towards a decentralized internet at Dweb Camp
This July, I spent an amazing five days at DWeb Camp, a gathering at a former Stasi holdout in Germany’s Brandenburger forest, that has been repurposed by the Alte Hölle collective striving towards sustainable and equitable futures. The event, organised by the Internet Archive Dweb-community and the
Root Systems: towards a decentralized internet at Dweb Camp
This July, I spent an amazing five days at DWeb Camp, a gathering at a former Stasi holdout in Germany’s Brandenburger forest, that has been repurposed by the Alte Hölle collective striving towards sustainable and equitable futures. The event, organised by the Internet Archive Dweb-community and the
Tiny Publics: Small Groups and Civil Society
It has been conventional to conceptualize civic life through one of two core images: the citizen as lone individualist or the citizen as joiner. Drawing on analyses of the historical development of the public sphere, we propose an alternative analytical framework for civic engagement based on small-group interaction. By embracing this micro-level approach, we contribute to the debate on civil society in three ways. By emphasizing local interaction contexts-the microfoundations of civil society-we treat small groups as a cause, context, and consequence of civic engagement. First, through framing and motivating, groups encourage individuals to participate in public discourse and civic projects. Second, they provide the place and support for that involvement. Third, civic engagement feeds back into the creation of additional groups. A small-groups perspective suggests how civil society can thrive even if formal and institutional associations decline. Instead of indicating a decline in civil society, a proliferation of small groups represents a healthy development in democratic societies, creating cross-cutting networks of affiliation.
Local Journalism Directory | Media and Democracy Project
We created a directory to help you find local journalism and local news sources in your area worth reading and supporting.
