Sep 18, 2014 - communication and networking for social change activists, and free like- ... In the interest of time, I w
Stealing the fire: Empowerment and resistance from the margins of cyberspace Stefania Milan, Voice + Matter conference, Roskilde, 18 Sept 2014
[email protected] •
When we think about social movements and digital technologies, what comes to mind is citizen journalism, blogging, or the use of Facebook and Twitter for organizing protests or reporting from the demonstrations. The role played by social media in spreading the protests of the so-called Arab Spring, the Indignad@s and #Occupy is still fresh in our memory. However, the story I want to tell you today is slightly different, in that it does not focus on platforms that people USE for protest or social change activism, but on the platforms and technologies that activists CREATE: a form of self-organized tech that bypass the dynamics and the control of the state and corporations.
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In other words, I want to address a specific form of empowerment through technology, that of tech activism.
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What is tech activism? It is activism that concerns itself with creating and shaping (digital) technology infrastructure and tools to facilitate communication and networking for social change activists, and free likeminded individuals from the constraints and threats of commercial communications. I am talking about (mostly) tech-savvy activists who put their skills at the service of social change and social movements, and, for example, set up activist servers to provide privacy-minded email services and blogging platforms; they set up community radio stations, maintain encryption services, and the like. I want to take you with me in the attempt of deconstructing media and technology - take a critical approach and look inside this black-box of old & new communication tech to uncover power inequalities and the relationships that tech sustain and promote.
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These are groups and individuals who, like mythological Prometheus, "steal the fire", as this activist once explained to me:
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"Prometheus is the Greek demi-god, who saw that the gods had fire and regular people did not. He saw this injustice, so he stole the flames and taught any other to make fire. “Stealing the fire”: we think it is a metaphor for the democratization of technology, for technology that is the servant of the political and social process of making decisions about our future. Not technology in the hands and at the service of elites." Fire is a metaphor for technology; stealing means “reclaiming and reappropriating” technology. By “stealing the fire” these novel Prometheuses seek to breach the monopoly of states as well as conglomerates (be it the media, computer, and telecoms industry) over the use and control of communication infrastructure. They aim to enable other social groups to convey their own
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messages, bypassing the filters of gatekeepers. •
The question of infrastructure might sound trivial in times of abundance of “free” social media, microblogging platforms and apps allowing people to voice their opinions and share pictures and videos at will, and at virtually no cost. But we often forget that these platforms are owned and controlled by media and telecoms corporations whose agenda focuses on profit and corporate interests rather than participation, empowerment, and social justice. With this in mind, activist groups challenge tech corporations on their own terrain. They create what DeeDee Halleck calls “infrastructures of resistance” to the neoliberal order.
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You might argue that this this is a "first world activism", of people who have access to tech resources, but in fact this is an increasingly global phenomenon. I spoke to, for example, activists from Tanzania and the Philippines; Latin America is at the forefront of engagement w/ technologies. More and more South-South networks emerge (LabSurLab); the last interviews I did in Colombia articulated the tech question in relation to the holistic approach of indigenous cultures. Soldering workshops allow non-experts to build radio transmitters from a kit. Certainly this is not mainstream activism, and it typically stays under the radar. Nonetheless, tech activists are deeply engraned in grassroots social movements (mostly community activism, environmentalism, "precarity"); they have enabled many of the protests of the last 15 years. They are not only service providers; they also embody specific narratives of technology and change (remember Andrea's point yesterday about framing?).
• In my time today, I want to 1) explore what these activists do, their practices (which I call "emancipatory communication practices"); 2) delve into the norms and ethics of technology that inform this activism, 3) reflect on what we can learn from tech activism to re-contextualize 'voice & matter' in relation to the opportunities but also the challenges (and the threats) of technologies, and digital technologies in particular. • In the interest of time, I will speak of platforms, software, projects as if they were stripped of content. Focusing on the tech level is certainly reductionist, but it exposes an important message, that we will explore later: technologies are not neutral. But let's start by looking at what tech activists do: 1. creation of alternative tech/infrastructure. In other words, they engage at the level of the "plumbing", or technology architecture, both hardware and software, on the ground that (to say it with Manuel Castells [2009]), "resistance to power programmed in the networks also takes place through and by networks". They seek to establish control over the conditions under which messages and content can be shared,
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and connections and exchanges take place >> Examples include alternative ISPs such as Autistici/Inventati (NoBlog platform) and Riseup, Crabgrass (a web application designed for social networking, group collaboration and network organizing ("… tools that are tailored specifically to meet the needs of bottom up grassroots organizing… work together on projects in a democratic manner") but also assembling the radio transmitter from a toolkit (Promentheus barn raising?). The creation of alternatives has something magical in it! It is a liberating and deeply empowering experience as it demystifies technology. 2. appropriation of enclosed spaces as an ethics of liberation. In other words, activists take advantage of unregulated spaces, for example in the airwaves, or engage in pirate actions >> Telestreet (an Italian movement that set up pirate micro-TV stations in metropolitan areas. It started in Bologna with OrfeoTv, active since June 2002, it broadcasts for a few hours a day within a range of 200 metres. The transmitting hardware consists of slightly modified receiver electronics); pirate radio stations ("media jacking"?) 3.hacking & thinking, both software and social norms, as adaptation of the existent to one own's needs and values. It consists of both tearing apart, adapting and rebuilding tools and software, but also circumventing or subverting intended usage. It is not exactly creation, but re-creation >> penetration tests (attack on a computer system w the intention of finding security weaknesses, gaining access to it, functionality+data) 4.bypassing legislation and surveillance through technical fixes. Activists envision different working rules and implement them "by design" in their daily practices and in the tools and networks they built. This approach suggests a “insistence on adopting a technocratic approach to solving societal problems” >> Encrypting data against traffic analysis and network surveillance: Tor, an anonymity software and network of virtual tunnels that allow people to improve their privacy and security online. Creation & self-organization are a constant in tech activism. Activism aim at creating "prefigurative realities", that is to say translating their political values into practice here and now. We can imagine these prefigurative realities as "little islands" in the sea of commercial tech (to say it with J Downing). What is the function of these little islands? Feminist thinker Sheila Rowbotham stressed how the vision of a more just society cannot be detached from the process of its making. Politics “must provide staging posts along the way, moments of transformation, however small”. These staging posts serve the purpose of developing and disseminating new narratives on technology, society and change, and new cultural codes. This speaks also to the role of these usually small projects for social change and development activism. They are not only the communication backbone of contemporary movements, but also a critical voice that reminds people of the constraints that characterize "tethered devices", to say it with Lawrence Lessig (devices that depend on an ongoing relationship with their vendors, who end up having significant control over how these devices are used); technology, say tech activists, encodes design and policy choices that are typically diametrically opposed to the values and efforts of dev activists.
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Next, let's look at the norms and ethics of technology that inform these practices. We have seen how it is an ethics of liberation / self-organization. • Why do we need to look at the ethical values? Because these activists teach us two things: a) the way is the goal (technology and the means of communication embody a moral dimension! The way in which action unfolds, we organize, we try to foster social change is a goal in itself); b) the technology we so much rely upon has to mirror the society we want! Isn't it a contradiction to promote social change using, for example, commercial social media which are centralized, top-down, opaque (we often don't have a clue re: algorithms).. that is to say, diametrically opposed to the values we want to instil in society? • i. ii. iii. iv. v.
so, values and an alternative narrative of technology and change. Will focus on five "clusters of values" access & sharing: all info and access to technology and anything that might teach you something should be free; sharing and access equal collective improvement & shared ownership openness & transparency: malleability of technologies; freedom to hack/modify tools and processes; possibility of access and unpacking processes self-determination: autonomy, respect for privacy, own your own data/info, but also consensus and horizontality / direct democracy hands-on imperative, that is to say first-hand engagement with technology, DIY which is liberating because it is both playful and empowering "do not harm" > think about the consequences of your action on the system/on the broad context in which you operate
FINALLY, what can we learn from tech activists to re-contextualize 'voice & matter' in relation to the opportunities but also the challenges (and, let me say, the threats) of technologies? a. access & sharing >> give people the ownership of information, design; emphasis on sharing knowledge and best practices as means to collective improvement b. openness & transparency: freedom to own your own development process c. self-determination: respect for the individual and the individual story; respect for the individual privacy and individual and collective data (remember that data is open to many interpretation, not all of which are progressive; I am scared when I hear "we need more data in development" as it will drive social change advocacy away from value-based advocacy and into maths: if stats are useful to portray a problem, not all social change organizations have the capacity to gather and analyse and present data in an efficient way: data might end up shaping the transnational/national advocacy sector, shrinking it, making it more unequal) d. hands-on imperative >> first-person engagement and individual responsibility; emphasis on experimental practices as demystification tools: take
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things in your own hands, take responsibility for change, don't be dependent; give agency to the individual e. "do not harm" >> think about the consequences of your action/project/decision on the broad system, on the context in which you operate: take an holistic approach (((Moving away from values and taking a sociological perspective, it is important to notice how looking at tech activism helps us illuminating the most recent tendencies in contemporary societies >> that of individualism, facilitated/promoted by use of devices and platforms that are inherently individual. How can we leverage for social change these centrifugal tendencies? Tech activism can teach us that...! ))) Let me add a very final point. As I have mentioned earlier today, I have taken platforms and software as if they were stripped of content. Focusing on the tech level, however, exposes an important message: technologies are not neutral (a point made by someone in the audience yesterday!). They are designed to fit certain values and priorities as opposed to others; they embed forms of power in themselves. More often than not, this power is well-hidden. Without going into conspiracy theory, the commercial platforms and devices we use are typically not designed to serve the purposes of development, social change, or a better world. We live in an increasingly commercialized and securitized cyberspace, affected by diseases like data retention, but also the massive blanket surveillance programs and the constant threats to net neutrality. Snowden's revelations have made us indignant, we might have be shocked and surprised, but we still continue using those very same services that we know very well collaborate happily with the the likes of the National Security Agency. So, to conclude: not only am I advocating for increased engagement with the "plumbing", the technical side of things (by the way, there are different levels of engagement, so it is open to lay users too), but I am arguing in favour of a critical approach to technology in both 1) education to development and social change, and 2) all ICT4D or C4D projects. Critically engaging with the power within technology we so much rely upon is fundamental to any empowerment and liberation process.
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