ECA/Subject: ECA - continuous refactoring in self-moderation Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2018 23:38:13 0100

   From: jon r <jon@allmende.io>
   To: commonswatch@lists.p2pfoundation.net, Frédéric Sultan <fredericsultan@gmail.com>, Zeljko Blace <zeljko@qsport.info>, Torange Khonsari <torange@publicworksgroup.net>, Asli Telli <telli.asli@gmail.com>, Ana Margarida Esteves <anamargarida.esteves@gmail.com>, "Laamanen, Mikko" <Mikko.Laamanen@rhul.ac.uk>, Ruby van der Wekken <rubyvdwekken@gmail.com>, Amanda Jansen <amanda@ouishare.net>, Nonty Sedibe <nontys@gmail.com>, Rémi Bocquet <rmibocquet@gmail.com>, Tibor Katelbach <oceatoon@gmail.com>, Kitty de Bruin <kittydebruin64@gmail.com>, Marie Venner <marie.venner@vennerconsulting.com>
   Subject: ECA - continuous refactoring in self-moderation
   Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2018 23:38:13 +0100

Dearest ECA,

I sense a form of disharmony reaching my inbox these days and feel compelled to provide my two cents to the discussion. Working in providing communication infrastructure for socioecological initiatives in the past years, and only rarely having the free time to enact in political discussion, us system administrators gain a special view on what's going on. Think of Snowden, but not for the go(u)vern(e)mental, but for the activists scenes shaping our collective future.

Happily enough I've grown up in the Internet and the early Web of the '90ies, where information was supposed to be free and unconditional trust to the available peers was a primary motivation for collaboration. Nowadays, unfortunately, I have come to acknowledge the cognitive and therefore physical effects of information and communication technology being enclosed and commodified in unprecedented scale.

Instead of monologising and deliberating about the similarities and differences in collective action and failure, I want to allow someone else's voice to be heard first, before leaving you with a few questions to carry on.

Please have a read of Aral Balkan's "Farewell not Goodbye"¹, which describes a probably similar situation at DiEM25, and focus your attention on the mention of email. Upon your return here, I want to suggest to reflect your reading against these questions:

- If there would be alternative ways of communication and documentation, similar in their production logic to the Commons alternatives (food, care, housing, energy, education, ...) to the global hegomony we all claim to support, would you be open to challange your very own expectations and habits with regards to escaping the echochambers and silos?

- If we are talking about redecentralisation of tools and infrastructures that support distributed modes of operation, how much effort can we expect from political practitioners to invest into decoupling their activities from the global commodities and their shiny surfaces?.

- If the Commons are only one part of the movements that need to align for a better future, most prominently together with Careing Economies, Degrowth as well as Social and Solidarity Economies, not to mention the explorations around Degrowth in Movements², and also, if all those narratives are only vessels to describe a new way of being together to a wider, uninformed public, which are then the implicit interaction patterns and informational freedoms that we must absolutely secure to ensure a thriving transformation of the academic-corporate-nation state system?

8 of 13 participants in this conversation rely on Google's public mail service, 3 custom domains are cloaked Google Apps domains, 1 custom domain is hosted at Microsoft and 1 custom domain is served from a large commercial ISP. Is this really the decentralised foundation we want to build upon?

I may have a lot more to share and say, depending on the course of the debate, but for now I will be happy to welcome your responses and track the case from afar.

Greetings from Hackenow,

sent via an independent librehoster³,

Jon

ECA