ECA/Subject: Re: ECA - continuous refactoring in self-moderation Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2018 10:19:31 0200

   From: zeljko@qsport.info
   To: jon r <jon@allmende.io>
   Cc: commonswatch@lists.p2pfoundation.net, Frédéric Sultan <fredericsultan@gmail.com>, 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: Re: ECA - continuous refactoring in self-moderation
   Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2018 10:19:31 +0200

Dear Jon - thank you for this amazing email, analysis and critique. It is much more than 2 cents and I really hope others find way in it for informing their own practice and inspiriting change in ECA... Will just add minor comments in-line bellow where I find useful.

On Mon, Mar 19, 2018 at 11:38 PM, jon r <jon@allmende.io> wrote: > 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.

Indeed. I think we fail to advance more in civil society due to lack of self-critique and slip into neo-liberal 'best practice' collecting routines. If anyone knows of good platform for addressing this I am happy to hear.

> 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.

Very generous of you to provide food for thought, but as your email did not resonate as much as I hoped it would till now, my thoughts are if it requieres an individual investment or group commitment which is not available here :-/

> 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

Excellent read - thank you for sharing this...maybe post you would appreciate https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-1603/msg00049.html

> 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?

Yes. Easily - yes, but at which speed, commitment and mode of adoption?

> - 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?

Considering amount of apple hardware and software installed at ECA Madrid it is hard to imagine of this being a fast and total transformation anytime soon, but maybe going from lowest common denominators: tools of collaboration, documentation and decisionmaking (loomio had no chance to be presented!).

> - 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?

I guess this is up for informing, discussion and periodic renegotiation...no?

> 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?

Think that at start the focus should be at point of joint work and interaction.

> 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

• > ¹ https://ar.al/notes/farewell-not-goodbye/
• > ² https://www.degrowth.info/en/dim/degrowth-in-movements/
• > ³ https://github.com/libresh/awesome-librehosters

Thanks again for links and looking forward to responses...

Best - Z