Erik Hobijn over techno-parasieten 

Techno-parasieten zijn volgens de definitie van Hobijn 'apparaatjes die gebruikmaken van gedeeltes van onze verworvenheden, speeltjes behept met opmerkzaamheid die technische storingen tot gevolg hebben.' Technoparasiet 00020004C leeft van de lantaarnpaal. Het is een soort bloemkelk dat het regenwater opvangt en het licht van de lantaarn omzet in energie, met als doel het creëren van een potentiaal verschil. Het regenwater wordt gebru ikt om het proces te versnellen. Hiermee wordt eerst de zinklaag aangetast en op den duur ook de ijzerlaag aangevroten zodat de lantaarnpaal wordt doorgezaagd en omvalt. Een andere parariet klimt in een spiraalachtige beweging langs de lantaarnpaal omhoog. Het motortje loopt op lichtenergie, heel langzaam. Boven aangekomen slaat hij ineens het glas en lamp kapot, vermoord zo zijn voedingsbron en valt dan naar beneden.

Free/Libre Culture Forum Declaration 

We can no longer put off re-thinking the economic structures that have been producing, financing, and funding culture up until now. Many of the old models have become anachronistic and detrimental to civil society. The aim of this document is to promote innovative strategies capable of defending and extending the sphere in which human creativity and knowledge can prosper freely and sustainably.

• copyleft,
• precarity,
• copyright,
• free culture

Take the Square! 

Because global problems need global protests and global solutions...

Take the Square!

• urban intervention,
• precarity,
• street protest,
• tactical camping,
• occupy

A User's Guide to Demanding the Impossible 

Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination

This guide is not a road map or instruction manual. It's a match struck in the dark, a homemade multi-tool to help you carve out your own path through the ruins of the present, warmed by the stories and strategies of those who took Bertolt Brecht's words to heart: "Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it."

• precarity,
• austerity

Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto 

In memoriam: Aaron Swartz

Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves. The world's entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations. Want to read the papers featuring the most famous results of the sciences? You'll need to send enormous amounts to publishers like Reed Elsevier.

• infopolitics,
• public domain,
• info-activism

Notes on the Politics of Software Culture 

Software has, over the last few years, increasingly come into view as a cultural technique whose social and political impact ought to be studied carefully. To the extent that social processes rely on software for their execution - from systems of e-government and net-based education, online banking and shopping, to the organisation of social groups and movements -, it is necessary to understand the procedural specificities of the computer programmes employed, and the cultural and political 'rules' coded into them.

Tactical Media in Brazil - Submidialogia conference report 

The four-day conference on the campus of the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp) brought together many key persons from the tactical media movement of Brazil and some of their counterparts in the Brasilian government.
The movement is converging from roots in free radio, free software, hardware hacking, art and social movements. It is currently focussed around a large-scale project master-minded by Claudio Prado and supported by the Ministry of Culture: ?Pontos de Cultura? (Culture Spots) which is aiming to empower up to 600 cultural projects with free software-based multimedia production and publication facilities.

• tactical media,
• Brazil

9-11 and After: A Virtual Case Book 

 The attack on the World Trade Center was--among other things--a stunning media event, and there was no shortage of analysis on mass media coverage. We saw no reason to replicate what others were doing. What no one seemed to be looking at closely was the significance of this ephemeral material that filled the streets and parks in New York below 14th Street or its relationship with the new media that was also flooding our lives.

The Revenge of Print 

In the wireless era, is the paper medium simply passé for the work of activists? Are zamizdat, fanzines and political magazines just good for historians? After the mid-nineties zine crisis due to a sudden rise of the cost of paper and the advent of the Internet, the actual role of magazines seems to be re-defined and still strategical for the circulation of ideas.

Practices of resistance and enthusiasm in Brazil 

Motivated by the theories of Richard Stallman, Lawrence Lessig, Geert Lovink and David Garcia, Brazilian Internet users, activists and artists are, more and more, developing attractive activism and tactical media projects.

• tactical media,
• Brazil

Basic how-to guide for preserving fundamental rights on the Internet | Xnet 

Xnet publishes a Basic How-to guide for preserveing fundamental rights on the Internet
#Democracy – Rights and freedoms protected by the people: recent events in Catalonia as a case study

How-to guide: https://xnet-x.net/en/how-to-for-preserving-fundamental-rights-internet/
Even more basic PDF version.

• infopolitics,
• net.activism,
• info-activism,
• censorship

Culture and Technologies of Control 

Introduction to the cultural intelligence manual "Tactical Reality Dictionary"

• tactical reality,
• control

The Law of Web TV 

Internet policy is hard to enforce, but there is no harm in thinking it through. On the other hand, whatever order there is in the Net is generally the result of focussed self-organization: namely that the elements that constitute the medium, technology, market, infrastructure, policy and consumers, fall into place rather quickly and often better than expected.

• community media,
• network cultures,
• streaming media

We Demand The Impossible: 

An Interview with John Jordan and Gavin Grindon

Furtherfield interview with Gavin Grindon and John Jordan from the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination about the User's Guide to (Demanding) the Impossible. Published by Minor Compositions.

• art,
• participatory media,
• austerity

Constructing the Digital Commons 

March 2003

Democracy can be understood in two notably distinct ways. In the institutional view democracy is understood as the interplay of institutional actors that represent 'the people' and are held accountable through the plebiscite; public votes, polls and occasionally referenda. The second view on democracy is radically different in that it sees the extent to which people can freely assemble, discuss and share ideas about vital social issues, organise themselves around these issues, and can freely voice their opinions in public fora, as a measure for just how democratic a given society is.

• public space,
• public domain,
• digital commons