Here’s the notes from the first part of her book. There isn’t a second part yet, I skipped to the end of the book because I need to ask about growing communities and needed to prepare it and the last part of the book has good bits for that.
Continue reading “Notes from Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger – part 3”Notes from Ubuntu Community Summit – Riga, Latvia, November 2023
There were several talks I enjoyed and a few I want to see but will have to wait for the videos to be released. Then some thoughts and reflections. General impressions of Riga in a separate post.
Chantal Mouffe and my game
Someone suggested my thoughts align with Chantal Mouffe and so I went down a rabbithole. Part of that, and critical thinking, is also seeing what critique exists and this quickly developed into a quagmire of who exactly has the right ideas. So I’m being a bit fast and loose here, and using the general ideas as a description of what the game is hoping to help with.
Continue reading “Chantal Mouffe and my game”Notes from Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger
I mangle the quotes to tell me story. The gist is a true reflection but it’s not the exact words.
p4 – Both “our” world and the “mirror world” – the world of the conspiracy theorists, agree that post-shock states of discombobulation have been opportunistically exploited in many different contexts. Both groups have a (p24) skepticism of elite power. p53 – The words the mirror world use are essentially fantasy. But emotionally, to many people they clearly feel true. And the reason they feel true is that we are indeed living through a revolution in surveillance tech, and state and corporate actors have indeed seized outrageous powers to monitor us, often in collaboration and coordination with one another. Moreover, as a culture, we have barely begun to reckon with the transformational nature of this shift.
Continue reading “Notes from Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger”The end of expertise: two routes with similar roots
.The idea for my metaverse project, peduncle, was born during the extreme drought in Cape Town around 2016, when a city of more than 4 million people were about to run out of water. It was a combination of climate change and mismanagement, but how we as scientists and engineers responded to it was, to me, equally inadequate than the people in power.
This threw me into an identity crisis about myself as a scientist and engineer – an “expert”. Someone shared Lesley Green’s article and I realised what I am dealing with inside myself is part of a bigger crisis: “the end of expertise”.
Continue reading “The end of expertise: two routes with similar roots”Worldbuilding the real world: build good ruins – Part 2
Part 1 is here: https://indiebio.co.za/worldbuilding-the-real-world-build-good-ruins-part-1/
The first part concluded that we need to build from the bottom, that top-down, expert-led action is not enough anymore, that community work of everyday is the resilience we need to thrive in these interesting times.
When we pursue bottom up design and implementation, these still need to be guided by common principles that comes from a higher view – so yes, there is still space for urban planners, government, but it becomes more of a conversation. How can we imagine and visualise this, as a global community of communities? Metarkitex talks about public space in the digital world, and asks do these public spaces exist online? Are they accessible and welcoming to everyone?
Public space developed to a space where people can go without aim or arrangement
This post continues with clips from an interview with Vandana Shiva and Dougald Hine.
Continue reading “Worldbuilding the real world: build good ruins – Part 2”Thinking about public spheres
I am interested in how the digital world, that can dissolve geographical boundaries, can help us keep governments around the world accountable, from the bottom up.
This led me to think about what democracy actually is.
Democracy is meaningful participation
Continue reading “Thinking about public spheres”Write-up, research outline try 2.
Here I’ve been trying to write a story with the headings, understandable to everyday people, assuming that the body will have the meaty academic content.
We are in crisis, and we need to act with some urgency.
There are two ways to act in crisis, and these are currently in tension.
The first way is to rely on traditional expertise, which is a “command and control strategy”, it is top-down. Experts say things and the rest of us do the things.
The second way is to do it ourselves, as a community, we just get in and do it.
Continue reading “Write-up, research outline try 2.”Meta-communities
I’m toying with names for this “brand” I’m creating, and maybe something around a curious little beast, or pequinha fera curiosa (PFC) in Portuguese. Fera to link with feral, but also to alliterate with FOSS. The newspaper idea I still have in the back of my head has Curvy Cavy as working title, and our virtual world project is called peduncle, with a snail-type mascot, also a curious little beast. I, too, am a curious little beast.
Continue reading “Meta-communities”The End of FLOSS as we know it?!
Just as I really get into FOSS, I’m told it’s over.
Continue reading “The End of FLOSS as we know it?!”