How federated systems disappear
Long-tail effects mean things become invisible, and it is hard to argue for that which does not seem to exist.
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What is 'alternative' about alternative social media?
Reviewing literature on alternative social media, we provide an overview of what scholars consider alternative, and reflect on what it means to study ASM
Let's talk Technology and Degrowth
Technology has a prominent role in contemporary society and degrowth proposes a radical transformation of society. That raises questions. What are the degrowth movements’ views on technology?
Postcards against Chat control
The local hackerspace read that physical mail is more effective than digital mail for campaigning, so we tried it out.
Visualizing image compression
Photograph of a beach that no longer exists shows an image of a beach near Barcelona which is now gone due to the effects of climate change. This post describes the sketching for Photograph in more detail.
On not scaling LURK
a tale of maintenance, federation, and governance
LURK in Artists Running Data Centers
the expression ARTIST RUN DATA CENTER (ARDC) refers to a server cluster that artists and collectives use as an experimental production space
solar powered website exhibited twice
solar.lowtechmagazine.com is exhibited in LACMA and Design Museum
Make Friends Not Art: Mapping Law Power and Participation
This paper discusses how laws intended to protect derailed a participatory design project
Spheres of Identity
On the topologies of digital identity systems and how thinking derived from topological determinism obscures how digital identity systems operate in practice.
Research Notes On Digital Identity
Shared preliminary findings from Digital Identity research project at MetaGovernance seminar
Books from other libraries
a prototype to interconnect digital community libraries and their publications using existing standards
Back To The Future Of The Internet
Fresh ideas from the Internet’s past against stale techological futures
Tool Shed: Borrowing, Maintaining, Shedding
An evening of exchange at HNI from 19:00 - 21:00 as part of the Tool Shed fellowship
Shifting your research from X to Mastodon? Here’s what you need to know
An informational opinion piece on research ethics on Mastodon / Fediverse
The Impromptu Museum(?) Of Obsolete(?) Devices
Discussed the design behind solar.lowtechmagazine.com at an introductory event of Malmö Degrowth Studies group
Duurzaamheid en webdesign, hoe zit dat?
Het energieverbruik van ICT is een complexe kwestie. Naast een sociaal en technisch vraagstuk is het ook een ontwerpvraagstuk. Hoe kan je de energievoetafdruk van je werk minimaliseren?
what does toot:indexable mean for academic research on the fediverse?
Mastodon 4.2 introduced a general opt-in for indexing public posts. Is this the beginning of an opt-in mechanism for computational academic research?
Book: How to build a low-tech internet?
Low-tech Magazine launched a thematic publication on digital technology
Log out_: A Glossary of Technological Resistance and Decentralization
Our article on Decentralised Social Media republished as part of Log out_
Article about sustainability and webdesign for Dutch Designers Magazine
I discuss the sustainability of ICT and what one can do within web design in an article for the magazine of the Professional Association for Dutch Designers
Rebuilding a solar powered website
After five years of running it we rebuilt solar.lowtechmagazine.com to work with hugo.
Presentation at Critical Infrastructure Lab opening event
In April 2023, the opening conference of the Critical Infastructure Lab took place at the UVA. The lab is focused on the study of media infrastructures and has three strands of research; geopolitics, standards, and environment. The conference contributions were also all grouped in to these strands and an additional Infrastructural Futures section. Unfortunately, I had to miss the first day. For…
Infrastructuring alternatives: Mastodon, the Fediverse and beyond
The workshop introduces the question of alternative social media and how a software like Mastodon, based on its federated topology, allows for different relationships between user communities and their infrastructures.
A Traversal Network Of Feminist Servers: LURK
a collaborative project formed around intersectional, feminist, ecological servers whose communities travelled between each other in 2022
Glossary Entry: Decentralised Social Media
An entry in Internet Policy Review’s Glossary of decentralised technologies
Toolmaking for a Human-Sized Agriculture
This workshop focuses on the relationship between tool design, the human body and the land.
contact
hmu @ ☞ roel at roelroscamabbing dot nl for mail ☞ blabla at roelof dot info for xmpp ☞ rra at post.lurk.org for fediverse, click here ☞ rscmbbng at twitter dot com for tweets
On Cultivating the Installable Base
This paper argues that technically-inclined PD practices that wish ”to matter” are well predisposed to significantly contribute to public repositories of computational alternatives.
Feature in Degrowth & Strategy
The solar powered webiste is discussed in Degrowth & Strategy
Konfluks
a tool that brings together small and dispersed streams of web content from different applications and websites together in a single large stream.
How To Run A Small Social Network With Your Friends
A workshop on organizing and maintaining a Mastodon server
interview in Disegno #30
The work on solar.lowtechmagazine.com, and the opinions of yours truly, were featured in “The Biggest Machine On Earth”. In this article in Disengo Journal, Oli Stratford explores the material side of the internet, carbon footprints and lean web design. You can get the journal here: https://disegnojournal.com/shop/p/disegno30 Or read the article on Oli’s Website
feature in CAPS LOCK
CAPS LOCK by Ruben Pater is a book that explores the ways in which (graphic) design is interwoven with capitalism and the ways that designers attempt to resist that. The book does so by giving the reader a rich overview of cases, designed objects, imagery and examples of work by different designers and studios. Some of the work as part of R&D was also included on page 380. Additionally, there is a…
One click install to autonomy?
Very scientific graph of fleeting interest in alternatives infrastructural practices by cultural practitioners and institutions vs ongoing groundwork done by subcultural practices On the 30th of June and 1st of July 2021 Aymeric Mansoux and me presented a talk and workshop for Screenwalks on practices of setting up and maintaining alternative computational infrastructures. Screenwalks is a…
Semipad, a calibre-web mod for collaborative annotations
This article describes how to modify calibre-web to allow for collaborative annotations on publications
Computing Within Limits 2021 Paper Presentation
On the 14th of june I presented ‘This is a solar-powered website, which means it sometimes goes offline’: a design inquiry into degrowth and ICT at Computing Within Limits. LIMITS is a yearly workshop concerning the role of computing in human societies affected by real-world limits. Planetary, ecological, social and otherwise. tl;dr In ‘This is a solar-powered website, which means it sometimes…
Talk for Digital Solidarity Networks
What are lessons learned from alternative, decentralised or federated infrastructures?
Creating portable digital libraries by embedding metadata
screenshot of the calibre interface Tools like Calibre make it possible to organize digital publications into meaningful collections by adding a wealth of metadata to files. This makes it possible to organize and search publications according to theme, publisher, authors, year and more. There is also a ‘description’ field which allow for comments of different kinds, such as an abstract…
feature in Redirecting Networks
Spread of Neural Magazine showing some of the work that is part of R&D Projects part of R&D were featured in Neural #65, a special issue edited by Rachel O’Dwyer. Get it here: http://neural.it/issues/neural-65-redirecting-networks/
participation in Transmediale 2020
Photo during talk Seven Theses On the Fediverse Photo by Adam Berry (CC BY-SA 4.0) As part of Transmediale 2020: End-To-End I’ve participated in a talk, a panel and three workshops. a talk The talk was a high-speed 20 minute executive summary of Seven Theses on the Fediverse and the Becoming of F/LOSS. This was part of the panel session Deplatformization and the Ethics of Exclusion. a panel…
Seven Theses On The Fediverse And The Becoming Of Floss
Cover of The Eternal Network Together with Aymeric Mansoux I co-authored an essay that looks at the interrelation between Free/Libre Open Source Software(F/LOSS) and the Fediverse, an alternative social media network. Through seven different theses, the essay explores how this latest federated social network challenges both the established forms of production and governance in F/LOSS software, as…
POST Design Festival
https://postdesignfestival.org/speaker/low-tech-magazine Low-tech Magazine questions the blind belief in technological progress, and talks about the potential of past and often forgotten knowledge and technologies when it comes to designing a sustainable society. Interesting possibilities arise when you combine old technology with new knowledge and new materials, or when you apply old concepts and…
Networks of One's Own Issue 2
A periodic para-nodal publication documenting networks of practices, tools and experiences that is itself collectively written within a network
Person With Ball ⛹
Tracing the genealogy of a single emoji from map historic map icon, to ethnicized and gendered representation
The Social In The Media
Varia at ODD, photo by Florian Cramer In June 2019 I joined a delegation of Varia to Bucharest Romania to meet and exchange with ODD and present our (Varia) media & software ecosystem during a presentation. A detailed write up can be found on the Varia website: https://varia.zone/en/the-social-in-the-media.html
Networks With An Attitude
Networks do not tell all stories equally. Networks, like all entities with stories, tell most readily those stories in whose reflection they see themselves. Eleanor Saitta, 2012
solar. lowtechmagazine .com in the media
List of media and projects referencing solar.lowtechmagazine.com In English: “Can the Internet Survive Climate Change?”, Kevin Lozano, The New Republic, 2019 “The future of web design is less, not more”, Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan, Fastcompany, September 10, 2018. “Imagining a Solar-Powered Internet: Kris De Decker Low<–Tech Magazine”, Jasio Stefanski, The…
The Network We (De)served
From January to April 2019 on behalf of Varia, Manetta Berends and me taught a thematic course at the Experimental Publishing Master’s programme at the Piet Zwart Institute. Responding to new developments in federated social media and the trimester sought to understand what on-line federation is and how novel forms of publishing could be imagined in that environment. Consequently the…
Infrastructour for Automated Landscapes
Lecture on the energy and data infrastructure in Eemshaven for a group of architecture researchers