serverpipe
communication system as part of operation Vula ( “Opening the path” in zulu ) that aimed to put an end to apartheid the ANC communication committee seems promising : the network which evolved over time, was using heterogeneous technology.
1
- Setup local server(s) & make your own network infrastructure, rather than “fixing the problems of internet access” by paying for increased bandwidth / data;
- Prefer “read/write” and negotiable networks to those that “just work”;
- Prefer pocket servers to those in the clouds;
- Embrace a diversity of network topologies and different scales (machine to machine, local nodes, institutional infrastructure) and consider the implications of working with each;
- Rather than a Web 2.0 model where resources must be uploaded onto “a 24/7 Internet” in order to share them; where sharing presupposes acceptance of non-negotiable / non-rewritable Terms of Service defined by market-leading global corporations)
- Invite participants to look critically at the implications of any infrastructural decisions, rather than imagining utopic and/or “killer” solutions;
- Aim to make that which is normally hidden and invisible (in contexts that tend to surveillance), explicit and shared (as a gesture of collective authorship), for instance:
- Instead of caching web resources (silently), imagine services to archive resources and share them locally as cookbooks or a digital library;
- Rather than logging servers and database accessible only by administrators, imagine (local) logs available for reading / editing by participants and published conditionally.