We work to create information that we will never own
August 27, 2024 1:19 AM Subscribe
This hellscape is no place for free information to thrive. The digital hoarder must take stock, and set out in search of somewhere independent from such distractions. A simple spreadsheet, maybe, a private are.na channel, a USB drive, or even a Minecraft map. What matters here is not the hoard’s form, but its capacity to be consumed outside the limits of the commodity. Free from the profit-churning debris of their social media feeds, visitors to this hoard might gain a better idea of how they, too, can use the information they find in service of principled, radical action. from Life in Fifteen Gigabytes by Bami Oke [e-flux]
This is why I have all of my photos on multiple hard drives and not in The Cloud. Everything is ephemeral - everything - but at least you control the drives you own.
posted by grumpybear69 at 7:48 AM on August 27 [6 favorites]
posted by grumpybear69 at 7:48 AM on August 27 [6 favorites]
The "fifteen gigabytes" jumping-off idea is a mess, and poorly introduces other thoughts about communal ideas, creativity and sharing. It doesn't engage with the strengths and weaknesses of copyright, nor the zeitgeist of current top social media platforms and the "network effect" that draws people to connect.
what good, really, is a pile of money to a capitalist, if it lies dormant and out of circulation?
I couldn't find marks who'd buy my "expiring future credits" cryptocurrency, otherwise I'd be lobbying to get an "expiring currency" into the tax credit system, claiming that we're "making sure that welfare drives GDP."
The digital hoarder must take stock, and set out in search of somewhere independent from such distractions. A simple spreadsheet, maybe, a private are.na channel, a USB drive, or even a Minecraft map. What matters here is not the hoard’s form, but its capacity to be consumed outside the limits of the commodity. Free from the profit-churning debris of their social media feeds, visitors to this hoard might gain a better idea of how they, too, can use the information they find in service of principled, radical action.
Servers cost money to run and take time for upkeep -- remember "if you're not paying for it, you're the product, not the customer." My home-based hoard is blocked and firewalled from the internet because my upstream pipe is asymmetrically weaker than my downstream pipe and because some of my data is private, neither for monetisation or public dissection. These things aren't drivers of principled radical action -- and I expect that some private activity at home is subversive and some is innocent but judged illegal by an unjust society, and we have tools for participating in communities around that subversion or injustice. I can't imagine monetisation would be easy -- "the master's tools will not take down the master's house."
posted by k3ninho at 8:17 AM on August 27 [4 favorites]
what good, really, is a pile of money to a capitalist, if it lies dormant and out of circulation?
I couldn't find marks who'd buy my "expiring future credits" cryptocurrency, otherwise I'd be lobbying to get an "expiring currency" into the tax credit system, claiming that we're "making sure that welfare drives GDP."
The digital hoarder must take stock, and set out in search of somewhere independent from such distractions. A simple spreadsheet, maybe, a private are.na channel, a USB drive, or even a Minecraft map. What matters here is not the hoard’s form, but its capacity to be consumed outside the limits of the commodity. Free from the profit-churning debris of their social media feeds, visitors to this hoard might gain a better idea of how they, too, can use the information they find in service of principled, radical action.
Servers cost money to run and take time for upkeep -- remember "if you're not paying for it, you're the product, not the customer." My home-based hoard is blocked and firewalled from the internet because my upstream pipe is asymmetrically weaker than my downstream pipe and because some of my data is private, neither for monetisation or public dissection. These things aren't drivers of principled radical action -- and I expect that some private activity at home is subversive and some is innocent but judged illegal by an unjust society, and we have tools for participating in communities around that subversion or injustice. I can't imagine monetisation would be easy -- "the master's tools will not take down the master's house."
posted by k3ninho at 8:17 AM on August 27 [4 favorites]
« Older Self-driving cars have got a kangaroo problem | sunshine follows thunder Newer »
posted by HearHere at 3:47 AM on August 27 [1 favorite]