Do I sound smart enough?

Besides writing a novel I’m trying to do about ten other things this week, all of which is making me a little overwhelmed and so instead of actually getting anything done I’m here in my cube at work spinning a little. I’m going to use my blog writing time today for one of my projects though, thus knocking two pins down with one ball. Specifically I’m going to rif here a little on a talk that I’m supposed to be giving as part of a panel on Saturday on Open Source Software and Democracy. I’ve titled my ten minutes “Appropriate Technology: Open Source Software, building democracy, and seizing the means of communication for ourselves” just to get a handle on what is potentially a very large topic. As it is, ten minutes isn’t nearly long enough for what I’d actually like to say.

This isn’t the first time I’ve used such a title, “Appropriate Technology” being the tag line we use at Resist! Communications to indicate both appropriate use of communications tech as well as the possibilities for *appropriating* technology to the ends of increased democratic flow and decision-making. In 2005 I gave a talk titled “Appropriating Technology: Security, Internet Services and the Struggle” so you can see this is the type of title I like alot. Snappy two words followed by three examples of what it is I’m talking about.

It’s unfortunate I can’t use most of that talk from 2005, because I’m having a hard time centralizing my thoughts on the topic I have chosen for this weekend. Not that I don’t have an opinion on the matter, but shaping it into intelligible words is turning into a bit of a problem when I would rather be researching historical details for my novel or otherwise getting stuff done at work.

Essentially I’m going to talk about the history of the collective – our commitment to building infrastructure for social movements, the pitfalls of centralizing activist communications on a few radical services (more distributed services needed!) but the potential using open source software for being inherently more secure despite those pitfalls. I’m going to briefly touch on the open source software products that Resist! uses (Debian Linux, SSL for network encryption, Drupal & WordPress for media and blogging, Squirrelmail and Roundcube, Mailman, Sympa etc.) and how their value to us lies not only in the fact they cost us nothing to operate, but through the open source network we have more security available to us than we would otherwise.

And then I’d like to go on for a bit about why it’s important that we have our own boxes at all. Jessi from Riseup is going to talk about the security apparatus and why “free” services come with a cost…. so I think I will may be go with that only briefly and then delve into the decline in traditional media, and how that provides a space for different types of online news and communications services to come to the fore in the years to come. Why is it important that we own our own media? So our Internet is not the same Asper-controlled conglomerate our news media has been all these past decades.

That’s all pretty loose at the moment but I’m puzzling it through. By Friday I’ll have it written out and ready, that’s just what I do with one-off talks like this…. and on Sunday I’m sure I’ll end up posting it here. Thoughts?