Red Cedar

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?

I’m not getting vaccinated against the swine flu. Really. It’s true, and I’m tired of people asking me and then arguing with me about it. It’s not as though I’m out there arguing for people not to get it, but I’ve made a decision based on my own health history and weighed out that the benefits of getting the vaccine don’t outweigh the risks.

At work we got a notice a couple of days ago letting us know that the flu clinic will be arriving on our doorstep in a couple of weeks and if we wished to participate we could get vaccinated for swine flu, seasonal flu, and pneumococcal all at the same time! For only a low, low price of $72. This, in a system with “socialized” health care – the government pays for the delivery (through clinics) of a product for which we pay full cost to the companies that produce it. You would think if governments really wanted to emphasize the importance of such things as vaccines they would provide them free of charge, but this has less to do with what’s important to us (the citizenry) than what’s important to them (those string-pullers at the top).

Just to be clear, I’m not a conspiracy theorist on this stuff by a long shot – but I do believe in collusion among class forces as a natural outcome of capitalism. Those at the top want to stay there, and it doesn’t matter at who’s expense. Politicians are sold hysteria by pharmas and just to ensure they don’t get caught out they pass it on to the public with the help of the media. It’s not as though doctors are uniformly for vaccination. In Britain, for example a full 50% of doctors don’t support routine vaccination (that is vaccination in healthy/not-at-risk populations).

About twelve years ago I had a flu so bad I thought I was going to die – high fever, delerium, basically unconcious for hours at a time – and granted, it was an awful experience. As awful, if not more than what I hear swine flu can be. It’s true that I don’t want to get sick like that ever again, but there’s a chance the vaccine could make me that sick too (a co-worker here got creeping fascitis from a flu clinic at work a few years ago and ended up hospitalized as a result of the shot, another co-worker got the shot just as she was coming down with the flu and got sicker than anyone else she knew at the time)…. and instead I’m washing my hands obsessively and gargling nightly (a public health nurse told me that gargling can kill H1N1 while it’s still incubating in the throat and before it gets into your system to make you sick). So there. I’ve got better hygeine standards as a result and that’s going to protect me against a whole lot more than the swine flu vaccine,