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Small updates, new version of IRC article, first stay at readable footnotes in the coop article

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@ -95,11 +95,9 @@ Sovereignty in interpreting technology has come to mean many things to us. In t
[^1]: http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-09-29/how-do-all-those-leaders-un-communicate-all-those-languages
[^2]: All the modifications and schematics we use can be seen here:
https://coati.pimienta.org/electronics
[^2]: All the modifications and schematics we use can be seen here: https://coati.pimienta.org/electronics
[^3]: Our written guidelines can be consulted here:
https://coati.pimienta.org/documents/
[^3]: Our written guidelines can be consulted here: https://coati.pimienta.org/documents/
[^4]: Grai Collective, Romania: grai@riseup.net

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# Keeping technological sovereignty: The case of Internet Relay Chat
## Maxigas
# Keeping technological sovereignty
New technologies sometimes manifest a critique of the existing conditions, but
their empowering affordances are often lost as their features are
progressively integrated to the requirements of capitalism during their
subsequent development. The history of chat devices is a textbook example of
critique and recuperation in technological cycles. However, the social history
and contemporary use of IRC (Internet Relay Chat) proves that such historical
logic can be – and is – resisted in some exceptional cases. This case study
does not necessarily recommend IRC as a medium of communication for activists,
but rather seeks to put forward some theses on the history of technology that
could be found useful in certain situations.
## The case of Internet Relay Chat
The systematic study of such cases may contribute to the refinement of a taste
for critical technology adoption practices in communities who wish to keep
control over the technologies that mediate their social relations. Therefore,
an appreciation of critique and recuperation in technological cycles may help
to further technological sovereignty (Haché 2014) over longer time frames,
where local efforts could potentially become part of capitalist regimes of
oppression and exploitation over time. A corollary observation is that
technical features may result in crucially different technological affordances
depending on their context of use: this shows that pure techniques should
never be promoted or rejected in themselves.
**Maxigas**
## Internet Relay Chat
**New technologies sometimes manifest a critique of the existing conditions, but their empowering affordances are often lost as their features are progressively integrated to the requirements of capitalism during their subsequent development.** The history of chat devices is a textbook example of critique and recuperation in technological cycles. However, the social history and contemporary use of IRC (Internet Relay Chat) proves that such historical logic can be – and *is* – resisted in some exceptional cases. This case study does *not* necessarily recommend IRC as a medium of communication for activists, but rather seeks to put forward some theses on the history of technology that could be found useful in certain situations. [^1]
Internet Relay Chat is a very basic but very flexible protocol for real time
written conversations. It was first implemented in 1988, one year before the
World Wide Web. IRC reached the height of its popularity as a general purpose
social media during the first Gulf War and the siege of Sarajevo
(1992-1996). At this time it performed various functions that were later
fulfilled by specialised programs and platforms, such as dating, following
friends or file sharing. As the population of the Internet grew and market
consolidation set it on the turn of the millennium, IRC faded from the public
view.
*The systematic study of historical cases may contribute to the refinement of a taste for critical technology adoption practices in communities who wish to keep control over the technologies that mediate their social relations.* An appreciation of critique and recuperation in technological cycles may help to further technological sovereignty [@Hache2014d] over longer time frames, where local efforts could potentially become part of capitalist regimes of oppression and exploitation over time. A corollary observation is that technical features may result in crucially different technological affordances depending on their context of use: this shows that pure techniques should never be promoted or rejected in themselves.
However, it is known from seminal studies of contemporary peer production
communities that free software developers (Coleman 2012), hackerspace members
(Maxigas 2015), Wikipedia editors (Broughton 2008) and Anonymous hacktivists
(Dagdelen 2012) use primarily IRC for everyday backstage communication. While
the first group has always been on IRC, the latter three adopted it after the
apparent demise of the medium. “Why [do] these contemporary user groups –
widely considered as disruptive innovators and early adopters – stick to a
museological chat technology despite its obvious limitations within the
current technological landscape?” Currently popular social networking
platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, offer similar features and appear to
be a more obvious choice. I propose that while IRC use can seem retrograde, it
is actually a critical technology adoption practice that empirically evades,
and analytically highlights the pitfalls of mainstream social media
monopolies.
# Internet Relay Chat
## Recuperation
**Internet Relay Chat is a very basic but very flexible protocol for real time written conversations.** It has been first implemented in 1988, one year before the World Wide Web. IRC reached the height of its popularity as a general purpose social media during the first Gulf War and the siege of Sarajevo (1992-1996). At this time it performed various functions that were later fulfilled by specialised programs and platforms, such as dating, following friends or file sharing. *As the population of the Internet grew and market consolidation set it on the turn of the millennium, IRC faded from the public view.*
Critique and recuperation in technological cycles is a process of integrating
societal demands into the capitalist system. New technologies sometimes embody
a demand for a better society and a critique of the existing conditions. While
such demands are typically addressed by subsequent versions of the same
technology, the same technology is also made to conform to the two main
requirements of the capitalist system. These latter two are the preservation
of social peace (i.e. repression), and the intensification of exploitation
(i.e. capital accumulation). It happens that the implementation of these two
requirements neutralises the societal gains from the demand originally
associated with the technology.
However, it is known from seminal studies of contemporary peer production communities that **FLOSS [^2] developers** [@Coleman2012a], **hackerspace members** [@Maxigas2015a], **Wikipedia editors** [@Broughton2008a] and **Anonymous hacktivists** [@Dagdelen2012a] use primarily IRC for everyday backstage communication. While the first group has always been on IRC, the latter three adopted it after the apparent demise of the medium. **“Why these contemporary user groups – widely considered as disruptive innovators and early adopters – stick to a museological chat technology despite its obvious limitations within the current technological landscape?”** Currently popular social networking platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, offer similar features and appear to be a more obvious choice. *I propose that while IRC use can seem retrograde, it is actually a critical technology adoption practice that empirically evades, and analytically highlights the pitfalls of mainstream social media monopolies.*
One aspect or form of recuperation is commodification. Commodification is when
something at some point becomes a commodity to be brought and sold on the
market. Commodification targets authentic things, which are often already
perceived to be valuable – for instance as a moral good – but not yet
recognised as an object of monetary exchange. The loss of authenticity through
commodification produces anxiety in consumers, which can be diagnosed as the
affective trace of capital’s violence.
# Recuperation
To summarise, critique addresses a social problem as a demand. Recuperation is
the implementation of the demand, but in the same movement also the
transformation of the technological context in a way that neutralises the
critique. The requirements that the implementation of the demand has to
paradoxically fulfil are (a.) keeping social peace (repression) constant while
(b.) increasing exploitation (capital accumulation). Commodification is an
aspect or mode of recuperation that often happens in technological
cycles. Commodification targets authentic goods which are outside of the
market, and integrates them into the circulation of commodities. Anxiety is
the byproduct of commodification as the affective trace of capital’s violence.
*Critique and recuperation in technological cycles* is a process of integrating societal demands into the capitalist system. New technologies sometimes embody a demand for a better society and a critique of the existing conditions. While such demands are typically addressed by subsequent versions of the same technology, the same technology is also made to conform to the two main requirements of the capitalist system. These latter two are *the preservation of social peace (i.e. repression), and the intensification of exploitation (i.e. capital accumulation)*. It often happens that the implementation of these two requirements neutralises the societal gains from the demand originally associated with the technology.
## Chat history and other examples of recuperation
One aspect or form of recuperation is *commodification*. Commodification is when something at some point becomes a commodity to be brought and sold on the market. Commodification targets *authentic* things, which are often already perceived to be valuable – for instance as a moral good – but not yet recognised as an object of monetary exchange. The loss of authenticity through commodification produces *anxiety* in consumers, which can be diagnosed as the affective trace of capital’s violence.
Recuperation as a historical logic can be seen at work in a wide range of
technologies, from the history of chat to the development of personal
computing. I concentrate on the history of chat devices because this is the
context of the IRC story. While the history of chat devices is a textbook
example of critique and recuperation in technological cycles, the story of IRC
is a counter-example that shows the possibility of resisting the historical
logic of capitalism.
<!-- To summarise, *critique* addresses a social problem as a demand. *Recuperation* is the implementation of the demand, but in the same movement also the transformation of the technological context in a way that neutralises the critique. The requirements that the implementation of the demand has to paradoxically fulfil are (a.) keeping *social peace* (repression) constant while (b.) increasing *exploitation* (capital accumulation). *Commodification* is an aspect or mode of recuperation that often happens in technological cycles. Commodification targets *authentic* goods which are outside of the market, and integrates them into the circulation of commodities. *Anxiety* is the byproduct of commodification as the affective trace of capital’s violence. -->
Chat devices answered a basic human need to discuss arbitrary topics
informally in a real time environment. After a long and parallel history of
chat devices, in the 1990s they consolidated into IRC (more or less as a
corollary to the consolidation of Layer 2 networks into the Internet). The
next generation of chat devices were Instant Messengers (Maxigas 2014). On the
backend (Stalder 2013), IMs used proprietary protocols and centralised
infrastructures, instead of the community defined protocols of IRC and its
federated model. On the frontend (Stalder 2013), IMs were organised around
private conversations, in stark contrast with IRC’s concept of topical
channels (itself taken from Citizens’ Band – CB – radio). Later, as the World
Wide Web took off, chat features were integrated into Web 2.0 social media
platforms.
# Histories
Eventually, surveillance came to be the key means for both maintaining social
peace and deepening exploitation on social media platforms.1 Everyday,
informal, even intimate gestures are captured and stored, sorted and mined for
the purposes of both targeted advertising and targeted repression. Such
revenue is indispensable to the capital accumulation mechanisms of a growing
section of capital, while the intelligence gained by authorities who share
access to the information flows is essential to the maintenance of social
order in both dictatorships and democracies. All this hinges on successful
platformisation: the ability of a vendor to install themselves as an
obligatory passage point for generally mundane and often minuscule social
interactions (Gillespie 2010).
**Recuperation as a historical logic can be seen at work in a wide range of technologies, from the history of chat to the development of personal computing.** The personal computer was the material expression – or functional implementation – of countercultural ideals of personal freedom in the 1970s [@Markoff2005a; @Turner2006a; @Zandbergen2011a]. The first PCs were constructed by hobbyists, most famously around the Homebrew Computer Club, but just as well by their counterparts in less hyped places such as Yugoslavia by people like Voja Antonić [@Antonic2014a]. Their ideal of *general computing* for everybody was realised to a considerable extent in rich countries, where PCs became available on the civilian market as household goods in the 1980s. Companies whose CEOs sometimes grew up in the Homebrew scene, such as Apple Inc. and the Microsoft Corporation lead this transformation, with considerable support from governments who were convinced by the revolutionary myth of computing legitimised by counterculturalist visions. PCs were interconnected through open standards to form the Internet. While in the 1990s few users built their own hardware any more, FLOSS allowed full control over their software.
The anxiety experienced by users stems from the fact that a supposedly
informal space of social interaction is mediated by capital and overseen by
the state, through mechanisms that look obscure, arbitrary and partial from
below. One can remember that the two defining characteristics of a healthy
civil society that can support technological sovereignty are its independence
from capital and separation from the state (Haché 2014). It is privacy in a
structural and collective sense that can be reclaimed through technological
sovereignty initiatives, but only through the continuous struggle of users for
taking the technological mediation of their social life into their own hands.
The history of the next cycle of personal communication devices – the mobile phones – is in contrast a purely corporate history, culminating in the smartphone. The smartphone, in turn, is far removed from the ideal of user-controlled general computing. Mobile networks are based on protocols whose details are trade secrets; SIM cards which run an operating system remotely controlled by the vendor, and even the popular Android FLOSS ecosystem is tightly coupled to Google Inc. services. While mobiles reach 100% of the global population and thus realised the demand of personal computing for everyone [@IANS2013a], the ideals of general computing and user control that provided the rationale for personal computing have been inversed [@Doctorow2011a].
It is important to realise that neither chat (Latzko-Toth 2010) nor personal
computing (Levy 1984) were “inventions” in the sense that a good idea was
implemented and socialised through commodity circulation. Both found a
foothold in the market only after a relatively long period where fringe
elements fought for them, often breaking existing laws, regulations and social
norms. Society then slowly tamed these technologies – and now they are used to
pacify society itself.
**Chat devices** answered a basic human need to discuss arbitrary topics informally in a real time environment, in a coffee-house public manner where strangers can band together but there is also possibility for one-to-one private conversations. After a long and parallel history of chat devices, in the 1990s they consolidated into IRC. The next generation of chat devices were *Instant Messengers* [@Maxigas2014b]. On the backend [@Stalder2013a], IMs used proprietary protocols and centralised infrastructures, instead of the community defined protocols of IRC and its federated model. On the frontend [@Stalder2013a], IMs were organised around private conversations, in stark contrast with IRC’s concept of topical channels (itself taken from Citizens’ Band – CB – radio). Later, as the World Wide Web took off, chat features were integrated into Web 2.0 *social media platforms*.
## Backlogs
Eventually, *surveillance* came to be the key means for both maintaining social peace and deepening exploitation on social media platforms. [^3] Everyday, informal, even intimate gestures are captured and stored, sorted and mined for the purposes of both targeted advertising and targeted repression. Such revenue is indispensable to the capital accumulation mechanisms of a growing section of capital, while the intelligence gained by authorities who share access to the information flows is essential to the maintenance of social order in both dictatorships *and* democracies. For instance, surveillance – technically based on the analysis of log files – accounted for 89% of Google’s profit in 2014 [@Griffith2015a]. [^4] All this hinges on successful *platformisation*: the ability of a vendor to install themselves as an obligatory passage point for generally mundane and often minuscule social interactions [@Gillespie2010a]. The kind of digital milieus where average Internet users chit-chat nowadays have been variously described by scholars as *enclosures*, *walled gardens* and *social media monopolies* [@LovinkRasch2013a].
### As a Human-Computer Interaction limitation
The anxiety experienced by users stems from the fact that a supposedly informal space of social interaction is mediated by capital and overseen by the state, through mechanisms that seem obscure, arbitrary and partial from below. One can remember that the two defining characteristics of a healthy *civil society* that can support technological sovereignty are its independence from capital and separation from the state [@Hache2014d]. It is *privacy* in a structural and collective sense that can be reclaimed through technological sovereignty initiatives, but only through the continuous struggle of users for taking the technological mediation of their social life into their own hands.
IRC is different from many other chat devices in that users can only follow
conversations as long as they are logged in. If a particular user is not
online, there is no way to contact her. Conversely, when a user logs back to a
channel, she has no idea what she missed while she was offline. Due to the
flexibility of the medium, there are many workarounds for the lack of
backlogs, but the fundamental fact remains that solving this problem is out of
scope of the IRC protocol. Network operators could solve the problem if they
wanted, but in practice users are – literally – left to their own devices.
Notably, neither chat [@LatzkoToth2010a] nor personal computing [@Levy1984a] were “inventions” in the sense that a good idea was implemented and socialised through commodity circulation. Both found a foothold in the market only after a relatively long period where fringe elements fought for them, often breaking existing laws, regulations and social norms. Society then slowly tamed these technologies – and now they are used to pacify society itself.
### As a classic affordance
# Backlogs
When IRC was conceived (1988), the lack of backlogs was not a particularly
unique property of IRC - the feature was absent from several other chat
devices. However, by the end of the decade – when the population of the
Internet exploded – it took on a particular significance. While purveyors of
various other services had to look for a business model in order to ensure the
sustainability of their operations – IRC operators were not forced to
commodify their services. Why?
**Logs are consecutive lines of texts that record events and interactions, from logging in a service to a piece of conversation between hitting the Send button.**
Because keeping track of backlogs for each user would mean that resource
utilisation scaled exponentially with the number of users, whereas if the
server only broadcasts new lines as they arrive and then forgets about them,
connecting more users results in little overhead. This is more or less true
for both processing power and storage capacity: the two essential computing
costs to be taken into account when operating services. Similarly, keeping
backlogs would increase the complexity of server software, translating into
increased costs in terms of development and administration work hours. Thus,
the lack of backlogs arguably makes IRC more simple and efficient.
## As a Human-Computer Interaction limitation
How these factors played out historically was that workers at Internet Service
Providers or academic outlets could just let a spare server running in the
corner, without having to justify the expenses to funders or answering too
many questions from their superiors. Under-the-counter IRC hosting can be
thought of as the détournement of fixed capital by users, rather than the
recuperation of users’ demands by capital. Again, in the beginning of the
decade it was usual practice for the Internet community to run popular
services on a volunteer basis, or for institutions to contribute to the
running costs of public infrastructures. However, by the end of the decade the
dotcom bubble was in full swing and users flooded the networks, so that
operating media comparable to the popularity of IRC was serious business.
*IRC is different from many other chat devices in that users can only follow conversations as long as they are logged in.* If a particular user is not online, there is no way to contact her. Conversely, when a user logs back to a channel, she has no idea what she missed while she was offline. Due to the flexibility of the medium, there are many workarounds for the lack of backlogs, but the fundamental fact remains that solving this problem is out of scope of the IRC protocol. Network operators could solve the problem if they wanted, but in practice users are – literally – left to their own devices.
“Scaling” became a buzzword of the era. It referred to the architectural
problem of designing technologies that given enough resources could answer an
arbitrarily large amount of requests, following the growth of the user base
without collapse. The lack of backlogs allowed IRC to keep up with the radical
increase of Internet users and become a mass media of its own. IRC came to be
the most popular dating application before dating websites went online, music
sharing software before the rise and fall of Napster, and micro-blogging
service before Twitter cashed in on hashtags. Users saw nothing geeky or
techie in IRC in the 1990s: it was as commonplace as the ubiquitous GeoCities
home pages.
## As a classic affordance
An anecdote illustrates the relationship of IRC to the burgeoning IT
industry. It was already 1999 when Microsoft included an IRC client in the
default installation of its popular Windows operating system, taking note of
IRC’s mainstream appeal. In the first major attempt to recuperate IRC, the
software was developed by the company’s Artificial Intelligence research unit,
and the application connected automatically to the company’s own IRC
servers. Ironically, the Comic Chat IRC interface was never popular with
users, and the only artifact that went down in history from the whole
enterprise was the Comic Sans font, which is still the laughing stock of
Internet users. Microsoft never figured out how to make money from the largest
online chat phenomena of the time.
When IRC was conceived (1988), the lack of backlogs was not a particularly unique property of IRC. The feature was absent from several other chat devices. However, by the end of the decade it took on a particular significance. **The lack of backlogs allowed IRC to keep up with the radical increase of Internet users and *become a mass media of its own***. In the 1990s IRC was the most popular dating application before dating websites went online, music sharing software before the rise and fall of Napster, [^5] and micro-blogging service before Twitter cashed in on hashtags. Users saw nothing geeky or techie in IRC: it was as quotidian as the ubiquitous GeoCities [^6] home pages.
### As a modern affordance
In the beginning of the 1990s it was usual practice for the Internet community to run popular services on a volunteer basis, or for institutions to contribute to the running costs of public infrastructures. However, by the end of the decade the dot-com bubble [^7] was in full swing and users flooded the networks, so that operating media comparable to the popularity of IRC was serious business. While purveyors of various other services had to look for a business model in order to ensure the sustainability of their operations, IRC operators did not need to commodify their services. Why?
The lack of backlogs came to mean a very different thing in the age of mass
surveillance. For instance, take a sticker from the Riseup collective (the
largest anarchist/activist email provider) on my laptop. It is advertising
their services with the slogan “No Logs, No Masters”. They can disperse with
keeping logs because they are based in the United States: in Europe, the
implementation of the EU Data Retention Directive requires communication
service providers to keep logs. Ironically, IRC is not included in the scope
of the legislation, probably thanks to its obscurity. As I explained earlier,
surveillance (technically based on the analysis of log files) is not only seen
as indispensable for national security, it is also generating the
advertisement revenue of companies like Google, accounting for 89% of its
profits in 2014 (Griffith 2015).2 The kind of digital milieus where average
Internet users chit-chat nowadays have been variously described by scholars as
enclosures, walled gardens and social media monopolies (Lovink and Rasch
2013).
Because keeping track of backlogs for each user would mean that resource utilisation scaled exponentially with the number of users, whereas if the server only broadcasts new lines as they arrive and then forgets about them, connecting more users results in little overhead. This is more or less true for both processing power and storage capacity: the two essential computing costs to be taken into account when operating services. Similarly, keeping backlogs would increase the complexity of server software, translating into increased costs in terms of development and administration work hours.
In contrast, IRC networks are made up of federated servers run by otherwise
unconnected actors, from individual geeks through academic institutions to IT
companies or even criminal organisations. So much so, that upon logging in to
a mainstream IRC network today, it is actually hard to find out who is
sponsoring the resources behind the server. The model of Internet-wise,
community-run, community-policed and community-developed communication
resources may seem atavistic today, when even starry-eyed activists think that
it is impossible to change the world without becoming entrepreneurs and
finding a “sustainable” business model. However, running the infrastructure as
a commons works for IRC just as well as in the 1990s. It allows users to
understand and control the media they use to share and collaborate: an
essential condition for nurturing technological sovereignty.
How these factors played out historically was that workers at Internet Service Providers or academic outlets could just let a spare server running in the corner, without having to justify the expenses to funders or answering too many questions from their superiors. Under-the-counter IRC hosting can be thought of as the détournement of fixed capital by users, rather than the recuperation of users’ demands by capital. An anecdote illustrates the relationship of IRC to the burgeoning IT industry.
The late Fidel Castro said that “a revolution is not a bed of roses. A
revolution is a struggle between the future and the past.” Here, we could say
the past and the present. Like Cuba, despite IRC’s relevant affordances that
answer to the burning questions of the day, both are increasingly
anachronistic in the context of the contemporary technological and political
landscape. Using, maintaining, and developing IRC became increasingly
cumbersome: like building a veritable time machine that can bring back
techno-political conditions from the past.
It was already 1996 when Microsoft included an IRC client in the default installation of its popular Windows operating system, taking note of IRC’s mainstream appeal. [@KurlanderSkellySalesin1996a] In the first major attempt to recuperate IRC, the software was developed by the company’s Artificial Intelligence research unit, and the application connected automatically to the company’s own IRC servers. [@LatzkoToth2010a] Ironically, the Comic Chat IRC interface was never popular with users, and the only artifact that went down in history from the whole enterprise was the Comic Sans font, which is still the laughing stock of Internet users. Microsoft never figured out how to make money from the largest online chat phenomena of the time.
The same feature that allowed IRC to become a mass media in the 1990s actually
prevents it from mainstream adoption in the 2010s. Users dropping into a
channel, asking a question, then leaving in frustration 20 minutes later are a
case in point. These lamers living in the age of mobile connectivity cannot
keep their IRC clients logged in for hours on end, like the owners of desktop
computers once did, and IRC users who have access to always-on servers do
today. Now, only relatively sophisticated users get the full IRC experience,
and feel part of the chat channels community. Such elitism excludes less
motivated users, but keeps the conversation within the circles of those “who
care about the quality of the material”:3 active members of peer production
communities.
IRC networks have no corporate overlords. Instead, they are made up of federated servers run by otherwise unconnected actors, from individual geeks through academic institutions to IT companies or even criminal organisations. So much so, that upon logging in to a mainstream IRC network today, it is actually hard to find out who is sponsoring the resources behind the server. The model of Internet-wise, community-run, community-policed and community-developed communication resources may seem atavistic today, when even starry-eyed activists think that it is impossible to change the world without becoming entrepreneurs and finding a “sustainable” business model. However, running the infrastructure as a commons works for IRC just as well as in the 1990s. It allows users to understand and control the media they use to share and collaborate: an essential condition for nurturing *technological sovereignty*.
## Conclusions
## As a modern affordance
It seems that technical deficiencies can have positive social
consequences. The same limitation – the lack of backlogs – that allowed IRC to
become a mass media in the 1990s, prevents its mass adoption in the
2010s. However, it also poses problems for data mining and surveillance, which
eventually forestalls its recuperation. As a user-controlled technology, it
now plays an important part in the media ecology of the Internet, as the
everyday backstage communication platform for peer production communities.
**The same feature that allowed IRC to become a mass media in the 1990s actually *prevents its from mainstream adoption in the 2010s***. Users dropping into a channel, asking a question, then leaving in frustration 20 minutes later are a case in point. These *lamers* living in the age of mobile connectivity cannot keep their IRC clients logged in for hours on end, like the owners of desktop computers once did, and IRC users who have access to always-on servers do today. Now, only relatively sophisticated users get the full IRC experience, and feel part of the chat channels community. Such elitism excludes less motivated users, but keeps the conversation within active members of peer production communities.
These relatively sophisticated user groups benefit from the simplicity,
flexibility and open architecture of the medium, which allows them to
customise it to their needs. Conversely, most Internet users are used to be
served by corporate social media platforms that cater to their needs
effortlessly. The contrast between the two approaches to technology adoption
begs the question whether it is more desirable to work for the democratisation
of knowledge or merely the democratisation of technology.
FLOSS developers, Anonymous hacktivists, Wikipedia editors and hackerspace members adopted IRC as their backstage communication channels. By now it is the only contemporary chat device on the Internet that allows informal, largely public, topic-centric discussions in a non-commercial environment free of state oversight and corporate exploitation. These criteria are paramount to groups that work together to produce for the common good and which deal with sensitive topics. Of course, topical, public, informal discussions were the original demand behind the popularity of chat devices.
The lack of backlogs helped to build technological sovereignity for Internet
users for a decade and later sheltered peer producers from the capitalist
requirements of exploitation and repression. Those who care about IRC had to
navigate a terrain of changing social conditions – including rifts in the
technological landscape and paradigm shifts in political economy – which
recontextualised the significance of technical features and limitations. The
contemporary use of IRC is based on properties and patterns of the medium that
were commonplace in the 1990s but were superseded by more capitalist media
since then. Therefore, it can be conceptualised as a time machine which brings
past technological and political conditions to the present, with surprising
consequences.4
However, through three cycles, features and affordances shifted towards personal conversations with people that you already know, while even group chat features came to be tightly coupled to surveillance. Chat devices are available for all today, yet historical changes undermined the original demands and the social critique that saw chat as a place for congregation and collaboration free from the interference of the state and capital. In light of these developments, the lack of backlogs – that makes surveillance technically complicated – came to mean a very different thing: it still protected the *technological sovereignty* of user groups, but only those that invested time and energy to hold on to it.
## Bibliography
<!-- user groups! -->
Broughton, John. 2008. Wikipedia: The Missing Manual. 1st ed. O’Reilly Media.
# Conclusions
Coleman, Gabriella. 2012. Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of
Hacking. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
**It seems that technical deficiencies can have positive social consequences**. The same limitation – the lack of backlogs – that allowed IRC to become a mass media in the 1990s, prevents its mass adoption in the 2010s. However, it also poses problems for data mining and surveillance, which eventually forestalls its recuperation. As a user-controlled technology, it now plays an important part in the media ecology of the Internet, as the everyday backstage communication platform for peer production communities.
Dagdelen, Demet. 2012. “Anonymous, WikiLeaks and Operation Payback: A Path to
Political Action Through IRC and Twitter.” Paper presented at the IPP2012: Big
Data, Big Challenges?, Oxford Internet Institute, Oxford,
UK. http://ipp.oii.ox.ac.uk/sites/ipp.oii.ox.ac.uk/files/documents/Dagdelen2.pdf.
These relatively sophisticated user groups benefit from the simplicity, flexibility and open architecture of the medium, which allows them to customise it to their needs. Conversely, most Internet users are used to be served by corporate social media platforms that cater to their needs effortlessly. The contrast between the two approaches to technology adoption begs the question **whether it is more desirable to work for the democratisation of knowledge or merely the democratisation of technology**.
Fuchs, Christian. 2012. “Google Capitalism.” TripleC: Cognition,
Communication, Co-Operation 10 (1): 42–48.
*The lack of backlogs helped to build technological sovereignty for Internet users for a decade and later sheltered peer producers from the capitalist requirements of exploitation and repression.* Those who care about IRC had to navigate a terrain of changing social conditions – including rifts in the technological landscape and paradigm shifts in political economy – which recontextualised the significance of technical features and limitations. The contemporary use of IRC is based on properties and patterns of the medium that were commonplace in the 1990s but were superseded by more capitalist media since then. Therefore, it can be conceptualised as a *time machine* which brings past technological and political conditions to the present, with surprising consequences. [^8]
Gillespie, Tarleton. 2010. “The Politics of ‘Platforms’.” New Media & Society
12 (3): 347–364. doi:10.1177/1461444809342738.
# Bibliography
Griffith, Erin. 2015. “Bad News for Google Parent Alphabet: The ‘G’ Will Still
Foot the Bill.” Article in Forbes
Magazine. http://fortune.com/2015/08/10/google-ads-money/.
[^1]: A gentle introduction is @Bango2013a, while activists may find @AI2017a useful for a jump start.
Haché, Alex. 2014. “Technological Sovereignty.” Passarelle 11 (11):
165–171. http://www.coredem.info/rubrique48.html.
[^2]: Free and Open Source Software.
Ippolita. 2015. The Facebook Aquarium: The Resistible Rise of
Anarcho-Capitalism. Revised and updated English edition. Theory on
Demand 15. Amsterdam: Institute for Network
Cultures. http://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/no-15-in-the-facebook-aquarium-the-resistible-rise-of-anarcho-capitalism-ippolita/.
[^3]: “The legacy of the 20th century has accustomed us to think that social control pertains only to the political, but it has long since become primarily an economic question of commercial implications. It is no coincidence that the NSA has made use of the collaboration with Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Apple and so on, to obtain data for the surveillance program PRISM.” [@Ippolita2015a 7]
Latzko-Toth, Guillaume. 2010. “Metaphors of Synchrony: Emergence
Differentiation of Online Chat Devices.” Bulletin of Science, Technology &
Society 30 (5):
362–374. doi:10.1177/0270467610380005. http://bst.sagepub.com/content/30/5/362.short.
[^4]: “Google is a profit-oriented, advertising-financed moneymaking machine that turns users and their data into a commodity.” [@Fuchs2012b 47]
Levy, Steven. 1984. Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. Anchor Press,
Doubleday.
[^5]: The software and company that brought peer-to-peer file sharing into the limelight and folded after a much publicised copyright controversy (1999-2002).
Lovink, Geert, and Miriam Rasch. 2013. Unlike Us Reader: Social Media
Monopolies and Their Alternatives. INC Reader #8. Institute of Network
Cultures. http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=C5785D014EFDDBB415354677C0FF7A8A.
[^6]: Popular free web hosting service (1994-2009) that allowed users to upload their own websites: “an important outlet for personal expression on the Web for almost 15 years” according to the Internet Archive [-@Archive2009a].
Maxigas. 2014. “History of Real Time Chat Protocols.” Relay#70 Panel F
(February). http://relay70.metatron.ai/history-of-real-time-chat-protocols.html.
———. 2015. “Peer Production of Open Hardware: Unfinished Artefacts and
Architectures in the Hackerspaces.” PhD thesis, Barcelona: Universitat Oberta
de Catalunya, Internet Interdisciplinary
Institute. https://research.metatron.ai/maxigas_dissertation.pdf.
Stalder, Felix. 2013. “Between Democracy and Spectacle: The Front and the Back
of the Social Web.” In Unlike Us Reader: Social Media Monopolies and Their
Alternatives, ed. Geert Lovink and Miriam Rasch. INC Reader #8. Amsterdam:
Institute of Network Cultures. http://felix.openflows.com/node/223.
[^7]: A speculative investment bubble (1996-2001) inflated by the growth of the World Wide Web and burst because it was not clear how companies offering online services could turn a profit on traffic.
[^8]: With the support of a postdoctoral grant from the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) and the sponsorship of the Central European University Foundation, Budapest (CEUBPF) for a fellowship at the Center for Media, Data and Society in the School of Public Policy.

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@ -150,7 +150,7 @@ interactions with the device. Habitual behaviour is manifested in a cycle.
## Give us our game back!
We need to approach the concept of cognitive ergonomics ( from ancient Greek
We need to approach the concept of cognitive ergonomics (from ancient Greek
“ergon – nomos”, “rules of the labor”): thanks to the digital media, we can
lower our cognitive load and, for example, and delegate to some device the
task of remembering all the dates and numbers of our agenda. A very useful
@ -265,9 +265,9 @@ not always. Training is more effective in that buttons will be pressed down
more frequently if the positive reinforcement is not automatic, but possible
or probable. A common example with humans is provided by gamblers at slot
machines almost everywhere: players know that they will not always win, if
ever, yet they continue to chip in, because the operant conditioning (I can
win) is more powerful than immediate frustration (I did not win this
time). Behavioural training is perhaps the greatest deceit in gamification,
ever, yet they continue to chip in, because the operant conditioning (“I can
win”) is more powerful than immediate frustration (“I did not win this
time”). Behavioural training is perhaps the greatest deceit in gamification,
and it is standard to video games and in fact, any other type of game.
The interaction with digital media needs not necessarily to be limited to a
@ -346,15 +346,11 @@ behaviors.
Finally, the fourth step is to compare our stories with those of others. Very
often we find that our compulsive habits are very much similar to those of our
peers, but we also discover that there exists a great many ways to make a
change - as long as we do really want it.
change – as long as we do really want it.
[^1]: “The Performance Society”, in Ippolita, In the Facebook Aquarium, INC,
Amsterdam, 2015, p. 23.
[^1]: “The Performance Society”, in Ippolita, In the Facebook Aquarium, INC, Amsterdam, 2015, p. 23.
[^2]: Flow, or in the zone / in the groove. See Mihály Csíkszentmihály, Flow:
the Psychology of optimal experience, Harper & Row, New York 1990.
[^2]: Flow, or in the zone / in the groove. See Mihály Csíkszentmihály, Flow: the Psychology of optimal experience, Harper & Row, New York 1990.
[^3]: A brief introduction can be found in S. A. McLeod: Skinner: Operant Conditioning. 2015. https://www.simplypsychology.org/operant-conditioning.html The classic work is B. F. Skinner: Science and human behavior. 1953. http://www.bfskinner.org/newtestsite/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/ScienceHumanBehavior.pdf
[^3]: A brief introduction can be found in McLeod, S. A. (2015). Skinner:
Operant Conditioning. Retrieved from:
https://www.simplypsychology.org/operant-conditioning.html The classic work is
Skinner, B. F. (1953). Science and human behavior. http://www.bfskinner.org/newtestsite/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/ScienceHumanBehavior.pdf

8
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@ -112,19 +112,19 @@ traditions have an already inherently environmental, sustainable and holistic
foundation. We need technologies that create well-being, beauty and
community.
## Re-appropriated Technologies from personal experience
## Re-appropriated technologies from personal experience
Over the past 10 years I have tried to carry the theory into practice, I have
adapted and changed my ways, I have created protocols and free licenses that
defend our Re-appropriated technologies. I have tried to generate collective
defend our re-appropriated technologies. I have tried to generate collective
workshops where people exchange experiences and skills and which could extend
to productive activity that will cover basic needs and enrich the communities.
I have discovered an existing market niche for Re-appropriated technologies:
I have discovered an existing market niche for re-appropriated technologies:
one way to describe it would be “in order to be productive and sustainable, a
producer of organic walnuts or almonds has no intermediate solution between a
nut-cracker and a super machine costing thousands of Euros. Re-appropriated
Technologies would occupy that space, adapting to the user and to their
technologies would occupy that space, adapting to the user and to their
environment”.
Society as a whole, and the majority of social movements, have not defended

19
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@ -258,18 +258,15 @@ These challenges give a comprehensible vision of the times to come, and the
creation of these autonomous zones opens possibilities to different ways of
understanding work, the commons, sustainability and economy.
[^0]: As a reminder, free technologies, in a nutshell, are the technologies
and services based on the freedom given by free/libre software and it’s
philosophy:
[^0]: As a reminder, free technologies, in a nutshell, are the technologies and services based on the freedom given by free/libre software and it’s philosophy:
* **Freedom 0**: The freedom to run the program for any purpose.
* **Freedom 1**: The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to
make it do what you wish.
* **Freedom 2**: The freedom to redistribute and make copies so you can help
your neighbour.
* **Freedom 3**: The freedom to improve the program, and release your
improvements (and modified versions in general) to the public, so that
the whole community benefits.
* **Freedom 0**: The freedom to run the program for any purpose.
* **Freedom 1**: The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish.
* **Freedom 2**: The freedom to redistribute and make copies so you can help your neighbour.
* **Freedom 3**: The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements (and modified versions in general) to the public, so that the whole community benefits.
[^1]: * http://riseup.net (USA)
* http://autistici.org (ITA)