First tentative try at multi language setup

LANGS.md

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+# Languages
+
+* [English](en/)
+* [Castellano](es/)
+

en/SUMMARY.md

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+# Technologoical Sovereignty, vol. 2.
+
+ * [Preface](content/00preface.md)
+ * [Introduction](README.md)
+
+## Part 1: Technological sovereignty initiatives
+
+ * [COATI: Traduccion simultanea usando radio frecuencias](content/05coati.md)
+ * [Plataformas de leaks](content/06leaks.md)
+
+## Part 2: Characterising technological sovereignty
+
+ * [Encrypting mails with usable tools: The mass adoption of encryption technologies](content/08leap.md)
+ * [IRC, modelo de comunicacion no reapropriado por el capitalismo](content/09irc.md)
+ * [Gamification](content/10gamification.md)
+ * [Cooperativas de soberania tecnologica](content/12cooperatives.md)
+
+## Acknowledgements + Contributions
+
+ * [Contribuciones](content/13contribuciones.md)
+ * [Agradecimientos](content/14agradecimientos.md)
+
+* * *
+
+ * [Contraportada](content/15contraportada.md)

en/content/05coati.md

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+![](logo1.png)
+
+# Simultaneous Interpreting Using Radio Frequencies
+
+**COATI – Colectivo para la Autogestión de las Tecnologías de la Interpretación**
+
+## Introduction
+
+> *“International solidarity and global protest is nothing new. From the European-wide revolutions of 1848, through the upheavals of 1917-18 following the Russian Revolution, to the lightning flashes of resistance nearly everywhere in 1968, struggle has always been able to communicate and mutually inspire globally. But what is perhaps unique to our times is the speed and ease with which we can communicate between struggles and the fact that globalisation has meant that many people living in very different cultures across the world now share a common enemy.”* – Do or Die, Issue 8, 1999
+
+> *“Our resistance is as transnational as capital”*<br/> – Slogan of the global day of action against capitalism, June 18, 1999
+
+As the economy has become increasingly transnational, so too has resistance to its devastating social and ecological consequences.  International resistance means coming together from different struggles and cultures to meet, share ideas and experiences, and coordinate actions.  Crossing borders and cultures in this way means communicating across language barriers, and language is about power.
+
+Many international gatherings take place in the more ‘international’ languages, such as English, Spanish, Russian or French.  Many people speak these languages, but that is because they have long histories of imperialism: they were forcibly, and in many cases brutally, imposed on people from many different cultures, devouring local languages and eradicating cultural diversity.  They can help us communicate, but they are often not people's first language, and people participating in a foreign language may be unsure if they have understood everything correctly, or they may lack confidence about expressing themselves well.  Events are often dominated by people who feel comfortable with the majority language.  Thus, native speakers of colonial languages (particularly English) have dominated history and they continue to dominate our meetings.
+
+If we are committed to diversity, grassroots participation or consensus decision-making, we must raise awareness of these power dynamics and processes of inclusion and exclusion.  Increasing the equality of our communication and creating space for speakers of other languages is an important political struggle.  One valuable tool for dealing with this is providing interpreting between languages so that everyone can communicate in a language they are comfortable with.
+
+Interpreting between two languages is an art as ancient as languages themselves and requires no technology.  However, for interpreting to be practical in larger meetings in several languages it must be simultaneous.  Multi-language, simultaneous interpreting cannot happen without technology.
+
+## A history of alternative interpreting technologies
+
+The first attempt to use technology to facilitate this type of interpreting seems to have been at the Nuremberg trials after the Second World War, using a system based on the telephone [^telephone].  Since then, the technology, usually based on infrared transmission, has developed alongside international organisations such as the UN and the EU.  It is now very advanced, but extremely expensive and out of reach for most activist spaces and social movements.  Even if an event can afford to hire some equipment, the costs soon become astronomical if you want to work at any kind of scale.
+
+The European and World Social Forums (ESF and WSF) that took place between 2001 and 2010 were international events on a massive scale, with up to 100,000 participants and hundreds of parallel meetings every day.  Initially, interpretation was very limited, due to costs, but some people quickly realised the importance of languages to the political process.  Babels, a network of volunteer interpreters, was born.
+
+Interpreting and interpreting technology became part of the political process.  Interpreting is easiest in large plenary sessions, where a few people speak and most just listen.  Participatory organising requires working in small groups, where more people have the opportunity to contribute, but this multiplies the interpreting resources required, so decisions about interpreting affect the working dynamics of an event.  The prohibitive cost of commercial technology and interpreters limits available resources, and there is no such thing as a purely technical choice.  Even if there is money to pay for the service, it is a one-off thing: you give it to a commercial company and it is gone.  The alternative is to "Do it Yourself", invest in people and equipment and thus increase the capacities and autonomy of the movements.
+
+At the 2003 ESF in Paris, over 1000 volunteers took part in the interpretation, and every plenary and workshop took place in several languages.  However, the technology used was commercial, and the costs were astronomical.  Full-scale, commercial interpreting technology has never been used again in an event of that size.  This inspired the first experiments in alternative interpreting technology.  Initially, these were based on computers, but digitalisation introduced long delays that confused the interpreters and the audience alike.  At the 2004 WSF in Mumbai, India, computers were abandoned for more low-tech, analogue solutions, transmitting through cables and via FM radio.  In Greece, a collective known as ALIS (ALternative Interpreting Systems) was formed to provide interpreting technology for the 2006 Athens ESF.  Following the blueprints and building on the experiences of earlier groups using analogue interpreter consoles and FM radio transmission, they spent months building enough equipment to cover the entire event.
+
+Athens was the first (and, for Social Forums, sadly the only) time that a large political event fully recognised alternative interpreting technology as a political question in itself and gave it the space and resources necessary to carry out its mission.  The result was an unprecedented success.  Infrared receivers are extremely expensive devices, jealously guarded by their commercial owners who require participants to deposit a passport or credit card in exchange for their use.  In Athens, interpreting was made available to anyone with an FM receiver, and versions of that system are still being used by social movements today, allowing people access to interpreting through any household radio or smartphone.
+
+Nevertheless, despite the success of Athens, the experience of working with the Social Forums was generally that the best efforts of interpreters and technicians were rendered completely ineffective by inadequate political and technical support at the events.  Furthermore, there was no support at all between events, when equipment had to be bought or built, stored, transported, tested and repaired.  Unlike commercial equipment which you rent for the duration of an event, self-managed equipment remains with you between meetings, and in greater amounts than any particular event may need.  People have to be trained in how it works, logistical issues need to be solved and there are administrative loads to bear, all of which requires resources and dedication.  The Social Forum process refused to learn that lesson, but other movements have taken it on board.
+
+## COATI: The Collective for Autonomy in Interpreting Technology
+
+COATI was founded in Barcelona in 2009, bringing together people who had participated in anti-capitalist and anti-globalisation movements.  We had supported the peasant farmers of Via Campesina in the creation of the movement for Food Sovereignty.  We had volunteered as interpreters – sometimes in very precarious conditions – and seen the value of good alternative technology.   We had learnt to organise horizontally and by consensus in the Do-It-Yourself culture of anarchist and anti-capitalist social centres all over Europe.  We had built an understanding of technology in the squatted hacklabs and free software communities.  We learnt about sound systems running hardcore punk festivals, street parties and independent, community-based radio stations.  It was those experiences – and the values of those communities – that inspired the project.
+
+We invited someone from the original ALIS collective to come to Barcelona and train us in how their equipment worked, and we began to track down as much of the old alternative technology as we could find (most of it was piled up in warehouses, or in forgotten boxes in campaign offices, gathering dust).  Our commitment was to increasing linguistic diversity and our plan was to acquire and manage the equipment, so that each event didn't have to solve its technology problems from scratch.  However, we quickly learnt that increasing access to interpreting technology was going to require more than just administering the equipment and reducing the costs.
+
+### Making alternative technology work for people
+
+The first challenge was to overcome resistance to using alternative technologies, often born of bad experiences people had had with the equipment in the past.  Designed within the social movements, the system did not match the quality of commercial equipment.  It was built with the aim of drastically reducing costs, using cheap material not specifically designed for audio.  The interpreters and the audience alike could be plagued with an electronic buzzing noise that was exhausting to listen to for any length of time.
+
+An important part of the solution was simply treating the technology as an important issue.  We trained ourselves.  Wherever our equipment went, there was always a dedicated person responsible for operating it.  Many of the problems of the past were caused by alternative technology being treated as an afterthought so that no one had time to ensure it was working well.  We learnt as we went along.  We devoted a lot of time to identifying the causes of problems and modifying the equipment, adding small circuits to filter and boost signals, and improve the quality of the sound.
+
+The material built by the Greek collective came with no schematics, which was made this considerably harder.  Hours of reverse engineering were required before we could make modifications.  Now the equipment is almost 10 years old and we are beginning to face the challenge of designing and building new, open-source consoles from scratch.  We are very aware of the value of open-source design, and all of the electronic work we have done is fully documented and available online [^online].
+
+### Making people work with alternative technology
+
+Overcoming technological problems was not the only challenge we faced.  Some of the most difficult issues stemmed from the political and organising cultures of the movements themselves.  Many groups are based on relatively informal organising and people can be resistant to the discipline simultaneous interpreting requires: people must speak slowly and clearly; use microphones so that the signal reaches the interpreters; and people cannot interrupt each other.  Larger networks and NGOs may have more experience of working with interpreters, but they tend to treat it as a mere technical service that should be invisible and not as an important part of the political process.  They get frustrated with the demands of solidarity interpreting and alternative technologies for enabling participation and political involvement.  However smoothly the technology is working, just having interpreting does not automatically eradicate the power dynamics created by language, and it must be everybody's responsibility to create space for more minority languages.
+
+Another important part of the work done by COATI has therefore been working to promote the political culture that alternative interpreting technology needs to really work.
+
+### Volunteer interpreting
+
+Alternative technology can be used by commercial interpreters, and volunteer interpreters can work in commercial booths.  However, in practice the two processes have developed very closely, side by side, and a key element of organising an event is often finding volunteers with the necessary skills to meet the language needs.  You can deal with this by finding professional interpreters who are willing to work for free, either out of solidarity, or simply because they need work experience, or because travel and expenses will be covered to exotic places.  However, this relationship risks becoming one of cheap service provision, with volunteers having little interest in the political issues being discussed; and the resulting expenses can be high even if the work is done for free.
+
+A large part of our work is therefore helping movements to build the capacity for simultaneous interpreting within their own grassroots environment.  The larger an event is, the more complex this process becomes and a whole article could be written just on the political and technical questions involved.  Suffice to say that it is a very important issue.  We have developed a two-day training for activists with language skills, and we always try to incorporate skill sharing in the interpreting teams we coordinate, putting experienced interpreters together with new activist volunteers in our booths.
+
+### Speaking for interpreters
+
+Another important part of changing the political culture has been to raise the profile of language diversity among participants in international events.  Wherever we work we try to give a political and practical introduction to the equipment, and provide written guidelines on how to speak in multi-lingual meetings [^multi-lingual].  We encourage people to actively think about the language they use.  For example, we ask participants not to speak the majority language during the meeting, even if they could, because it marginalises those who have to rely on the interpreting, leaving them feeling embarrassed, uncultured, and consequently, less inclined to take part.  We have experimented with subverting the invisible interpreting model, placing the booths centre-stage and having speakers speak from the floor, thus making everyone aware of the processes involved.
+
+### Designing flexible solutions to meet political needs
+
+Interpreting inevitably does impose limitations on what a meeting or gathering can do, and simultaneous interpreting is best suited to quite hierarchical forms of organising such as the traditional conference model.  However, we are committed to non-hierarchical organising.  We make it a priority to understand a group's methodologies, needs and resources in order to match them to the technological possibilities.
+
+There are two main parts of this process.  One is to work closely with event organisers to understand their political aims and help them to understand interpreting and interpreting technology and how they interact with different kinds of facilitation techniques and meeting dynamics.  The other is to take a creative approach to the equipment, building little hacks using mixers and splitters, and wiring (or sometimes gaffer-taping) devices together in unconventional ways to make them do what we need.
+
+We have built up a wealth of experience of pushing the boundaries of what can be done to break the mould of the typical meeting format, even in quite extreme circumstances.  At the Second Nyeleni Europe gathering in Cluj-Napoca, Romania in 2016 we organised interpreters and equipment to work with experimental participatory methodologies with over 400 participants in more than nine languages.  We are now working on a technical and political guide to facilitation with multiple languages.
+
+### The biggest challenge: Decentralisation
+
+Over the past seven years we have worked with many groups and movements to help solve the language requirements of their international events.  Very often this means us providing all the necessary technology and technicians, as well as coordinating the volunteer interpreters for the event.  However, we also collaborate in mixed solutions, and help organizations to develop or acquire their own equipment, and to build capacity to meet their interpreting needs.  We believe that real technological sovereignty means that groups don't have to rely on 'experts', but become empowered to meet their own technological needs.  One of our biggest projects has therefore been the development of simple, easy to use, build-your-own open-source hardware.
+
+## The Spider: An open-source hardware project
+
+The simplest form of interpreting technology is probably the “Spider”: a small box you plug a microphone into, with sockets for headphones to take the interpreting to the audience via cables, making it look like a big, lanky spider!
+
+Compared to FM radio or other wireless transmissions, Spiders are cheap and very easy to operate.  Spiders are a small-scale device, only really suitable for smaller meetings, although in extreme situations we have used them at events with hundreds of participants!   The real scalability of the project lies in the fact that any organisation can have a few, making them completely autonomous for many of their interpreting needs.
+
+Years of experience went into developing and producing our own open-source version of the Spider, with many improvements, such as modular extensions you can use to add listeners in groups of up to twelve.
+
+We build our Spiders by hand, for our own use and for sale.  We also sell make-your-own kits at cost price.  All the schematics, parts references and complete building instructions are published online [^online] under the GNU General Public License.
+
+## Training new tech collectives
+
+Since the Spider project went online, we have run a number of electronics workshops, training people to build their own spiders.  We also know of at least one group, in Ukraine, that has built Spiders without any contact with us.  We invite technicians from other groups to join us at large events and see how the technology works in the field.  We have taken part in a number of skill-sharing weekends, helping new groups to get started.  We have participated in the creation of new collectives using Spiders and inventing their own interpreting solutions in Romania [^Romania] and Poland [^Poland], as well as an international collective, Bla [^Bla], which has Spiders and small radio kits that travel to different events around Europe.
+
+## Conclusions
+
+Sovereignty in interpreting technology has come to mean many things to us.  In the first instance, in order to extend access to interpreting technologies to resistance movements, it was necessary to reduce the costs, and develop high-quality alternative solutions that really work and are sustainable in the long-term.  However, that was not the only challenge.  A lot of political work still needs to be done to overcome people's resistance to using interpreting technology to open our meetings and gatherings up for speakers of other languages to participate on an equal footing.  There is a need to share skills and knowledge about the technical aspects of interpreting and how those can interact with different kinds of facilitation dynamics.  Open-source research and development that aims to maximise technological sovereignty must be accompanied by capacity building and political mobilisation, in order to increase people's awareness of why and how they should use the technology, as well as to empower them to really control and create their own solutions.
+
+For more information about COATI and the work we do please see:
+
+<https://coati.pimienta.org>
+
+Contact: <mailto:coati@pimienta.org>
+

en/content/06leaks.md

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+# Whistleblowing, a double edged sword
+
+Whistleblowing is an ancient practice that has been called many names and is not ethically bound.  It can be the link between the source and the journalist, or between the snitch and the military.  In both cases, a reserved information goes in the hands of a person considered trustworthy, which transforms this information into an action.  Wikileaks and Snowden have made whistleblowing come back full powered, showing how digital communication can simplify the process and protect the integrity of communications between sources and recipients.  Anonymity and encrypted storage technologies have propelled this revolutionary framing.
+
+I say framing because whistleblowing does not have an ethical value per se, what identifies its nature is the political cause that motivates it.  So if you are a single person going up against a powerful organisation, like the US state department, the intelligence community, the financial system, or the Vatican, you might be remembered for your heroic behaviour, like Chelsea Manning [1], Bill Binney [2], Herve Falciani [3], Paolo Gabriele and Claudio Sciarpelletti [4].  Although becoming famous in this field often means you have been caught, denounced or that you are in the run, hopefully those outcomes do not apply to all whistleblowers, as we will see.  
+
+Your informations can empower the citizen in understanding the power dynamics in play, but  institutions themselves can also take advantage of those.  If the ultimate goal of whistleblowing is making society more transparent in the interest of society itself, this might sound fascinating if you want a revolution, but it can be also very irresponsible for other reasons.  Nobody really wants a society in which everyone can be a spy or an anonymous snitch.  
+
+Such a society would just strengthen the currently established institutions in power.  Regimes in which a person can be economically rewarded for snitching on other citizens exemplify such misuse.  Added to that, any structure with some type of power, even your small NGO or political team, benefits from agreements and contracts which are kept private because they require some level of confidentiality.  No resistance would be possible without well kept secrets.  
+
+Transparency for the State (or for “who has enough power to shape our reality”) and privacy for the rest of us?  This could work as a nice simplification, but then we should respect this separation in all our political actions and never, ever, expose any private information of other citizens.
+
+I worked with the globaleaks.org team on the creation of its software platform.  Our dream, was to create a “portable wikileaks” that could be unleashed in every city, media and public company.  After all, white collar crime and other corporate misbehaviour can’t be detected, neither understood, without an insider.  My experience comes from deploying it for different groups with different needs.  Departing from the made up story below, we will see how digital whistleblowing can enhance your political actions and what you should take into account when planning your leak initiative.
+
+## Once upon a time...
+
+There was a river getting heavily polluted.  Some facility operates nearby and it is clear they are disposing chemical waste.  There are rules, periodic checks, policies – but at the end of the day, flora and fauna are getting poisoned.  Someone inside must know, but you don’t know anybody who works at the facility.  
+
+Your team creates a campaign and solicit sources, but criticism starts because your Wordpress blog for receiving the leaks is not very secure.  Therefore, you set-up a proper platform (SecureDrop or GlobaLeaks [5]) that can guarantee anonymity for the source, and encryption for the information exchanged.  Even a seizure of the server can’t compromise the security of sources nor your active investigations.  This is a privacy by design setup.  However, despite the platform pick, you know that your initiative is shaking some established power and you fear retaliation.  You develop a mitigation plan based on splitting responsibilities among a larger group composed of environmental lawyers, local journalists and some foreign analyst who also receives the leaks.  This way, if a person get stopped, the initiative will keep running.  However, despite all this security management, after two months you have received zero leaks.  
+
+Sadly, we are closed in our bubble, our circles.  We try to communicate with our intended audience, but despite our efforts at the end of the day we talk only to persons similar to us.  So, nobody working at the facility was in your comfort zone.  You’ve to hunt these sources, advertise them personally or massively.  In the beginnings, nobody understands why your cause is important.  Then you re-frame your message, making clear why it matters for the environment, why their role is important, and after some weeks, the first timid source might arrive.  
+
+This is just the beginning and when the first article is published, you know this story will be read by facility employees because they talk about their company.  And then you explain again why their role matters, how they can send anonymous tip-offs, that they are not the first and can do it safely.  Gradually, step by step, gaining trust from persons with different values and knowledge, you are getting the flow of information that might be transformed in political outrage, strength, actions.  After a while, society takes action and the facility has to take responsibility for its environmental impact.  
+
+This example can take place in different contexts in which abuses happen.  But let's see if all the outcomes of leaking are positive and corrective or if they can be damaging as well? 
+
+## Practical steps
+
+Suppose you are lucky enough to receive an anonymous document detailing a lobbyist plan to influence the new policy about environmental preservation.  The first urge might be to publish it immediately.  Let citizens make their own mind, and check if the information contained in the document fits their own knowledge.  Some readers might confirm, deny, or integrate new information within the original source.  
+
+But this is not journalism and it is not information, it is just a naive action of  unmediated radical transparency.  Ten years ago, WikiLeaks used to work that way.  It was a platform in which sources could upload documents and have other readers perform its analysis, investigation and publication.  In 2007, it was a common way of doing things, until Buzzfeed [6] does the same in 2017, publishing an unvalidated report about Russians and Donald Trump.
+
+However, such release methods are dangerous and extra tempting if you are operating in the information ecosystem.  The speed of messages does not let people evaluate the information in its context, nor understand how much of it is plausible and which are the parties involved.  Nowadays only the title, the subtitle, and maybe a small percentage of the actual content is actually spread.  It is impossible to ask for a public revision and when unvalidated news goes viral, the effect is to split the audience into two polarized groups.  
+
+Trust is key because a leak might not lead to changes.  It can be ignored, silenced, accepted as daily life.  An anonymous document should be published, but it is expected that a trustworthy person, such as a mainstream media journalist, a visible activist or human rights defender states: “I know the source, I vouch for the source, I’m protecting the source”.
+
+Leaks are information you might use as accountable tools for transparency.  They can also be legitimate research tools for civil society.  Results can feed into scientific or political processes.  Change is not something that can be implemented by technology.  On top of technically defined properties, you need to implement your political and ethical values.  
+
+## Whistleblowing powered campaigns as processes
+
+The best validation method we have seen so far is independent research.  If the investigation hasn’t lead anywhere, then the leak has to be considered unconfirmed.  You might also need to interact with the source in order to get leads.  Luckily, some platforms  can keep sources in the loop in order to confirm their submission, request updates, or answer questions raised during the investigation.  On the one hand, you can ask for more details.  On the other, you will still have to evaluate the proofs, because you cannot rely only on the source.  Publishing leaks without understanding the agenda and motivations of the sources can mean being instrumentalised by them.  Keep in mind that leaking has been used many times for organising smear campaigns.
+
+Having trustworthy partners among the recipients also greatly helps the initiative.  It ensures that the revision, source management and outreach will not be done by only one group, but will be shared through partnerships with local lawyers, journalists, policy makers, researchers.  Then your group has to transform investigated and validated leaks into stories.  Passionate and understandable stories to engage people and create mass mobilization.  Think about the process applied to the Edward Snowden leaks where for three years now there is constant journalistic revision and gradual publications.  
+
+One key factor for a successful campaign is to remain focused on a subject, a
+topic, a challenge.  Do not vaguely call for evidence about corruption at
+large.  Frame your specificities in your landing page and targeted towards
+your audience.  Confirmed content should be clearly marked and more visible.
+And every time you have the opportunity to write for the media, remind to the
+readers that a safe box for tip-offs is available, because articles are
+generally read by people involved in the issue.  
+
+It is useful to measure what is happening as much as possible.  Keep track of
+the event and monitor its social media presence in order to understand how to
+improve your campaign based on results collected earlier.  By sharing these
+measurements, you will help other initiatives like yours.  Don’t be afraid of
+your enemy and keep building open data on how your organisation works.  Do not
+address the people, but the numbers, concentrate on the results, achievements
+and statistics.
+
+## Dangerous paths where you should be cautious
+
+An initiative has a time window of existence, it has to define what it is
+aiming for, what is its next milestone and how it is going.  Having
+unmaintained initiatives might confound future potential sources.  If your
+activity stops, make it very clear, because nothing sounds more sketchy and
+worrying than a whistleblowing initiative that accepts tips but fails to
+publish them.
+
+Putting a source at risk is irresponsible, and this can happen if a story
+contains too many identifiable details.  Files need to be sanitized and
+metadata need to be cleaned, but you also need to ask the source about how
+many other persons got access to the same information.  Depending on the
+amount (two, twenty or two-hundred) aware of the same secret, different
+justifications will need to be made up.
+
+It is easy, when you're part of a conflict and you are facing an adversary, to
+assume that all the persons collaborating with it are your adversaries too.
+That is a dangerous path.  Do not aim at leaking personal information about
+“low-rank” workers, for instance, because you might just expose innocents to
+responsibilities they don't own.  Just imagine if similar actions were used
+from an established power to treat a minority or a marginalised group.  If you
+are looking for social justice, spreading whistle-blowing as a way to solve
+political struggles might just backfire against your agenda.
+
+Attacking an individual is a fascist behaviour, and it has to be stigmatized
+despite the political reason sustaining the initiative.  What has to be
+exposed is the corruption of a system, not the misery of life.  Whoever does
+the release has the mission also to protect low ranked individuals from public
+exposure.  Otherwise, whistleblowing will just enable a "Kompromat" [7], a set
+of information that might embarrass someone or be used for blackmailing
+individuals.  Every faction in play can make use of it, so it is better to
+share strong ethical values in order to judge the democratic quality of
+initiatives.
+
+In theory, a whistleblowing initiative is intended to empower a weak group to
+shed light ona secretive oppressive organisation.  But what defines power,
+oppression and secrets depends on contextual and subjective evaluations and
+thus can be rarely used as an assessment and evaluation criteria.
+
+As a conclusion, I really believe whistleblowing can address and make good use
+of lot of disgruntled employees and the ethical remorse that some ex-workers
+experience.  Being able to empower these voices and transform their stories
+into changes is a vector of leverage we have to explore, maybe now more than
+ever.
+
+## Successful cases of GlobaLeaks adoption
+
+Interesting experiments have been created by communities around the world.
+Since 2012, the GlobaLeaks team is keeping track of a list [8] but some of the
+most notable are the submissions collected by WildLeaks, a platform against
+animal poaching [9]; the Italian Investigative Reporting Project Italy
+collecting evidence of public officers on Couch-surfing raping their guests
+[10].  I mention this just because there are so many corruption cases.  The
+Spanish X-Net [11] was able to prove the complicity of bankrupt bankers and
+the state and made a theater play out of it.  PubLeaks, with the participation
+of the biggest Dutch media, made a book with all the revelations received in 4
+years, and MexicoLeaks [12], was apparently so frightening that journalists
+were fired even before the leaks began to flow.  And now is up to you.  What’s
+the Pandora’s box you want to open?
+
+## References
+
+[1] The most inspiring whistleblower of the last years perhaps?
+https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelsea_Manning
+
+[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Binney_(U.S._intelligence_official)
+
+[3]
+https://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/nov/27/hsbc-whistleblower-jailed-five-years-herve-falciani
+
+[4] In 2012, Paolo Gabriele and Claudio Sciarpelletti, working for the Pope,
+fed journalists with internal and reserved documents about the Vatican
+management.  This lead to Pope Benedict XVI to step down (an event that was
+not happening since 600 years).
+
+[5] GlobaLeaks https://globaleaks.org and SecureDrop https://securedrop.org
+
+[6]
+https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2017/01/10/buzzfeeds-ridiculous-rationale-for-publishing-the-trump-russia-dossier
+
+[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kompromat
+
+[8] https://www.globaleaks.org/implementations
+
+[9] https://wildleaks.org/leaks-and-reports/
+
+[10]
+https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/29/couchsurfing-rapist-dino-maglio-italian-police-officer-rape-padua
+
+[11] https://www.thenation.com/article/simona-levi/
+
+[12]
+https://www.occrp.org/en/daily/3776-mexicoleaks-journalists-fired-after-joining-whistleblowing-alliance
+

en/content/09irc.md

@@ -0,0 +1,342 @@
+# Keeping technological sovereignty: The case of Internet Relay Chat
+## Maxigas
+
+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 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.
+
+## Internet Relay Chat
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+## Recuperation
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 history and other examples of recuperation
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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).
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+## Backlogs
+
+### As a Human-Computer Interaction limitation
+
+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.
+
+### As a classic affordance
+
+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?
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+“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.
+
+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.
+
+### As a modern affordance
+
+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).
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+## Conclusions
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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
+
+## Bibliography
+
+Broughton, John.  2008.  Wikipedia: The Missing Manual.  1st ed.  O’Reilly Media.
+
+Coleman, Gabriella.  2012.  Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of
+Hacking.  Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
+
+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.
+
+Fuchs, Christian.  2012.  “Google Capitalism.” TripleC: Cognition,
+Communication, Co-Operation 10 (1): 42–48.
+
+Gillespie, Tarleton.  2010.  “The Politics of ‘Platforms’.” New Media & Society
+12 (3): 347–364.  doi:10.1177/1461444809342738.
+
+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/.
+
+Haché, Alex.  2014.  “Technological Sovereignty.” Passarelle 11 (11):
+165–171.  http://www.coredem.info/rubrique48.html.
+
+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/.
+
+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.
+
+Levy, Steven.  1984.  Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution.  Anchor Press,
+Doubleday.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+

en/content/10gamification.md

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+# Digital Governance: Once upon a time...
+
+There was a city on the shores of a mountain lake.  The city was very dirty
+because people threw the waste in the streets; the water ended up in the lake,
+which became polluted and smelly.  More stringent laws were enacted, but
+nothing happened despite reprimands and fines; even jail proved
+ineffective.  The people had become accustomed to malpractice, they had become
+addicted to the stench of open sewers and toxic fumes of burning garbage
+heaps.  Every remedy miserably failed.  Those who could not bear the situation
+any more had packed up and run – others were simply resigned.  After all, they
+thought, that even if they would act as they should, as the others would
+continue to misbehave, it was not worth doing anything.
+
+Then, one day, a manager arrived in town.  He proposed to help solve the
+situation, but only if the city government entrusted him full powers in the
+matter.  If something went wrong, if citizenship complained, they would give
+him the heave-ho.  So he obtained a total delegation.  The manager turned
+entrepreneur and his technical people put many trash baskets in place and
+announced a fantastic waste collection game.  Anyone could participate: just
+follow the rules for separate waste collection and you could win amazing
+prizes.
+
+It worked so well that after a few months the city was clean.  But now public
+transport was in crisis.  Wild parking.  Unsafe roads.  And there was no public
+money available.  The manager turned entrepreneur and obtained carte blanche to
+handle the other sectors in difficulty.  He had the citizens registered with
+full name and address on his social platform.  On it they accounted word for
+word what they were doing, and what their friends and acquaintances did, and
+people around them.   These and many other actions allowed to enter special
+ranks; players who distinguished themselves could level up, and gain access to
+new exciting rewards thanks to their statuses.  A sophisticated system made
+that you could accumulate credits in the form of digital currency on accounts
+managed by the entrepreneur's various companies.  The list of wrongful actions
+was continuously updated.  Reporting an illegal action by a neighbour, for
+example, entitled the informer to three minutes of free shopping at one of the
+entrepreneur's supermarkets; five minutes if it was an information about a
+first-time offender.  Digital currency credits replaced traditional money
+within the city.  Every interaction could be quantified based on credit, that
+you could buy and sell: the entrepreneur's bank took only a small percentage
+of each exchange.
+
+The city government was dissolved.  In its place came a technical governance by
+the manager, run as a private organization, which resulted in a great saving
+in terms of time, money and energy.  The city quickly became a model for the
+whole world.  Professionals came from far away to study the miracle.  Everyone
+agreed on the most notable feature of the set-up – the true realization of
+heaven on earth – that there was no need to think or to choose, since a
+magnificent system of notifications was continuously informing all the players
+about the next moves to be made in order to gain a reputation.  The few
+dissident voices claimed that the players were acting like automatically
+pre-programmed machines, but as an initially sceptical citizen confessed, he
+finally really felt free for the first time in his life.  No one wanted to go
+back to a time when they were in the grip of uncertainty and doubt about what
+they should choose.
+
+And so everyone was trained and lived happy thereafter.
+
+## Gamification
+
+This story is meant to illustrate the main elements of “gamification”, one of
+the implementation formats of digital governance systems.  Its basic mechanism
+is very simple: everything that can be described as a problem is converted
+into a game, or, rather, in a game pattern.  Repeating an action deemed correct
+is encouraged by way of rewards, credits, access to a higher (hierarchical)
+level, publication in charts or records.  Seen from a regulatory point of view,
+this means that instead of sanctioning infractions, compliance with the rules
+is rewarded.  The outcome is a system of norms which is self-conforming and
+positive, with no ethical dimension, since the valuation of any behaviour, its
+axiology, is determined by the system, and not by a personal and/or collective
+reflection on the action itself.  Gamification stands for the society of
+performance [^1].
+
+Loyalty incentives, such as fidelity programs for consumers, for voters, for
+subjects, have been known for centuries.  However, the pervasiveness of
+interactive digital connection systems opens new scenarios for mass training
+techniques.  With it, cognitive delegation morphs into the delegation of social
+organization.  Automated interaction procedures are refined by capitalizing on
+the way users handle their personal digital tools.  Invidiously, participation
+in the construction of shared worlds turns into behavioural drill.
+
+Our intention is obviously not to argue for a return to repressive
+systems.   Prohibition and ensuing repression typically triggers a deepening of
+the desire for transgression and therefore amounts to a negative reinforcement
+mechanism.  Prohibition never works.  Yet, conversely, not all that glitters is
+gold with a positive reinforcement system.  Anyone who has dealt with children
+knows that rewards are more effective than “teaching them a lesson”.   But then
+one often comes to realize that once the kid gets “hooked” to the award they
+will want an ever bigger prize, and that there's no way anything is going to
+happen unless an even greater accolade can be anticipated.  So often a positive
+reinforcement system reverts into a punitive system, which reveals itself as
+being merely the opposite of an equivalent system based on rewards.
+
+But education in itself has preciously little to do with compliance with a
+given rules, and is has also nothing to do with obedience.  The same old
+Socrates, in wanting to educate young people for citizenship by example, did
+not only break the rules, but he invited others to be disobedient and follow
+their own “Daimon” (daemon, the “inner voice”).  Algorithmic “education” is
+nothing else than drill training, and leads to servitude.  Although in
+appearance it can produce good results in terms of measurable performance, it
+certainly does not induce independence, autonomy or responsibility.
+
+
+## Pleasure
+
+The line between learning and training is razor thin.  The main factor comes
+down to the organic chemical which plays a central role in learning and
+responding to positive reinforcement stimuli: dopamine (or more technically
+“3,4-dihydroxyphenethylamine”), a neurotransmitter that runs through the
+neural paths of our brain.  To simplify what is an extremely complex mechanism,
+we can say that the sense of gratification and reward we experience when we
+manage to learn something is connected to a release of dopamine.  In general,
+the performance of enjoyable activities in the psycho-physiological realm
+(drinking, eating, having sex, getting appreciation, empathy, etc.)
+corresponds to an increased concentration of this neurotransmitter.  The same
+applies, by the way, to the use of drugs.
+
+Learning in all its forms, even in physiological activities, requires effort,
+care and attention.  Reading is tiresome, just as is assimilating any new
+skill.  To attain a satisfactory level with psycho-physiological activities
+requires effort.  The simplest and less costly way to raise the levels of
+dopamine and hence to experience pleasure is to complete a task, or to perform
+a given procedure, again and again.  Repetition, iteration of a given behaviour
+is the formula.  It works as a short-cut.
+
+The emotional development processes take place in the limbic system, the
+central and oldest part of the brain.  It indicates the presence or the
+prospect of rewards or punishments to promote the activation of motor
+programmes aimed at giving pleasure or avoid pain.  Addictive drugs operate
+exactly the same way and in the same brain region, causing feelings of
+pleasure.  Once established neuronal connections get increasingly strengthened,
+thereby losing in plasticity.  This kind of connective stiffening corresponds
+to a decreased ability to relax the state of pleasant neuronal excitation
+caused by dopamine: in more technical terms, it occurs by way of a long-term
+impairment of the synaptic pathways that connect neurons.  Such trails become
+like paved roads in our brains, and it takes truckloads of dopamine to feel
+pleasure.  At each step, the necessary dose has to be increased.  This explains
+why drill is so effective, and why it generates addiction.  The desire for
+pleasure related to an automatism, which amounts to compulsive behaviour,
+makes us enter into a repetitive loop getting out of which becomes
+increasingly difficult because the neural pathways that are always excited,
+will not be able to do anything else but get more and more powerful with the
+passage of time: beat-rhythm-repetition.
+
+The user touches the device.  Not once, but many times.  From all the touches -
+every touch is a beat - comes the rhythm, which is repeated in many
+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
+“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
+support, kind of indispensable - almost.  We did not need any tuition to be
+able to use the phone directory in print.  Or even our telephone for that
+matter, or how to manage our contacts on a social platform.  Maybe we had at
+times to ask some geek type among our friends.  We probably don't have a clue
+how all this stuff works, but the main thing is that we are able to do with it
+what we want.  And to do this, we will have to perform a series of repetitive
+actions, or retrace a procedure.  We go by what is in the interface and follow
+the obvious traces of the algorithmic procedure laid down by others for us.
+
+The organization of our cognitive system is mainly based on intuitive
+faculties and reasoning.  Entrusting ourselves to intuition, we only interpret
+a context through mental schemes that are already part of our non-conscious
+mnemonic luggage.  Cognitive and computational effort is minimal, since we do
+not think about what we're doing.  We act automatically.  Reasoning instead
+requires substantial cognitive effort, we must dwell on a problem, make
+hypotheses, follow a sequence which requires a slow pace and full
+involvement.  Intuition allows us to act and to use a tool without being able
+to explain its operation, while the reasoning can make us able to explain
+exactly how something works without necessary being able to use it.  A virtuosa
+violin player may have no idea how her muscles work, but she can use them to
+perfection.  Conversely, we may be able to describe the steps to drive a
+tractor theoretically by reading a manual, without being able to actually
+drive it.
+
+Declarative memory (knowing what, knowing something) is distinct from
+procedural memory (knowing how, knowing a procedure).  All the activities we
+carry out automatically involve procedural memory.  When we act intuitively we
+refer to the procedures we learned in the past, acting out the strategy which
+seems the most appropriate for the successful completion of the task at
+hand.  We do not need to think.  It is a question of ecology of resources, like
+not wasting valuable computational energy to think about how to ride a bike if
+you already know how to ride it.  But when there is no match with our previous
+experiences, we must refer to reason and analyze environmental conditions
+before acting: if a tire is flat, we try to take it apart and fix it.  But if
+we can't manage, we have to ask for help, or tinker with it otherwise, and
+create a fresh, not yet applied procedure.
+
+In general, using a digital medium, e.g.  a web interface, on an ongoing, daily
+basis, means to gradually learn to use it automatically.  And as these
+interfaces are designed to give the most user-friendly, intuitive
+“experience”, it is easy to see how, through the creation of mental patterns,
+one can say that we use them “without thinking”.  Even if we switch to a
+different make of cellphone while using the same applications, suffices to
+identify its icons to go back to the automatic mode, and type in without
+looking at the keypad.
+
+Once trained, the mind is able to repeat one the particular, earlier internal
+simulations of the action that we want to complete: intuitive ability is
+therefore the ability to simulate a known procedure and acting it out
+automatically.  This automatism coincides with the execution of the
+procedure.  From there springs most of the apparent misunderstandings regarding
+the educational benefits of the use of digital devices, and about cognitive
+differences allegedly existing between “digital natives” and later adopters.  A
+good illustration is provided by the fact that smartphones and tablets are
+used in the rehabilitation of patients suffering from neuro-degenerative
+afflictions such as semantic dementia.  In their case, since procedural memory
+is the only kind of memory left to them, patients are able to master several
+functions and use the devices on a daily basis without problems even though
+they are otherwise unable to remember very simple notions.
+
+“Digital natives” is in itself not a very valid concept, people born in the
+television age also can become proficient computer users, interact socially
+and engage in interpersonal relationships mediated by digital devices, and
+find experiencing and participating in multimedia interconnected realities
+more interesting than the “disconnected” everyday life.  All moderately
+intelligent human beings can become “digital natives”.  A human brain is very
+plastic and it modifies itself very quickly when learning procedures, and this
+is especially the case with gamification related procedures.  But then, this
+does not mean that people are consequently able to comprehend, interpret,
+analyze, rewrite or teach the procedural mechanisms they themselves repeat
+routinely!
+
+The more or less deep dive into a virtual reality penetrating our organic body
+through the optic nerves generates a detachment to our environment and a
+selective inattention to non-visual stimuli, as well as being addictive.  And
+breaking away from the screen, after passing hours that have seemed to be
+minutes, can be felt as a real ache.  Give us the game back, even for a moment,
+just a moment, it was so fun! It is such a cool separation from the body.
+Here, it is the passage of time which constitutes the fundamental parameter to
+identify the different types of interaction.  When we are not aware the passing
+of time, we are probably in a phase of flow [^2], of procedural immersion.  We
+are living in a current, immediate cycle of interaction, an extremely
+addictive experience, which we would like never to end.  When on the contrary
+time is perceived as linear, with experiential stages we are aware of, and
+which we are able to stratify, to store and to recall later, we find ourselves
+in a time of sequential learning and of applying declarative memory.
+
+By now, video games have become a fundamental part of the life of millions of
+people, who together spend billions of hours playing on or off-line.  In terms
+of turn-over, the video game industry has overtaken all other branches of the
+entertainment industry: developing a successful video game, for instance a
+MMOG (Massively Multiplayer Online Game), in which participants connect
+simultaneously to play in a world that they create together, can be more
+expensive, and then turn out to be more profitable, than to produce a
+Hollywood blockbuster.  Of course video games are not all the same but the vast
+majority are designed to induce flow.  Besides bolstering the dopamine circuit,
+they can act on the release of oxytocin, which modulate fear and anxiety and
+induces prosocial behaviour, and has an effect on many other neurotransmitters
+and hormones.
+
+Many video games are made following the prescriptions of behaviourism, and in
+particular the format of the Skinner box game, designed by the American
+psychologist Burrhus Frederic Skinner [^3] in his experiments with rats and
+pigeons in the 1930s.  Skinner developed a method of learning called operant
+conditioning.  A particular type of behaviour will be prompted more
+successfully, even in the case of humans, by way of rewards granted in a
+non-automatic way.  Thus, a rat will receives food if it presses a button, but
+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,
+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
+mere self-training, an exercise in procedural memory and simultaneous
+intelligence or intuition.  Hacking, the art to “put your hands on”, to take
+over the operation of a complex operating system (hard- or software), to tweak
+it and alter its functioning at will certainly also appeals to the senses.  Yet
+remaining dazed and (not) confused in front of a screen for a classic and self
+destructive “flying to Australia” session of 24 hours or more, until the
+body/mind collapses of exhaustion is a typical example of system-induced
+self-destructive behaviour abusing the self-reinforcing dopamine cycle making
+people forget their own organic body.
+
+Thus we strongly aim to and advocate to a conscious and balanced back and
+forth between various forms of intelligence and memory.  Care of the self
+starts with a careful observation of personal interactions, with listening to
+personal inclinations, this with the aim to be able to find the pace to suit
+us, and to be able to set our own rules.  In other words, to create our own
+interactive “liturgy”.
+
+## From self-defense to hacker convivial pedagogy
+
+We do not want to give up on the game, to give up the pleasure of playing
+together.  Indeed, we think that learning by playing is one of the finest ways
+to genuinely layer our experiences, to make them part of us.  “Hands on” be our
+motto: for the pleasure of tinkering with machines, tweaking devices and
+systems, and doing it together, this is is the real joy.  This activity in the
+first person, this pleasant interaction (some erotic thrill must be part of
+the game!) is a pre-condition of happiness for a hacker playing with
+technological tools.
+
+In the course of our “s-gamificazione” workshops (de-gamification) we have
+developed a simple methodology to move towards a convivial pedagogy, playing
+with the machines we like.  But then, we first have to get rid of the
+automatisms that reduce us to mere cogs of the corporate megamachines.  To us,
+digital self-defense means above all to drop the habit of re-acting to
+gamification stimuli.   As a start we have to change our habits in a conscious
+way.
+
+It is not possible here to give an account of a typical workshop, because
+there is no such thing as a typical workshop.  In our experience every group of
+people and every situation turns out to be radically different from any
+other.  Also, very personal issues frequently come to the fore, and it is
+essential to keep these within the protected area of the group, away from the
+limelight.  Thus we have tried to abstract the basic steps and elements of our
+workshops in order to give an account that runs as one and the same story, yet
+retold in many different ways.
+
+The first step is to acknowledge the fact that we are immersed in interactive
+environments shaped by automatic devices we did not choose and which do not
+necessarily make us feel good.
+
+The second step is to observe ourselves acting as if we were strangers, with
+weird habits – to look at ourselves in the shape of strange animals waiting
+anxiously for that message, getting irritated if it doesn't appear, getting
+elated by a like, bouncing when a notification pops up ...
+
+Once we have identified the automatism (stimulus-response) that make us behave
+in a certain way, we focus the attention on the emotional changes that result
+from them.  Anger, joy, sadness, excitement, impatience, envy, fear and many
+other emotions manifest themselves constantly, often in combination.  There
+obviously exists an interactive design of emotion of which we are unaware.
+
+The third step is to tell others, to people we trust, what we have discovered
+about ourselves, about our behaviours.  This way we are not disclosing facts
+about ourselves on public notice boards owned by multinational corporation.  On
+the contrary, we choose our own dedicated spaces and times to bring out the
+masks that enliven our personal interactive liturgy.  The bundles of emotions
+which makes us take the character of an undecided person, or of a braggart, or
+of a shy individual, of a competent expert, and of many other possible types
+represents what has settled down in our individuality - without us
+noticing.  Up to that point the positions “we answer like that” and “we act
+like this” - show us how much we have become enslaved to our own induced
+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.
+
+[^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.
+
+[^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

en/content/12cooperatives.md

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+# Hacklabs to technological cooperatives
+
+Techno-political collectives mix technical and political concerns.  A perfect
+example is Riseup which defines its mission as a provider of “online
+communication tools for people and groups working on liberatory social change.
+We are a project to create democratic alternatives and practice
+self-determination by controlling our own secure means of communications”.
+Nowadays the field is composed by very different types of organizations
+ranging from loose and informal networks of hacktivists, free software
+communities, formal organisations such as foundations, start-ups invested in
+the so-called civic tech and even public institutions and council towns.
+
+Some years ago, technological sovereignty meant the development of free
+technologies [^0] by and for the civil society.  Empowering society by
+developing tools, hardware, services and infrastructure that meet social needs
+based on the ethics of free software and self-management.  Nowadays, with the
+transition to open source things have become messy as big corporations
+promoting open source software basically for their own benefit have broken the
+relation between technological development and social responsibility.
+
+In this text I will rethink what role cooperatives have, or could have, as
+economic and social actors in reclaiming this relationship.  To do so, I will
+depart from the broad galaxy of techno-political collectives [^1], and then
+focus on the format of technological cooperatives as they have been deployed
+in Spain.
+
+## A galaxy of initiatives
+
+We find foundations which can be committed to create open source and free
+software solutions and services (FSF, Mozilla, Blender, etc.) and/or to
+protect and defend digital rights (Electronic Frontier Foundation, La
+Quadrature du Net, X-net) mobilizing and pulling economic resources to make
+those project run in the mid and long term.  People can support foundations as
+a donor, volunteer, intern.  They normally look for experienced and qualified
+professionals and count with formal and legal structures when many
+techno-political collectives are based on informal groups and communities.
+
+Another weird aspect of the current scene consists in local government
+initiatives which are working towards openness and transparency based on
+citizen participation.  Many “rebellious” council towns located in Spain are
+supporting the development of free software tools focused on citizen driven
+political participation [^2], and behind those developments, freelancers, small
+companies and cooperatives are working on setting up viable, robust and
+trustful systems to promote open democracy.
+
+Technological cooperatives can be found at the intersection of both previous
+options as they have an economical goal aiming towards sustainability and also
+a political and social approach to technology.  Besides, as most of their
+clients come from the third sector (non‐profit oriented, such as NGOs,
+associations, collectives ) they can help build products based on their
+specific needs and desires.  Examples include [^3] Candela (Amnesty’s activist
+management app), GONG (project/budget manager for NGOs), Oigame (online
+petition platform), Nolotiro (platform to exchange things), Mecambio
+(repository of energetic, financing and connectivity alternatives).
+
+## Creating a coop...
+  
+From now on, I will focus on the particular story of how we founded a free
+software cooperative, Dabne, in Spain – but simultaneously others were doing
+the same [^4].  In the 90’s, when Internet started to be accessible, several
+projects [^5] wonder what it meant to escape from established identities,
+self-organize online transgressing borders, create a collective brain.
+Hacklabs, in squats or association offices, were places to experiment, learn
+about things that were not easily available as not everyone had an Internet
+access yet, nor a computer.  Until then hackers were barely visible and
+hacklabs became that meeting point where “isolated” hackers came in contact
+with social movements.  A passionate hybrid came out of that, it knock a
+strong free/libre software community which had a high impact on society’s
+approach to free technology.
+
+Spain has quite a long tradition of agricultural and industrial cooperatives
+and at some point, some of us started thinking that our hobby could turn
+through cooperativism into a way of living.  As each cooperative have their
+own agreements regarding work and labour, I will share the terms under which we
+founded our own:
+
+ * We wanted to make a living but not at all costs.
+ * We wanted a shared decision making process.
+ * We wanted transparency.
+ * We wanted to define our goals, and change them when needed.
+ * We wanted everybody to be treated equal and in a fair way.
+ * We wanted to continue learning, have fun and promote free software.
+ * We didn’t want to be slaves of our work but work with others in a
+   collaborative and cooperative way.
+
+With that in mind, we analysed how the “enterprise world” worked and wonder if
+we could become “business people” doing something that until then we did for
+free.  A key element lied in the belief that we were going to found companies
+and step into “the market”, that thing governed by capitalist rules which we
+were deeply against.  Vertigo.  There were no previous references of free
+technology cooperatives neither money to invest (we needed 250€ each).  There
+was a strong determination and will to not work for big capitalist companies
+that make you uniform, dull and slave to their rules.  The libre/free software
+community was there so we were not alone, we had our computers and skills, our
+beliefs that free technologies empower society, that free software brings
+sovereignty and that the digital era should make knowledge accessible, open
+doors to people and bring democratic alternatives to societies.  We were
+choosing a way of living not just a job.
+
+Dabne was founded in 2005 and it took us one year to understand what it meant
+to create a company, to manage a business and to decide a legal form that
+would favour our values of collaboration, transparency and responsibility.  We
+went to workshops, talks, trainings, wrote business plans, attend appointments
+at the Chamber of Commerce.  It seemed endless but little by little things
+began to take shape.
+
+Becoming a coop happens in a specific environment of cooperatives advisers
+which is by far more friendly and easy to ask than in the start up world for
+instance.  Mantras like “success”, “fame”, “competitiveness”,“big profit” are
+not part of their vocabulary.  They gave us a social approach, an
+understanding of how to address our impact and empower social organisations in
+the technical aspect.
+
+Our friends xsto.info had founded one year before a free software cooperative
+in Madrid, they were a small group of sysadmins, web developers, wireless
+experts also committed to the free software community.  Their experience
+helped us, we could share our doubts, difficulties, and see how others had
+gone through similar situations.
+
+All in all, we managed to set up the company, and one good thing about
+software is that to start up, you basically need nothing but knowledge, a
+laptop and Internet access which means that costs are minimum – but the first
+challenge is to get the first clients.  Through friends and contacts, we
+started our way, then the word spread mouth to mouth and slowly we had our
+group of clients.
+
+Our mainly technical profile made us look for alliances like with noez.org
+focused on design and innovation centred on people.  With them we could share
+different perspectives of technologies and made our work more understandable.
+Then Dabne became in an unplanned way a women's free software cooperative.  So
+far we do not know of any other women’s software development cooperative in
+Spain.  This led Dabne to IT counselling: as active listeners we could make
+technologies comprehensible to non-technical people, adjust projects rhythms,
+be honest and able to say no when we cannot do it. 
+ 
+## Building a multi-verse of communities and networks
+
+Cooperatives are most of the times fragile.  But by working together, building
+and taking part in existing communities, creating and nurturing networks, they
+can strengthen their resilience and sustainability over time.
+
+Through a cooperatives’ platform (UMCTA) we got in contact with environmental,
+agroecology, social work and social adviser cooperatives willing to share
+their longer experience and knowledge.  To become a coop also meant to enter
+the social and solidarity economy community [^6].  At that time Coop57-Madrid,
+an ethical financial service cooperative was founded and its goal has been to
+finance social and solidarity economy projects thanks to investments from
+civil society.  Red de economía alternativa y solidaria (REAS) and the social
+market are networks for the production and distribution of goods and services
+based on the principles of social and solidarity economy.  Among those we
+found ones concerned with social transformation, environmental sustainability,
+commons, gender equality, transparency, participation, self-organization,
+internal democracy.
+
+Interestingly, most social and solidarity economy networks share a lack of
+interest towards techno-political issues, making difficult to include the
+concerns of free software cooperatives in their agenda.  Because of this, in
+2007 technical cooperatives set up the initiative “Software libre y ONGs”,
+dedicated to promoting the use of free software and free technologies.  A call
+for breakfasts while having short talks complemented with a conference focused
+on Free/Libre software and Third sector organizations.  At a bigger scale, in
+2008, the Federal Association of Free software companies (Asolif) and other
+platforms [^7] were created for promoting free software, create new business
+models and achieve responsible wealth.
+
+On the other hand, communities were built around each specific technology,
+programming language, content management system, operating system distribution
+or hardware, in order to advance knowledge, share good practices, come up with
+improvements, and welcome newbies.  A small cooperative uses several
+technologies, so the best option would be to participate in the different
+technical communities and attend their events (conferences, meet-ups, etc).
+But being able to take part of IT community events requires people, time and
+money, which is very difficult to handle in a small cooperative with limited
+resources...
+
+Yet, time has shown that new people are founding cooperatives and collectives
+[^8] around free technology, so the wheel keeps rolling.
+
+## SWOT for coop
+
+I will recap dimensions introduced previously using a Strength Weakness
+Opportunities Threats (SWOT) analysis where:
+
+Strengths refers to characteristics and internal factors of the cooperative or
+project that give it an advantage over others:
+
+ * Small team can change and adapt quickly
+ * Flexible working environment (home, office, client’s office)
+ * Ability to make decisions and define company goals
+ * No initial capital needed
+ * Define own timing
+ * Good corporate image
+ * Creativity
+ * Curiosity
+ * Have fun
+
+Weaknesses refers to characteristics of the cooperative or project that puts
+it at a disadvantage relative to others:
+
+ * Strain of working
+ * 24/7 involvement
+ * No business management experience
+ * No specialized profiles
+ * Difficulty to grow
+ * Communication
+ * No financial cushion
+ * No legal counselling
+
+Opportunities refers to external factors of the environment that the
+cooperative or project could exploit to its advantage:
+
+ * Able to develop own ideas & projects
+ * Ability to chose partners & projects
+ * Be part of different networks & communities
+ * Capacity to respond to concrete and uncommon needs and desires
+
+Threats are external elements in the environment that could cause trouble for
+the cooperative or project:
+
+ * Exhaustion and burn out
+ * Uncertainty about future
+ * No update on technical issues
+ * Price reduction
+
+## Now some open questions remain
+
+Cooperatives can make possible the building of new autonomous zones while
+responding to many challenges:
+
+ * **Economy**: how to shape an economy of the commons, social and supportive?
+
+ * **Self-organization**: how to be sustainable in a long term run, while
+   questioning unquestionable truths like, consensus, horizontality,
+   participation, leadership?
+
+ * **Technological freedom**: how to fight for free software, digital rights,
+   open knowledge and copyleft?
+
+As years pass by, technological cooperatives still looks like a small field
+based on strong personal relationships, which are key to building trust and
+assuming new challenges, but that can be also a limitation when there is a
+need to scale up.  Besides, the precarious and uncertain economic situation
+makes it difficult to integrate new people.  However, there is always a moment
+when the project grows and with it, should the team grow, how … or not?
+
+Then who should be part of the cooperative?  Should they have specific
+technical skills?  Should they have a versatile profile?  Are technical skills
+always needed?  Is it affordable and ethical to have apprenticeships?
+
+And what about decision making processes?  Cooperativism is about sharing the
+decision making process but experience shows that not everyone wants to take
+part of it – should they be excluded from the cooperative?  Is the ability to
+make decisions key to be part of a cooperative?  Should all decisions be taken
+in common?
+
+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:
+
+    * **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)
+    * http://www.free.de/ (GER)
+    * http://so36.net (GER)
+    * https://www.boum.org/(FR)
+    * http://nodo50.org (ESP)
+    * http://pangea.org/ (ESP)
+    * https://www.immerda.ch/ (CH)
+    * https://mayfirst.org(USA)
+
+[^2]: * https://github.com/AyuntamientoMadrid/consul
+    * https://github.com/AjuntamentdeBarcelona/decidim
+
+[^3]: * Candela: https://github.com/amnesty/candela
+    * Gong: https://gong.org.es/projects/gor
+    * Oigame: https://github.com/alabs/oigame
+    * Nolotiro: https://github.com/alabs/nolotiro.org
+    * Mecambio: http://www.mecambio.net/
+
+[^4]: * Dabne: http://dabne.net 
+    * Xsto.info: http://xsto.info/ 
+    * aLabs: https://alabs.org/ 
+    * Semilla del software libre: http://semillasl.net/
+    * Enreda: http://enreda.coop/ 
+    * Gnoxys: http://gnoxys.net/
+    * Grupo Ikusnet
+
+[^5]: Some of the projects: 
+
+    * http://sindominio.net (ES)
+    * http://autistici.org (IT) 
+    * http://samizdat.net/ (FR) 
+    * http://espora.org (MX) 
+    * http://thing.net (USA)
+
+[^6]: * http://coop57.coop/ 
+    * http://www.economiasolidaria.org
+    * https://madrid.mercadosocial.net/ 
+    * http://tangente.coop/
+
+[^7]: * Asolif: http://www.asolif.es/
+    * Esle: http://esle.eus/ 
+    * Olatukoop: http://olatukoop.net
+
+[^8]: * Deconstruyendo: http://deconstruyendo.net/ 
+    * Interzonas: https://interzonas.info 
+    * Talaios: http://talaios.net 
+    * Shareweb: http://shareweb.es 
+    * Reciclanet: http://www.reciclanet.org 
+    * Buenaventura: http://www.buenaventura.cc/ 
+    * Itaca: http://www.itacaswl.com 
+    * Saregune: http://www.saregune.net 
+    * Cooptecniques: http://cooptecniques.net/
+
+Some other cooperatives, groups or initiatives working around free/libre
+technology:
+
+ * Latino América Kefir: https://kefir.red/ 
+ * Vedetas: vedetas.org 
+ * Cooperativa tierra comun: https://social.mayfirst.org/tierracomun

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es/README.md

@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+# sobtec2
+Book: Technological Sovereignity, volume 2

es/book.json

@@ -0,0 +1,9 @@
+{
+    "title": "Soveranía Technológica",
+    "description": "Dossier Ritimo",
+    "author": "ed. Alex Haché",
+    "language": "es",
+    "pdf": {
+        "paperSize": "a5"
+    }
+}