Social Innovation Hacktivism: from here to assemblages @danmcquillan

Deleuze & Guattari. Manuel De Landa. Paulo Friere. Ontology of multiplicity. Difference is productive. Assemblage theory and ideas of hacktivism. Twin totems are De Landa and Lulzsec.

Organisations and Institutions are striated spaces. “ marked by linear boundaries, restricted to a particular plane of activity in the space of all possible potentials”. Energies are captured. Possibilities are codified. Includes NGOs & civil society. Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari (1980). A Thousand Plateaus. Trans. Brian Massumi. London and New York: Continuum, 2004.

Social Innovation Camp was founded on the affordances of digital & social technology. A smooth space of openness, flows and zones of intensity. Not counter-hegemonic discourse but construction of concrete alternatives. http://www.sicamp.org/

Enabled by Design = hacking (living aids) The Good Gym = mashup MyPolice = without permission http://mypolice.org/ , http://enabledbydesign.org/ http://www.thegoodgym.org/

Characteristics of sicamp: peer-to-peer, radical interdisciplinarity Asset-based Rapid prototyping: minimum viable product (MVP) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset-based_community_development http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product

We can argue that all institutions & organisations are technosocial assemblages, and ask “How can we re-assemble this stuff?” “ We may have exhaustive knowledge about an individual’s properties and yet, not having observed it in interaction with other individuals, know nothing about its capacities” De Landa, Manuel (2005). Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy We can’t know a priori what technosocial components can do when assembled in a particular way.

Abstract Hacktivism. Abstract Hacktivism: The Making of a Hacker Culture http://www.isk-gbg.org/abstracthacktivism/ What is a hacker? The “jargon file” is a 1975 glossary of hacker slang. Definition #7 - One who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations. http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/H/hacker.html

Haiti earthquake. Frustrated about speed & savviness of response. Self-organised crisis camps. Created both tech solutions and realtime crowdsourced efforts. Hacktivism -> assemblage. http://crisiscommons.org/ http://blog.ushahidi.com/index.php/2010/02/08/project-4636-an-info-graphic/

Line of flight... Participatory digital-social innovation. “ never think smooth spaces alone will save you”. Mix smooth and striated. Hybrids of social movements & service orgs. But relentless reterritorialisation... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reterritorialization

“ At the heart of it is a newly politicised generation of hackers who have moved from a lulz-based psychic-economy to an engaged, socially-aware and politically active attitude towards world events” - Deterritorial Support Group http://deterritorialsupportgroup.wordpress.com/2011/06/07/twenty-reasons-why-its-kicking-off-in-cyberspace/

#Tahrirsupplies meets #Tahrirneeds Convergence. “ The protesters... function like an offline, rapidly prototyping, open source community”.

#mubarak #murdoch #[insert name here] How will incumbants react? Does humbleness precede hybridity?

Speed & scale? Lets be Un-Google. You can't solve social problems with algorithms. And TED talks are not real. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/business/30charity.html

Policy: Problematised. Totemic toughness. Signalling acceptable beliefs. Telling Policy Stories: An Ethnographic Study of the Use of Evidence in Policy-making in the UK http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8120088 / Prototyping is the new policy / / Doing is the new modelling /

Not policy but pedagogy. Paulo Friere Peer to peer. The ‘practice of freedom’ Freire, Paulo. 2000. Pedagogy of the oppressed. Continuum International Publishing Group

The internet is our platform. Keep it Free. Egypt #shutdown. http://www.internetartizans.co.uk/socnets_with_old_tech_egypt What about the NextNet? http://events.ccc.de/camp/2011/wiki/Blackout_Resilient_Technologies_Village

Technologies of transformation. “ The more people unveil this challenging reality which is to be the object of their transforming action,” Freire argues, “the more critically they enter that reality” There is a crisis but we have agency. Yes We Camp. And we are part of a larger change... #sicamp, #barcamp, #anonymous, #telecomix, #socialinnovation #jan25, #feb14, #15m, #syntagma, #tahrir, #NOSCAF, #jul23, #23j