A little over a month ago I made a quickie-post on my Free Speech blog that made brief mention of a wiki for direct action, and a torrent site curated specifically for the activist crowd. In this post I’d like to flesh out those ideas more in as non-technical a way as possible. Where specific technologies are involved, I’ll do my best to offer an explanation of why the technology is important to the fundamental ideas of what I’m brainstorming. I’d like to emphasize that I’m at the brainstorming stage, so you might run into some half-baked (or not baked at all) ideas, inconsistencies and the like, so please don’t flame me if x doesn’t exactly make sense in light of y. Without further ado, let’s delve into the world of wikis, torrents, and useful content.
Wikis for Direct Action
A wiki is a collection of interlinked web pages and photos, all of which can be visited and edited by anyone at any time (definition via wikipedia). The most successful example of a wiki in action is Wikipedia, a comprehensive and free dictionary collectively authored by anyone interested. In addition to providing an amazing and ever increasing wealth of information on a wide variety of topics in the tradition of other encyclopedias, Wikipedia’s encyclopedic prowess extends to current events and is often updated in real-time as events unfold. Wikis have become a popular way for people to coordinate activities and information, one of my favorites being Stanford Law professor Lawrence Lessig’s codebook wiki. From the site:
Lawrence Lessig first published Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace in 1999. After five years in print and five years of changes in law, technology, and the context in which they reside, Code needs an update. But rather than do this alone, Professor Lessig is using this wiki to open the editing process to all, to draw upon the creativity and knowledge of the community. This is an online, collaborative book update; a first of its kind.
While not the best tool for every project requiring collective authorship, wikis can be a powerful tool when applied properly to the right projects. The constantly changing and fast-paced world of technology and law is one area where wikis can be useful for keeping information up-to-date. And, if you haven’t already picked up on it, the community aspect is a core feature to any active and successful wiki. It may be obvious, but I’d like to emphasize that the nature of wikis allow them to function to the same degree on both a local and global level.
Direct action and the legal rights of those involved in direct action is another area in which I can see the benefits of having an active and informative wiki. The history of direct action, techniques, legal rights and ramifications, and current instances of direct action are among the many topics that could be covered. A useful resource for neophytes to the scene as well as veterans, it would allow the sharing of information and coordination of documenting both direct actions and violations of rights during those direct actions. One example that we had thought of during the RNC protests of 2004 but never implemented, was a real-time moblog site (a website people could post photos to from their mobile phones), linked up with information about people being arrested and police abuses and then synced with the National Lawyers Guild and the information and observations of legal observers. The ultimate goal being the documentation of abuses and aiding rapid response time to those thrown into Guantanamo on the Hudson without cause. Using wiki technology to implement such a wide coordination of information dependent on accurate and timely reporting didn’t even cross my mind at the time, and I’m smacking myself that it didn’t, but it does give you an example of what a wiki could potentially be used for in the hands of activists involved in direct action. I imagine that this is the kind of network Korea already has implemented, which allows citizens to organize a large and successful national protest within hours.
Activist Curated Torrents
A torrent is a specific instance of peer-to-peer (P2P) software BitTorrent. Since I’m trying to stay away from the technical side of things in this post, here is what’s important about BitTorrent (and other P2P technologies) that you should keep in mind: it’s decentralized. Previous file distribution systems made use of a centralized server storing and hosting the files people wanted to share. Individuals, or clients, would connect to the central server and request a file to download. Using this method, connections were easily tracked, and bandwidth quickly maxed out. P2P technologies erase the need for a central file server, and BitTorrent implements a kind of distributed bandwidth feature that keeps the bits flowing and the bandwidth relaxed (I’m trying to not get technical!), making the distribution of large files a relatively painless affair. Many video game vendors use P2P software to distribute their products, and the Participatory Culture Foundation is using torrent technology in its Broadcast Machine and DTV.
So we’ve established that it’s easier than ever to share large files, thanks to P2P technologies and the increasing presence of broadband in individual homes. Now what? Here’s the biggest problem I have with the onslaught of information available to me at every second: it’s really hard to find what I want. And sometimes I don’t even know how to go about finding what I want or fine-tuning a search for a broad and nebulous topic. In my previous post I mentioned ibiblio.org’s torrent site. The reason I mentioned it is because it is a focused torrent site, it caters to a specific need, and makes the search for open source software easier and more reliable. Imagine the same thing for how-to manuals, video files from protests and other direct action sites, and posters (to name a few), curated by and for the activist crowd with metadata that was actually well applied and useful.
And in Conclusion…
Well, there isn’t really going to be a conclusion as this was more brainstorming and explication than Essay. What I’m thinking about, on a large scale, are two different but complimentary sources of information, wikis and torrents, focused on the activist community at large. Consider this post a very rough-draft, a working document that, if we were wiki-ing, you would be able to edit and contribute to. My day-to-day life is ruled by the incessant search for better ways to organize and filter information, better ways to find relevant information, and the means to make my life more productive and streamlined. Activist wikis and activist curated torrents are just another step towards making my life easier. ;)
[Edit 09.28.2005 - theophile pointed me to Chomsky Torrents, a torrent site that began as a source for all things Chomsky but is now becoming a more general site for political material. Excellent.]
I’m also interested in the layering of technology with time and location specific events, using real-time communication devices and techniques such as phone-cams, text messaging, gps, and google maps. But that’s for another post…
pardon my ignocence, but what if there was a wikibay used to sort out all this information in neat catagories for people to access? if you make it i want half of the profits…
A wikibay? Tell me more, oh wibbywabby.
it’s wibbLywabbERLy now, by the way…and i dunno: i just thought a wikibay (i.e. wik-E-bay) could create a way to organize and filter information. Like i can go to E-bay and find a ridiculous old war sock but i can’t find out how to tan a bobcat hide to keep the fur on it (this really happened last weekend, by the way. me and alison found a beautiful and unfortunately dead bobcat on the side of the blue ridge parkway, put it in the trunk, took it home, drank a LOT of bourbon and skinned the thing (her brother helped…or, did most of it) we have pictures too, if i ever get my website working again i’ll post them…very, very, very disturbing. like, worse than itchy and scratchy.) anyway, i have no idea what i’m talking about, i just thought the name sounded clever. if anything, we could create a fake company called wikibay and float the name until some fatty fat gives us lotsa money for it…i’ll keep thinking of a more appropriate answer, though, just so people don’t think you have such a dumb wibblywabberly…