The Center of Everyday Technology is a Rotterdam based initiative that collects, conducts and instigates research and projects relating to the emerging developments in everyday technology. We aim to provide an environment where questions can be asked, opinions can be stated, projects can be developed and research can be conducted, both collectively and individually. Our goal is to become a hub for exchange and a source for resilience, within the city and beyond.
Discussions around digital technologies are often quickly connected to the power ratio between the major technology companies and their users. The influence of the private sector on digital culture is huge and creates a monotone image of start-ups, sci-fi AI future scenarios and problem-solving products. An interest to focus instead on localization, plurality and collectivity have led to the desire to form a collective organization, that builds on a pillars of a network of people in Rotterdam and that could fascilitate participation in debates in a wider network.
Rotterdam has a strong network of artists, programmers, designers, writers, teachers and enthusiasts at the moment, that use Free Software in their practices and daily life and/or is interested in investigating socio-technological infrastructures. There are different groups and projects running around themes such as self-hosted servers, MediaWiki software, collective learning, DIY culture, network technologies and the change in working conditions.
Within the Rotterdam panorama we would like to insert ourselves into, there are for example monthly gatherings of the homebrewserver.club: a place for discussion and development of self-hosted services and home servers. Another example is the zine "Immaterial Labor Union", which is published several times a year and filled with articles and comics that reflect on the status of free labor. And recently the two-day festival "Floppy Totaal" took place, bringing music makers and enthousiasts of the floppy subculture together - a type of culture that the USB flash drive or digital folder never managed to do.
The programs of several educational departments are in a similar way connected to these topics: the master program "Experimental Publishing" of the Piet Zwart Institute examines different forms of "making public" outside the hegemonic world of social media; The department "Hacking (?)" Willem de Kooning Academy ... ...... ; And the research group "Hybrid Publishing" at the same academy explores various forms of hybrid workflows, to study hybridity in a publishing process between online & print and user & developer.
Digital technology is the central field of investigation for these initiatives, but is always implicitly or explicitly linked to social, economic and political forces. The development of De Samenscholing is also connected to them. The need to initiate a collective organization is both born from a practical desire, to have access to a place to share and organize, but most importantly also grounded in a shared interest in locality, plurality and collectivity.
De Samenscholing will therefore operate in the city as a social infrastructure for discussion, meetings, collective learning, help and action. In the wider network De Samenscholing wants to establish an international network and to become a hub for exchange, a voice in debates and a resource for resilience.
**Association**
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De Samenscholing will develop a framework for a public program, that is aimed to invite and speak to a wider network. This public framework consists of thematic sessions (2x per year) and the launch of an article/short publication (4x per year).
De Samenscholing will function on a membership basis: each member can initiate or organize a weekly, monthly or spontaneous session. By creating an open space to initiate, a changing flow of meetings will be organized and being available for participation to other members. The core group will develop and organize the public program and the take the general affairs on their account. At the moment this group is: Lidia, Niek, Roel, Dennis and Manetta; however, this is not a fixed composition. Development of the public program will require different forms of core group, linked to the specific subject and the kind of event. We would like to experiment with a rotating form of the core group, changing in favor of each public activity.
The De Samenscholing space functions as a working and meeting place where members meet during organized events or accidental encounters; and where non-members are welcome to join. The core group will use the space as a workplace for the development of projects and as a hosting place for organizational meetings. The daily use of space will vary per person from 1 to 4 days a week.
De Samenscholing will start off with the monthly sessions of the homebrewserver.club, organize a weekly collective MOOC-study program, and start a computer-parts depot. The first public event of De Samenscholing will be a presentation of the article "Have You Considered the alternative?" and will be organized in May 2017.
