What remains of a publication after it has been published? How does its status change in the post-production phase? Does it survive and thrive or will it suffer a slow, unnoticed death? Some works keep circulating, others do not. Fragments live on in search engines, on platforms, or in physical space, aggregated, fragmented, or re-contextualized. How does the materiality, positioning, and design of the work influence this afterlife? How to design for sustainability of the publication? The constellation of readers, publishers, designers, and editors is under consideration. Why do we even publish and for whom? What does it mean to actually read nowadays? Why are aspects of time and space important in the positioning of a publication? When we shake off the idea of the book as a static object, we can start to look at other - social , emotional, material , and spiritual - aspects of publishing. The echoes of the afterlife will reverberate through new publishing strategies.
Florian Cramer and Roel Roscam Abbing talk about federated social networks, how they work, what they do, and what chances and pitfalls they present for the publishing domain.
+A public conversation on federated publishing took place during the lunch break of the final day of the Urgent Publishing1 conference. Florian Cramer, reader in 21st Century Visual Culture/Autonomous Practices at Willem de Kooning Academy, asked Roel Roscam Abbing a few questions on federated networks, their origin, and their techno-social implementation.
+Roel Roscam Abbing is a researcher and artist who works on networks, infrastructures and the politics that inform them. He’s a founding member of varia2, a space for developing collective approaches to everyday technology located in Charlois (Rotterdam). Varia hosts and employs a series of federated networks, such as one based on XMPP3, an open standard for messaging.
+Cramer and Roscam Abbing started by explaining what is a federated network and why it matters nowadays. Federation allows diverse entities to preserve some internal rules while still being able to communicate with each other. In this way they are able to maintain a certain degree of autonomy. Roscam Abbing pointed out that federation is not new, email and the web being old examples of it which are still in use. However, in a landscape characterized by an increasingly vicious centralization and by users’ growing awareness of their needs and the limitations of generalist platforms, federation acquires new meaning and relevance.
+The subject of the conversation then became Mastodon4, a Twitter-like federated social medium. Unlike Twitter, Mastodon is comprised of multiple community-owned “instances”, that can define their own rules, modify user interface, etc. Mastodon itself is part of a bigger network called the Fediverse5, which includes different applications (such as the older GNU Social6 or the recent PeerTube7) that are able to communicate with each other thanks to underlying federation protocols such as ActivityPub or OStatus.
+Roscam Abbing is one of the admins of a Mastodon instance called post.lurk.org and dedicated to media, free software and the politics of technology. Post.lurk.org currently hosts 129 users and is invite-only (you can get in touch with the admins on https://talk.lurk.org/). Roscam Abbing explained Mastodon stands in a too long tradition of projects that reimplement the features of proprietary applications but in free and open source software. Mastodon initially emerged as a fork of GNU Social and was driven by a dissatisfaction towards social media like Twitter. Particularly in the wake of silencing techniques and the harassment campaigns that went through the hashtag #gamergate and the election of Trump. The urgency was that of modifying the software stack and to build organizational techniques to create safe spaces for targeted communities.
+In order to join Mastodon, a user needs to pick up an instance, which might be confusing at first given the sheer diversity among the existing ones. Picking one instances doesn’t mean you can’t communicate with other ones, however. They do however form their own distinct communities with rules and guidelines. Roscam Abbing highlighted the presence of code of conducts on many of these instances as well as shared customs, such as stating one’s pronouns in their bio. These codes of conducts are meant to communicate to potential visitors on what that community considers (un)acceptable behaviour.
+In this respect, Cramer remarked that safe space doesn’t necessarily mean progressive or left-leaning, but it can also be a zone that purposefully breeds far-right sentiments and ideas. From this point of view, Mastodon can be seen as “the perfect technology for distributing a troll farm”. In fact federated social media share a common ground with the interests of a subset of 4chan users, in particularly the board /g/ where free software and alternatives to commercial media are often discussed and promoted. Similarly interest in these networks can also be linked to cyberlibertarianism.
+There are several ways to preserve a sense of safety within an instance. For example, other servers can be silenced (users will still be able to get their content in their personal timeline) or fully blocked, in a process called ‘defederating’. Roscam Abbing pointed out that defederating caused quite a stir among inhabitants of the fediverse, as it goes against the principle of openness and unlimited interconnection that are the hallmark of web and free software ideology. One way to motivate the implementation of silencing and blocking at the instance level can be summarized as “we don’t have to read your bullshit”.
+“If silencing and blocking is possible, isn’t there the risk of creating the equivalent of an organic supermarket, of elitism, of leaving the territory unguarded?”, asked Florian Cramer, suggesting that it is important to “stay with the trouble”. Roel’s response was that federated networks and proprietary platforms are not mutually exclusive. However, the safe spaces provided by a specific instance allow to strategize and to produce a different techno-social imagination.
+The issue of privacy was also raised by Cramer, who spoke of synchronization while being reminded of bbs8. Roscam Abbing clarified that privacy on Mastodon shouldn’t be understood in the classical sense of a private communication channel as it doesn’t implement any end-to-end encryption. This is because Mastodon has been conceptualized as a publishing platform where most messages are publicly readable. This makes Cambridge Analyitica-style mining still possible. It also means that direct messages can be potentially read by admins, just like on the major commercial platforms.
+Cramer and Abbing discussed the “composition” of the people involved in a project like Mastodon: not necessarily male engineers rooted in computer science but often designers and media people with a particular attention to user interface (Mastodon looks much better than the average free software project) as well as communities typically underrepresented in free software development such as people of color, queer, etc.
+The questions from the audience revolved around the notion of governance. Roscam Abbing responded that the development of the project is currently based on the “benevolent dictator” model, as the creator of Mastodon has the power to take final decisions (in fact there have been Mastodon fork-tryouts, where the main focus has been a different form of governance). Furthermore, not all labour that goes in the project is acknowledged: work that is not code is often rendered invisible. This has lead to disenfranchisement from queer and POC communities that in the early stages contributed a lot to the platform. One of the most interesting spaces to understand where Mastodon is going is the issue tracker9: this is where plenty of users, not necessarily developers, request, discuss, and criticize features.
+ 1: http://networkcultures.org/makingpublic/conference/
+2: http://varia.zone/
+3: https://xmpp.org/
+4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon
+5: https://fediverse.party
+6: https://gnu.io/social/
+7: https://joinpeertube.org/en/
+8: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_board_system
+9: https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues
Inventing new ways of publishing between fast populism and slow academia. How to counter misinformation and stimulate open public discussions through a speedy publishing process, high quality content and spot-on positioning?
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This panel served as an excellent kick-off to the conference: excited participants, urgent discussions, and a good overview of the topics to come. Moderator Florian Cramer framed the debate with a few opening words about what this ‘post-truth’ moment is that we find ourselves in.
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If traditional media are to be believed, social media are to blame for the current state of public debate. The refrain goes: people continue to drive circles in their own algorithmic filter bubbles, only seeing material that confirms their pre-existing worldview and subsequently polarisation occurs. It seems to be a problem of information, truth, and authorship, an editorial problem, but in reality just as important are what we publish, how we publish, and which technologies we use.
+Generally speaking, the more thorough a publication is, the more slow it is. This is something that populists take advantage of readily by short-circuiting social media speediness and academic slowness: while Jordan Peterson is trending on Twitter, surely the countering academic articles are in the making, but these refutations of Peterson’s take on Foucault or Derrida simply come too slowly to have any useful effect.
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In this session we hear from practitioners that go beyond disciplinary boundaries to have a quick but thorough input for current debates.
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Morten Paul (DE) is editor at the humanities publish-ing house August Verlag Berlin. Studied German Studies, Philosophy and Cultural Studies at the University of Konstanz and Goldsmiths College, London.
+Morten Paul is editor at the humanities publishing house August Verlag Berlin. He starts his talk with the statement that the notion of ‘post-truth’ is wrong to begin with. There is in fact a proliferation of truths, there are too many truths! While post-structuralism killed the truth, the right-wing has been allowed to flourish because of it. The problem with alternative facts is not so much the alternative, but the positivist understanding of ‘facts’. This is too reminiscent of conspiracy theories: facts are truths that are out, but covered up. Alternative facts have been around for as long as we can remember.
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By historicizing these phenomena, Morten tries to go beyond the shock the left seems to be in right now. Having researched the history of far right magazines in Germany, he is able to discern that the strategies we see around us now have in fact always existed. Far right activism and the rise of right wing political parties historically go hand in hand, and are supported by a certain ideological cohesion on the right that the left lacks.
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Nikola Richter (DE) is a writer, journalist, and publisher who combines comprehensive knowledge of the cultural and literary sector with an interest in online media and a broader perspective on political and social issues. In 2013 she founded the publisher mikrotext.
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Nikola Richter is a writer, journalist, and publisher. She also draws historical parallels in her talk, although of a different nature. While we are talking about the speed of publishing in relation to social media virality, she says that the history of publishing was always also about speed. Think back to the 16th-18th century chapbooks: street literature that was cheaply produced and meant to spread popular cultures widely.
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Today, a publisher’s role is expanding. No longer is it just about selecting, editing and presenting texts coherently, but a publisher now also needs to be a reader, a commentator, needs to engage on social media.
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A publisher is not an outside entity acting upon public discourse, but actively located within it. An ethical publisher says “nichts tun ist keine lösung”, and publishes for others, does it while thinking of others.
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Publishers need to exploit their media to infiltrate discussions. Can the epub be a mobile chapbook? It can be read on any device, and one copy can instantly turn into endless copies.
+Clara Balaguer (PH) is a cultural worker. Currently, she coordinates the Social Practices course at Willem de Kooning Academy and teaches Experimental Publishing at Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam.
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Clara Balaguer explains her situation as being ‘in exile by academia’. Originally from the Philippines, she decided to leave when the situation became untenable for her critical activities. She works by immersing herself in communities, on the ground in the Philippines, but similarly online as a troll (which you can read more about here)
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Being invited to speak at a conference with the word ‘urgent’ in the title seems odd: since arriving in the Netherlands, Clara in fact has been feeling a general lack of urgency. Everything is neatly organized and orderly. In this privilege there is no real urgency like she knows it is experienced in the Philippines.
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Clara co-founded Hardworking Goodlooking, an underground publisher, that wears the badge ‘mosquito press’ as a badge of honour. To be full of buzz and annoying under dictatorship, never able to be exterminated, is something to be applauded. Hardworking Goodlooking uses pirating strategies to distribute inaccessible academic work within the Philippines. This is not about big numbers: getting 25 copies into the right hands is in this case enough to have the right impact.
+Padmini Ray Murray (IN) is a researcher and creator currently based in Bengaluru where she has founded a not-for-profit organization called Design Beku. She is visiting faculty at the Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, where she launched India’s first-degree program in the digital humanities.
+Padmini Ray Murray is a researcher and creator who is passionate about transforming ways in which we make and share knowledge. In her talk, she zooms in on the interrelation between power and knowledge, and relates this to the caste system in India and its influence on knowledge production.
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The idea of the university campus as hotbeds for rape culture is not just an American phenomenon. The case of #LoSHA (List of Sexual Harassers in Academia) is an example of a kind of graffiti-inspired strategy of publishing that has a longer history in feminism. By publishing the list of harassers on Facebook, Raya Sarkar effectively created a graffiti wall consisting of names of the accused that was open for anyone to add to. It played a significant role in the start of the MeToo movement in India.
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When ‘RAPE HAPPENS HERE’ was projected onto the building of Columbia University during an open day in 2015, or when students at Brown University wrote the names of their harassers on toilet doors in the 90s, activists similarly inscribed a public place with their accusations, for all to see, for the public to deal with.
+A ready critique of this type of ‘calling-out’ on social media, or finger-tip activism is that there is no due process. At the same time, social media activism is very ephemeral. Everything that is posted is at there at the mercy of the platforms and can be taken away easily.
+Following Sara Ahmed, academics have to acknowledge their complicity in these power struggles. Academia never was the place of freedom. Cambridge University Press has always profited from colonial knowledge production in India. We now have to take social media practices as counteracts to those institutions and histories as well.
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In the West, it is easy to be critical of the medium itself, forgetting about situations in other parts of the world where the benefits of connecting outweigh the downsides of the business. To deal with the post-truth, the answer should always be ‘more discussion’, never more authority.
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Not everyone can do what Sara Ahmed did and leave the institution. Learning from Fred Moten and Stefano Harney we have to find the undercommons and make subversive use of the institution, and perhaps similarly the platform?
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