In recent years, new peer-to-peer protocols have appeared that attempt to decentralise the transmission of information over the internet. Instead of one central machine delivering information to many others, the focus has shifted to enabling all machines to serve files to one another. The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) protocol constitutes one of these attempts: a distributed file system that seeks all computing devices with the same system of files for storing and sharing.
IPFS has raised the interest of many communities, from archivists to activists. Versioning, resiliency and availability make it a useful infrastructure builder for digital archivists, while its distributed nature has enabled groups of people to circumvent censorship. For instance, the 2017 referendum website of Catalonia, which was mirrored on IPFS after the original website was shut down by the Spanish government.
During this workshop, we will look at the successes, the pitfalls and the potential of this protocol. We will install it, go through the basics, discuss how it differs from other P2P protocols like dat and what types of usage it enables.
* This workshop will last for 8 hours and a laptop will be necessary.
* Prior knowledge of command line would be good, but is not obligatory.
This workshop is an initiative by Julie Boschat Thorez, Silvio Lorusso and Cristina Cochior.
# Varia curriculum
This workshop is organised in the context of the very first series of the Varia curriculum, developed in collaboration with the 3rd year minor "Hacking" of the Autonomous practices from the Willem de Kooning Academy (WdKA) in Rotterdam.
The curriculum is an ongoing series of workshops in which participants are introduced to technical, theoretical and methodological skills at the basis of the various practices that live within *Varia*. These are short intensive master-classes or workshops aimed towards providing high level introductions as a basis for further explorations.
Would you like to join this workshop? Please send us a short email on the info[a]varia.zone email address at the 29th of October the latest!
