Networked Politics and Technology Seminar

NETWORKED POLITICS AND TECHNOLOGY SEMINAR 5, 6 & 7 DECEMBER 2008 (Version: 3 Dec)

PARTICIPANTS INFOKIT

Seminar website: www.networked-politics.info/berkeley Contact: 415-518-9297

A) Agenda B) Introduction to the discussion and readings C) Participants Bios D) Practical infos: How to get to places?

A) AGENDA

Friday 5 - 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm - Public event at San Francisco Movement Organizing, Technology and Networked Politics: The experience of the Social Forums The Mission Cultural Center Gallery - 2868 Mission Street, between 24th and 25th This event is free and open to the public. After the public event we will go together to have dinner in the Mission Area.

6 & 7 NETWORKED POLITICS & TECHNOLOGY SEMINAR School of Information -UC Berkeley 102 South Hall, Berkeley CA 94720-4600

The methodology of the seminar is a collective conversation and discussion where all participants play an active role (there is no audience). We provide participants with a reader so that everyone arrives with an orientation and with developed thoughts on the issues under discussion (See below suggested readings). Each line of discussion is briefly (10 minutes) introduced by two or three people. After the discussion a person will summarize the discussion. The folliwing timetable is orientative.

Saturday 9 am – 10 am Welcoming of School of Information - UC Berkeley. Presentation of the Networked Politics project and of the seminar agenda and methodology. Round of presentation of the participants 10 am - 1 pm Governance of platforms for participation: Social forum and online collaborative communities 1 pm – 2 pm Lunch 2 – 7:30 pm When do new social media and political activists converge/match? 8 pm Dinner

Sunday 9 am – 1 pm New institutions: the rediscovery of the commons Consolidation of ideas - Summary of the discussions 1 – 2 pm Lunch 2 pm Networked Politics collaborative research: Proposals of new lines of research and collaborative tools to follow up 8 pm Dinner

B) INTRODUCTIONS TO THE DISCUSSION AND THE READINGS

In broad terms, Networked Politics is an inquiry into the shift from centralized and hierarchical forms of organization towards decentralized and horizontal forms, from the perspective of new ways of organising for social change. Of course hierarchical and centralizing tendencies persist and even appear in new forms, but we are struck by how organizational logics and forms of a similar kind are emerging in many different spheres. The nature of 'networked politics', even those elements of it that have been identified and discussed is still unclear. It is still very much an emerging reality. There is much that is unknown and many questions about how to conceptualize the innovations, the potentialities and the problems associated with it. We think it is useful systematically to reflect on the consequences and ambiguities of these new realities. And although our focus in this search is the changing forms of political organization, we are learning from experiences and metaphors in other spheres. The main experiences which have led us to this research are the Social Forums models of organising. But we have been also exploring the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) movement and web communities, inspired by their organizational parallels with the Social Forums. We have also been investigating “techno-political tools”: conscious attempts to introduce the new information and communication technologies into processes of political action and organization. What are the changes in the relations and character of power, of the production of identity, and the processes of group identification and cohesion in the new networked forms of political organization? What are the pros and cons of open spaces (spaces of networking and self-production/organization without a centre)? How does the role of 'infrastructure providers' change in such conditions? What is the character of the leadership and the dynamic of democratic processes and of accountability in networks? What could be the possibilities of parallel co-governing replacing hierarchical command? What, in a context of self-organisation within a faciliated space could be the mechanisms of feedback and reflexivity? How could institutions that facilitate participation, in contrast to managing representation work? And what are the limits, the failures and the traps of these new forms of organization? These are only some of the questions that arise from this new frontier of research. The research is action oriented. The plan is to reflect not via abstract terms but through concrete experiences, not to leave theory in the air but to try to be useful, to improve existing political organising and to create new connections. The Networked Politics project is a collaborative research project started in 2005. It is being supported by a network of European organizations: Transform! Italia, Transnational Institute (Amsterdam), Euromovements – techno-political node and IGOP- Barcelona. The seminar at the Bay Area is co-organised or sponsored also by Global Commons Foundation, Funders Network on Trade and Globalization, International Forum on Globalization, Labor Tech, International Computer Science Institute at UC Berkeley and School of Information at UC Berkeley. Networked Politics main activities are the organization of seminars, collective publications and ongoing conversation through the web (www.networked-politics.info). The seminars have been a series of conversations that have put very different people - in terms of experience and traditions - creatively in contact with each other. The seminars also combine new people and people who have participated in previous seminars in order to facilitate continuity of the discussion. Seminars had take place during the past three years at Porto Alegre and Nairobi (during World Social Forum events), Athens (during the European Social Forum), Bologna, Manchester, Barcelona and Berlin (during the G8 Summit). The goals of organizing a seminar in the San Francisco Bay Area are: to enlarge the exchanges and the cooperation in the project between Europe and the United States; to connect and learn from the experiences of social forums and social movements in both continents; to profit by the uniqueness of the technological innovations, research and experiences based at the Bay Area.

Overview of articles The following collection of readings is intended to provide some articles that reflect on these issues as potential reading material before the discussion. They are the articles that have been written or recommended by participants. It is by no means exhaustive but we hope will prompt ideas and reflections. The single articles are availeble at the website. Plus, a reader booklet (containing all the readings) can be also download it at the website. http://www.networked-politics.info/berkeley/reader/ We recoment to read the ones wroten by other seminar participants (Indicated with a +)

* First line of discussion: Platforms for participation. The goal of this section is to analyze and compare the organizational structure of the Social Forums and of online communities' experiences, in order to understanding something more of the organizational logic of voluntary and decentralized forms of coming together. We thought it would be useful to investigate parallels, metaphors and lessons and make a comparison, analyzing similarities and differences, between the two cases of the Social Forums and of the platforms of social networking or of collaborative and distributed production online (e.g. Wikipedia). The idea would be to explore: i. the different layers and logics of the space: core group/providers, design of rules/protocols opened to participation, active participants/producers, users/consumers; ii. the tension between common principles and strategic goals from one side and openness, diversity, self-organization and horizontality from the other; iii. the logic of inclusion and exclusion and of the different cultural/social backgrounds in a networking logic. iv. the forms of conflicts and of their resolution. v. what happens when networks go wrong? vi. how are networks sustained and reproduced – when sustainability is desirable?

+ Freeing Software and Opening Space: Social Forums and the Cultural Politics of Technology Jeffrey Juris, Giuseppe Caruso, and Lorenzo Mosca examine the use of ICT by Social Forums in Brazil, India, Europe and the US. Their experiences show that software and technology decisions are inherently political. Whilst the adoption of Free and Open Software reflects political goals of Social Forums and can facilitate interactive communication and grassroots participation, they also can create dependence on a small group of technical experts and raise issues of unequal access to technological knowledge and resources across gender, class, racial, and geographic divides. A contribution to the WSF strategy discussions from Networked Politics Anastasia Kovada sums up discussions at the Berlin NP seminar as a contribution to the WSF Strategy consultation. Kovada argues that the future of the WSF does not lie in a simple choice between ‘open space’ and ‘actor’, but rather by envisaging WSF as a tool which is both an open space and also maximizes action. The paper draws on analysis of the free software movement to suggest some challenges for WSF in rethinking its role in terms of assisting the process of identifying commonalities from a multiplicity of actions, learning from the models of weak and individual cooperation evident in social network platforms, building a collective evaluation of reports and making extra efforts to overcome barriers to participation in Social Forums. Networks Plus? – Encountering the complexity of the Forum Graeme Chesters argues that the World Social Forum can only be understood by an analysis not just of its role within society, but also the complex dynamics within the Forum that have allowed conflictual voices and actions to co-exist. The decision to act in a decentralized, participatory and democratic manner has had a feedback loop and created “weak ties” that have reaffirmed this praxis and given the Forum a durability, strength and interconnectivity even as some groups have rejected it and have moved outside + Another U.S. is starting to happen Judy Rebick shares the optimism and inspiration that came from the US Social Forum in 2007, which rejected leadership by NGOs and celebrities and concentrated on building lasting alliances and leadership from culturally diverse grassroots groups, particularly of historically marginalized and excluded communities of color, indigenous peoples, the poor and working class. The lack of emphasis on technology, internet, and communication centers may have disappointed many media activists, but was perhaps a reflection that most of the organizing was done in face to face meetings. + Governance, Regulations and Powers on the Internet: Toward new Models of International Governance using the example of the Social Forums Christophe Aguiton & Dominique Cardon recount the history of WSF and the different ways it has organized itself, reflecting the tensions that have arisen as a result of its commitment to consensus-decision making, horizontal participation, to be both an open space and a forum for action, and refusal to allow anyone to represent WSF. Critiques have forced WSF to change and led to instability, but its adaptability suggests that it can adapt to future challenges. + Evolutionary graph theory and structural power An exploration by Lee Worden of the intersection of mathematical modeling and prefigurative horizontalist praxis

* Second line of discussion: When do new social media and political activists converge/match? It seems that social movements are no longer at the forefront innovation in the use of the new media. On the other hand, there is a proliferation of “successful” experiences of online communities that appear to share some values and organizational principles (connecting diversities, organizing distributed participation, a spirit and mechanisms of sharing and collaboration, openness …) with social movements, together with many differences. Another focus of inquiry would be the efforts to build intentionally techno-political tools, which have, in general, had limited success. Examples of both of these would be presented and discussed at the seminar. The goal of this session is to analyze different cases of building tools for political participation and democratic organization and question the strategy of social movements regarding technology. These experiences will be also compared with and related to those of the web communities. The scope is to identity among other things: “wrong/false” expectations; possible organizational and cultural limits in appropriating/using the new technologies of information; patterns of online interaction; ways of combining democratic organizing and governing with the constraints implied by the medium; conditions for an online community formation. + Video interview with Howard Rheingold on “Virtual communities, new technologies and political activism” by Mayo Fuster Morell for the Networked Politics and technology seminar. Among other specific questions, Rheingold reflects on the pros and cons of openness in virtual communities, examples of uses of technology in political mobilization, the conditions for the formation of virtual communities and the Internet as a Commons. + Where the Counterculture Met the New Economy: The WELL and the Origins of Virtual Community Fred Turner tells the intriguing history of one of the world’s first virtual communities, the Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link (WELL), which emerged in 1984 from a popular Californian magazine called the Whole Earth Catalog. The story shows how WELL had its roots in the New Communalists Movement of the 1970s which provided the methodology for the building of a non- hierarchical community across geographically dispersed area. Its success has helped model the interactive possibilities of computer-mediated communication ever since. + A note on networks Tim Costello of Global Labor Strategies shares a case study of the North American Alliance for Fair Employment to examine the nature and strengths of networks (as opposed to coalitions). He highlights networks’ strengths in terms of bringing together diverse actors, enabling flexible responses, cross-organizational leadership, experimentation and ultimately impact. Communication is key to the success of a network and Web 2.0 is opening up new possibilities in this arena. + Social Movements 2.0: Brendan Smith from Global Labor Strategies examines the potential, risks and challenges of Web 2.0 for trade unions. The ability to form groups, scale up, allow interactivity, undermine hierarchies and create communication tools cheaply provide unprecedented opportunities to unions. However there are also big challenges in turning online support into offline action, presenting complex ideas online, and addressing the risks that come from online action. There are also important challenges to unions as workers begin to organize outside traditional structures and challenge the control traditionally exercised by central organizations and movements. Selected Patterns from Liberating Voices: A Pattern Language for Communication Revolution Douglas Schuler distinguishes five language patterns in relation to Networked Politics, with each pattern describing a phenomenon or process that we believe can help promote positive social change: Civic Intelligence (mobilising effective civil society response); Public Agenda (how to change what issues are on the public agenda); Strategic Capacity (identifying and improving attributes to make good decisions); Mobile Intelligence (capacity to think in a constantly changing environment and maximising mobile technologies); and Open Action and Research Network (coordinating diverse and complex networks focused on common objectives). Indymedia and the enclosure of the Internet Indymedia programmer reflects on the challenges to activist internet tools and platforms when up against both the development budgets of the big media corporations but also their control over services and de facto standards. Better coordination and stronger alliances with the Free Software Movement will be key to facing the challenge. Facebook Facts: Finding Friends and Foes, Our Times Derek Blackadder examining the significance of social networking sites for unions notes that workers are already on the sites and are facilitating rapid coordination and mobilisation, but there are serious concerns about privacy, confidentiality and lack of control of corporate-owned communications. His own experience of being kicked off facebook twice is a salutary reminder that unions should always have a plan B. + Social Forums and Technology: Hypothesis on why online communities promoted by Social Forums don’t easily scale up Mayo Fuster Morell examines why Social Forums have been slow to adopt collaborative, participative, and online community models of web interaction. The case-study focuses on the building of OpenESF, a collaborative tool built for ESF in 2008. She examines both the support and questioning of the openesf platform, and concludes that one of the main obstacles to adoption of Online Community are divisions in organizational approaches within social movements (individual vs collective, open against closed, offline vs online). Google’s Gatekeepers Jeffrey Rosen presents the problems and dangers of Google becoming the gatekeepers to Internet content. Throughout history, the development of new media technologies has always altered the way we think about threats to free speech. As more and more information and expression migrates online, to blogs and social-networking sites and the like, the ultimate power to decide who has an opportunity to be heard, and what we may say, lies increasingly with commercial Internet service providers, search engines and other Internet companies like Google, Yahoo, AOL, Facebook and even eBay.

* Third line of discussion: New institutions - the rediscovery of the commons. There is an increasing emphasis on the concept of common goods in many different contexts and by many different social movements. Whilst in the global South it is based on defending natural resources that form the basis for existence for a huge number of poor people, it has recently emerged – with distinct arguments – as an important concept in the FOSS movement, in open knowledge movements, in environmentalist movements, in the debate about the governance of complex infrastructures of communication (including the Internet), and in many movements against the privatization of fundamental goods or services, etc. In general the concept seems to address in a new way – not simply through the state - the issue of the definition and of the governance of public goods and of a public sphere. And the re-emerging of the concept seems connected with the conditions of a networked and globalized society and form of production and culture.

+ The Commons, the state and transformative politics Hilary Wainwright looks at the potential for applying learning from the virtual commons (seen in the Free Software movement) into transformation of the State and the creation of a material commons. Key points of convergence include the need to democratise knowledge within institutions, greater collaboration between users and producers/providers, rethinking the role of labour and its potential for social creativity, and the need to construct more directly participative and power-sharing forms of organisation The political economy of peer production Michel Bauwens argues that peer to peer production is leading to the emergence of a third mode of production, a third mode of governance, and a third mode of property. It has the potential to create a Commons-based political economy, if its essential elements are incorporated. These include access to distributed technology; the existence of distributed fixed capital and distributed financial capital (or state support); and the separation of process of design from the process of physical production. + Manifesto of the Students for Free Culture The mission of the Free Culture movement is to build a bottom- up, participatory structure to society and culture, rather than a top-down, closed, proprietary structure. Through the democratizing power of digital technology and the Internet, we can place the tools of creation and distribution, communication and collaboration, teaching and learning into the hands of the common person — and with a truly active, connected, informed citizenry, injustice and oppression will slowly but surely vanish from the earth. Communication Power (video) Manuel Castells delivers a lecture from his latest book that argues that power is ‘based on the control of communication and information’ and develops the theoretical and empirical foundations of the many aspects of this argument. Manuel Castells’ work on power and communication builds on his trilogy on the information age, which established him as the seminal theorist of the ‘network society.’ Addendum: Intellectuals in an age of transition Wallerstein argues that in the context of systemic crisis, the challenge for intellectuals is to see clearly what is at stake intellectually, to measure clearly moral implications and assert moral preferences as well understand what is going on in the political sphere and how we can implement our vision of the true and the good. The struggle will require lucidity, openness, diversity, decentralized power, and people able to act as interpreters between multiple movements.

C) PARTICIPANTS BIOS - This list does not include all the participants

Christophe Aguiton (Orange R&L, European Social Forum) [email protected] Researcher at France Telecom R&D and Orange Labs. He publishes on new forms of organization, weak cooperation, and Geek culture. Aguiton is a key figure in the anti-globalization movement. He comes from IV International and SUD trade union and has worked in many international networks (Euromarches, Attac, World Social Forum, European Social Forum etc). Tim Anglade Judd Antin [email protected] PhD student at UC Berkeley's School of Information (iSchool). His research explores how social psychological incentives operate to facilitate or hinder online cooperation. http://www.technotaste.com Phoebe Ayers - Wikipedian - [email protected] Academic reference librarian, specializing in engineering and computer science resources. Co-author of How Wikipedia Works, published in 2008 by No Starch Press. http://phoebeayers.info/ Cary Bass - Wikimedia Foundation - Volunteers Coordinador – [email protected] Thiago Benicchio (World Social Forum, Brazil) [email protected] Journalist. He has been working as the communications person in the WSF office in Sao Paulo since October 2007, as part of the support team for the 2008 Global Day of Action, and using networks for politics since the early Days of Global Action in late 90’s. He is also a bike and transportation activist, strongly using internet, blogs, mailing lists, collaborative pages and other network tools for action planing, discussions and as alternative media. Marco Berlinguer (Transform! Italia) [email protected] Marco Berlinguer was born and lives in Rome. In the last few years he contributed to the foundation of Transform! Italia and of different European and International networks as: Transform! Europe, Euromovements, Eurotopia, The Network for the Charter for Another Europe, Newtorked Politics, Labor and Globalization. He is mainly engaged in studying and experimenting with new forms of connection between social and political action and research, and between new forms of production of information, knowledge and communication and the production of new forms of alternative and trasformative subjectivity. Recently he edited: “World Social forum: A Debate On the Challenges for Its Future” (2003); “La Riva sinistra del Tevere - Mappe e conflitti nel territorio metropolitano di Roma” (2004); “Pratiche costituenti - Spazi, reti, appartenenze: le politiche dei movimenti” (2005); “Parole di una nuova politica” (2007); “Networked Politics” (2007). Mark Burdett -San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center. [email protected] Nick Buxton (Transnational Institute) [email protected] Online communications officer at TNI. He has been involved in using the internet as a tool for activism since the mid-90s, when he was Communications Manager for the international Jubilee 2000 debt cancellation movement. He wrote up some of the learning from Jubilee 2000’s use of ICT in a published book “Advocacy, Activism and the Internet” (Lyceum Books, 2002). From 2004-2008, Nick lived in Bolivia working with the movement against free trade agreements, learning and writing about Bolivian social movements and their struggles for social and environmental justice in this inspiring Andean nation. He is now living in Davis, California. Scott Byrd - [email protected] Scott Byrd (UC Irvine/University of Notre Dame) is a doctoral candidate in Sociology at the University of California, Irvine. His dissertation explores transnational coalition building and collaboration among social movement organizations. Scott is currently a visiting fellow at the Center for the Study of Social Movements and Social Change and the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame where he is examining the multi-level organizational dynamics of transnational networks and the resourcing strategies they employ to manage inequalities and cultural difference. Scott’s research and writing has appeared in /Mobilization/ and /Globalizations/. He along with Elizabeth Smythe are currently co-editing a forthcoming special issue on the World Social Forums for the Journal of World System Research. He has attended and helped plan Social Forums in the US and Brazil. Chris Carlsson Writer, multimedia and graphic designer, political activist. Author of Nowtopia. http://www.chriscarlsson.com/ [email protected] Geraldo Adriano Godoy de Campos (Brazil) [email protected] Lecturer in Sociology of International Relations in ESPM, São Paulo, Brasil, and Coordinator of Interdisciplinary Convergence of the International Relations course in the same University. He is a member of the Directive Board of the Arabic Cultural Institute of Brazil and a Fellow of the Salzburg Seminar. He was formerly Coordinator of International Relations of the Participatory Budget of São Paulo. He participated in and edited the book: “In the eye of the hurricane. Rethinking the future of the left,” with Hilary Wainwright (TNI, 2006). He is co-author of the book: “Participatory Democracy and redistribution. Experiences of Participatory Budgeting in Brazil,” with Adalmir Marquetti. His areas of research-activism includes: participatory mechanisms, immigration and Bolivia. Geraldo is currently an activist on immigration issues and coordinates a course about “Social economics and cooperatives for immigrants” in São Paulo. Dominique Cardon (Orange Lab) [email protected] Sociologist working in Orange Labs and France Télécom R&D’s Usage Laboratory and associated researcher at the Centre for Research on Social Movements at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences sociales (CEMS/EHESS). His research focuses on relations between the use of new technologies and cultural and media activities. If new technology can contribute to the transformation of social relationships between individuals, it is also possible to modify the public arena, the media, and the way in which information is produced. The interconnection between sociability and the public arena is the starting point for various studies relating to cultural practices, alternative media, and “interactive” television programmes. He is particularly interested in the use of new technologies by international militants in the alterglobalization movement. Coye Cheshire (School of Information, UC Berkeley) [email protected] Interested in the social aspects of computer networks and exchange systems. His current research topics include the role of information as the object of exchange in social exchange environments and the production of collective goods in computer-mediated exchange networks. His current collaborative work focuses on the relationship between exchange structures and risk, uncertainty, trust, and cooperation (in the U.S. and across societies). Current research examines the role of social psychological incentives in various computer-mediated exchange situations. He holds a B.A. in Sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1997; an M.A. in Sociology from Stanford University, 1998; and a Ph.D. in Sociology from Stanford University, 2005. He is currently Professor at the School of Information at UC Berkeley. Website: www.ischool.berkeley.edu/people/faculty/coyecheshire Tim Costello (Global Labor Strategies, USA) [email protected] Co-Director of Global Labor Strategies an information and networking center on global labor and environmental issues. Prior to that he helped found, and was for 8 years Coordinator of, the North American Alliance for Fair Employment, a network of 65 unions and community groups in the United States and Canada organized to issues related to precarious work. Costello was himself a truck driver and workplace activist for more than 25 years. Following his years as a workplace activist, he worked as a Union Representative at SEIU Local 285 in Boston. He has extensive collective bargaining experience in a number of industries. Costello has also been a lifelong environmental activist and has helped found labor and environmental networks. He has coauthored 4 books: Common Sense for Hard Times, Building Bridges, Global Village or Global Pillage, and Globalization from Below. He has published scores of articles and reports on labor and environmental issues in The Nation, Working USA, New Labor Forum, Social Policy, Asia Times, Alternet, and many other publications around the world. He regularly posts articles on labor and environmental issues at: www. laborstrategies.blogs.com . Todd Davies (Stanford University) [email protected] A long-time activist and the Associate Director for and a Lecturer in the Symbolic Systems Program at Stanford University. His current projects include Deme (rhymes with “team”), a group-deliberation oriented, free software content management framework written in Python-Django; Whovoted.net, a new website that provides public access to voter lists in U.S. elections; and the book Online Deliberation, co-edited with Seeta Gangadharan, which will be published in early 2009. He is a past president of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, lead investigator of the Partnership for Internet Equity and Community Engagement, an organizer with LaborTech, and currently on the board of directors for the Chiapas Support Committee. Jerry Feldman (International Computer Science Institute at UC Berkeley) [email protected] Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at UC Berkeley and a member of the Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences. From 1988 to 1998 he was the Director of the International Computer Science Institute, where he is a member of the AI group. His most important current project is the Neural Theory of Language effort in natural language understanding and learning, previously known as L0. A new book on the NTL project is now available: From Molecule to Metaphor: A Neural Theory of Language, MIT Press 2006. There is also a related website m2mbook.org that has news and reviews of the book and also will hopefully help further the development of a Unified Cognitive Science. Jerry is also active in activities to enhance the availability of IT to underserved groups. His most major undertaking in this area is the Community of Practice Environment (CoPE), which aims to facilitate online group cooperation without requiring IT expertise. This is a multidisciplinary project, based at ICSI and is affiliated with the UC Berkeley CITRIS endeavor, which works on a variety of issues concerning Information Technology and Society. One of his completed projects is the Sather language, compiler, libraries and system. His personal work focused on the parallel extension which is called pSather. Website: http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/~feldman/ Blanca Gordo, PhD (Center for Latino Policy Research-ISSC - UC Berkeley) [email protected] Born in Tlaltenango, Zacatecas, a small town in the mountainous northern central part of Mexico, and moved to Pasadena, CA in the U.S.A. when she was 10 years old. At the core of her intellectual interest in technology development is her social concern for the poor. Her research concentrates on understanding the effects of the lack of technology on low income people and places, and on identifying practical civic solutions and structuring policy that intervenes positively in this process. Currently, she is working on a book titled Digital Destitution and Technology Development, which addresses two policy-relevant questions: what are the new forms of inequality that arise with the integration of technology into the productive functions of society; and under which conditions, through what social processes, and under what governance structure could social and ethnic populations living in low income places benefit from information and network technology? For the last ten years she has been involved in the development of open source software and in social experiments that involve its adoption by community-based organizations that serve “digital divide” populations that otherwise lack the resources to integrate IT into their productive work process. Currently she is Academic Coordinator and Director of the Technology and Development Research Group at UC Berkeley’s Center for Latino Policy Research (CLPR). She is also a long time member of the Berkeley Center for the Information Society (BCIS) at the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI). Email: [email protected] Website: http://clpr.berkeley.edu/ Mark Graham [email protected] Currently Senior Vice President of iVillage.com, an NBC Universal company, General Manager of Astrology.com, Chief Technical Advisor for OERCommons.org, Chair of the Advisory Board for IGC.org and a member of the APC.org Council. Mark co-founded Rojo Networks (now part of SixApart), IGC.org (PeaceNet/EcoNet), and APC.org (Association for Progressive Communications). In the early days of the commercial Internet Mark was responsible for building AOL's first gateway to Internet based services and managing technology and operations for the US side of the US-Soviet onlin venture Sovam Teleport. He was head of business development and technology for The WELL where he led development of WELL Engaged, the web-based interface for The WELL and was president of Whole Earth Networks. Mark's introduction to computer-mediated communications and networks began in 1980 when he was, for three years, a member of the technical staff of the Air Force Data Services Center in the Pentagon. Alexis Halbert (International Forum on Globalization) [email protected] Working on renewable energy options, economic models and climate change policy. http://www.ifg.org/ David Harris (Global Lives Project, Institute for the future) [email protected] Executive Director of the Global Lives Project as well as a a Research Affiliate at the Institute for the Future (IFTF). The Global Lives Project is a non-profit media organization with more than 250 volunteer collaborators in 10 countries, working to build a video library of human life experience that can be explored both online and through unique video installations. His work with IFTF focuses on social change, political economy, the global south and new media. David holds a master’s degree in Sociology from the University of São Paulo and B.A. in international development from UC Berkeley. While living in Brazil from 2004-2007, David wrote and directed newscasts for CurrentTV. His writings and photographs have been published in print with Adbusters, the Sarai Reader, Glimpse Magazine, Next American City, Focus on the Global South and online with Alternet and Grist. David’s written work has been translated into French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch and Chinese. James Jacobs [email protected] Besides being a government information librarian at Stanford University Library, James has been a long-time participant in 2 activist library groups: radical reference (http://radicalreference.info) which seeks to give activists and indy journalists research assistance through a network of over 300 librarians around the country; and Free Government Information (http://freegovinfo.info) a small group of volunteers that advocate for and track on the issues surrounding free access to and preservation of digital government information and open/transparent governance. He has also helped to start the Stanford Open Source Lab. Dave Johnson (Blogger) [email protected] Jeff Juris (Arizona State University) [email protected] Jeffrey S. Juris is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Arizona State University. He received his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley in May 2004, and has also served as a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and the Institute for Social Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Juris is a co-author of Global Democracy and the World Social Forums. His latest book, Networking Futures: the Movements against Corporate Globalization, explores the cultural logic and politics of transnational networking among anti- corporate globalization activists in Barcelona, including their participation in mass actions and transnational networks such as Peoples Global Action and the World Social Forum. Most recently, Juris has continued his ongoing research on the World Social Forum process, and he is currently conducting new ethnographic fieldwork on grassroots media activism and autonomy in Mexico City. He also serves on the Editorial Board of Resistance Studies Magazine and is a member of several activist research networks, including Sociologists Without Borders and the North America Chapter of the Network Institute on Global Democratization. Dorothy Kidd (University of San Francisco) [email protected] Chair and Associate Professor at Dept of Media Studies at the University of San Francisco, received her Ph.D. in Communication from Simon Fraser University. She has published in the area of political economy of media, feminist media and social change and community media. Her articles have been published in both academic and popular edited books and journals. She has also worked extensively in community radio and video production. Her areas of interest include democratic and participatory communications and media and globalization. Website: http://mediaresearchhub.ssrc.org/dorothy-kidd/person_view Mike Linksvayer (Vice President, Creative Commons) [email protected] Joined Creative Commons as CTO. Previously he co-founded Bitzi. He has over ten years’ experience as an enterprise software, web, and multimedia developer and consultant and holds a B.A. in economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Jamie McClelland (May First) [email protected] Co-founder of May First/People Link, an Internet services and technology organization with the mission of enhancing the Internet as a tool for mass communication and organizing, developing new technologies and uses for it, and helping social justice movements use it effectively. Rob Miller (Openplans) [email protected] Openplans is the networking platform adopted by the European Social Forum and World Social Forum. Louis Montagne [email protected] Louis Montagne can outline his profile in just 3 tags – technical, entrepreneur and community. As an engineer, he has a strong technical background allowing him to be CTO in two different companies, AF83 and faberNovel. He has founded two companies of his own, Bearstech and AF83, and spends a lot of time working on community-driven projects and on how to enhance the experience of online communities. He is a Member of the Board of Silicon Sentier (http://siliconsentier.org), coordinator of the Cap Digital cluster’s commission on collaboration and Open Source (TIC). (http://www.capdigital.com), a member of APRIL ( french FLOSS association) (http://april.org), and a BarCamp organizer (http://barcamp.org). AF83 is a young and active company of 50 people working on designing connected social, media and live applications. (http://af83.com). Bearstech is a free software company, a cooperative which as a core activity offers services around hosting and has different R&D activities, one being the “Hackable devices” : devices made to be hacked and modified. (http://bearstech.com) Mayo Fuster Morell (Euromovements (Barcelona), European University Institute (Florence)) [email protected] Mayo is part of the first generation born in democracy after the Franco dictatorship in Spain. Mayo became active politically with the Catalan Global Resistance Movement (Barcelona) and Peoples Global Action. In 2002, she concentrated my activism on action-research issues mainly though building online spaces and tools for the systematization of the knowledge generated in political mobilization processes (Moviments.info Investigaccio.org Euromovements.info) and the publication of a Guide for Social Transformation in Catalonia (Ed. Edicions Col.lectives) and Investigaccio (Ed. Viejo Topo). Since 2006 she have been pursuing a Phd research at the Social and Political Science Department at the European University Institute in Florence. Her thesis is on Online Creation Communities: Democratic Quality in Knowledge-Making Processes (onlinecreation.info). It includes case studies of Social Forums Memory and Wikipedia. Her supervisor is Donatella Della Porta. Mayo am (happily!) visiting the School of information at UC Berkeley through December 2008, sponsored by Coye Cheshire and Howard Rheingold. Mayo is a member of the social movements working group and the research project on Political Participation and the Internet in Spain (www.polnetuab.net) at the Institut de Govern i Politiques Publiques (Univ. Automona de Barcelona). She put into practice the reflections coming out of her research in the creation of an Open E- library On Social Transformation (openelibrary.info), by contributing to the Webteam of the European Social Forum and the World Social Forum (openesf.net), and via the Networked-Politics.info project. Website: www.onlinecreation.info Ben Moskowitz (Students for Free Culture) [email protected] Seeta Peñ–a Gangadharan – [email protected] PhD candidate in communication at Stanford University, specializes in media and communications policy and uses an interdisciplinary approach to understand the role of the public in policymaking. Currently, Seeta is investigating the ways in which the public participates and contributes to the rulemaking process at the Federal Communications Commission. Other research interests include: media globalization, political economy of media and culture, and new media studies. Seeta’s past research has focused on the rise of transnational advocacy in the communication rights movement, broadband activism and public service commitments, race and class in digital copyright debate, and pre-digital network culture. Since 1995, Seeta has been involved with independent media, public broadcasting, media and communications policy research, and media activism. Seeta is the co-founder and current board member of the Center for International Media Action. Other past experiences include: research assistant, Civic Space, KQED Public Broadcasting; program consultant, Active Voice/Television Race Initiative; research assistant, Institute for Public Policy Research; and co-founder, WireTap. She holds a master’s degree in Media and Communications from the London School of Economics and Political Science and received a B.A. in International Relations and Communication from Stanford University. Jeff Perlstein 415-225-6673 [email protected] Jeff has been very involved in the work of social movements and technology/new media in the States, starting most significantly with co-founding Indymedia.org and the Seattle Independent Media Center in the lead up to the anti-WTO mobilizations in '99. After two years of working with numerous IMC's in the U.S. and internationally, he became director of Media Alliance in the Bay Area - the longest running regional media activist project in the U.S. He co-founded the Media Action Grassroots Network (MAG-Net), a national network of regional media justice hubs throughout the U.S. He spent one year working with The Newspaper Guild coordinating online strategy for their organizing campaigns on behalf of journalists at 11 Bay Area papers. For the last year he has coordinated the Media Policy Working Group of Grantmakers in Film & Electronic Media, an affinity group of funders making grants to media content, infrastructure and policy projects. Mark Randazzo (Funders Network on Trade and Globalization) [email protected] Mark Randazzo has worked for over three decades to strengthen social movements and international networks through organizing, program management and grant- making in Africa, Asia and the U.S. He has an MA in Development Studies and has worked for many non-profit organizations, including Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy, United Support of Artists for Africa, Oxfam America and JustAct/Youth Action for Global Justice. Mark has organized the work of FNTG since 2001. Judy Rebick (Ramble, Canada) [email protected] Born in the U.S. but moved to Canada at age 10. Judy holds the CAW Sam Gindin Chair in Social Justice and Democracy,at Ryerson University in Toronto. This is the only union endowed chair in North America and its mandate is to create Ryerson as a hub of interaction between social justice activists and academics. As part of that mandate, she is part of organizing the Toronto Social Forum. Judy is founder of www.rabble.ca, Canada’s irreverant independent online news and discussion site. Founded during the protests against the FTAA in Quebec City, rabble continues to be the primary news and discussion site for progressive people in Canada. Judy is the author of several books and articles, most recently Ten Thousand Roses: The Making of a Feminist Revolution (Penguin 2005). She is a long- time activist in the feminist movement and was President of Canada’s largest women’s group and a leader of the pro- choice movement. She also was founder of the New Politics Initiative, an attempt to bring new politics into the electoral arena in Canada. During the 1990s, Judy was the host of a national TV show on CBC and a frequent commentator in broadcast and print in the mainstream media. Gindin Chair [www.ryerson.ca/socialjustice]. Darian Rodriguez Heyman [email protected] Last Executive Director of Craigslist Foundation: Providing knowledge, resources, and visibility to the next generation of nonprofit leaders. He is Commissioner & Chair of the Operations Committee, SF Dept. of the Environment. Elijah Saxon (Riseup) [email protected] Elijah is a graduate student in sociology and part of the Riseup collective. Doug Schuler (Public Spheres Project) [email protected] Masters degree in Software Engineering from Seattle University and a masters degree in Computer Science from the University of Washington. He’s a former chair of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR), a founding member of the Seattle Community Network (SCN), and a faculty member (Evening and Weekend Studies) of The Evergreen State College where he teaches and learns about technology and social implications of the network society. Doug’s new book, Liberating Voices: A Pattern Language for Communication Revolution, which will be published in November 2008, contains 136 patterns. The book was written by Doug and over 80 contributors. His recent books, co-edited with Peter Day, are Shaping the Network Society: The New Role of Civil Society in Cyberspace (MIT Press) and Community Practice in the Network Society: Local Action / Global Interaction (Routledge). He also co-edited Cyberculture: The Key Concepts (Routledge) with David Bell, Brian Loader, and Nicholas Pleace. His book New Community Networks: Wired for Change (Addison-Wesley) is freely available online in both English and Spanish. For over 20 years Doug has been engaged with issues relating to society and computing, mostly as an activist with CPSR. He has worked on many CPSR projects including all eight of CPSR’s biannual symposia on the “Directions and Implications of Advanced Computing” (DIAC) conferences, which provide a public forum for social implications of computers. Doug is currently the Program Director for CPSR’s Public Sphere Project where he is coordinating a participatory action / research project on civic intelligence. Doug has given presentations in Africa, Asia, Europe, and South and North America on issues related to democratic, equitable and sustainable uses of technology. Brendan Smith (Progressive Technology Project, USA) [email protected] Legal analyst, activist and journalist. He is co-founder of Global Labor Strategies, co-director of the UCLA Law School’s Globalization and Labor Standards Project, and a consulting partner with the Progressive Technology Project. He has worked previously for U.S. Congressman Bernie Sanders (I-VT), both as a senior legislative aide and staff on the U.S. House Banking Committee, as well as for a broad range of trade unions, grassroots groups and progressive politicians. He is a graduate of Cornell Law School. Brendan has published two books, In the Name of Democracy (Holt/Metropolitan) and Globalization From Below (South End), and co- produced the PBS documentary Global Village or Global Pillage?. He runs two blogs: GLS’s Global Labor Blog and PTP’s Reverb Crib Notes. His commentary has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, CBS News.com, YahooNews and the Baltimore Sun Times. He is a member of CWA Local 9119. David Solnit [email protected] As a global justice and anti-war organizer, I helped organize the shutdowns of the WTO in Seattle in 1999 with the Direct Action Network and in San Francisco Financial District the day after Iraq was invaded in 2003 with Direct Action to Stop the War. I am a street theater maker, puppeteer and a co-founder of Art and Revolution, using culture, art, giant puppets and theater in mass mobilizations, for popular education and as an organizing tool. I also give direct action, strategic organizing and cultural resistance trainings. I edited Globalize Liberation: How to Uproot the System and Build a Better World. With Army veteran Aimee Allison I co-authored Army of None: Strategies to Counter Military Recruitment, End War, and Build a Better World. My forthcoming book, co-edited with sister Rebecca Solnit is The Battle of the Story of the Battle of Seattle (AK Press 2009). I am a fellow at the Oakland Institute, a policy think tank linked with activist networks and social movements. I currently organize with Courage to Resist, supporting GI resistance and promoting people power strategies to end the Iraq war and occupation. I organize against Chevron corporation with antiwar, climate justice, environmental justice and international solidarity groups. I am part of the Seattle WTO People's History Project (RealBattleInSeattle.org). Hilary Wainwright (Red Pepper, Transnational Institute) [email protected] I was born in Leeds and now live mainly in Manchester (and a little in London!) I’m co-editor, with Oscar Reyes, of Red Pepper, a monthly, independent green and feminist left magazine, based in Britain but with an transnational perpective (see www.redpepper.org.uk). And I work for the New Politics Programme of the Transnational Institute, mainly on the theme of rethinking political organisation but also on the theory and practice - and limits- of participatory democracy (www.tni.org). I’ve written or co-written several books relevant, even if tangentially, to the work of networked-politics. These include (with Sheila Rowbotham and Lynne Segal) “Beyond the Fragments: Feminism and the Making of Socialism,” “Arguments for a New Left: Answering the Free Market Right” and most recently “Reclaim the State: Experiments in Popular Democracy.” A long time ago I also wrote several books on innovative experiments within the UK trade unions and also about the experience of the Greater London Council (glc) for which I co-ordinated a unit which was responsible for unlocking the resources and support of the local state for trade union and community struggles and alternatives. It was called the Popular Planning Unit (those were the days!). In 1986 Mrs Thatcher literally abolished the GLC - because of initiatives like the Popular Planning Unit. Otherwise my jobs have been mainly in universities (but trying to unlock their research resources for activist research with grass roots trade unions and other movements). I have also worked, on and off, as a freelance writer for the Guardian. Katharine Wallerstein (Global Commons Foundation) [email protected] Co-founder and Executive Director of The Global Commons Foundation, a collective of revolutionary-minded scholars, artists, organizers, and other individuals creating platforms for reflection, discussion, education, and action on alternatives to global capitalism with a focus on new knowledge and perspectives from the Global south. Global Commons takes seriously the notion that the world system is in crisis and that we are in a moment of historical transition in which the production of alternatives is of paramount importance and urgency. www.globalcommonsfoundation.org. She was previously Director of Programs at the Sally and Don Lucas Artists Programs at Montalvo, an international residency center and set of programs for artists and thinkers that she was instrumental in launching. She has a Master’s degree in History from Duke University for work on modern cultural history and visual culture. She earned her Bachelor’s Degree at Oberlin College in Sociology/Anthropology. She continues to write on oppositional identities and the cultures of social movements. Katharine is active the World Social Forum and the movement for an alternative globalization. She lives in San Francisco. Steve Weber (Institute of International Studies at UC Berkeley) [email protected] A specialist in International Relations, is Professor of Political Science at UC Berkeley, an associate with the International Computer Science Institute, and affiliated faculty of the Energy and Resources Group. His areas of special interest include international and national security; the impact of technology on national systems of innovation and defense; and the political economy of knowledge- intensive industries, particularly software and pharmaceuticals. Trained in history and international development at Washington University, and medicine and political science at Stanford, Weber joined the Berkeley faculty in 1989. In 1992 he served as special consultant to the president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London. He has held academic fellowships with the Council on Foreign Relations and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He is a member of the Global Business Network in San Francisco, California; and Senior Policy Advisor at the Glover Park Group in Washington DC. He actively consults with government agencies, private multinational firms, and international non-governmental organizations on foreign policy issues, risk analysis, strategy, and forecasting. Weber’s major publications include Cooperation and Discord in U.S.-Soviet Arms Control (Princeton University Press); the edited book Globalization and the European Political Economy (Columbia University Press); and numerous articles and chapters in the areas of U.S. foreign policy, the political economy of trade and finance, politics of the post-Cold War world, and European integration, in both scholarly and popular venues. His book The Success of Open Source (Harvard University Press) is the leading study of the political economy of the open source software community. He is currently completing a book with co-author Jonathan Sallet, Meeting of the Minds: Open-ness and Innovation in the Modern Economy; and a book with co-author Bruce Jentleson, The New Age of Ideology: How America can Compete in the Global Marketplace of Ideas. Cindy Wiesner (GGJ Miami) [email protected] A queer working class Latina originally from Hollywood, CA. She has been a community activist and organizer for more than 18 years. She has organized with HERE (Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union) Local 2850 and POWER (People Organized to Win Employment Rights). Trainer and a member of the board of directors for GenerationFIVE. Cindy worked with the Miami Workers Center and currently is the political coordinator for Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJ). Grassroots Global Justice is a national US-based alliance of community organizations, regional and national networks that believes in connecting movements across sectors, issues, and language to build the power and base of the peoples most impacted by neo-liberalism, imperialism and ecological destruction. She represents GGJ on the National Planning Committee of the US Social Forum and also on the Hemispheric Council of the Americas Social Forum. Lee Worden (Center for Tranformative Research) [email protected] Lee Worden wears a globalization protestor hat and a mathematician hat. He has worked at various places including UC Berkeley and the Santa Fe Institute. His research includes models for emergence of cooperation, ecological dynamics, and consensus formation on social network structures. Eddie Yuen [email protected] A writer, sociologist, archivist and activist based in the SF Bay Area. He is the co- editor of Confronting Capitalism: Dispatches from a Global Movement (Soft Skull Press, 2003). He is currently the associate producer of Against the Grain, a radio and web media project on KPFA FM.

D) PRACTICAL INFOS: HOW TO GET TO PLACES? Contact cell phone: 415-518-9297

FRIDAY Dec 5 < 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm > Public event at San Francisco: Movement Organizing, Technology and Networked Politics Mission Cultural Center Gallery 2868 Mission Street, between 24th and 25th How to get there To get there take Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) to 24th street stop. You will get out on Mission. Bart map: http://www.bart.gov/stations/index.aspx 6 & 7 NETWORKED POLITICS & TECHNOLOGY SEMINAR School of Information -UC Berkeley 102 Berkeley CA 94720-4600 School of Information is at South Hall. It is in front of the Campanile (tall o'clock towel)

South Hall (School of Information) at Google Map: http://maps.google.com/maps? f=l&hl=en&geocode=&q=South+Hall,+UC&sll=37.870856,- 122.258306&sspn=0.007758,0.019312&ie=UTF8&near=Berkeley,+CA&mrt=kmlkmz&ll=37.874413,- 122.258241&spn=0.007351,0.019312&z=16&msa=0&msid=104640425587560232061.0004398462e137accbf5f Directions to campus By BART From San Francisco: 1) Board BART and transfor at the 12th Street or MacArthur station to a Richmond train or for direct passage (except on Sundays) board a Richmand train in San Francisco. 2) Get off at the Berkeley Station (aka Downtown Berkeley). 3) Walk east on Center Street for 1 block to the campus, then continue on central path through campus. 4) The School of Information is in South Hall, at approximately C/D 4 on the map, across from the Main Library Cabs: San Francisco cabs: (415) 333-3333 Berkeley cabs: (510) 652-1200, 774-7575, 395-0000