We are frequently told to consume responsibly (organic, local, coop). And it's common techies ask you to use responsibly: choosing free/open source software. Still, I invite you to think for one moment on the infrastructure behind our daily work. Technology is not neutral, but inherently political, and so are the apps that we use everyday. This presentation reviews the problems of the centralized infrastructure we tipically use, and the emerging decentralized alternatives. Note: The CC BY license applies to the text, not to the images, which are used under Fair Use.

1. Infrastructure Matters
Samer Hassan
@sh3v3k
Berkman Center at Harvard
Universidad Complutense de Madrid

2. Consuming responsibly

3. Using responsibly

4. Legal Context
City
State
European Union

5. Technology is Political

6. Technical Context
App
Platform
Infrastructure

7. Web 2.0: Platforms

8. Web 2.0: Platforms

9. Web 2.0: Platforms

10. How bad is it?

11. Centralization
● For-profit
● Surveillance
● Monopoly
● Centralised Control
● Top-down
● US-centric
● Proprietary Software
● Single Ownership

12. This was different...

13. Decentralization
● Privacy
● Anonymity
● Decentralised Control
● Bottom-up
● Diversity

14. Emerging Alternatives

15. http://swellrt.org http://teem.works

16. Remember the Infrastructure!

17. Thanks!
Samer Hassan
@sh3v3k
Berkman Center at Harvard
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
This presentation is a composition of text and images. The text is released as Creative Commons Attribution
4.0 International. The images are mostly copyrighted and used under Fair Use. The image logos belong to
their corresponding brands/projects/institutions. Sources of other images: Mercado de Economía Social de
Madrid, Dries Buytaert Blog, P2Pvalue, Baran (1964), Wikipedia and unknown others