[FSUG-Bangalore] A Social Web meetup this Wednesday 6 pm

[Praveen A]

[sending without attachment]

Social Networking (most of the time people refer to facebook and
twitter) has become an important medium for people to organize and
protest. But it is foolish to trust a few companies like facebook,
twitter and google to protect the medium. We have to build something
that does not depend on a few companies and which gives users the
power over their data.

Eben explains how powerful this medium has become.

Quoting from Eben's excellent speech "Why Political Liberty Depends on
Software Freedom More Than Ever"

Software is what the 21st century is made of. What steel was to the
economy of the 20th century, what steel was to the power of the 20th
century, what steel was to the politics of the 20th century, software
is now. It is the crucial building block, the component out of which
everything else is made, and, when I speak of everything else, I mean
of course freedom, as well as tyranny, as well as business as usual,
as well as spying on everybody for free all the time.

In other words, the very composition of social life, the way it works
or doesn’t work for us, the way it works or doesn’t work for those who
own, the way it works or doesn’t work for those who oppress, all now
depends on software.

At the other end of this hastening process, when we started our little
conspiracy, you and me and everyone else, you remember how it worked,
right? I mean, it was a simple idea. Make freedom, put freedom in
everything, turn freedom on. Right? That was how the conspiracy was
designed, that’s how the thing is supposed to work. We did pretty well
with it and about half-way through stage one, my dear friend Larry
Lessig figured out what was going on for us and he wrote his first,
quite astonishing, book “Code”, in which he said that code was going
to do the work of law in the 21st century. That was a crucial idea out
of which much else got born, including Creative Commons and a bunch of
other useful things. The really important point now is that code does
the work of law and the work of the state. And code does the work of
revolution against the state. And code does all the work that the
state does trying to retain its power in revolutionary situations.

But code also organizes the people in the street. We’re having
enormous demonstration around the world right now of the power of
code, in both directions."

For the full speech see
Transcript http://www.softwarefreedom.org/events/2011/fosdem/moglen-fosdem-keynote.html
Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BSLBvwyUEs

You might have seen Vignesh's mail from about the protest against
Internet censorship. That is the short term goal, fight the imminent
danger to our freedoms. While diaspora, friendica and libertree are
efforts in the long term how we want to preserve our freedoms. See

https://joindiaspora.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/images/scaled_full_5aff7affa991a5fa3678.jpg

 (I saw it in my diaspora stream).

So Social Web (Web, because it is a network of federated networks)
efforts like diaspora
and Freedom Box are the long term efforts in this fight for freedom in
the internet. We need to do both. Protest will get us people's
attention and we may be able to stop some bad things, but at the end
we should not lose sight of where our real goals are, when we will be
deciding the agenda. When the government cannot ban a social network
by banning one website. Since disapora is the internet itself they
will have to shut down the whole internet. That is what we are
building with The Social Web.

For those who are new to the social web idea, it is democratisation of
the social networks, decentralisation of power to control the social
network from facebooks to twitters to you and me. What
diaspora/friendica/libertree provides is a way for us to install our
own social networks. Think of it like wordpress software and
blogger.com or livejournal.com

Its Free Software community's answer to facbooks, twitters and google pluses.

Read their wikipedia entries to learn more
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendica
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_%28software%29
http://libertreeproject.org/

Meeting is suggested at 6 pm Wednesday (Since I'm in Bangalore on
Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday I thought of calling for a meeting on
Wednesday. Those who are in Bangalore please organize more meet ups in
different places in convenient times).

Tell us if you are coming by visiting this link
http://www.meetup.com/Diaspora/Bangalore-IN/372282/ Please also
suggest some central place for this meet up.


-- 
പ്രവീണ്‍ അരിമ്പ്രത്തൊടിയില്‍
You have to keep reminding your government that you don't get your
rights from them; you give them permission to rule, only so long as
they follow the rules: laws and constitution.