Cover Photo: Pont'Ecciu, 1st century AD Roman bridge, restored and enlarged in 1157 during the period of the Giudicati, Allai, Sardinia. CC-SA 2.0 Carole Raddato I've spent most of my life trying to understand how information technology and people interact. Technology does what it says…
Cover Photo: Detail, door-hinge, inscribed with the name of Entemena of Lagash, c. 2400 BCE, from Iraq. Pergamon Museum, Berlin, Germany. CC-BY-SA 4.0 Osama SM Amin FRCP FOSDEM is a two day event where the Free University of Brussels (Specifically the ULB, or Université libre de Bruxelles, not to…
This blog has a new home. After years on WordPress shared hosting, it now runs on self-hosted infrastructure. Ghost on a VPS I manage, backed up to encrypted offsite storage, federated via ActivityPub. The name is new too. "Techverständiger" served its purpose, but it was always more job…
I'm writing this article within the context of the SOAM "RE:FUND OUR DIGITAL FUTURE: REIMAGINING FUNDING ARCHITECTURES FOR PUBLIC INTEREST TECHNOLOGY” residency program I'm taking part in to order to create a new speculative institutional model with the goal of empowering open hardware infrastructure…
The United Kingdom has just delivered the world's most expensive demonstration of why throwing technology at social problems doesn't work. After two years of ignoring expert advice and billions in compliance costs, the UK's Online Safety Act has achieved the opposite of its stated…
I'm writing this article within the context of the SOAM "RE:FUND OUR DIGITAL FUTURE: REIMAGINING FUNDING ARCHITECTURES FOR PUBLIC INTEREST TECHNOLOGY” residency program I'm taking part in to order to create a new speculative institutional model with the goal of empowering open hardware infrastructure…
First off- excited to announce that I've been accepted into the SOAM Virtual Residency program with the theme ""RE:FUND OUR DIGITAL FUTURE: REIMAGINING FUNDING ARCHITECTURES FOR PUBLIC INTEREST TECHNOLOGY". I applied because I thought this theme would be perfect to try to address the…
Ever since its eponymous report was published nearly a decade ago, the "roads and bridges" metaphor has dominated how many working with FOSS software, including I, think about open source sustainability. Nadia Asparouhova's influential 2016 report painted a picture of critical digital infrastructure that is prone…