- Read: Degrowth, green energy, social equity, and circular economy
- Read: Freeing Ourselves From The Clutches Of Big Tech
- Finally built my little electro synth kit today.
- (It was a Christmas present last year…)
- It was loads of fun to do.
- Great soldering practice for a soldering newbie.
- Lots of different components to solder together in various different ways.
- The Pinecil worked great.
- Putting together the EIGHT Electro Synth
Kind: Articles
- Read: Neither Vertical Nor Horizontal
- Picked it up again after a while.
- Listened: A blast in Manhattan
- First episode of The Santiago Boys.
- Really well made.
- This first episode covers a lot of the geopolitics and general shittery of the CIA and corporations in South America.
- Read: Doughnut Economics
- Listened: Building Lifeboats to the Emerging Futures
- Really interesting discussion. Lots of quotable moments (but I was listening while doing yard work so didn’t jot them down).
- Philanthropy.
- Theory of change. Margaret Wheatley and the Two Loop Model.
- Some discussion on hope in a troubled world. I liked the definition of hope described, I’ll need to go back and pick that out.
- Also a mention of the New Constellations project, which I had forgotten, did something in Barrow a few years back.
- Read: The great carbon divide
- Carbon inequality and wealth inequality.
- “the richest 1% of the population produced as much carbon pollution in one year as the 5 billion people who make up the poorest two-thirds”
- Listened: Movement and Stillness
Continue reading “Reclaiming the stacks: September 2023 roundup”
It all comes from the angle of reclaiming the stacks – expropriating information and communications technology from Big Tech and returning it to the people.
Continue reading “Reclaiming the stacks: August 2023 roundup”
This is the second in a series of regular monthly updates exploring the intersection of ecosocialism and ICT. In it I look at the problems of digital capitalism and positive actions we can support now that embody digital ecosocialism. I also explore readings and thoughts on the theoretical side of things, particularly with an eye on transition: how we get from (digital) capitalism to (digital) ecosocialism.
The media has made much of one recent example: a startup company heating public swimming pools with the excess heat from small, local data centres that process machine learning and artificial intelligence. At face value, the story of the ‘digital boiler’ is fun, innovative and feels like positive action. But in the face of catastrophic climate change, driven by capitalism and aided and abetted by the Big Five tech companies (Alphabet, Apple, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft), is this kind of activity enough? Commenting on the inadequacy of dislocated, parochial attempts to challenge capitalism, Jodi Dean famously remarked: “Goldman Sachs doesn’t care if you raise chickens”. Relocating this sentiment to the capital-driven digitalization of the world, we can ask: “Does Amazon care how you heat swimming pools?”

The IPCC is unequivocal as to the cause of the crises of our times: human activity. We are altering the planet to such a degree that the change has been proposed as its own geological epoch: the Anthropocene. Others hone this further, asserting that it is not the presence of humans per se that is the cause, but the very particular configuration of our recent history: capitalism and growth. We are in the Capitalocene, and only an alternative to capitalism will get us out of it.
In all of this, one of the sectors with a major role to play is ICT. Computing and communication devices are now integral to our society – from our phones to our computers to the servers and the global infrastructure that networks them together. ICT has a significant environmental impact of its own through the lifecycle of its physical devices, but also an enabling and structural effect on the impact of other sectors and society in general. ICT plays a huge role in how the world operates.
Unfortunately, much of ICT has been captured for capitalist ends. Big Tech corporations are some of the largest in the world. They represent the majority of companies to have ever attained over $1 trillion in market capitalization, and they have resulted in “an intensification of labour and environmental exploitation on a planetary scale“. The paradigm of digital capitalism needs to be challenged and reversed if we are to stand a chance of combatting climate change. What can challenge its dominance?
Sustainable development and the sustainable development goals are well-known organising principles that aim to put people and planet first. The field of ICT for sustainability (ICT4S) explores the principles of sustainable development as applied to ICT. Yet, as with sustainable development as a whole, there are various approaches to ICT4S, and the majority either sustain the status quo or offer only mild reforms – such as repurposing excess computational heat rather than questioning its presence in the first place. Much more transformative strategies are needed to make the changes that we need in the timeframe that we have.
On the radical end of the spectrum of sustainable development lies ecosocialism. It melds socialist and environmental politics, with a strong anti-colonial and anti-capitalist sentiment that moves beyond private profit to socially useful and ecocentric production. Digital ecosocialism is the extension of ecosocialist ideals into the digital realm. It is ICT that embeds the values of planetary stability, social equity and agency throughout the sector. Many of the building blocks are here already: for example libre software and creative commons licenses. Digital ecosocialism combines resistance and regulation with the building of alternatives. Examples of digital ecosocialism in action include the cultivation of platform cooperatives; the socialisation of physical infrastructure; federated and democratically governed social media platforms; the building of data commons; the right to repair; tech worker unions; and activism against the excesses of Big Tech.
Perhaps one day in a post-capitalist future community-run digital boilers will power municipal infrastructure, but right now Amazon does not care how we heat swimming pools. Big Tech will care about strike action and worker empowerment; campaigns against exploitative practices; the deconstruction of intellectual property laws; regulation against monopolistic practices and early obsolescence; technology appropriation for the common good, and digital degrowth. As concerned ICT workers we need to urgently agitate, organise and educate to foster digital ecosocialism.
Sunday
+ [[Energy storage]] and [[grid balancing]].
+ [[Associational socialism]]
+ The [[Iceberg Model]]
+ The [[water cycle]] is a complex system.
Monday
+ [[Stokes Croft Land Trust]]
+ [[Community land trusts]]
Tuesday
+ [[An Essay on Liberation]]
Thursday
+ Read: [[What Does An Ecological Civilization Look Like?]]
Friday
+ Listened: [[Cuba’s Life Task]]
+ [[Conversations with Gamechangers]] is pretty awesome lineup.
Saturday
+ Did the [[parkrun]].
+ Read: [[David Bollier, P2P Models interview on digital commons]]
+ Read: [[A Syrian democratic social economy in the making]]
+ [[Cooperatives in Rojava]]. [[Aborîya Jin]].