tziteras

Here is a quick recap since it's been a while I've written here (I've written a bit on my blog in n-1.cc though). When the spanish protest camps made their decision to shift focus from camps to assemblies in each neighbourhood, back in June, I started going to my local commission meetings. It was a brilliant experience, to sit with other spaniards and see what we actually wanted to implement from our experience of the camp. I took part in the culture group and talked about participative art, and how you can use flashmobs and quite innocent actions to get people involved, or at least questioning things. We organised a cabaret where we brought together lots of local people for a memorable performance in our local square. This was in Sant Andreu del Palomar. I've since moved to the city centre, so am too far away, but I have about 4 different assemblies to choose from here, and getting energy to get stuck in a bit more. Sant Andreu in Barcelona is an area with small st...

[IN PROGRESS - need to add links. Sorry but I'm into participative process, please comment and help me write this! I was just thinking about this thing about robots - online or physical, or more tentacular cybernetic systems like what international corporations and/or tech companies have built up around us over the years and how it interacts with us. I felt I should come and write it down.] There is terrible totalitarian news starting to edge it's way in to passive acceptance, from the government injustice and brutality across the world, and the international coordination of this violence (that goes all the way to the top), from that to the drones that patrol prisons and are made to kill people. I've spent a little time working with electronics, making and conceiving of materials to make a symbiotic musical, solar, improviser bot, and programming software based bots to guide kids around a 3D reconstruction of Sydenham Crystal Palace in London (and Second Life). I learn...

My predictions for Spain are pretty bleak at the moment, although I have some hope. I predict the right wing Partido Popular, founded by a member of Fascist dictator Franco's government, will win these elections. The PP will have none of the PSOE's qualms in dislodging the protestors once results are in. There will be some trouble with police and law in order to empty the squares, and for some time, things will return to normal. These are beautiful protests – more a spontaneous group of people just expressing discontent, and trying to find alternatives to the way things are. They now reach 300 cities and towns where people are camped in the main squares, and the evening "caceroladas" (some sonic discontent making at 9pm with cans and pots) reach every street in Barcelona. I think the camp's future is uncertain at the moment, but that a movement may have been born, a movement that will oppose or maybe even cohabit with the old order in new creativ...

An article by Richard Heinberg, " Economic History in 10 Minutes " which I read the other day, inspired me to look a bit more into more elaborate economies than simply gift/tribal based, that might escape people's thoughts as they search for alternatives to the current (failed?) economic system.  His article is a good summary of a lot of peak oiler economics although I've heard him and others say these things before lots of times and in different ways. Heinberg points to our  addiction to fossil fuels as the central reason for lots of current problems, and the article treasures hunter gatherer cultures with their gift economies as a possible future or as something to move towards. Doing something in 10 minutes is bound to leave something out. It would be easy to believe, reading his article, that we once were all happy and shared everything, then - boom! - iPods. (He actually says " So letting go of the gift economy was a trade-off for progress—houses, cities,...