The goal of this “syllabus” is to identify some themes that drive Data Together as a project & as a politics, and to find some readings that help us understand those themes better.

Themes

• A view on the decentralized (distributed) web (June 26)
  🎬 Recorded Call   🗒 Notes
• Ownership (July 24)
  🎬 Recorded Call   🗒 Notes
• Commons (August 21)
  🎬 Recorded Call   🗒 Notes
• Centralization as opposed to Decentralization (and peer-to-peer, federation) (September 4)
  🎬 Recorded Call   🗒 Notes
• Privacy (September 25)
  🎬 Recorded Call   🗒 Notes
• Justice (October 30)
  🎬 Recorded Call   🗒 Notes

Sessions

A view on the decentralized (distributed) web

Just getting us all on the same page about this very, err… central question, and also working through distinctions between similar terms (especially) decentralized, distributed, federated, p2p.

Readings:

• Brewster Kahle (2015) “Locking the Web Open, a Call for a Distributed Web”
  • Alternate: Brewster Kahle (2015) “Locking the Web Open: A Call for a Decentralized Web” (longer form)
• André Staltz (2017) “The Web Began Dying in 2014, Here’s How”
• Paul Baran (1964) On Distributed Communications (No. RM-4230-PR). Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation. doi:10.7249/RM3420
  • Alternate: Paul Baran (1964) On Distributed Communications Networks. IEEE Transactions on Communications Systems, 12(1). doi:10.1109/TCOM.1964.1088883

Ownership

Sometimes when we talk about Data Together we use phrases like “communities taking ownership of their data”. What do we mean, and why is this language important to us?

How should we think about “ownership” as a value, and in what ways are individual and collective ownership different from each other?

Readings:

• Selections from Ours to Hack and to Own (2016) edited by Trebor Scholz and Nathan Schneider (WorldCat)
  • Chapter 3: Trebor Scholz - How Platform Cooperativism Can Unleash the Network
  • Chapter 2: Nathan Schneider - The Meanings of Words
  • Chapter 12: Dmytri Kleiner - Counterantidisintermediation
    • See also: P2P Foundation wiki entry on Counter-Anti-Disintermediation
• Anne-Mette Albrechtslund (2017) Negotiating ownership and agency in social media: Community reactions to Amazon’s acquisition of GoodReads. First Monday, may 2017. doi:10.5210/fm.v22i5.7095
• Possession is Nine Tenths of the Law. (2018, July 15). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.
  • See also: Trademarks, copyrights and common law: possession is only nine-tenths of the law
  • See also x2: The Problematic Concept of Possession in the DCFR: Lessons from Law and Economics of Possession

Commons

Sometimes, instead of ownership, we talk about a “commons”. How ought the commons to be governed, and by whom?

Readings:

• Elinor Ostrom (1990) Governing the Commons Chapter 1 and/or 2 (Archive.org) (WorldCat) (Amazon)
• Peter Linebaugh (2014) Chapter 9: “Enclosures from the Bottom Up,” in Stop, Thief! (WorldCat) (Academia.edu) (Amazon.com)
• Primavera De Filippi & Felix Tréguer (2015) Expanding the Internet commons: The subversive potential of wireless community networks.
  • Alternate: Primavera De Filippi & Felix Tréguer (2014) Expanding the Internet commons: The subversive potential of wireless community networks Journal of Peer Production (PDF)

Centralization vs. Decentralization (and Peer-to-peer, Federation)

Now that we’ve thought more about possession and ownership let’s return to thinking about just how decentralization differs from centralizations (and whether or how peer-to-peer or federation fit in)!

Readings:

• Nathan Schneider (2017) “The Irresistible Power of Decentralization”—and Its Elusiveness (DRAFT–not for circulation)
• Executive Summary (6 pages) of Defending Internet Freedom through Decentralization: Back to the Future?
• See also: Beyond distributed and decentralized: what is a federated network? Networked Cultures
• See also: P2P Foundation wiki entry on Peer_to_Peer

Privacy

Lately we’ve been hearing some interesting critiques of “privacy as a concept and moral imperative”. Let’s see if we think they make sense.

Readings:

• Selections from Wendy Hui Kyong Chun (2016) Updating to Remain the Same: Habitual New Media focus on Part II Introduction and end of Chapter 4, pp. 93-94, 150-165
  • Introduction, pp. 1-19
  • Part II Introduction, pp. 93-94
  • Chapter 4, pp. 135-165
  • See also: Shubha Sharma (2016) Mumbai women assert their right to loiter
• Simone Browne (2015) Chapter 4: “What did TSA find in Solange’s Fro? Security Theater at the Airport,” in Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness
• Jill Lepore (2013) The Prism: Privacy in an Age of Publicity
  • See also: The Hidden History of Privacy (Edited) [📹 10:26]
• Finn Brunton and Helen Nissenbaum (2015) Chapter 3: “Why is obfuscation necessary?,” in Obfuscation: A User’s Guide for Privacy and Protest

Justice

Why do we care about justice (rather than alternative descriptions of how we ought to act)? Let’s explore through popular framings of justice as what is fair as well as social justice (which includes environmental justice, data justice, design justice).

Readings:

• Eve Tuck & K. Wayne Yang (2016) “What justice wants” In Critical Ethnic Studies, 2(2), 1-15 focus on pp. 3-10, it will be dense!
• Selections from John Rawls (1971) A Theory of Justice 29 pages
  • §§1-4
  • §§22-24
• Diana Nucera (2014) “Two way streets: Forging the Paths Towards Participatory Civic Technology”
• Martha C. Nussbaum (2007) Introduction. In Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership 8 pages
• See also: Audrey Watters (2014) From “Open” to Justice
• See also: Digital Justice, Design Justice principles
• See also: Public Lab Re-imagining the Data Lifecycle
• See also: Justice (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)