[HacktionLab] Luddite participation in BarnCamp

[Mike Harris]

Hi All,

I've been talking to the Luddites who are organising a camp this year in
July.  We're planning on doing a swap, with them participating in
BarnCamp and us participating in their Gathering.

Here's the workshop/talk that they're going to do in BarnCamp:

Digital Technology & the History of Capitalism

We have been celebrating the 200th anniversary of the Luddite uprisings,
which were essentially protests against the beginnings of the industrial
capitalist system. In our time we are in the midst of a new industrial
revolution based on digital technology, and there are major debates
about issues such as surveillance and the impact of this technology on
people's lives and society at large. What these debates lack, even in
radical circles, is that the technology is often taken as given, and
there is little understanding of where the technologies came from, in
terms of the historical development of the capitalist system. This
workshop will take a look at that history in order to help us better
understand the current debates.

They also have asked if anyone our end can do a blog post for them, see
their text below.  I'm stacked with organisation, so if someone else
could help with this, that'd be great.  Get in touch of list if you do
and I'll send you the contact details.  Obviously as a statement coming
out of HacktionLab this might be hard to achieve, so I wonder how best
to do it as well?

The Luddites say ... "In the run up to our gathering we would like
different groups to do a guest post on the blog on the gathering. The
post could focus on current issues you are campaigning on or just be a
broad summary of all the issues you are interested in. But what we would
really like is something that tried to connect your particular issues to
a broader politics of technology that we will be trying to talk about at
the gathering. For example, how is digital technology shaped and applied
by the capitalist system in general and corporate priorities? How does
digital technology interact with other technologies to serve those
interests? Of course, I realise that those are massive questions that
you could write a book on, but it's always good discipline to think
about how to summarise huge issues in 500 words. Would you be able to do
something like that?"


Cheers,

Mike.

-- 
Mike Harris
w: http://mbharris.co.uk <http://mbharris.co.uk/>
t: +44 7811 671 893
0: http://mbharris.co.uk/keys/pgp.html