Disruption Network Lab presents:
Fighting Technologies of Domination: From decentralised event platforms to the right to analogue. 
A meetup with: Roberta Barone (AI Ethics and Governance Expert and Advocate, IT/DE), Balotta Collective (balotta.org – A Shared Agenda for Local Communities, IT), Agnese Trocchi (Digital Communications Manager, Educator, IT).

How can we find alternative ways of sharing information and events beyond big tech and commercial social media platforms? And when we want to unplug, do we have a ‘right to analogue’? Over the past decade, smartphones, and with them Big Tech, have become almost inextricably woven into the fabric of our daily lives. So much so that the (few) people who, for whatever reason, don’t own a smartphone are increasingly having to find workarounds or give up some activities altogether.

If it is true that there is an emerging, unspoken obligation to own devices produced and marketed by private companies in order to participate fully in public and private life, we need to be aware of it, discuss it and ask ourselves: should we, as citizens, have the freedom to choose not to own a smartphone, without this choice causing significant friction in our daily lives?

The right to analogue is not a rejection of technology, but a call for autonomy. It is another tool in the toolbox of digital rights activists, alongside decentralised software alternatives. If the right to analogue is formally recognised, companies and institutions would be obliged to provide diverse options, and this in turn could help loosen the grip that tech monopolies have on individuals, governments and society.

Programme
15:00-16:30: Open discussion – From decentralised platforms to the right to analogue.
The first part of the meetup will be dedicated to an open discussion, on the one hand to name the contradictions of the acritical adoption of smartphones and to give a voice and a framework to doubts, questions and demands that remain largely unspoken, and on the other hand to explore the possibilities of grassroots technologies and decentralised open-source software to share events and collect experiences beyond the use of social media platforms.

16:45-18:15: Gancio and Balotta.org – Exploring open-source software for event publishing.
After a short break, the second part of the meetup will be hosted by the Balotta Collective (Italy) and we will delve deeper into the exploration of Gancio. Born in Turin (Italy) out of political hacking movements, Gancio is a free open-source software designed for event publishing.

Because technology is not neutral and should be freely available to all, Gancio sees users not as passive visitors but as active content creators. In fact, its main feature allows anyone to browse and add events, freely and anonymously, without asking for registration, money (like Meetup) and/or personal information (like Facebook). No ads, no likes, no usernames, just a simple agenda.

In this workshop we will use the website Balotta.org as a case study to show how Gancio can be implemented and used for and by local organisations. Balotta.org is a shared calendar for the city of Bologna, Italy. We will look at the political reasons for its creation and how these have evolved over time, as well as explaining our moderation process and the decision to print a paper version. We will describe Gancio’s interface, including submitting an event as an anonymous user and browsing the admin dashboard.

No previous experience/knowledge necessary!
The meetup is a warmup for Hackmeeting 0X18. Hackmeeting is the annual gathering of the digital counterculture in Italy since 1998.

 

Speakers:
ROBERTA BARONE
(AI Ethics and Governance Expert and Advocate, IT/DE)
Roberta Barone works as an expert in AI ethics and governance, and is an advocate for a critical approach to technology. Together with tech critics and experts, she organised multi-disciplinary workshops in high schools to raise awareness on the economic, social and psychological implications of the data economy among students. She is a member of Etica Digitale, an Italian organisation fostering a human- and rights-cantered debate on technology. Since 2020, she has been researching the right to analogue and to a life free of intermediation.

BALOTTA COLLECTIVE
(Balotta.org – A Shared Agenda for Local Communities, IT),

Balotta is a shared board for events and activities in Bologna and the surrounding area. Balotta is sociability: a shared calendar where you can find or propose courses and workshops, concerts, presentations, shows, popular sports and so on. Balotta is struggle: you can find or propose meetings, marches, benefits and initiatives of struggle. There is no space on this platform for religious institutions, political parties, fascist, sexist, trans-homophobic, racist or discriminatory content of any kind. Balotta is not social: it has no ‘likes’, which are useful for creating hierarchies of content and users. It does not provide profiling and data collection tools and is free of hidden and oppressive algorithms. Balotta is based on free software (https://gancio.org) and is a collective resource, not a service. https://balotta.org

AGNESE TROCCHI
(Digital Communications Manager, Educator, IT).
Agnese Trocchi (Rome, Italy) writer, artist and social media manager. Trainer and teacher mentor in digital didactic at national level in Italy, she comes from a media-hacking background (Candida TV 1999/2003), she has been in the field of social media management since 2009. In 2017 she co-founded the interdisciplinary research group C.I.R.C.E. to promote a self-aware approach to technology and social networks using the hacker pedagogy method. She runs workshop and laboratories for kids, adults and affinity groups to “follow the threads of our connections”, to uncover the hidden elements of everyday digital automatism and to invent together new procedures for an ecological relationship with machines. She is the author of the book Internet, Mon Amour.

The Meetup programme “Decoding Agency” by Disruption Network Lab is funded by the Capital Cultural Fund (Hauptstadtkulturfonds), Reva and David Logan Foundation.

The series is organised in cooperation with neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGbK), Berlin.