| 4 | | At the same time, the converging crises in the major capitalist economies, the precarious state of the world environment, the political crisis in government in so many of the world's countries and the usurpation of government authority by international banks and committess have brought humanity to a point of urgency and the Internet, a community of more than 1.4 billion people world-wide, is one of its responses. When all else fails, human beings come together to communicate and figure out how to survive. That's what's happening today with the Internet. |
| | 3 | The converging crises in the major capitalist economies, the precarious state of the world environment, the political crisis in government in so many of the world's countries and the usurpation of government authority by international banks and committess have brought humanity to a point of urgency and the Internet, a community of more than 1.4 billion people world-wide, is one of its responses. When all else fails, human beings come together to communicate and figure out how to survive. That's what's happening today with the Internet. |
| | 4 | |
| | 5 | Humanity's crisis demands greater communication and collaboration among the world's people. And humanity has been forging ahead in doing that with world-wide efforts like the World Social Forum and the Climate Control movement and, of course, the Internet. |
| | 6 | |
| | 7 | The Internet is humanity's way of facilitating the communication necessary to make all this collaboration possible. |
| | 8 | |
| | 9 | At the same time, the global crisis against which we're mobilibizing depletes the resources required to build gatherings of large numbers of people. They are too large to put on, too expensive to get to and not capable of broadening the number of poor people attending. If we are going to ensure the progressive movements' continued collaboration world-wide, we are going to have to use the Internet and that is one reason why humanity invented it. |
| 38 | | Our proposed seminar for the Thematic Social Forum on Alternatives highlights a crucial aspect of our movement today: the Internet. With over a billion people engaging in a collective activity, today's Internet is one of humanity's largest social movements, reflecting the kind of social interaction and collective achievement activists like us struggle for world-wide: fundamentally collaborative, democratic and based almost entirely on tools and software that has been produced collaboratively, developed by large, democratic communities and distributed freely. It is truly international and resilient against constant attempts to control its direction and curtail its positive growth. |
| | 41 | A |
| | 42 | |
| | 43 | We should be developing open source, decentralized and non-hierarchical systems to diffuse our messages simultaneously to many people, proposing them concrete ways to participate |
| | 44 | |
| | 45 | B |
| | 46 | |
| | 47 | We should promote access to the internet, including the ability to copy, modify and redistribute all software and all information, as a basic human right. Defend it as a common space and prevent its privatization. |
| 56 | | El documento que surge sera en primer documento escrito por technologos que trata del "derechos y deberes del technologo progresista". |
| 57 | | |
| 58 | | El nombre de el seminario (como es en todos eventos participantes es "Techie Congress"). |
| 59 | | |
| 60 | | Descripcion de Actividad [machine translated] |
| 61 | | |
| 62 | | Nuestro seminario propuesto para el Foro Social Temático sobre Alternativas se base en una realidad: no se puede ni pensar del futuro y de un lucha hacia el futuro sin considerar al Internet. Con más de mil millones de personas colaborando en una actividad colectiva, la Internet de hoy es uno de los mayores movimientos sociales de la humanidad. Como su tarea principal, ha desarollado una tecnologia, basada en sus mejores instintos basicos (colaboracion, discusion and apoyo mutuo), para hacer posible nuestra sobreviviencia y el desarrollo de una sociedad sana, justa y colaborativa. |
| 63 | | |
| 64 | | Los technologos forman la direccion de este gran movimiento y eso subraya su importancia politica. |
| 65 | | |
| 66 | | En su caracter y conducta, el Internet refleja las practicas que ha caracterizado el ser humano por todo su historia: |
| 67 | | colaborativa, democrática y basada casi totalmente en las herramientas y software que son productos de colaboración, desarrollados por grandes comunidades democráticas y distribuidos libremente. Es verdaderamente internacional y capaz de resistir a los intentos constantes para controlar su dirección y reducir su crecimiento positivo. |
| 68 | | |
| 69 | | Tecnologos progresistas de todo el mundo se reunirán para elaborar "principios" que describen nuestras responsabilidades y derechos frente al resto del movimiento progresista. Nuestro objetivo es publicar y distribuir estos principios a través de nuestras redes y presentarlos como un documento producido por el proceso del Foro Social y el Congreso de tecnologos. Esto con el proposito de adelantar la relacion que tiene el tecnologo con el resto del movimiento. |
| 70 | | |
| 71 | | Utilizando una erramienta que se llama "democracia colaborativa", grupos pequeños de 3 a 4 trabajarán cara a cara. Durante 2 horas, de 10-15 minutos para una introducción, a 45 minutos para una sesión de colaboración en línea, a 30 minutos para su revisión y discusión a nivel mundial, y 30 minutos para el debate local y concluir. Materiales necesarios que pueden ser proporcionados por los organizadores del seminario incluyen ordenadores portátiles suficiente (suministrado por los participantes o en alquiler) para todos los grupos, proyector, micrófono, cámara y altavoces. |
| 72 | | |
| 73 | | Peticion de apoyo de los organizadores del Foro: conexión a Internet. |
| 74 | | |
| 75 | | Metodologia de trabajo Tipo de actividad propuesta es seminario o taller. Propuesta duracion es quatro horas. Esperamos participacion estara cero personas. Idiomas: Espanol, English, Francais, y Portuguese. Traduccion de presentacion en Mexcio estara Espanol y Ingles. Requieremos proyector y mampara, sillas, y conexion a Internet. |
| | 83 | J |
| | 84 | |
| | 85 | stimulate movements to organize collective discussion about their use of internet and how to increase visibility and visioning of online possibilities for the movement agenda. This strategy is to change the way we relate to the internet as a space, rather than a collection of tools approached individually. |
| 88 | | We will then distribute the principles to everyone at the Social Forum and propose them to the USSF's People's Assembly for ratification. On that basis, we will begin to build the kind of relationships inside the movement that will move us all forward. |
| | 98 | After nearly five hours of collaboration and discussion, the Congress emerged with a consensus on the following principles: |
| | 99 | |
| | 100 | |
| | 101 | * Technological decisions have political consequences. These decisions need to reflect the politics of our movements. Every technology we adopt has embedded power relations. Technology structures how we are able to communicate and who is able to communicate. Technology use is highly influenced by NGO and government procurement, spending, and regulation. Our movements should work to change policies and spending, create more transparency, as well as work to develop technologies that are attendant to our needs. |
| | 102 | |
| | 103 | * Participatory Technology Design. We understand that technology should be driven by the needs of the movement as a whole. We all have the responsibility to voice our ideas about socially responsible use of technology; at the same time, specialized tech skills, like all specialized skills, create power dynamics that we must recognize. We must engage in ongoing dialogue as a movement to address the ways that power structures become embedded in technology, and include everyone as far as possible in all aspects of technology design. |
| | 104 | |
| | 105 | * Digital Inclusion: Technology should be accessible to all, and the movement should actively move to break down those barriers to access including language, hardware and connectivity. We should work on technology to break down other barriers, and not construct new barriers. Technologies need to be designed with the end user in mind, this includes translation, accessibility, youth education, and access to computing resources. |
| | 106 | |
| | 107 | * Social Sustainability: Technology we build or implement should retain its usefulness to people and organizations in the movement. It must be usable and accessible. It should support multiple platforms, open standards, and data portability. It must be economically feasible for the organization to maintain. We must include documentation and training sufficient to give groups control over the technology that serves them. |
| | 108 | |
| | 109 | * Community Owned Infrastructure: Our communities have the right to design, own, use and control the network, hardware, and software we rely on. The movement has the responsibility to support and steward this community-owned infrastructure. Techies within the movement have the responsibility to explain and advocate for community-owned infrastructure. |
| | 110 | |
| | 111 | * Data privacy: Our social movements have a right to be free from surveillance, both governmental and private. We should encourage our movements to make political choices to protect the privacy, security, and data of both individuals and organizations. |
| | 112 | |
| | 113 | * As we do tech work with the movement, we must work against systems of power, privilege, oppression and exclusion. We must work collaboratively across identities, groups, languages, and borders. We must specifically commit to strengthen the voices of oppressed peoples including people of color, women, gender-oppressed people, LGBTQI people, Indigenous peoples, migrants, immigrants, low-income people, people with disabilities, and people of all ages, education levels and technological skill. We must actively engage, train and collaborate to nurture a movement that celebrates diversity. |
| | 114 | |
| 110 | | * Contracted software development: includes website, collaborative democracy software, server maintenance '''$5,000''' |
| 111 | | * Coordination staff: Two, part-time organizing positions for 1 year '''$60,000''' |
| 112 | | * Travel: includes fees and travel/accommodation to outreach events as well as travel/accommodation for 6 major Techie Congress events in Paris (April), Mexico (May), Detroit (June), Palestine (October), India (December), and Dakar (January 2011) '''$ |
| 113 | | * Equipment: ongoing costs for rentals and purchases at events '''$4,000''' |
| 114 | | * Advertising and networking '''$3,000''' |
| | 136 | * Contracted software development: includes website, collaborative democracy software, server maintenance '''$10,000''' |
| | 137 | * Coordination staff: Two -- One full-time, one part-time -- organizing positions for 1 year '''$100,000''' |
| | 138 | * Travel: includes fees and travel/accommodation to outreach events as well as travel/accommodation for 6 major Techie Congress events in Paris (April), Mexico (May), Detroit (June), Palestine (October), India (December), and Dakar (January 2011) '''$18,000''' |
| | 139 | * Equipment: ongoing costs for rentals and purchases at events '''$12,000''' |
| | 140 | * Advertising and networking '''$15,000''' |
