In 2016, the Internet Archive convened a decentralized web summit to discuss ways to make the web less centralized and thus less vulnerable to censorship, corporate abuse and "shadow regulation" (I gave one of the keynotes). Read the rest

When "social media" meant "blogs," there were many tools, services and protocols that comprised an infrastructure for federated, open, loosely joined interaction: the rise of the social giants has killed off much of this infrastructure, all but erasing it from our memories. Read the rest

At yesterday's Internet Archive Decentralized Web Summit, the afternoon was given over to questions of security and policy. Read the rest

This week, the Internet Archive is hosting a three-day event (which finishes today) called The Decentralized Web Summit, whose goal is to figure out how to build a new Internet that is "locked open," an idea that emerged from Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle's 2015 series of talks and articles about how technologists can build networks and protocols that are resistant to attempt to capture, monopolize and control them. Read the rest

Everyone thinks libraries have a positive role to play in the world, but that role differs greatly based on whether you’re talking to a librarian or a patron. Ask a patron what libraries have in common and they’d probably answer: they share books with people. Librarians give a different answer: they share a set of values. It’s time for libraries to step up to those values by supporting access to the Internet and taking the lead in fighting to keep the Internet open, free, and unowned.

Two striking articles on the roboticization of the workforce: first is Kevin Kelly in Wired, with "Better Than Human", an optimistic and practical-minded look at the way that robots change the jobs landscape, with some advice on how to survive the automation of your gig: Read the rest

Christopher sez, "MediaGoblin, a decentralized free and open source software media publishing system for audio, video, images and more, has landed a new media type: 3D! This expands MediaGoblin's role beyond being not just a free as in freedom replacement for Flickr, YouTube, SoundCloud, etc but now also a run-your-own Thingiverse. Development was sponsored by open hardware company Lulzbot, which gave away a 3D printer to the woman who added the feature. MediaGoblin is also currently running a crowdfunding campaign with the Free Software Foundation." Read the rest