Soft Infrastructure of Decidim

Decidim Barcelona

 

We studied the Soft Infrastructure of the digital platform. Published under Creative Commons in Computational Culture Issue 9 (July 2023).

 

Paolo Cardullo, Ramon Ribera-Fumaz, and Paco González Gil (TURBA, Internet Interdisciplinary Institute, UOC Barcelona)  offer an insider’s perspective on the development of Decidim, a free and open-source software platform for civic participation created in collaboration with Barcelona City Council under the recent mayorship of Ada Colau and Barcelona en Comu’. This platform is designed to foster accountability, transparency, and civic participation in local politics. Born partly out of the ‘movement of the squares’, the software strives to emulate the mass open decision-making and deliberation integral to city life. Here, the platform’s key developers reflect on its inception.

Open Access publication via Computational Culture, Issue 9, and the SocArXiv repository on Open Science Framework DOI: 10.17605/OSF.IO/JASD7

 

 

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kiddingthecity is…

 

…a webspace created by Paolo Cardullo in 2007 during his PhD at Goldsmiths University of London. It has gone through a few updates building up on my projects and publications

#OCTV

#OCTV

 

Art installation with CCTV cameras at Goldsmiths University of London. 2013

In conversation with media artist James Steven from the collective SPC, I curated an installation with CCTV cameras at Goldsmiths, University of London, in July 2013. This experiment complemented a panel discussion on video surveillance we organised at the International Visual Sociology Association (IVSA) annual conference ‘Public Image’. The aim was to raise awareness of the complexities of CCTV systems and to open up a debate beyond the discourse of power and control, which CCTV is usually associated with. Pre-print (2017) CCTV oddity: Archaeology and aesthetics of video surveillance, Visual Studies, Routledge. DOI: 10.1080/1472586X.2017.1328988 →→→SocArXiv pre-print @ Open Science Framework.

#OCTV consisted of six surveillance cameras streaming live from selected conference rooms to video displays positioned in each of the six rooms. Each camera feed was then linked to a webpage, made visible as a QR-code to scan, that is, as a composition of black and white pixels in the characteristic square shape. Any mobile phone was therefore able to connect to the ‘control room’ page, and then to switch to the desired camera.

→→→ see my collaboration to the ‘CCTV Sniffing’ workshops, powered by Deptfod.tv and SPC→→→ see my article about the ‘Sniffing’ workshops (2014)

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kiddingthecity is…

 

…a webspace created by Paolo Cardullo in 2007 during his PhD at Goldsmiths University of London. It has gone through a few updates building up on my projects and publications

Open Wireless Network

Open Wireless Network

 

Community wi-fi mesh in Deptford, London (2008-2014 ca.)

OWN was a mesh of Wi-Fi radios set up by James Stevens and SPC in 2008 in Deptford, London SE8, an innercity borough with a history of migration and working-class labour stretching to the imperial docks. Deptford features vast council-owned housing estates, housing associations, and still affordable solutions for students from the near Goldsmiths, University of London. OWN picked to more than 400 daily users and about 100 nodes, a few years ago. Due to funding and time constraints, as well as to the less stringent digital divide brought by 4g phones and flexible broadband provision, OWN was temporarily abandoned in 2014.

OWN set mostly around the Creekside, where the river Ravensbourne touches the strong tides of the nearby Thames. This is the latest gentrification frontier in SE London, with developers putting a lot of emphasis on the ‘cultural quarter’: Deptford is now said to be second only to Shoreditch for number of artists, studios, and exhibitions. In this controversial and evolving scenario, OWN provided free access to the ‘commercial Internet’ plus the possibility to experiment with mesh networking for local residents.

 

I was fortunate enough to be part of the early stages of this evolving network, hosting a node in my own flat for a few years, and participating to the weekly drop-in workshop called ‘Wireless Wednesday’. I have written a paper on the connections between wireless proximity and anonymity – published as a book chapter for Communicating the City (Peter Lange); and another one discussing the intricate connections between gentrification and the independent wireless network – this is now published as ‘Gentrification in the mesh? An ethnography of Open Wireless Network (OWN) in Deptford’, City (Routledge). The paper narrates a social history of OWN and the gentrification of Creekside →Download the pre-print

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kiddingthecity is…

 

…a webspace created by Paolo Cardullo in 2007 during his PhD at Goldsmiths University of London. It has gone through a few updates building up on my projects and publications

Zotpress and Me

What I have been reading (some) 

Some of the readings most recently added to My Zotero here rendered through the ZotPress plug-in

Qiu, J. L., Castells, M., & Cartier, C. (2009). Working-Class Network Society: Communication Technology and the Information Have-Less in Urban China. MIT Press. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bibliouocsp-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3338988
Fazio, N. (2023). Tiziana Terranova, After the Internet. Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures, 26. https://doi.org/10.20415/hyp/026.r01
Lovink, G. (2022). Extinction internet. Institute of Network Cultures (INC). https://www.eurozine.com/extinction-internet/
Hui, Y. (2020). Machine and Ecology. Angelaki, 25(4), 54–66. https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2020.1790835
Cardullo, P., Ribera-Fumaz, R., & González Gil, P. (2023). The Decidim “soft infrastructure”: democratic platforms and technological autonomy in Barcelona. Computational Culture, 9. http://computationalculture.net/the-decidim-soft-infrastructure/
Co-designing Infrastructures. (2023). UCL Press. https://www.uclpress.co.uk/products/186914
Angwin, J. (2023, June 13). One of the Last Bastions of Digital Privacy Is Under Threat. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/13/opinion/encryption-messaging-privacy-signal-whatsapp.html
Hummel, P., Braun, M., Augsberg, S., Dabrock, P., Erlangen-Nürnberg, F.-A.-U., & Gießen, J.-L.-U. (2018). Sovereignty and data sharing. 2.
Eurocities. (2023, May 3). Barcelona Local Digital Twin. https://eurocities.eu/stories/barcelona-shapes-the-future-of-city-planning/
Keller, P. (2022). European Public Digital Infrastructure Fund White Paper. Open Future. https://openfuture.pubpub.org/pub/public-digital-infra-fund-whitepaper/release/2
Bego, K. (2022). Towards Public Digital Infrastructure. NGI Forward. https://openfuture.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/TowardsPublicDigitalInfrastructure_v0.2.pdf
EU Working Team on Digital Commons. (2022). Towards a Sovereign Digital Infrastructure of Commons. https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/report_of_the_european_working_team_on_digital_commons_digital_assembly_june_2022_wnetherlands_cle843dbf.pdf
European Commission. (2022, December 15). European Digital Rights and Principles | Shaping Europe’s digital future. https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/digital-principles
Renieris, E. M. (2019, September 25). Forget erasure: why blockchain is really incompatible with the GDPR. Berkman Klein Center Collection. https://medium.com/berkman-klein-center/forget-erasure-why-blockchain-is-really-incompatible-with-the-gdpr-9f60374e90f3
Renieris, E. M. (2023). Beyond Data: Reclaiming Human Rights at the Dawn of the Metaverse. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/14119.001.0001
Secretaria-Geral. (2023). Primeira rodada do PPA Participativo já mobilizou mais de 45 mil pessoas. Secretaria-Geral. https://www.gov.br/secretariageral/pt-br/noticias/2023/maio/primeira-rodada-do-ppa-participativo-ja-mobilizou-mais-de-45-mil-pessoas
@LulaOficial. (2023, May 11). “Por isso, a participação de vocês é fundamental. Quem critica o governo tem que ir na plataforma e fazer proposta! Quem está reclamando tem que dizer o que quer! Participe da plataforma, diga o que quer para o Brasil!”, finalizou o presidente @LulaOficial #BrasilParticipativo [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/secomvc/status/1656684648808710144
Bratton, B. H. (2015). The stack: on software and sovereignty. MIT Press.
Gerlitz, C., Helmond, A., Nieborg, D. B., & van der Vlist, F. N. (2019). Apps and Infrastructures – a Research Agenda. Computational Culture, 7. http://computationalculture.net/apps-and-infrastructures-a-research-agenda/
Wood, D. M. (2007). Beyond the Panopticon? In J. W. Crampton & S. E. Crampton Jeremy W. (Eds.), Space, Knowledge and Power: Foucault and Geography. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Wood, D. M., & Monahan, T. (2019). Editorial: Platform Surveillance. Surveillance & Society, 17(1/2), 1–6. https://doi.org/10.24908/ss.v17i1/2.13237
Wood, D. M., & Mackinnon, D. (2019). Partial Platforms and Oligoptic Surveillance in the Smart City. Surveillance & Society, 17(1/2), 176–182. https://doi.org/10.24908/ss.v17i1/2.13116
Participedia. (2023). Citizens’ Jury. https://participedia.net/method/155
People Powered. (2023). Participatory Democracy Resources. People Powered. https://www.peoplepowered.org/resources
ChatGPT broke the EU plan to regulate AI. (2023, March 3). POLITICO. https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-plan-regulate-chatgpt-openai-artificial-intelligence-act/
How it feels to be sexually objectified by an AI. (n.d.). MIT Technology Review. Retrieved April 17, 2023, from https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/13/1064810/how-it-feels-to-be-sexually-objectified-by-an-ai/
Klein, E. (2023, April 16). The Surprising Thing A.I. Engineers Will Tell You if You Let Them. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/16/opinion/this-is-too-important-to-leave-to-microsoft-google-and-facebook.html
Simone, A. (2023, March 17). 83. The Surrounds: Urban Life Within and Beyond Capture. https://soundcloud.com/user-283789701/the-surrounds
McGuirk, P., Baker, T., Sisson, A., Dowling, R., & Maalsen, S. (2022). Innovating urban governance: A research agenda. Progress in Human Geography, 46(6), 1391–1412. https://doi.org/10.1177/03091325221127298
Marvin, S., McFarlane, C., Guma, P., Hodson, M., Lockhart, A., McGuirk, P., McMeekin, A., Ortiz, C., Simone, A., & Wiig, A. (2023). Post‐pandemic cities: An urban lexicon of accelerations/decelerations. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, tran.12607. https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12607

Thanks For Browsing!

kiddingthecity is…

 

…a webspace created by Paolo Cardullo in 2007 during his PhD at Goldsmiths University of London. It has gone through a few updates building up on my projects and publications