Boundless Conformity

Received via email

Social Democracy had decayed, said Walter Benjamin in his 1940 essay “On the Concept
of History,” without the expectation that revolution would make “the continuum of history explode.” Already, within three decades, Social Democrats had managed virtually to erase the name of Blanqui, associated as it was with insurrection, “though it had been the rallying sound that had reverberated through the 19th century.”

Dispatches from the Fediverse

From From Embers

Our fediverse correspondent Lenny returns to discuss the FBI seizure of the servers of Kolektiva.social, the largest anarchist instance on Mastodon. We also talk about the continuing discrediting of big tech companies such as Twitter, Meta and Reddit, and what that might mean for people working to build an open-source, decentralized alternative to corporate social media platforms.

On Anarchism, Technology, and Transhumanism

From The Commoner by reimagining

The more I wrestle with it, the more I become sympathetic to, if not a full-blown supporter of, anarchist-transhumanism. After much interrogation, the notion of technology as a neutral tool that can be leveraged to act as an oppressive method of control (to reduce agency and confine), an emancipatory tool (to resist domination, to expand agency and empower), or a complex overlapping web of both seems to generally ring true.

Techno-sharia, morality police and psychopolice

From Il Rovescio Via Dark Nights

As I wholeheartedly participate in the courageous uprising of Iranian women, who defy both the high-tech injunctions of the moral police and the murderous lead of the uniformed police, I spit in the face of those who, instead of picking up that example to insubordinate themselves to the “technically equipped barbarism” that imprisons us too and is leading us straight to world war, ill-concealedly contrast “Western freedoms” with Iran’s algorithmic patriarchy.

Hello world

From ewaste distro

This project explores the connections between software, networks, decentralization, anonymity, hacking, technological production, and anarchism. We are interested in how our lives are shaped so significantly by the mundane and esoteric technical choices which create the worlds we inhabit. We are critical of experts, moderators, and administrators but we seek to understand their world so that we might come up with alternative practices for our own ends.

Invecchiare Selvatico on Immediatism Podcast

Invecchiare Selvatico's book Black Blossoms at the End of the World, with poetry and songs by Nazel Pickens, is a compilation of essays, fragments, scribbles, letters, rants, songs, and ramblin's discovered in a secluded backwoods cabin. Written by a primary editor of Green Anarchy magazine who has used a variety of names, these essays are timely and relevant to our lives. "Can Bricks Break Diametrics? On Decapitating Two~Dimensional Binary Thinking" challenges our language and ideas, potentially leaving us better anarchists for having considered these. "Their World is Virtually Done" is a rant on "the almost encompassing grasp technology has over humans."

Signal Warning?

From It's Going Down

Why Moxie’s Departure is Not the End of Signal

Technical discourse almost always generates an odd sort of distortion when it collides with life outside of disciplinary separations. This is very much the case when it comes to radicals and information security. Communications, computer science and cryptography are highly complex, to the point that even people working in the security industry full time have difficulty grasping the complexities from time to time. As we saw with the Snowden leaks, the combination of highly complex technical content and the possibility of danger in the form of surveillance, tended to generate a discourse grounded in hyperbole and conspiracizing. This approach often led people to either attempt to completely go dark, or to modify their practices base on false, misconstrued or misunderstood information.

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