bell hooks, Feminist Theory. From Margin to Center (1984, p. 33)
I often need to use words like decentralised, distributed and decentering to talk about the shape of collective intelligence and how people can be connected together and work together. And I want to get a hands on feel for what those terms really mean, what work they actually do, and what they could do.
Decidim.Barcelona is a prototype for public-commons participatory democracy and has characteristics of a collective intelligence.
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[Version November 2020 :: These PhD posts are online workbenchs and mood boards :: Opening up research process, playing with multimedia and inviting your comments]
General Argument: Decidim is a prototype for public-commonsparticipatory democracy, forming part of a live ecosystem of collective intelligences with transformative impacts.
Knowing the whole: excerpt from Preface to 1984 Edition of bell hooks’ Feminist Theory. From Margin to Center. Not knowing the whole: excerpts from Notes from Nowhere (eds) (2003), We Are Everywhere (p. 69, 71, 72).… Knowing the whole + Not knowing the whole
Excerpt from Preface to 1984 Edition of bell hooks’ Feminist Theory. From Margin to Center.Paul Baran’s network typologies from “On Distributed Communications”, a document prepared for the United States Air Force Project Rand (1964).
Baran’s network typologies from the early days of computing (1964) are still referenced by Tecnopolitica researcher-activists at the forefront of social transformation today (see diagram below). Decentralized and distributed networks, politics and technologies are at the heart of Tecnopolitical practices, however their politics are far removed from Baran’s context of US Air Force funded research. Politically, Tecnopolitica would have more in common with the trajectory of bell hooks whose framework: emphasises ‘the centre’ (contrasted with the margin); suggests ‘the decentering of the West globally’ and a focus instead on ‘attention on the issue of voice. Who speaks? Who listens? And why?’ (p. 40, 1994); and continues to be a reference point today for people arguing for ‘decentering and decolonising knowledge’ (Moreno Figueroa, 2019).
However, the substance and vibe of the hooks’ text sends very different messages to these stylised network visualisations (above and below)….
Second Sketch of the Swarm of Swarms (28 August 2020). Thinking about contrast and relation with swarm search on Google’s Waterfall of Meaning. Reference List and Google Trends data below.