Grassroots Use of Technology: Y’all come to my ‘hood!
Thanks to j of the Thursday Bloggroup at the Berkman Center for pointing out the upcoming Grassroots Use of Technology 2006 right near my home at Umass Mandela*. The center of mass of the conference will probably be a quasi-liberal optimism about the possibility of reversing the ever greater concentration of wealth and power with it’s concomitant/enabling control of the mainstream media. Still I will go to see if as Marx once said to Friedrich Engels, “there is something we can use.”** Further, I will urge others to go. At the same time, I will urge folks to keep an eye on the “net neutrality” legislation in Congress. Verizon and cohorts may claim to own the pipes, but we’re letting them use our right of way. The grass roots have a right to water flowing through pipes on public land. Should you wish to add your voice, Save the Internet is a good site.
*I refer, of course, to the almost forgotten proposal that the poor and disenfranchised of Boston would be better served if they seceded and renamed Roxbury, Dorchester, and parts of the South End. after the Nobel Peace Prize winning South African leader Nelson Mandela. I was not sure if I remembered the geographical boundaries correctly and the current Wikipedia entry does not mention Dorchester, but Websters Online does.
**I greatly admire Marx and am informed by him, but his critique of science, while bold for his day, is, in the light of subsequent developments, naive. I will show that the notion of ‘Natural Law’ in and of itself has marketing/political component, but I need to elaborate the Greenberger Universe to do that. Also, I am significantly skeptical of Marx and his derivatives’ eschatology.
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