Distributed Web of Care

Announcing DWC at Code Societies

by Taeyoon Choi

A class at Code Societies Winter 2019 at the School for Poetic Computation in New York City.

Distributed Web of Care is an initiative to code to care and code carefully. In this class there will engage in three different activities. First, we will investigate centralized, decentralized, distributed and peer to peer networks. We will analyze the popular technology platforms, focusing on its network infrastructure and terms of services. We will compare them with decentralized alternatives such as Dat Peer to Peer Protocol and Scuttlebutt. Second, we will take on performative exercises to explore the feeling of being in a network. We will learn to move around in physical space with strings in order to care, not control, each other. Lastly, we will imagine the kinds of network we want for the future and we will discuss how we can build it with code and code of conduct. We will distribute our code and code of conduct as zines in physical print and data, published with Dat.

Concepts

Intersections of Race – Gender – Environment – Disability justice

Code Ecologies notes
Artificial Advancements
Computing and Stories
Diversity at SFPC
Code of Conduct from eTextile Spring break

Keywords

dat create : You are creating your digital archive.
dat keys: In case you forget your key, you can get it again.
dat share: You will start to seed your archive.
dat sync: You can connect to a remote dat, and live sync to it’s changes. This also results in you sharing the archive even when the original archive is not available.

Step by step

Getting set up
- open up terminal, go to your project directory
- mkdir datzines
- cd datzines
- install npm and node
- npm install -g dat
Cloning an archive
- dat clone (Taeyoon’s archive unique hash – revealed in class)
- cd (into the cloned folder)
- ls (show files)
- dat sync
- Taeyoon will update the original archive. Students will see their files synchronizing.
Making your own archive
- cd ..
- mkdir yourname_zine
- cd yourname_zine
- create zine.
- touch inside.txt
- nano inside.txt

Dat Zines

Guidelines for the zines, appropriated from ASCII Town Workshop by Mindy Seu.

File must be titled yourfirstnamelastname.txt
no spaces, all lowercase

File must include

Outside: (for cover of your zine)

Inside: (content of your zine)

For Outside:

Width: minimum 20 characters, maximum 50 characters
Height: minimum 10 lines, maximum 20 lines
Include a zine cover with your name so your friends know which zine belongs to you.
In your text file, write “Outside:” (make sure you include the colon) above the house you drew, followed by a hard line break.

For Inside:

Below your cover, write “Inside:” followed by a hard line break.

Monospaced font
One size (16 pt)
One weight (no bold, italicized, etc)
One color (black)
No links
No mark-up
No motion
There is no width or height restriction for the inside of your zine. Use the negative space creatively. Consider creating movement through scale, placement, and scrolling.

Publishing

dat share, start publishing
write your unique key
Give the key, written on a piece of paper to a TA or Taeyoon, who will clone it into the main archive
View dat zines
Dat clone to Taeyoon’s unique hash or use Beaker Browser

Code Societies

SFPC’s Code Societies, is a winter intensive session organized by Melanie Hoff. Code Societies will examine the ideological and corporeal attributes of computation; concentrating on the poetics and politics of culturally embedded software. How do different platforms and processes — including algorithms, data collection, social media, infrastructure, and interface — yield distinct modes of seeing, thinking, feeling, and reinforce existing systems of power? Through a balanced study of critical theory discussion and hands-on coding workshops, students will create small projects that explore and question these ideas.

Code Soceties complete syllabus