I am a supporter and user of free software (though I admit I have not migrated entirely). I research and write about the social movement aspect of free software, and its potential as a model for alternative social organization beyond the realm of software development. I am inspired by the future envisioned by free software [...]

I went to the Union for Democratic Communication conference last weekend, held at Buffalo State College. I had never been to Buffalo, which is what made me pick this conference over the annual meeting of the Canadian Communication Association. I’ve been to Ottawa before; heck, I used to live there. I hedged my bets a [...]

Saveournet.ca, a Canadian coalition working to defend our online freedoms, has launched a sweet campaign urging people to wear their hearts on their sleeve and tell the CRTC to keep the internet open, fast and accessible to all Canadians.
Bell and other corporate giants such as Rogers and Shaw currently have free reign to “throttle” service [...]

It is a well known fact that hackers – the original MIT hackers, anyhow – love Chinese food. In truth, I think it’s because the only restaurants open when they’d come to after 7, 13 or 24 hours of straight programming, only to find it was 4am and they were about to faint from hunger. [...]

Richard Stallman, otherwise known as rms or the founder of the free software movement, will be in town for a series of lectures at UBC and BCIT. I have been reading Stallman’s stuff since I wrote my master’s thesis in 2003. Although he has sometimes passed off as a crank, much of Stallman’s work has [...]

Me ‘n Leslie Regan Shade@the new media panel.
Media Democracy Day totally kicked it this weekend at the VPL. The event was a good fit with the library, and the MDD fair – 40+ community groups set up to do community outreach and promote a more accessible media system with less corporate influence – [...]

I feel like this is what I do a little bit everyday.
Anyhow, I’m giving at talk tonight at the Vancouver Linux Users Group monthly meeting, titled: Open source and the knowledge factory hack. It’s a mildly revised version of the talk I gave at Open Web last April. I’ve incorporated some new reading, specifically McKenzie [...]

Last night I attended a free workshop at Free Geek called “How I stopped worrying and learned to love the command line.” Who wouldn’t want to go, with a title like that?
I love FreeGeek. I’ll just say that upfront. Everything about it invokes the New Society that I dream of, but picture only vaguely in [...]

Apologies for my unannounced (and unplanned) summer hiatus…
Last night I attended my first Net Tuesday, at Workspace in Gastown. Let me first say that Workspace is a cool place. I first visited it for the inaugural Vancouver BarCamp in 2006. The place was new and the idea underlying it fresh: a gathering space and workplace [...]

One of the tech activists participating in my dissertation research just told me about a project being run by Riseup called Summer Freedom of Code. This is a totally inspiring endeavour, one that reaffirms my decision to stick with my research topic, and assures me that social justice organizing and activism are not dead – [...]