Hillhacks

A Talk by viper, at Unconference

We are all witnessing that liberty and democracy is compromised and even subjugated by the very establishments which ought to balance the power and had the responsibility to expand the people's freedom. In democratic societies/countries, the state of governance is becoming more and more imbalanced and people pay their wages for impunity of establishments.

How technology can be engaged by the people, based on democratic principles to take their responsibilities back from their representatives, and distribute among the commons, deliberate the problem collaboratively, innovate solutions and implement with crowd sourced capital - who can finally enjoy the fruits of their labour.

Let's discuss about the philosophy, possibilities, pragmatic things which can be done in order to not live in the transition, but also to live freely.

We all are aware about how society is influenced by the technology it uses. But as Melvin Kranzberg says technology has never maintained its neutrality. Thus it becomes the responsibility of the people who believe in principles of democracy to make it neutral by infusing transparency, availability, accessibility, affordability into it. If people remain idle and turn themselves into just using it for survival and luxury, then it becomes a tool of evils triumph - for good men had to do nothing.

The power asymmetry and the demand for equality, transparency, accountability, justice, participation and transformation of deliberation & policy making to people. The friction between the people and the establishments that presently governs people all are happening in a transition continuum - from hierarchical, subjugated governments to flat, distributed, collaborative forms of government.

Problems does not vanish, and thus either Utopia nor Dystopia is possible. It completely depends on how each individuals contribute to the problem and contribute to the solution. Either way technology(mechanism & policy) plays a significant role in implementing the governance which is based on democratic principles.

Any policies, laws implemented by the established governments for the sake of security or service compromising even a tiny fraction of fundamental liberties is not worth to be implemented in the first place. People must equip themselves to be vigilant, by being watchdogs, forming civil societies, being independent researchers, whistle blowing, etc.. using technology and forming the network and communication infrastructure which cannot be controlled from or by any centralized establishments.

Thus we can converge the basic requirements as follows : 1. Empowering people with Technology that is transparent, built by them/for them. 2. Mechanism and Policy of every technology is deliberated collaboratively by people. 3. Communication infrastructure must start from people without centralization. 4. Every technological systems made by the gov. must be reviewed by the people, not with the results but by analysing its architecture, mechanism and policy. 5. Governance engine(a s/w system) must be built by the people, that helps them to participate, deliberate, collaborate in decision making that influences them at individual, community, locality, state and national levels. It must equip the lay citizens to make informed decision, for example, pre-emptive warning/alarming based on constitutional principles of government limitations, alarming when certain laws affect their privacy, education, profession etc..

I was a engineer & researcher in a NDA signed central laboratory of electronics research of gov. of India, helping in creating instruments from scratch related with Spectroscopy. Through out my research i have created and hacked few instruments which i find interesting and also used free hardware systems, created free software to interface them, along with my colleagues and participating students.

u can find my unpublished paper at : https://arxiv.org/pdf/1507.08565v1

I am friend of FSFTN, ILUGC, SIARS.

Interested in self & independent research in Food, Democratization of Scientific instruments, Education.

A wanna be home-brewer of ham radios. Like to tinker with electronics, free hardware and free software systems.

Writes a lot with A3 paper, draws block diagrams + stick mans while researching.