Internet freedom is increasingly disputed. Governments want to regulate it and Internet providers want to restrict access to parts of it. To remind us that the Internet can exist without centralized control, INTK has created unCloud (www.intk.com/uncloud), an application that enables anyone with a laptop to create an open wireless network and distribute their own information. The proliferation of social networking and current developments in service-based platforms (what has become known as “cloud computing”) provide explicit examples of the privatization and commodification of social production. What becomes clear is that our Web experience is bound to inherent paradoxes that are reflected in its technical organization. One of the foundations for its critique relies on recognition of the ways in which the market has expropriated energies of peer production and social exchange from the commons.

The Control your own cloud workshop is based on the unCloud application. Participants explore the Web’s internal architecture by creating local networks where they control both content and communication protocols.
The workshop culminates with a small action where some of the ideas behind unCloud are applied to the festival’s context.

Registration for this workshop is closed.