Organisational Processes in Decentralized Software
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Software developerSoftwareProcess (computing)SoftwareFood energyCommunications protocolMusical ensembleData conversionSelf-organizationArithmetic meanRight angleBlogBitOpen sourceMultiplication signProjective planeInformationSlide ruleComputer configurationNumberDependent and independent variablesHypermediaDatabase normalizationDescriptive statistics1 (number)Instance (computer science)Group actionFigurate numberPublic domainGoodness of fitLocal ringBinary multiplierComputer animationLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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Integrated development environmentEvent horizonDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Exception handlingLevel (video gaming)Power (physics)Chemical equationMereologyCategory of beingShared memoryTrailVideo gameInternetworkingTerm (mathematics)Process (computing)Projective plane1 (number)Decision theoryExistencePoint (geometry)Dynamical systemGroup actionLimit (category theory)Perspective (visual)Food energyPhysical systemFamilyMusical ensembleSoftware bugNatural numberLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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Perspective (visual)Term (mathematics)Power (physics)Process (computing)Order (biology)Electric generatorShared memoryScaling (geometry)Self-organizationProjective planeTheory of relativityLogicSlide ruleData structureProduct (business)Different (Kate Ryan album)BitComputerGroup actionSoftwareData conversionLevel (video gaming)Type theoryTheoryPosition operatorPhysical systemSinc functionMusical ensembleIntegrated development environmentDivision (mathematics)Traffic reportingCategory of beingDressing (medical)CollaborationismComponent-based software engineeringPressureSpeech synthesisMedical imagingMeeting/InterviewLecture/Conference
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Musical ensembleLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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Musical ensembleDecision theoryLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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Machine visionVulnerability (computing)Context awarenessPosition operatorProjective planeGraphical user interfaceLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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Projective planeDependent and independent variablesCodeMusical ensembleMeeting/Interview
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Computer animation
Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:06
We have Natasha, Usain and Zeid. I want to talk about organizational processes in decentralized software. Thanks so much for the presentation. Thanks for hosting us because we really feel a bit as the strangers coming up in here.
00:34
Just a little bit of a note. We did a bit of an intuition with this talk. I just want you to be very conscious here that I only have white faces in front of me or most of them.
00:47
Just as a starting point, we're going to talk about organizational processes in decentralized software. The reason why we are here, we wanted to be in the decentralized room because of the great energy of every decentralized and federated project that is happening right now.
01:07
We wanted to speak right before the active people wanted, just submitting the great movement and energy that is there. We have in this slide here showing the regular options and the number of softwares that are adopting shared protocols
01:26
or in desire to go make a counterpoint to existing police and the governance capitalism that is already mentioned. It's huge. I think the least we've been looking through is at least for the softwares maybe more.
01:46
Every place discovered, every domain discovered and it's dealing with good energy right now. No, there's no slide. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm just trying to show you.
02:11
When you are here, it's a question of the way, the long history of this centralized community that I would not go over. We all have, many people here have different visions on it. There has been a lot of happening.
02:23
But what we want to question is really the fact that decentralized is presented as a technical solution, a really great technical solution, but only discussed as a technical solution. And we feel that's a gap. So why it's a really amazing technical solution is because obviously it multiplies the sources of information.
02:44
Obviously it's redundancy information that allows for a lot of resilience. It allows for the emergence of local instances of many services, each of them having their own policy, their own eventually kind of conduct, their own self-consciousness and so on.
03:05
So that's not possible. So the question is how about sealing our project together? Are you complete the time that we spend resolving the slides? No, I don't.
03:20
Because I am not saving it. So what we want to achieve, we want to challenge. So we think it's important to voice what we need to achieve, which is challenging the monopolistic situation. We're developing decentralized software based on common protocol. And what we have at our disposal to do so is human material, not only technical material, we have people.
03:47
So while we can have this political protocol itself, it does not display any political opinion. That we all agree on. And the community itself has a tendency not to do so either.
04:02
So how to get organized or what are you doing next? We have existing community medias of organization, but there are skills underused. There are programs, but there are not many used. There are working groups.
04:20
There are many means of organization, but often not that much. In our research, let's say we found that many posters were said on the blog. Everyone published some blog and a response to a blog, and there's no structure, conversation happening in the community. And it's also through the narratives that are present in our movement.
05:06
And in particular, also in the description of this session, we mentioned this hero narrative. So what do we mean by that? By hero narrative, we mean this tendency in software and in technology in general, through which we follow this charismatic figure who don't sleep at night just to make one comment after the other.
05:27
And it seems online, it seems like in the end they are the only ones working the project, even though everyone knows that it's not like that. But to the other hand, it's also a model, a work model, which is not healthy.
05:42
Not for the person in fact, but also for the community at large. This is because of course there are many problems that can arise in this kind of dynamics where there is this hero, which somehow sets the level of the collaboration, a specific project.
06:02
So the person who knows becomes the example. And since we also another concept which is interesting, we even thought about that, is the concept of democracy. So the ones who do more are also the ones who take the decision in the end. And this is something which can work, but also has some problems.
06:22
For example, in this kind of context, sometimes it's difficult to tell the difference between a behavior which is authoritative, which is a behavior of someone who says or does something because he knows something, or a behavior which becomes authoritarian in a way.
06:41
Because for example, the narrative is that of the benevolent dictator. No, it's not fun. It's not nobody. We don't want to have a dictator, even though he or she are benevolent. We want to break this narrative. Another problem is the fact that these kind of processes are detrimental for the long term sustainability of projects.
07:02
Because if there is just one person or two persons in the world, what happens is people burn out or they just decide to do something else in the life of the project doesn't exist. And of course, it leads to a missing perspective on ways in which a project can be improved.
07:24
Because if there is only one person who takes all the decisions and who somehow is regarded by the community as a kind of hero, who in any way improves everything because he's the one or she's the one who works most, then we also miss all the limits to improving a project through exception.
07:47
But the good thing is that these kind of processes can be mitigated. I don't know if they can be resolved at all, because in the end there are people, and there are some people who like to take leadership on and some people don't like it.
08:02
So there will always be some kind of imbalance in a group. So what we can do is to keep this imbalance in track and discuss about it and also do something about it. And we can do something on the more local level or on the more political, more global approach.
08:22
If we focus on the local level and here our feminist principles and practices come into play, two practices which come from the feminist tradition which could be useful in some communities
08:40
are first the practice of care, and this is something which I think that in the past years have been also discussed more. So it's the idea that if we are part of a group, everyone needs to take care of the other. So if you are part of a group and you see someone who is going to burn out, you can tell them,
09:04
hey, maybe you are doing too much, maybe can I help you somehow or do you want to slow down, etc. Another point is skill sharing, which is of course not just a feminist practice, it's something which exists and nobody can put a hand on it,
09:21
but it is true that in the past years in a big feminist tech skill sharing events made in a kind of more welcoming environment and things like that.
09:40
And what is important about skill sharing is that it's something that sometimes is taken for granted and if you are in a group, if there is someone who knows how to do something, okay, there is that someone, so that kind of skill is not shared, but this also is what leads to the hero and the person
10:00
who is the only one who knows how something works. So also having this kind of sharing in a group, for example, always working there, is something which can decrease this kind of authoritarian problem. But the truth is that we didn't really mostly want to talk about care and how to be nice human beings
10:23
because we think that you are perfectly capable to understand that and there are a lot of resources on the internet. What we really wanted to talk about is power, power in communities, in projects and how this can affect the communities and how to deal with it.
10:48
Quickly will be the definition that we found in the youth feminist wiki, that is youthfeminist.wiki.com, about intersectionality, I have an idea, the term sounds familiar maybe to some of us.
11:01
So it's the idea of dealing with power in a systemic and long term perspective. It's used to deal with power in a systemic and long term perspective. And it's a concept used to describe the ways in which oppressive institutions, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, plagiarism, xenophobia, racism, et cetera, all the isms, are often interconnected.
11:23
When you are into one of those things, you might be into others or one and they cannot be examined separately from one another. So the definition says the concept first came from Legos Polakim, he was a clinician in 1989 and is largely used in critical theories,
11:41
especially feminist theory when discussing systemic issues. Why is that true? Because we want to be able to have a honest conversation about power, to understand the whole types of it, where we come from is useful in this conversation, how people are tied to one another is useful in this conversation,
12:01
how we can change the relationship that we have been tying in between us since a generation is just moving there. So there are two aspects we talk in this, only in the internal level, the priority, but also on the external level, who are we as power structures in relation to other power structures that we are facing.
12:24
And this needs to be acknowledged. I always say when I see Google logo on our screens, it hurts me because I don't want to see them and I want us to reflect on our situation and on our position in front of them. We are not on an equal level and this should be a problem.
12:45
So the idea is that reasoning through the lenses of intersectionality is something which is not going to give answers, but is something which can help in asking questions about what we do. So the idea, here we are talking again mostly on an external level,
13:04
so how as a group we can more effectively counter those powers which in a direct, for example the surveillance capitalism which was mentioned, or so in an indirect way can harm ourselves.
13:37
Okay, so we have listed some questions which would be interesting to discuss
13:50
in decentralized projects and which are concerned with the wider impact of the project. One first question which could be asked is
14:01
okay, what is the impact of my work on the job market? What is the impact of, in which way can I do what I am doing in a way which makes it also easier for other people to earn a living on that, for example. Another question would be what kind of users, and especially non-users,
14:23
I am excluding in my projects? So for example, if I think about a very nice something for health, and then there is a wide category of people, maybe older people who are not familiar with technology
14:45
and are not trying to learn it, then you are excluding all these people. So maybe try to think also how to reproduce what you want to do in a more kind of a logic way, or how to improve the tool of the possible users of the technology.
15:04
And another very important thing, what is the impact of the product on the wider environment? For example, we have a lot of electronic waste, so how heavy is your system, your software, your whatever?
15:21
Does it work on other computers and these kinds of things? Do I need to use it on a phone or it doesn't work? And etcetera, etcetera. So yes, in general, in what kind of ways the things you are doing should actually be reinforcing existing problems in the public.
15:49
Just to close up, so it's thinking about organization in a systemic way, because the system we are living in is the whole society, it has the intelligence everywhere,
16:02
so we need to include external actors in developing decisions, even if people are not directly concerned, we should not take them as externalities. Of course we should focus on positive speech, but not only. We should also actively deal with the presence of problems and not be afraid of voicing them.
16:27
We can respond on a larger scale. Yes, the idea to conclude is that if we want to make decentralized software projects
16:48
in order to imagine a world which could exist outside of the capitalism narrative and a world in which technology could really be used as a tool to help ourselves
17:01
and not as a tool to be oppressed and to be controlled, then we do need to produce and establish more visible narratives about existing counterpowers and non-hegemonic technological projects and communities.
17:26
And what we wanted to say, sorry, our slides were a little bit mixed up from the first version, so we kind of lost the training again.
17:41
The idea is that it's okay to be political and to voice political values, even in decentralized software projects, because in the end, the people who are doing technology are not doing technology just for themselves, but they're doing it for larger society,
18:02
and so there are ways to make the involvement of this larger social group more visible. So, for example, if there is some political issue in which the members of your community feel to be vocal about, for example, global warming of the people dying in the Mediterranean, what's wrong about, I don't know, expressing actively solidarity towards these people,
18:26
or writing on your website that this is a problem for you and for your projects, and that you don't want people who don't think that is a problem using your software, for example. Because in this way, it's possible to strengthen the relationship between different communities and different groups,
18:47
which, with or without the technology, share the same aim of fostering a world in which more people and more autonomy decide what we want to do with our lives.
19:06
So, yeah, and just for the expertise of one level, I hope maybe that was something.
20:21
Sure, stuff like that. But I would say that a lot of people in the tech industry think that they're only involved in tech, and in reality, it is every decision that you make in your life, whether it's small or big.
20:42
So, I want to raise the question of how can we raise awareness to people that you can have a rational and have discussions about problems, like a discussion with Ube and Gloria about the future of danger on the web,
21:01
and about the marketer of Chrome and Firefox. And he understood the fact that I was presenting to him the danger of the web, but he always went back and came up with a new vision to justify his position.
21:22
So, I don't know what's the way to raise awareness and make people see certain things and show the vision that tech has a political consequence in the community that we live in.
21:45
Yeah, I go towards what you were saying. It's really about raising the issues in regards to our projects and saying I don't find our projects into this response to the issues you are mentioning
22:02
and setting it clearly, not hiding it, not saying it's going to happen because the code is going to make it happen. It's also going to happen because of people. To make this issue more visible is just to talk about them.
22:31
So, name them, name the fact that there is politics and technology, there is political code, and you just need to be aware of that and discuss it. So, today we mentioned it. You can mention it again in the next conference.
22:45
You can participate or discuss it in your community. That's the only way to make this more visible.