Learning Outcomes
- Understanding approaches to digital community organizing as it relates to the DWeb.
- Critical analysis of the DWeb movement’s values and philosophical underpinnings, and the assumptions and ideologies that undergird this community.
- Acknowledgement of the implicit and explicit biases embedded in approaches to build and maintain network infrastructure.'
Materials Needed
A computer or device with Zoom installed, with camera and microphone.
A free Miro account.
Prerequisites
Suggested review: DWeb Principles
Suggested reading: sutton, mai ishikawa (2021, February 18). Behind the scenes of the decentralized web principles | Internet Archive blogs.
Suggested reading: Ehmke, Coraline Ada. (2021, September 3). The Sacred Geometry of Respect, Trust, and Equity | Internet Archive Blogs.
Session Description:
Since 2016, the Internet Archive has convened a global community of developers, organizers, academics, and social entrepreneurs to share ideas and approaches to building a decentralized web (DWeb). Members of this DWeb community decided to collaborate and develop a set of principles to define their shared values. The group’s aim was to affirm that they were building network infrastructure for the sake of addressing concrete challenges, especially those faced by the most marginalized and oppressed. What resulted was a document that has guided the community since 2021.
But what’s the purpose of such a statement? How is it not antithetical to a “decentralized” movement for people to agree and convene around a set of ethical norms? How do principles and declarations help ensure that technologies and organizations are explicit about acknowledging who designs, controls, and benefits from a decentralized web?
This session will examine the DWeb Principles as a case study, examining one approach taken by a community to crystallize its shared vision for distributed network infrastructure. We will compare the document to other principles and statements around “internet freedom,” “digital rights”, and “decolonized technology,” and explore the purpose that such declarations serve for their communities. And lastly, we will analyze technologies and organizations from both the World Wide Web and Decentralized Web through the lens of the DWeb Principles and students’ personal values.
