Hackbases: replicable live and work infrastructure, for radical theory and practice

Hackers - as technologists, theorists, artists - the oft-supposed vanguard, too labour in "bullshit jobs" to subsist. In majority, their lives are subsumed by the logic of current neoliberal capitalist societies, and actually further those agendas. Arising from their fund-politics entanglement, the current institutional types potentially offering significant change potential - non-governmental or academic organisations, "ethical" startups, as well as current hackerspaces - are insufficient to facilitate that for the many. In addition, the already limited carrying capacity these vehicles offer, as per their limited replicability/scalability, often seems to be in systemic danger proportionally to how much their work is transformative. This is evident in worldwide closures of humanities academic departments, targeted dismantlings of regulatory agencies, smear campaigns against NGOs, etc. Hackbases however, could be the critically missing, replicable, resilient subsistence and work infrastructure model, to enable general "opt-in" full-time lives of integral political and technical practice. These live-in hack-theory-art-politics spaces are experimenting with, developing, and currently offering new foundations for an insurgence - to shift the negative trend of how technology is redefining societies and natures.



Bio

David Potočnik, b.1986, Slovenia. Critical technologist and practitioner. Studied Philosophy at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. Since 2009 working on middlemachine, an unreleased fragment narrative engine, in the context of CHT/Totalism hackbase in Lanzarote, Canary Islands, Spain [http://totalism.org]. Recently released E2H collaborative content system [http://e2h.middlemachine.com], and launching the Totalist cooperative [http://coop.totalism.org]. Splitting time between the Lanzarote base, and different European capitals [http://totalism.org/maps]. Researching full work automation, post-capitalism, representation systems, hypermedia, supply chains, and the Anthropocene. I am convinced the forces of technology will only be used sensibly when we change the current structure and the dynamics of power over it.




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