“Socialize knowledge,
without creating power”
Primo Moroni

Our book presentation tour, about the 10 years of activity of the Autistici/Inventat collective, is happening and will be stopping in Bologna.
It’s difficult to summarize what the Autistici/Inventati collective is and what the publishing of this book means after 10 years of our existence. The +KAOS blurb explains it as follows:
“The collective experience of a group of technology and communication lovers who embraced Pirmo Moroni’s motto, “Share knowledge, without creating power”.
The main purpose, the synthesis, is combining enthusiasm for technology (or technologies) with a strong will for communicating. Not using the passion for technology uncritically, but instead constantly trying to use them as a means for human (and knowledge) liberation, involving people and making them participants in the sharing of knowledge and experience. Allowing them to safely communicate and use technology in a concious way; enabling movements and collectives to organize themselves in a faster and simpler way . All of these projects are run by the collective itself, without the appointment of leaders.
What this project shows is that technology and communication are not neutral, even though this concept is not new. Neither are they Leviathans strictly involved with power. What the Autistici/Inventati story teaches us is that, of course, technology and communication have a side, but we can actively choose it.
And the A/I collective have chosen who to side with:
with those who have no voice
with those who are oppressed
with those who act autonomously
with those who “share knowledge without creating power”
with those who fight for freedom and equality
In short, those who are our own

To start with, we want everything.
Autistici/Inventati, Manifesto

Presentazione del progetto Futuro Anteriore

Il 26 settembre 2011, Wu Ming 1 pubblica su Giap, Feticismo della merce digitale e sfruttamento nascosto, dal quale nasce un fitto e appassionato dibattito: cosa sarà delle informazioni e della cultura, oggi conservate su supporto digitale? Sul tema intervengono semiologi, archeologi, informatici, scrittori o semplici lettori incuriositi dal tema. Chi difende una visione ottimista, chi assume posizioni più problematiche. Poichè i commenti sui blog sono le forme d’informazione volatili per eccellenza, Wu Ming 1 chiede ai giapster intervenuti sul tema di trasformare quegli spunti in “qualcosa” di più.

Nasce il progetto Futuro Anteriore. Siamo circa una dozzina, non ci siamo mai visti in faccia. Apriamo un wiki sulla piattaforma Crabgrass, sviluppata dal collettivo Riseup. Là, montiamo un collage di tutti i commenti pertinenti comparsi su Giap, e lo chiamiamo “Gran Bollito”. Dopo aver aggiunto nozioni di informatica, archeologia e pensiero contemporaneo, in primavera sforniamo un succulento saggio collettivo. Ci sembra noioso. Si propone l’aggiunta di un pizzico di narrativa: orchi invasori e monache guerriere fanno al caso nostro.

Futuro Anteriore è un oggetto narrativo non-identificato: viene avvistato per la prima volta su Giap il 6 settembre 2012.

Gran Bollito*

* Alias: Aless, Anonimo Coniglio, Elettra, Errico Bresci, Ivan Iraci, Matt Pumpkin, Mauro Vanetti, Nexus, Steko e Vecio Baeordo.

There is a lot that happens in Italy in terms of social struggles, movements, and fights for justice. Outside of the mainstream media, which trades largely in stereotypes if not outright distortions, we find excellent reflections on these fights. Yet, how much of this reflection filters out of Italy?
We have come to realize the near total absence of grass-roots information in other languages regarding Italy, an absence noted by others as well. Much of this absence is due to simple linguistic limitations, to the Italo-centrism of some movements, as well as to the difficulty of opposing commercial media. Such considerations exist already within the much larger debate on strategy and the problem of grass-roots communication.
It was from here, or better yet from a Twitter discussion that grew into a brief manifesto, that the idea was born to begin this reflection. However, Struggles in Italy is not a place for this debate to occur. Almost paradoxically, it is quite the opposite: a blog from which to narrate the social justice fights of the peninsula. Begun on the significant day of October 15, 2011 with pieces in English, Spanish, and Greek that were posted on Twitter, one year later we have expanded the presence to Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, as well as a featured space on the Lib.com portal.
Perhaps even more interesting is the active involvement in the project of a small international community.
The project is one of an experiment in what was once called “media activism”, a term that has fallen largely out of use even within social movements. Regardless, Struggles is going through a period of critical analysis of our approach to the media instruments that we use, having had to confront a drop in participation after an initial phase of strong enthusiasm. For us, October 6th is an important stage in this process.

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit, pursues the utopia to make the knowledge available to everyone; a project that makes its flag from neutrality and independence from powers. Articles must follow a “neutral” point of view, informations have to be accompained by sources, the attention against (self)promotion it’s high. And the project, to be autonomous, lives only of donations. But it’s not so easy: neutrality is a mirage that clashes everyday with concerned interventions and disputes between users. The openness to new users is challenged by the wall of rules that necessarily arose over the years. Utopia makes Wikipedia fragile; the success, visibility and costs generate powers, interests, manipulations. And many clichés.