{"id":2017,"date":"2023-04-08T15:17:00","date_gmt":"2023-04-08T07:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iraia.net\/blog\/?p=2017"},"modified":"2023-04-18T15:19:23","modified_gmt":"2023-04-18T07:19:23","slug":"21st-century-tech-struggle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/iraia.net\/blog\/2023\/04\/08\/21st-century-tech-struggle\/","title":{"rendered":"21st-century tech arena of social struggle"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>LAST DECEMBER 2022 (which seemed so long ago, in infotech terms), at first I had wanted my study group at UP Open University to focus on the potentials of an AI-based operating system (think of Linux on AI steroids) that ran on an alternative PC architecture. This AI-muscled PC would rely almost purely on GPUs + a standard CPU (think of a souped-up Raspberry Pi with external GPUs).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Such an approach would make it much easier for barrio kids to assemble a fairly cheap AI-powered rural network for empowering their province&#8217;s educational-cultural and info needs. If successfully deployed in many rural provinces, it could serve as a long-term innovator-disruptor not just in the &#8220;IT industry&#8221; sense but in the wider socio-economic and political sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But since my group was pressed for time, and what with the hype around Midjourney, Dall-E etc., I agreed with the more popular choice to focus on AI generative art and lit &#8212; which of course have their own immense (but I now feel, short-lived) innovator-disruptor potentials. I&#8217;m still satisfied though with how the research turned out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But now I want to return to my original interest, advocacy, and prediction: that, in the longer-term, the biggest arena of struggle for cyber-control (in the IT field) will feature the &#8220;weaponry&#8221; of streamlined mini-PC servers on AI-architecture GPUs (even just Raspberry Pi-based for now).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It would run AI-enabled open-source operating systems and software, and be capable of hosting distributed-cloud services that can empower community-based networks. The network can even shield itself from external attack, to some extent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So here are some links that should be of interest to 21st-century tech activists:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><a href=\"https:\/\/gendersec.tacticaltech.org\/wiki\/index.php\/Complete_manual\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/gendersec.tacticaltech.org\/wiki\/index.php\/Complete_manual\">Zen and the Art of Making Tech Work for You (The complete manual)<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"Pockit: A tiny, powerful, modular computer\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"Pockit: A tiny, powerful, modular computer\">Pockit: A tiny, powerful, modular computer<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/cs.brown.edu\/~vpk\/papers\/wcn.commag11.pdf\">Wireless Community Networks: An Alternative Approach for Nomadic Broadband Network Access<\/a><\/li><li>and so many others<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><br>The key elements of this future 21st-century tech arena of social\/class struggles are now here, or fast looming on the horizon. #<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a class=\"twitter-follow-button\" href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/junverzola\" rel=\"external nofollow\">Follow @junverzola<\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"http:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\"><\/script>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>LAST DECEMBER 2022 (which seemed so long ago, in infotech terms), at first I had wanted my study group at UP Open University to focus on the potentials of an AI-based operating system (think of Linux on AI steroids) that ran on an alternative PC architecture. This AI-muscled PC would rely almost purely on GPUs &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/iraia.net\/blog\/2023\/04\/08\/21st-century-tech-struggle\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;21st-century tech arena of social struggle&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1157,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63,28,55,139],"tags":[409,109,66],"class_list":["post-2017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-infotech","category-media","category-technology","tag-ai","tag-alternatives","tag-computers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/iraia.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/iraia.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/iraia.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iraia.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iraia.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2017"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/iraia.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2017\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2018,"href":"http:\/\/iraia.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2017\/revisions\/2018"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iraia.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/iraia.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iraia.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iraia.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}