project thought

project thought

[Thomas Lord]

   I hope that readers of this list are making or are
   willing to make an effort to grapple with the recent
   IPPC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5° (aka
   IPCC SR-15).

   Probably not a few readers - I would guess fewer in the U.S. -
   are aware of the growing School Strike movement,
   the Extinction Rebellion, and so forth.

   There being an immediate need for radical change in social
   relations, particularly those of production and distribution,
   the people of the planet are jeopardized by the threat of
   centralized control of the most basic communications
   infrastructure on the Net (the so-called social-media).

   Readers are also aware that the Free (Libre) Software Movement
   has, de facto, prepared for decades to step up with tried, true
   tested, available substitutes -- substitutes with many
   superior attributes -- ranging from basic email, netnews, and
   chat programs to basic office software, distributed social
   software and so on.   We have not, like the corporations,
   spent two decades trying to learn how to manipulate people's
   behavior on and offline.  We have built some rough and ready
   infrastructure parts for helping people be part of a global
   society populated by autonomous individuals and structured
   by cooperative association.

   Because the world needs such extreme motions as 15%+ reductions
   in emissions in developed countries **IN ONE YEAR**  then **THE
   SAME AGAIN FOR SEVERAL YEARS TO COME** it is, it seems to me,
   probable that the road that avoids hell nevertheless requires
   immediate, mass deployment of basic libre communications and
   networking tools -- we can do quite a bit with micro-machines
   like PIs, freedomboxes, whatever.  A chaos is rapidly coming.
   We can help the passage of the people through that period.

   Now is not a time that calls for further refining of the software.
   I am not suggesting new development projects, though of course
   some small ones may be helpful on the margins.

   Rather:

   Now is a time that calls for mass, global deployment and adoption
   at the grass roots - as part of a mass response to the
   immediate demands of environmental damage mitigation and
   adaptation.   Now is the time to much more widely deploy what
   we already have among ourselves.

   How do we begin to carry out such an action, across the
   whole of the libre movement?

   -t

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