{"code":"AVCQSM","title":"🧶 Knitting Our Internet","speakers":["NNL8YT"],"submission_type":3,"track":3,"tags":[],"state":"confirmed","abstract":"<cite>Knitting Our Internet</cite> is an **interactive journey** through the history of the Internet, and a **collective rethinking** of its future.\r\n\r\nThe activity consists of a **face-to-face workshop**, providing tangible and simple examples about how the Internet works, simultaneously **questioning** the very essence of today’s mainstream social networks. Its main purpose is to expose the critical limits of **surveillance capitalism**, **centralization**, and its **environmental impact**.","description":"Using my grandma’s yarn, we’ll simulate a centralized network, clearly and practically exposing the intrinsic limits and issues of any centralized infrastructure.\r\n\r\nAfter pinpointing these problems, we’ll time-travel to the beginnings of the Internet, discovering that decentralization was actually at its heart. We will travel through the history of the Internet and of the Web by reading quotes and observing pictures, together. We’ll see how the problem of social media “enshittification” and the criticalities of big tech do not arise at all from a technical issue, but it is all a social, political, and economical matter.\r\n\r\nTherefore, we’ll dive into the concept of “Surveillance Capitalism” unmasking the hidden dynamics of the digital technology industry, from data harvesting to emotional manipulation.\r\n\r\nHow do we take Our Internet back? How can we make it truly decentralized again? The workshop ends with the simulation of a decentralized network among the participants, still using my grandma’s yarn. We will have uncovered how decentralization is key not only to address social media issues, but it’s a broader political structure we should be using as reference in pursuing brighter and more human perspectives.\r\n\r\nFull workshop in [Knitting Our Internet’s *Weaver Kit*](https://ournet.rocks/weaver-kit/)","duration":90,"slot_count":1,"content_locale":"en","do_not_record":false,"image":"http://program.why2025.org/media/why2025/submissions/AVCQSM/ournet_iswMNSm.png","resources":[16,17,18],"slots":[13235],"answers":[]}