Pdf:ServPub

ServPub

Author: [Author Name]

Publisher: [Publisher Name]

ISBN: [ISBN Number]

Publication Date: [Publication Date]

Edition: [Edition Number, if applicable]

Foreword

Lorem ipsum.

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Contents

• Being Book
• Platform Infrastructure
• Networked Infrastructure
• Wiki to Print
• Open Source Design
• Praxis Doubling
• Publishing & Distribution
• Referencing
• Colophon

Collectivities and Working Methods

Pad for working https://ctp.cc.au.dk/pad/p/servpub_methods

Coordinator: Winnie & Geoff
Contributors: In-grid, CC, Systerserver, Winnie & Geoff, Christian and Pablo

What does it mean to publish? Publishing is the act of sharing and passing on knowledge, creating a dynamic relationship between authors/writers/producers and readers. It makes space for others to tune in a particular theme or topic, shaped by a specific medium, format, approach, structure and content. At its core, publishing is inherently a social and political process—it builds communities, invites action, and inspires new ways of thinking. To put simply, publishing means making something public, but in this apparently simple act, there’s a lot at stake, not simply what we publish, but how we publish. The process involves mindful and reflexive thinking of resources, tools, people, technology and infrastructures. In other words, publishing also entails recognizing the post-digital landscape and understanding the political and economic forces that shape that practice.

This book is an intervention in these ongoing debates, emerging out of a particular history and practice of experimental publishingand shaped by the collaborative efforts of various art-tech collectives, operating both within and beyond academic contexts, who are all invested in how to make things public and find ways to publish outside of commercial and institutional norms.. Crucially, the ethics of Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS), in particular emphasis on the freedom to study, modify and share, operate as core principlesfor this book, enabling modification and versioning with a broader community in mind. What links these traditions is the need to address the social relations that experimental publishing can help to expose and activate differently.

Our working premise is that despite the widespread adoption of open access principles, relatively little has really changed in academic publishing and scholars still distribute their work through paywall enclosures, and follow a production model that is largely unchanged since industrialism. This book is an attempt to draw attention to these historical and material conditions for the production and distribution of books, and to strengthen the possibility of working alternatives. Our concern is that books, and academic books in particular, follow a model of production that belies their criticality. By criticality, we mean to go beyond a criticism of conventional publishing and acknowledge the ways in which we are implicated at all levels in political choices when we engage in how to publish books. It's this kind of reflexivity that has guided our approach. In summary, the book you are now reading is both a book about making and publishing a book, and a kind of manual for thinking and creating one. It seeks to acknowledge and register its own process of coming into being as a book — an onto-epistemological object, if you will. It highlights the interconnectedness of its contents and the form through which it has been created.

Background

The reflexive, collaborative, and experimental forms of publishing underscore our approach to creating this book, and highlight its processual nature and challenge the convention of treating books as if they were discrete objects. Such an approach necessitates thinking beyond standarized platforms, normalized tools, and linear workflows in book publishing and calling upon previous projects and collaborations, including, for instance, Aesthetic Programming in which the authors developed a book about software as if it were software. In FLOSS culture, more than one programmer contributes to writing and documenting code. Contributors might be unknown and are able to update or improve the software by forking — making changes and submitting merge requests to incorporate updates — in which the software is built together as part of a community. To merge, in this sense, is to agree to make a change, to approve it as part of a process of collective decision-making and with mutual trust. This is common practice in software development particularly in the case of FLOSS in which developers place versions of their programs in version control repositories (such as GitLab) so that others can download, clone, and fork them. We were curious to explore how the concept of forking in software practice might inspire new practices of writing by offering all contents as an open resource on a git repository, with an open invitation for other researchers to fork a copy and customize their own versions of the book, with different references, examples, reflections and new chapters open for further modification and re-use. By encouraging new versions to be produced by others, the book set out to challenge publishing conventions and make effective use of the technical infrastructures through which we make ideas public. Clearly wider infrastructures are especially important to understand how alternatives emerge from the need to configure and maintain more sustainable and equitable networks for publishing.

link=File:Rosa2022.jpg|frameless

It is with this in mind that we have tried to engage more fully with the politics of infrastructure that not only supports alternative but also intersectional and feminist forms of publishing. A key inspirational project for this book is "A Transversal Network of Feminist Servers" (ATNOFS) which involved six collectives: Varia (Rotterdam), Hypha (Bycharaest), LURK (Rotterdam), esc mkl (Graz), FHM (Athens) and Constant (Brussels), . The project explores self-hosting infrastructural practices that addresses questions of autonomy and community in relation to technology. Specifically, rosa, is a feminist server, was collaboratively created as part of the project. It serves as a travelling infrastructure for documentation, collective note taking, and publishing to connect people and create relations. I was fortunate enough to be invited to their last event, hosted by Constant in 2022 and sponsored by FHM, where I experienced the workflow, discussions, and collaborative working environments, and saw a physical rosa that enabled me to engage technology differently:

we’ve been calling rosa ‘they’ to think in multiples instead of one determined thing / person. We want to rethink how we want to relate to rosa. (2024)

Trying to get access to the server when you arrive is always a difficult moment, this led to the audio experiment on rosa. We were wondering why it is always so hard to get access to a server? It was only at the end of the last day that it became playful. We needed another day… ALSO: “It feels like rosa always needs a re-introduction.” (2024, 160)

In this way we would argue that the project responds to the pressing need for publishing to acknowledge its broader apparatus.

[to be continued...]

Socio-technical form

An important principle is not to valorize free and open-source software but to stress how technological and social forms come together, and to encourage reflection on shared organizational processes and social relations. This is what Stevphen Shukaitis and Joanna Figiel have previously clarified in "Publishing to Find Comrades," a neat phrase which they borrow from Andre Breton: “The openness of open publishing is thus not to be found with the properties of digital tools and methods, whether new or otherwise, but in how those tools are taken up and utilized within various social milieus." Their emphasis is not to publish pre-existing knowledge and communicate this to a fixed reader — as is the case with much academic publishing — but to work towards developing social conditions for the co-production of meaning. As they express it, "publishing is not something that occurs at the end of a process of thought, a bringing forth of artistic and intellectual labor, but rather establishes a social process where this may further develop and unfold".

That one publishes to establish new social relations aligns with what Fred Moten and Stefano Harney have described as the "logisticality of the undercommons", in contrast to the proliferation of capitalist logics exercised through the management of pedagogy and research publishing. The publishing project of Minor Compositions follows such an approach, perhaps unsurprisingly so, as the publisher of Moten and Harney's work (and our book of course) and the involvement of Stevphen Shukaitis who has coordinated and edited Minor Compositions since its inception in 2009 as an imprint of Autonomedia. In an interview published on their website, explicit connection is made to avant-garde aesthetics but also autonomist thinking and practice, which builds on the notion of collective intelligence, or what Marx referred to, in "Fragment on Machines", as general (or mass) intellect. General intellect is a useful reference as it describes the coming together of technological expertise and social intellect, or general social knowledge, and although the introduction of machine under capitalism broadly oppress workers, they also offer potential liberation from these conditions. Something similar can be argued in the case of publishing, extending its potential beyond the functionary role to make books and generate surplus value for publishers, and instead engage with how thinking is developed with others as part of social relations. To quote from the interview, "not from a position of ‘producer consciousness’ ('we’re a publisher, we make books') but rather from a position of protagonist consciousness ('we make books because it is part of participating in social movement and struggle')." We'd like to think that our book is similarly motivated, not to just publish our work or develop academic careers or generate value for publishers or Universities, but to exert more autonomy over the publishing process and engage more fully with publishing infrastructures that operate under specific socio-technical conditions.

Research content/form

The naming of 'minor compositions' resonates with this, alluding to Deleuze and Guattari's book on Kafka, the subtitle of which is "Towards a Minor Literature". We have previously used this reference for our 'minor tech' workshop, held at transmediale in Berlin in 2023, to question 'big tech' and to follow the three main characteristics identified in Deleuze and Guattari's essay, namely deterritorialization, political immediacy, and collective value. As well as exploring our shared interests and understanding of minor tech in terms of content, the approach was to implement these political principles in practice. This approach maps onto our book project well and its insistence on small scale production, as well as the use of the servpub infrastructure to prepare the publications that came out of the workshop and the shared principle to challenge the divisions of labour and workflows associated with academic publishing.

There's a longer history of these collaborative workshops co-organised by the Digital Aesthetics Research Center at Aarhus University and transmediale festival for art and digital culture based in Berlin. Since 2012, yearly workshops have attempted to make interventions how research is conducted and made public. In brief, an annual open call is released based loosely on the festival theme of that year, targeting researchers from different positionalities and diverse geographical spread. All accepted participants are asked to share a short essay of 1000 words, and upload it to a wiki, and respond online using a linked pad, as well as in person at a research workshop, at which they offer feedback and reduce their texts to 500 words for publication in a “newspaper” that is presented and launched at the festival. Lastly, the participants are invited to submit full length articles of approximately 5000 words for the online open access journal APRJA. The down/up scaling of the text is part of the pedagogy, condensing the argument to identify key arguments and then expanding it once more to substantiate claims. The final stage of the review process ensures that all articles adhere to conventional academic standards for scholarship such as double-blind review.

Workshop participants are encouraged to not only engage with research questions and offer critical feedback to each other, through an embodied peer review process, but also with the conditions for producing and disseminating their research. As already mentioned, Minor Tech in 2023 made this explicit, setting out to address alternatives to major (or big) tech by drawing attention to the institutional hosting, both in person and online. In this way, the publishing platform developed for the workshop and its publications can be understood to take on a pedagogic function allowing for an iterative approach to thinking and learning together as part of a network of connected socio-technical organisational practices. The 2024 workshop Content/Form, further developed this approach using small, cheap, portable (raspberry pi) computers that acted as a server and ran the wiki-to-print software to exert more autonomy and to stress the material conditions. Both technological and social forms are brought together as part of an affective infrastructure for collective research.

In contrast to the approaches to research described above, it remains an oddity that academic books in the arts and humanities are still predominantly produced as fixed objects written by individual authors and traditional publishers. Experimental practices such as the ones described so far expand upon the processual character of research, and incorporate practices such as collaborative authorship, community peer review and annotation, updating and iterative processes of developing a set of versions over time, thus offering “an opportunity to reflect critically on the way the research and publishing workflow is currently (teleologically and hierarchically) set up, and how it has been fully integrated within certain institutional and commercial settings.” An iterative approach allows for other possibilities that draw publishing and research closer together, and withing which the divisions of labor between writers, editors, designers, software developers are brought closer together in ways in a non-linear publishing workflow where form and content unfold at the same time, allowing one to shape the other. Put simply, our point is that by focussing on experimental publishing activities, the sharing of resources, modification of texts and versioning, other possibilities emerge for research practice that break out of old models constituted by tired academic procedures (and tired academics) that assume knowledge to be produced and imparted in particular ways. Clearly the tools and practices we use for our writing shape collaborative content.

book structure:

The book charts the development of a bespoke publishing infrastructure that draws together previously separated processes such as writing, editing, peer review, design, print, distribution. Each chapter unpacks practical steps alongside a discussion of some of the poltical implications of our approach.

[go on to describe each chapter in detail]

collectivities

- short semi-structured interviews with each collective

.......0. What characterizes your collective as collective?  

.......1. What are your approaches in working together as a group and working with others?

.......2. How does your group work with infrastructure?

.......3. What do you want to work on Servpub?

.......4. How do social relations become transformed?

[minor composition]

Methods

Feminist, intersectionality, queer, radical referencing

doing and making and thinking

development of tools perhaps too

artistic practice/research/artivist approach

end chapter with idea of Book as reflexive practice - reiteratung this point - book about its own making.

Platform infrastructure

Coordinator: In-grid (Katie)

Contributors: Winnie, Becky, Batool, Katie

Index TBC

• Introduction
  • Why pi?

• Pub/public spaces
• Educational institutions
• Inbetweens/travel
• Workshop as space
• Cultural/public spaces
• Domestic/private spaces
• Ending/conclusion

Introduction

Wiki4print, the raspberry pi which hosts https://wiki4print.servpub.net/ travels with us . We have constructed our network of servers in such a way that we can keep it's hardware by our sides as we use it, teach and experiment with it and activate it with others. This chapter will consider the materiality of our particular network of nodes, our reasoning for arranging our infrastructure in the way we have and what it means to move through the world with these objects. By considering our movement from one place to another we can begin to understand how an ambulent server allows us to locate the boundaries of the software processes, the idiosyncrachies of hardware, the quirks of buildings and estates issues, and how we fit into larger networked infrastructures. How we manage departures, arrivals, and points of transcience, reveals boundaries of access, permission, visibility, precarity and luck.

In this chapter we will explain our decision to arrange our physical infrastructure in this way; mobile and in view. To do this we will map our collective experiences in a series of types of space. These spaces are reflective of our relative positions as artist*technologist*activist*academic (delete as appropriate):    

• PUB / PUBLIC SPACES (maybe add this? e.g. 8M / the social origins/elements?)

• EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS (+history, eduroam,ctp,aarhus, cci, lsbu etc) (overview)
• INBETWEENS: TRAVEL / suitcase as a space (hardware)
• WORKSHOP AS A SPACE (workshopping as a methodolgy, a server runs on a computer)
• CULTURAL/SEMI-PUBLIC SPACES (more on physical layer of the internet)
• DOMESTIC/PRIVATE SPACES (hardware maintenance and care)

WHY PI? (As an overview, maybe this goes in Educational Institutions)

## Travelling server space: Why matters?

As briefly mentioned in Chapter 1,  one of the key inspirational projects for ServPub is ATNOFS (A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers), a collaboration of six collectives and organisations researching intersectional, feminist, and ecological serve infrastructures for their communities. Many precedents have contributed to the exploration of feminist servers, including the Feminist Server Manifesto developed during a workshop hosted by Constant in 2013,  and Systerserver, which has been active since 2005. While there is significant focus on care, labor conditions, and maintenance, the technical infrastructure remains largely hidden from the general public as servers are fixed in location and often distant from the working group. We often perceive servers as remote, and large-scale entities, especially in the current technological landscape where terms like "server farms" dominate the discourse.

Attending the ATNOFS meeting was both helpful and rewarding, offering a tangible experience of what a server looks and feels like. Contrary to the common perception of servers as large and remote, they can be as small as the palm of your hand and in proximity. Rosa is considered as a travelling server which afforded collaborative documentation and notetaking at various physical sites where the meetings and workshops were taken place in 5 different locations throughout 2022. In addition Rosa is also part of the self-hosted and self-organised infrastructures of ATNOFS, engaging "with questions of autonomy, community and sovereignty in relation to network services, data storage and computational infrastrucutre". The project is highly influencial as it encourages ServPub members to rethink infrastructure—not as something remote and distant, but as something tangible and self-sustained. It also highlights the possibility of operating independently, without reliance on big tech corporations. While most feminist server and self-hosting initiatives have emerged outside of London, we are curious about how the concept of traveling physical servers could reshape a vastly different landscape—one defined by critical educational pedagogies, limited funding, and the pressures of a highly competitive art and cultural industry in the UK. The first consideration is skills transfer—fostering an environment where technical knowledge and open-minded thinking are recognized and encouraged, enabling deeper exploration of infrastructure. This is also where the London-based collective In-grid, comes into the picture of ServPub.

• By bringing the pi in person to teaching moments, it allowed us to discuss ideas around the physicality of and physical caring for a server. There is trust and intimacy in proximity.
• Why the pi and not another single board computer

• Why pre owned/borrowed hardware

• For clarity, when we refer to Wiki4Print[pi] * or another name we decide together

• Needs to move, because it's travelling for workshop

• Problems of plugging into network infrastructure at various institutions

• Legible at borders - recognisable by border patrol officers

• Problems of maintaining hardware

PUB / PUBLIC SPACES (?)

maybe add this? e.g. 8M / the social elements? Again a space for origin stories?

Networking as a space: Call for a Counter Cloud Action Day

On the 8th of March 2023 (8M), an international strike called for a "hyperscaledown of extractive digital services".The strike was convened by numerous Europe-based collectives and projects, including In-grid, Systerserver, Hackers and Designers, Varia, The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest, NEoN, and many others. This day served as a moment to reflect on our dependency on Big Tech Cloud infrastructure—such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft—while resisting dominant, normative computational paradigm through experimentation, imagination, and the implementation of self-hosted and collaborative server infrastructures.

To explicate this collective action, the call's website is hosted and asynchronously maintained by a network of networks, technically known as a Webrings, especially popular in the 1990s, are decentralized, community-driven structures that cycle through multiple servers. In this case, 19 server nodes—including In-grid—participate, ensuring the content is dynamically served across different locations. When a user accesses the link, it automatically and gradually cycles through these nodes to display the same content. Webrings are typically created and maintained by individuals or small groups rather than corporations,  forming a social-technical infrastructure that supports the Counter Cloud Action Day by decentralizing control and resisting extractive digital ecosystems.

On the evening of 8M, many of us—individuals and collectives based in London— gathered at a pub in Peckham. The location was close to the University of the Arts London where some participants worked. What began as an online network of networks transformed into an onsite network of networks, as we engaged in discussions about our positionality and shared interest. This in-person meeting brought together In-grid, Systerserver and noNames collectives, shaping a collaborative alliance focused on local hosting, small scale infrastructure for research, community building, and collective learning.

EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS. /winnie

https://ctp.cc.au.dk/pad/p/winnie_servpub#L11 (still working on it...some might need to go somewhere, but moving towards to educational institutions)

The constraints of working within educational institutions (that use eduroam). The example of needing to set up or use mobile hotspots for the UAL and LSBU workshops.

see this link for writing: https://ctp.cc.au.dk/pad/p/winnie_servpub

**** could this be a moment to talk about the "origin" story of servpub, i.e. that the idea of getting around insitutional constraints of eduroam helped birth the project. So a place to talk about network issues? Review network...****** good idea...

What allows the pi to go walking:

Survey of the final set-up, brief overview of the parts of the infrastructure.  i.e. that starting from this problem of the constraints of the institution we set out to create a VPN which connected ambulant servers. Define how the Network Infrastructure chapter will deal with connecting to the wider web.

More on IP Addresses mapped to DNS / A Records / Tuxic ?

## Instituional space: Setting up at CCI (workshopping as a method) - 2023

### ctp server with the proxy IT issues  -> institutional constraints , eduroam

- why Pi?

- anyone has the email that i wrote to Hazel? (has she forwarded)

- meeting with Batool about the project

- Mariana and Batool configuring Pi

- leading to first workshop in Jun 26th 2023                    

This workshop was a knowledge sharing session. Systerserver and Varia members shared information about their collective practices and technological knowledge about servers and Virtual Private Networks. We began setting up the first Raspberry Pi that now hosts servpub.net

## Instituional space: Setting up at LSBU in Nov 2023 (workshopping as a method) - 2023

Workshop 2        

Centre for the Study of the Networked Image, London, UK

This workshop introduced ServPub as a project and as a network of technical and social components. We also took visitors through the technical setup of the Raspberry Pi which now holds Wiki4print. We reflected on the process by wrapping up the day with a collective documentation exercise and group discussion with Q&A.

                   

This workshop was facilitated by In-grid with contributions from Systerserver members.

INBETWEENS: TRAVEL / a suitcase as a space

***** Could this come next after institutional constraints? Just anecdotally the fact that they recognised the pi at the border, could serve as a nice way to talk about why pi and/or the other alternatives out there.  *****

The conditions of traveling with an ambulent server where movement is limited through border control, visa rules, and absurd transportation rules. Making a ambulent server for a constrictive space.

What it means to pack a server into a bag, cables and plugs and screens. What actually goes travelling. The pi unplugged, sans-electricity, sans-network. The physicality of a thing. A list of the things borrowed and stolen.

- Hardware (why pi)

• - Why Raspberry Pi

• - Why the pi and not another single board computer

• - Why pre owned/borrowed hardware - CCI

WORKSHOP AS A SPACE

Pull out: Workshop as space

• Creating a space in a workshop, creating

• need to be with it to work - proximity to it to fix it

A server runs on a computer. By bringing the pi in person to teaching moments, it allows us to discuss ideas around the physicality of a server and caring for a server. There is trust and intimacy in proximity. This allows us to demystify network infrastructure.

CCI workshop / earlier workshops?

LSBU workshop content before joining the pi to the VPN. Demystifying the browser. Serving up files over a LAN. Accessing a file system, navigating around a file system on the command line.

## domain

7 Jul 2023

Hi,

I am the collaborator of systerserver working on a new autonomous network called servpub.

We would like to register a domain for two years www.servpub.net

Would you be able to get me a quote and do you have admin page for example to update the DNS configuration etc?

Thanks

Winnie    

   

The first idea that comes to mind when writing this chapter is the concept of a domain, which connects to notion of space, location, infrastructure, mobility and publicness. A domain functions as the address used to access a website on the internet, serving as a link to a hosting and storage spaces where webpages and digital content are stored and made accessible to users. It represents both a name and an identity—whether for an organization, a thought, a project, or something else. Beyond the name itself, as explained in the first chapter and our reasoning and references behind choosig ServPub, another key consideration is the top-level domain (TLD). Options such as .com, .org, .edu or others each carry distinct meanings and implications. Ultimately, the project selected .net as the most fitting choice, alluding to a social-technical network that encompasses both humans and machines, emphasizing connections, networks and comunities as foundational infrastructure.

Such a social-technical network encompasses numerous personal relationships. While it is common to purchase a public domain through companies or individual with whom one has no direct connection, this project takes a mindful approach to each decision. We carefully consider where the money goes to and whom are we supporting, ensuring that our choices align with our values and priorities. For instance, we reached out to Tuxic.nl, a company within our friends' network, because they provide open-source software and hardware solutions. More importantly, Tuxic.nl[1] offers services particularly for NGOs, political action groups and small businesses, supporting a wide range of creative and socially driven projects. It is also worth mentioning that once we confirmed the quote via email, Tuxic.nl promptly registered the domain and setup the configuration, incurring the costs on their side—all before receiving any payment. This level of trust reflects their dedication to supporting projects with integrity and confidence.

+++draft

Plugging it in:

• - Start with the impact of physicality, being in the same room as the hardware, being able to point to it in the corner of a room. Understanding the distinction between software and hardware. Setting up Hardware, what is an operating system Linux (why Linux):

• https://wiki4print.servpub.net/index.php?title=Docs:01.1_Hardware_and_OS

• + further links to Raspberry Pi

• - Local Area Network

• - Physical layer of network infrastructure?

• - Routers / Wi-fi / ethernet / MAC addresses ?

• - Software / Internet Protocol layer

• - TCP / UDP / ports / IP Address  ?

• - Protocols:

• - SSH (to enable networked/remote collaboration, I'm not sure going into collaboration here is the right thing to do, maybe more for praxis doubling?)

• https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/computers/remote-access.html#ssh

• https://wiki4print.servpub.net/index.php?title=Docs:01.3_SSH

• - Default Password Access. Basics of SSH + command line: navigating around a computer, installing software etc.

• - Setting up SSH keys per User ?

• https://wiki4print.servpub.net/index.php?title=Docs:01.2_Creating_Users

• https://wiki4print.servpub.net/index.php?title=Docs:01.3_SSH

• - TMUX ?

• - HTTP

• - Default set up on a pi?

• - Setting up a server with Nginx

• https://wiki4print.servpub.net/index.php?title=Docs:02_Local_Server_Setup_with_Ngin

• - the browser: accessing a website on the LAN

SSH/User creation (maybe just do the basics of SSH not user creation)

Servpub as a platform could be understood as a series of interconnected nodes or small board computers connected together to create a network. At the time of writing we have two nodes: wiki4print, and pubdoc. Short explaination of what those pis are actually doing?

[DIAGRAM OF THE NETWORK]

Through much of this project many of us are working (coding, writing) in a collaborative space on one or more of our networked nodes. When setting up a node which will be accessed, maintained or changed by several people we need to first consider how it is we configure those spaces. This is both a series of social questions (how we organise and document labour, how we decide who has access and to what extent) and technical considerations. Fundementally, at some point in developing the collaborative environment, we must should discuss and choose a user and access structure. Whatever structure is decided upon, we should then decide how to communicate between sysadmins, how to keep records and how to handover work.

As we mentioned in the section about why we want to be mobile our servers are shared and also mobile. In order for us to be able to have a functioning collaborative space that space needs to be accessable regardless of where is is in the world, or who is currently it's physical caretaker. In order to access the nodes remotely, we therefore need to call upon a protocol which allows us to enter the common space created on the pis remotely. Secure Shell (SSH) is a network protocol that lets users securely access and manage servers and computers (like our pi) from another device as long as it has internet access and the correct credentials. It functionally allows an individual to 'log-in' one device from another. If you have ever used a remote desktop, the idea is very similar, only you have access to that devices folder structure using a command line/text-based interface, rather than having the ability to access that devices desktop.

* Note: if you are interested in the steps it takes to use this protocol we have an installation/configuration guide as part of our documentation here.

This is all well and good, but you cant use ssh to access a remote device unless you have the correct credentials to do so: a user profile on the remote device in question and a pair of keys which encrypt and decrypt messages between the devices. SSH uses Client-sever architecture, which means that it divides tasks between clients and servers. The client is the device that requests information from a device, the sever is the device that provides that information.

In our case our Pi is our Server, and our personal laptop or device we want to use to access the pi, is the client. We talk about the nuances of these terms and how we feel about them in chapter x praxis doubling.

SSH is generally considered more secure due to its reliance on strong encryption and public/private key authentication.

**** Mention that this is where you'd then need to connect it to the VPN, which is not covered in this chapter? Reference Network Infrastructure chapter? *****

CULTURAL/PUBLIC SPACESSECTION DRAFTING [Cultural spaces] /katie

Up to the point of writing, our Wiki4Print[pi] has been a physical presence at several public workshops and events/interventions. Although in many (if not all) cases, it would be more practical and less effort to leave the hardware at home, we opt to bring it with us, for the reasons outlined above. By dint of our artist*sysadmin*academic situations, the pi has visited several of what we are defining as cultural spaces. We are using this term to describe spaces which primarily support or present the work of creative practicioners: museums, galleries, artist studios, libraries. This definition is not perfect, and obscures a lot of factors which we feel are pertinent to this discussion. We are conflating publicly funded institutions with privately rented spaces, spaces that are free to enter with others that have partial barriers like membership or ticketing. However, we feel that for our purposes here, these comparisons, although imperfect allow us to see common issues. As with our entrances and exits from institutional spaces (universities), domestic locations and moments traveling we need to spend some time feeling out the material conditions of the space, and the customy practice in, and idiosyncracies of, that space. Not all two cultural spaces are built the same, as no two homes are the same.

We'll tell you about two spaces to explain what we mean.

1. An arts space run by a charity, based in a meanwhile use building. The building contains rented studios which are used by individual artists and small businesses, a cafe and performance space, and gallery space open to the public. The longevity of the space is precarious due to the conditions of a meanwhile use tenancy, and the building itself is not being actively maintained as it is intended for demolishion by the developers who own the site. The space is based in the UK.

2. A center for contemporary arts, publicly funded by the federal government. The space hosts art exhibitions, theater and performance, films, and academic conferences. It also contains cafes and shops, and is generally open to the public, with some ticketed events. This space is in Germany.

For now we will refer them the two spaces as STUDIOS and MUSEUM.

These spaces are demonstrably quite different, in their scale, security and publicness. That being said there are common experiences when arriving in cultural spaces with a mobile server. We need to feel out the location everytime, understand levels of access, the policies and politics of these spaces, and of the duty of care/legislative duties each institution needs to respect. We may have developed our protocols of working, but these cannot be impressed upon other spaces indesciminately, we need to acknowledge that we are sharing this space with its caretakers, and also with other creative groups with thier own needs and working practices, and the wider public who may be impacted and interested in our presence, or who may not be at all aware we are sharing the space at all.

The most pressing issue is often access to an internet connection. As we have outlined in [chapter x/section y], our network of nodes are connected to eachother using a VPN. In our case, the VPN network requires access to the internet to encrypt and route data through its servers. Additionally, two of our nodes (wiki4print and pubdoc), serve up public webpages (https://wiki4print.servpub.net/ and https://servpub.net/) and when offline these sites cease to be accessible. [FACT CHECK THE VPN PART to make sure I'm describing this accurately]. Getting internet access may appear to be a simple enough problem to solve, being as we are in cultural spaces which often have public wifi available, but often it becomes more convoluted.

As we discuss in further detail in the section on education institutions, some internet networks block all VPNs. Although this particular issue was not apparent in this particular STUDIO or MUSEUM, it is not uncommon for a public wifi network to block VPNs in order to control access, or for security reasons. For example, some organisations may block VPNs to maintain control over their network traffic, or to try to limit who has access. VPNs mask the IP addresses of users, and so by removing that option, institutions have greater insight into who is accessing their networks and what they are doing while connected. Additionally, although this is not an issue we directly encountered, some national governments block or restrict VPN use in order to impose state censorship and reduce individual privacy and agency, although it's often framed by the powers that be as a measure to maintain national security or prevent cybercrime ( https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10606-022-09426-7, Russia, China, Turkey - is this a bit of a fleeting mention of a massive issue? How best to frame this point with the appropriate weight, reference Winnies Unerasable Characters?).

All that being said, Cultural spaces are more personal and negioable, easier to access a personal connection to make soemthing happen. Essential for our ability to experiment publicly and accessibly. You can often go find someone to help on a particular issue, technical staff, other tenants, community of users.

but comes with more emotional labour, hiccoughs and weirdnesses

Flexible but also messy

* VPN blocks - using mobile hotspot to bypass institutional barriers

* Wifi strength, coverage over large buildings, connections with 100s/1000s of people

* Routers - where are they?

* Reliance on systems we cannot directly troubleshoot -  precarious spaces (studio space in SET) where there may not be staff onsite to help, "parasitic" -- negotiatiing with different networks (power dynamic / security)

* Ethernet - often disconnected!,

* MAC addresses (unclear on this - ask B why this was included)

* Estates issues: (broken?)ethernet ports, working plugs, access to extensions, locked doors, opening hours, previous bookings, cleaning regimens, central heating (or lack there of), security (theft), furniture.

negotiation of being portable but who has the permissions.

Transmediale the connectivity not working when we arrived, as an example.

Within instituitions, the need to use mobile hotspots to bypass the institutional barriers. Refer to the constraints of educational spaces.

"parasitic" -- negotiatiing with different networks (power dynamic / security)

• - Public institution/cultural spaces (museum/HKW at TM/SET), EASST

Once connected to the VPN, problematics and politics of:

• - Accessing the wider internet from different spaces

• - Physical layer of network infrastructure

• - Routers / Wi-fi / ethernet / MAC addresses ?

https://ci.servpub.net/in-grid/collective-infrastructures

DOMESTIC/PRIVATE SPACES / Becky

- a way to talk about hardware of the pi? e.g. heatsinks and the limitations of a pi

- hardware maintenance as a practice

- extending storage with a USB

- backups

The wiki4print pi has ended up living in a house of an In-grid member in South London. How it came to be there was a result of the needs of caring for a temperamental Raspberry pi in a temperamental meanwhile space (SET studios). However, its particular journey through London and where it has landed was as much to do with the material constraints of internet access as it was to do with the needs of working in a collective. Passing hardware from hand to hand across London became a force that determined the material shape of the network: last minute plans, emergencies, the demands of work schedules, holidays, illness and commute times all played a part in the movement of the hardware.

wiki4print was originally at SET Studios in Woolwhich. The building was originally (what?) then it was an HMRC building (insert full history), it is now maintained by the Arts Charity SET which emerged out of squatter culture in London. The use of meanwhile space (definition?) within the arts sector in London is closely tied into wider property development crises, where more and more artists are reliable on institutions that exist in the margins. The reality of having a studio within a meanwhile space is that much of the infrastructure is crumbling. When In-grid first set up the Raspberry pis the hope was to host them in an art studio at SET, but it quickly became apparent that it was not viable, the ethernet ports in the room were not functional, the wi-fi was not reliable and the team maintaining the building are primarily artists themselves rather than corporate service providers. In the lead up to the Content/Form Transmediale workshop the pi kept crashing and going offline. We moved it to avoid these issues in the middle of a co-working session with multiple collectives so as to stick to the timeline. Batool raced to Becky's so that we could go ahead with the session. Why Becky's? Batool was not traveling to Germany for the workshop and Becky's house was the closest to the studio and on the way to where Batool was travelling for work.

We thought the pi kept going offline becasue the SET wi-fi was bad, but this was a red herring. While the pi was at Becky's it temporarily lived under a bed so the ethernet cable could reach it. Through the process of being able to debug at any hour (lying on the floor beside a bed) we were able to discover that problems with accessing the pi online were due to the Raspberry pi overheating, freezing and shutting down processes which would take it offline. We bought a heat sink and fan for the pi, and from then on it worked reliably in all locations. Maintaining server hardware in a domestic space or outside the context of a server farm (small or large) becomes an act of providing care at odd hours.

Maintaining the network becomes an act of inviting the rhythms and bodies of others into the material realities of the network. Cleaning the cat hair out of the fan of the raspberry pi or plugging in the pi because a guest did some hoovering and didn't realise what they were unplugging.

Ending/conclusion

Creating a theory of space, a unifying conceptual framework for why we want to discuss these forms of space and how.

------------------

Glossary -> Can we make a glossary for the technical terms...

Technical Writing / Structure for what to potentially include in this chapter

- Hardware (why pi)

• - Why Raspberry Pi

• - Setting up Hardware:

• https://wiki4print.servpub.net/index.php?title=Docs:01.1_Hardware_and_OS

• + further links to Raspberry Pi

- Remote Access to Hardware over a local network (workshop)

• - What constitutes a local area network LA

• - Physical layer of network infrastructure?

• - Routers / Wi-fi / ethernet / MAC addresses ?

• - Software / Internet Protocol layer

• - TCP / UDP / ports / IP Address  ?

• https://wiki4print.servpub.net/index.php?title=Docs:00.1_Network_terminology

• (Network Infrastructure chapter has some detail about lan/wan/van already + history and politics of IP Addresses IPv4 and IPv6, they touch on Static IP addresses) https://wiki4print.servpub.net/index.php?title=Chapter_2b:_Server_Issues:_Networked_Infrastructure

• What Protocol stack or internet infrastructure model do we want to use and what are the politics of that? Not sure what protocol stack is in Network Infrastructure Chapter (image of the hourglass). OSI or Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) or is there something else?

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_protocol_suite

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_model

• - Protocols:

• - SSH (why pi / to enable networked/remote collaboration)

• https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/computers/remote-access.html#ssh

• https://wiki4print.servpub.net/index.php?title=Docs:01.3_SSH

• - Default Password Access

• - Setting up SSH keys per User

• https://wiki4print.servpub.net/index.php?title=Docs:01.2_Creating_Users

• https://wiki4print.servpub.net/index.php?title=Docs:01.3_SSH

• - TMUX ?

• - HTTP

• - Default set up on a pi?

• - Setting up a server with Nginx

• https://wiki4print.servpub.net/index.php?title=Docs:02_Local_Server_Setup_with_Nginx

- IP Addresses mapped to DNS / A Records / Tuxic

- Hand over to Syster Server Chapter? VPNs, Tinc, Reverse Proxy servers / routing traffic?

Coordinator: SysterServer Contributors: xm (ooooo) and Mara

https://digitalcare.noho.st/pad/p/servpub

https://eth.leverburns.blue/p/servpub-2b

Index/Structure

positionality of feminist servers:

• data infrastructure literacy
• digital solidarity networks
• dependencies - alliancies - affinities
• troubleshooting /debugging

politics of networks

• systerserver networking: internes/alliances/systerserver /....
• lan/wan/vlan
• regulatory bodies ICAN-RFC's develop/discuss standards (missing)
• routing / subnetting (missing)
• history of VPN
• proxy, tor as tools for accessing the web (missing)
• geolocation and network infrastructures

resources matter

• traffic costs and electricity (missing)

Chapter

positionality of feminist servers

In this chapter we will appropriate the tactics of Queercore: How To Punk A Revolution and introduce our feminist server's activities as a catalyst to push techno-feminism into existence and announce we are here to stay. The documentary explores the rise of the queercore cultural and social movement in the mid-1980s, which channeled punk angst into a biting critique of societal homophobia.

We as part of Systerserver and co-dependent on other feminist server projects (Anarchserver, Maadix, leverburns, digiticalcare...), will share ways of doing, tools & strategies to overcome/overthrow the monocultural, centralized oligopolic surveillance & technologies of control.

A server is a place where our data is hosted, the contents of our websites, where we are chatting, storing our stories and imaginaries and access the multiple online services we need to get organized (mailinglists, calendars, notes,...). We don't want to be served, we think a feminist server as an (online) space that we need to inhabit. As inhabitants,  we contribute by nurturing a safe space and a place for creativity, experimentation and justice, a place for hacking heteronormativity and patriarchy. Feminist servers have the potential to learn together, to maintain and care for a space together in a non-hierarchical way, and in a non-meritocratic way.

• https://creatingcommons.zhdk.ch/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Transcript-Femkespider.pdf

To be able to setup server's we need to have hardware, a machine - a single board computer (like raspberry pi, olimex, an old refurbished laptop,...) or a server in a rack in a data center, a virtual machine (vps), and the will to self host (described in chapter 1). As Systerserver, our feminist server project, we relate and organize around these servers by adopting different roles, defined in conversations in Anarchaserver. [roles]

Besides from these roles we need to encourage “data infrastructure literacy” for the ability to account for, intervene around and participate in the wider socio-technical infrastructures through which data is created, stored and analyzed. Our intent is to make space for collective inquiry, experimentation, imagination and intervention around data. Data as in binary information, suitable for processing by computers, recognizing it's intrinsic (human)labour conditions, maintenance and hence care. In becoming more literate, we cultivate our sensibilities around data politics and as well engage a wider public with digital data infrastructures.

• https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2053951718786316

For this reason we need to make servers visible and physical as a crucial/critical space, we need a room of our own and we need a ‘connected room’ of our own.*  or a network of one's own

• *(Spideralex) https://creatingcommons.zhdk.ch/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Transcript-Femkespider.pdf.

• *referring to the paranodal periodic publication and series of events and worksession in rotterdam revisting of Virgina Woolf's classic eesay.

By making infrastructures visible with the aid of drawings, diagrams, manuals, metaphors, performances, gatherings, systerserver traverses technical knowledge with an aim to de-cloud (Hilfling Ritasdatter, Gansing, 2024) our data, and redistribute our networks of machines and humans/species.

• ( public interface anarchaserver /calafou: https://zoiahorn.anarchaserver.org/physical-process/ )

• ( are being served  - home is a server -  https://areyoubeingserved.constantvzw.org/Home_server.xhtml )

A connected room, network of one's own, with allies as co-dependencies, attributes collectivities interacting as radical references which evades hierarchies of cognitive capital based on individuals and underlines the collective efforts to resist within the hegemonic technological paradigm.

• https://www.roots-routes.org/hacking-maintenance-with-care-reflections-on-the-self-administered-survival-of-digital-solidarity-networks-by-erica-gargaglione/

politics of networks

Being part of the Internet, or internets, is a combination of vast, complex and opaque technologies we have to understand the technicalities of the Internet, such as IP address, Local, private and virtual networks, routing and subnetting and the politics of scarcity, economy and institutional control.

systerserver networking

Systerserver has 2 physical machines in a data room in Graz @ mur.at. [Mur.at = ]. Donna from the genderchangers went to install the most recent hardware in 20??. The server is called Adele. The older machine we have since 20?? and is called Jean. Both are running a recent stable debian image with diverse services. Let's focus on Jean who hosts...our vpn-tunneling software called tinc*(atfnos/tinc geanology).

The software Tinc functions with (private) networks, and, jean, we configured two (three?) of these private networks, named "internes" and "alliances". While the first is for our internal Systerserver network name to communicate with our backup server, the latter is for local servers from our community e.g the etherpad servers of leverburns which we use for documentation. There is also the network named systerserver which was our first attempt to install and configure Tinc and makes the servers for this publication. The servers that are connected to these networks are mostly home based with dynamic Ips that change. A home router switches the public ip regularly, they use what are called dynamic IP addresses, this means your public IP address change over time. This is because your internet service provider (ISP) temporarily assigns you an IP address from a pool. They do this to manage their available addresses more efficiently and for minor security benefits. So an ISP's lease time can expiring which triggers an IP address change.

Hence for these servers to be accessible in the Internet they need a fixed (or static) IP. With the creation of the Tinc networks, servers can be accessed via the IP of jean which is a fixed IP. Tinc (and other VPN) tunnels operate within private networks (10.0.0.0), and the machines inside these tunnels can connect to each other with the private IP’s that we assign within these private networks. (invites ..?) In that case, we as system administators of jean and their allied servers, we have the agency to configure these private networks without the necessity to be given a fixed IP by the internet providers, which most often is an expensive service. Also there is a shortage of IPv4...

dyndns ? dependencies

Protocol stack

lan/wan/van

To understand somehow more the private and public IP’s and networks, we can look at them from their naming conventions. LAN is an abbreviation for LOCAL AREA NETWORK, and the reserved addresses for these networks are either 192.x.x.x, 169.x.x.x (DHCP) and 172.x.x.x. These addresses are distributed within one room, building that has a router. The router that broadcasts the WiFi or provides ethernet cable connections is the interface between the local network inside the room, and the WAN (WIDER ARE NETWORK), basically the Internet.

The addresses 10.x.x.x are reserved for the private networks, that are also called virtual. Since Virtual Private Networks are more complex to comprehend. Let's introduce a little bit of their history, hoping that it will illustrate their purposes and functions more.

history and topology of VPN

After the WWW and http protocol, the question of secure connections became urgent as the ability to connect beyond institutional networks became wider. AT&T Bell Laboratories developed an IP Encryption Protocol (SwIPe), implementing encryption in the IP layer. This innovation had a significant influence on the development of IPsec, an encryption protocol that remains in widespread use today.

"IPsec, introduced around the mid-1990s, provided end-to-end security at the IP layer, authenticating and encrypting each IP packet in data traffic. Notably, IPsec was compatible with IPv4 and later incorporated as a core component of IPv6. This technology set the stage for modern VPN methodologies." ref https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/cyberpedia/history-of-vpn

By end of 90s Microsoft worked towards implementing a secure tunnel protocol, creating a virtual data tunnel to ensure more secure data transmission over the web. The encryption methods used in the PPPP was vulnerable to advanced cryptographic attacks. the MPPE (Microsoft Point-to-Point Encryption), only offers up to 128-bit keys which have been deemed insufficient for protecting against advanced threats. Later together with Cisco, they developed another protocol, the L2TP, for serving multiple types of internet traffic.

"L2TP (Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol) works by encapsulating data packets within a tunnel over a network. Since the protocol does not inherently encrypt data, it relies on IPsec (Internet Protocol Security) for confidentiality, integrity, and authentication of the data packets traversing the tunnel." ref https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/cyberpedia/what-is-l2tp

A later tunneling protocol is the openVPN, which has been designed as a more flexible protocol allowing port configuration, and more security.

Tinc protocol follows here...

the drawing of encapsulation from tunnel up/down

While https is another way to secure traffic over the internet, it is distingue from IPSec in that IPsec secures all data traffic within an IP network, suitable for site-to-site connectivity. HTTPS, the secure version of HTTP, using SSL, and its successor TLS secures individual web sessions, typically used for secure remote access to specific applications via the internet.

geolocation and network infrastructures

Now that hopefully we have a clearer idea of the local/private networks vs the public networks aka Internet, it’s important to dive into the distribution of addresses and the politics that stem from this. According an online article about the state of the Internet as of 2023, several factors have contributed to the decline in IPv4:

   • Market Saturation: The Internet may have reached a point where there is no additional demand to drive further growth, leading to a natural plateau in IPv4 usage. 
     
   • Shift to Content Distribution Networks (CDNs): The transition to CDNs for digital services has reduced the demand for traditional content distribution methods, impacting IPv4 growth. 
     
   • IPv4 Address Exhaustion: The depletion of available IPv4 addresses has led to the adoption of address-sharing technologies and significant architectural changes in Internet services, further contributing to the decline. 
     

Despite these trends, the article notes that the majority of the Internet user base (slightly under two-thirds as of the end of 2022) still relies exclusively on IPv4. The future trajectory of IPv4 and IPv6 usage remains uncertain, influenced by technical developments, economic factors, and global events, such as pandemics, economic crises and communications technology in different parts of the word. IPv6 adoption is scant in most of Africa, the Middle East, Eastern and Southern Europe, and the western part of Latin America. Due to the market saturation and the smaller pace of network growth (double check) in those regions appears, for the moment, be adequately accommodated in the continued use of IPv4 NATs. This means that ISP can charge higher prices for a declined number of IPv4 and the need for self or community based hosting that relies on static and fixed IPv4s can be obtained through VPN tunnels and reverse proxies, or Tor onions.

ref https://blog.apnic.net/2024/01/09/measuring-bgp-in-2023-have-we-reached-peak-ipv4/

In the art research project A Tour of Suspended Handshakes, artist Cheng Guo physically visits nodes of China’s Great Firewall. Using network diagnostic tools, he identifies the geolocations mapped to IP addresses of these critical gateways, based on data published by other researchers. At times, these geolocations correspond to scientific and academic centers, which seem like plausible sites for gateway infrastructure. Other times, they lead to desolate locations with no apparent technological presence. While Guo acknowledges that some gateways may be hidden or disguised—for example, antennas camouflaged as lamp posts—the primary reason for these discrepancies lies in the redistribution and subnetting of IP addresses, as well as their resale. These factors make it difficult to pinpoint exact geographical locations. Additionally, online IP location tools provide coordinates in the WGS-84 system (the global GPS standard), whereas locations in China must be converted to GCJ-02 (an encrypted Chinese standard). This further complicates geographic identification, as mapping activities have been illegal in mainland China since 2002. In the case of the Great Firewall, the combination of IP redistribution and encrypted coordinates obscures the true locations of its gateways, rendering the firewall a nebulous and elusive system. Similarly, for mobile (ambulant) servers, geolocating individual servers—beyond the main public-facing ones—remains a challenge. However, unlike the Great Firewall, the mobility of such servers is not enforced through top-down government control. This decentralization has the potential to counteract centralized policies and provide a means of circumvention.

ref https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_data_in_China

Wiki layouting

[what]

This chapter stretches what wiki layouting could be.

It does not focus on design, cause this tends to lean towards the cosmethic aesthetics, but we're interesting in aesthetics in a broader sense, in structural aesthetics that come from writing through a wiki.

[how]

We will engage with the materiality of MediaWiki by looking at a range of features of this software and the forms of sociality it activates. For instance:

• at the different tools for versioning that are there and how they relate to ideas of authorship,
• through explorations of hypertext, the idea of transclusion, and different ways of linking/relating pages, categories, user contributions, what links here, even going to semantic data models perhaps (triples)
• possibly by engaging with the size of media files + database
• embracing the strength of messiness in a non-templated environment

[why]

Printed material made with the wiki-to-print setup does not really smell like a wiki. This is one thing we feel interested to dig into. Why doesn't it smell like a wiki?

But also, we make a printed object as a thing that will last on paper. But meanwhile, we also produce wiki pages, but nothing happened with them. What is left when making something with a wiki? How can it feed back into the wiki?

That is why we are shifting from a focus on wiki printing to wiki layout.

How can we use wiki pages to render multiple layouts and publications from? How can reuse become a central attitude when working with the wiki?

How can we work with an attitude curious of:

• reuse of material
• transformation through layouting

Finding different paths through the material.

We want to explore a range of experimental wiki based writing/reading environments, by exploring:

• the materiality of MediaWiki, wiki writing, wiki reading..
• the materiality of layout engines (HTML, Paged.js, graphviz, ...)

Wiki activity snapshots

First outcome of our wiki technotext ethnographic trajectory. The graph above was generated with this script, using Python, Jinja and Graphviz and working with the wiki of monoskop.org.

Taking snapshots of a wiki using Graphviz to make layout. Graphviz is not easy to control, and that's meant to be so. You can control some things like fontsize and shape of the nodes, but the placement of nodes and edges is controlled by Graphviz.

If you make something for print, or for the web, you think about how long something will last. We tend to then simplify layout, to make it accessible for people for as long as the layout exists. We follow conventions based on our reading direction (left to right, top to bottom in our language). Putting something on the top-left of the page (like a link to a homepage), is a decision that feels very accessible.

But Graphviz follows a different approach. It places the nodes and the edges without thinking about usual hierarchies, or usual ways of reading. We done a bit of that with the title of the graphs. Here the placement at the top is important, it is different information to the content of the graph. But the rest of the layout of the graph is decided upon by Graphviz. And also placed differently once the content of the graph changes. It connects the act of making snapshots and taking a particular slice from the bigger whole in the form of a graph on a particular moment in time.

In this way, it fits a technotext-ethnographic approach. Taking samples at different moments to make layouts. It introduces an element of time and temporality.

Notes from reading from the booklet "16 case stories", published by the LGRU in 2013:

• layout is the spatial arrangement of text and graphical elements
• what we understand of it is directly exported from the Gutenberg press
• there are little traces of the encounter of layout with digital systems

What we notice and remember about wiki-to-print practice: the digital systems that are involved in the making of printed matter often become invisibilized.

FLOSS Design principles and processes:

Choice of fonts, and design values/ethics/considerations, licensing, questions of openness, and federation, other ways of organising.

Link to pad that is being shared between design and computational publishing chapters. A record of meetings to get familiar with designing with wiki4print.

Icon: ⟀⋒⌘

/\ means axis intersection through a place of interest.

STRUCTURE:

Intro:

Praxis doubling is itself a plural. The _ing on doubling is a process ongoing, a verb and an action that is taken in a number of different orientations. In this section we are looking at how In-grid has oriented its praxis in this coalition. Praxis itself being the combination of practice and theory, of code and conduct, and of docs and protocols. In this act of doubling praxis, we open up the ways of interpreting relations, and figuring their possibilities.

To feel this out these technical network relations together In-grid has built up a debugging method for technical docs. This entails making practice and their knowledges accessible, from these distributed knowledges form dialogues around how these technologies can be configured otherwise, and set intentions for other ways of practicing them. This methodology is meant to not only enable technical practice and it's knowledges to be in discourse with the imaginaries they are figured through, but to also orient these dialogues towards forming our own imaginaries and figures for them to be practiced through.

This work builds from Lucy Suchman's Configuration, where we aim to double the user/designer paradigm she critiques to form other ways of imagining and transforming our relationships to technologies.This doubling is also done through one of our key practices of moving from transparency to access, enabling our practices to be accessed and doubled into other forms and needs by others. We developed this approach informed by the concept of semi-plain language that Kelsie Acton notes in here chapter Plain Language for Disability Culture in Crip Authorship. Both in the language we try to use but also in the way we are trying to practice language and formats as plastic and maleable. In this thinking not only how we can make technical language accessible within the scope of plain language, but also what textures and curves can we leave on with the semi- that can enable change this discourse to figure out other infrastructures.

- This chapter is built upon reflections upon writing the technical docs. In that sense its a recursive text, a companion for another text and is written in tandem with us rewriting the technical text <3

- highlighting syntactical/technical lingo,

       - eg using the star \* for transfeminist (reference the source)

       - explaining the use of technical metaphors

- What this chapter does:

   - re-figuring what docs do

   - sharking knowledge and making the technical knowledge accessible

   - do we want to talk about the interplay between techincal discourse and between sharing it in a pedagogical

- Explicitly referencing that our practice (in-grid) are doing many transdisciplinary things

- doubling praxis can first be introduced as the reality of more-than-double

- //Discourse of efficiency, depersonalised - docs being anonomous

- critiquing a "figure" and we can bring in Docs as a firuge

Context in servpub project:

- What do tech-docs do, What dont they do - poetic lists? - tell stories?

- How/why did we (in-grid specific) start making these docs?

• - learning through writing and sharing.

       - means for getting more in-grid members on board. The project itself was a response to Winnie Soons call for creating a trans\*feminist research project in London. (We don't yet know what makes this one so London: deliberatly working outside of institutions, skimming resources and distrubution skills) - should talk & ask Winnie about that/perspective

       - syster using it for other projects Les ask them about these strands!

- What emerged through that process, in terms of needs and processes?

- In depth explainaition of the technical practice (docs), and the social labour relations around it. highlighting where optimisation is prioritised and the industrial tools built around making that practice easy as possible

- learning / teaching? Self-teaching? how are the docs related to this?

Positioning/argument (maybe better title like disobedient figuring):

- Contextualise within "standard" doc-writing norms. Engineering work-flows, reliance on docs to standardise practice and erase human nuance, etc. - do we also want to talk about disobedience here? - ref: Geohackers text

- Importance of chainlinking a technical practice in one seemingly neutral spaces (docs) to other, more politically implicated contexts (work, efficiency, transparent methods, etc) - ref: Ahmed?

- Lucy Suchman, configuration paper

- Articulate our response to that. How can we offer a response, why? What is the percieved gap we are trying to fill with these proposed docs?

- Who can we reference as guides for this offering. Mentions of action research by other people

       - ref. 'filing a bug report on bug reporting', writing technical docs that reflect on techincal docs

Directing attention to technical choices (do we even need this?):

- short overview and use this refernce the colophon!

- might have or refere to the diagrams of relations

- mention readical referencing and point to colophon

- should mention the technical choices of the docs (not hardware) as that wont be in the colophon

ref:

   - "Software does not come withour its world" - Maria Bellacasa quoted in geohackers text

Activating the docs

- Docs become active (used, referenced, relevant) when we the need for building is shared, and others want to expand independant infras.

- "_we are reminded collectively that technical knowledge is not the only knowledge suitable for addressing the situations we find our-selves in_" and yet technical knowledge is what we are trying to spread with docs. (Suchman, Lucy, Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions)

- Reference for G to add to plainish text

- while we still needed and wanted to keep our docs legible, what are the necessary deviations from the doc-making tradition that we need in order to address our readers, who, decidedly, were not other engineers. How do we write docs DIFFERENTLY but not necessarily more simply. We do not assume the ignorance or simple-mindedness of a non-technically educated (conditioned) readership. How do we write for solidarity?

- docs are for linear processes, breaking linearity was a major challeng you m

- Practicing protocols, workshoping the technical writing in none technical spaces, and using those protocols (refer to the handshake, client server discussions)

- docs assume that you start somewhere and end somewhere, but as we are writing this its evident that we started many times in different places, and ended in many more, and some have not even ended even though that part of the project is technically "done"

- also how we make docs accessible, adding intros that overview and question practices in a way all can engage.

Annotating the Chapter with snippets from the docs

ref: https://time.cozy-cloud.net/

Graceful ending

Side note: dealing with deprecated tools!

References

Pad up to date: https://pad.riseup.net/p/PraxisDoublingChapterNotes-keep

4c. PUBlishing & Distribution ?? // needs development of idea

Initial idea is wanting to draw in and work with some of the ideas that one of my PhD student James Fox has done on cybernetic models and alternative organizing structures. But the idea would not be asking him to write about that, but rather to think through in discussion with Minor Compositions, as publisher, how a more cybernetic of organizational structure could be translated into tools of protocols for our internal organizational processes. And the idea would be thinking through those things where the internal processes would be resonant with the approaches being developed within the ServPub book project. In other words it would be trying to work through how the methods being developed in this project could shift the internal organizational structures of the publisher. It might make sense to keep developing this and see how it best fits into the ServPub project as publication, in the sense that at this point it's unclear whether it sits better as a chapter in its own right, or as materials which might be usefully integrated into other planned chapters.

(Minor Compositions, Systerserver)

Coordinator: Minor Compositions (Stevphen)

Contributors: Mara, Stevphen, James

Whereas a book would usually end with a ‘list of references’ or 'works cited', this book’s final chapter concerns the practice of ‘referencing’ – the reference as a verb and not a noun. This change of perspective underlines how the creation of references, configurations of authorship, indexing of knowledge, and other scholarly activities – that are usually considered mundane and less important than the actual knowledge itself – are in fact an intrinsic and important part of the constitution of knowledge: What we know cannot be excluded from the formats of knowing. To use another word, academic referencing is part of creating what Celia Lury has referred to as an ‘epistemic infrastructure’ – the organisational structures and facilities by which knowledge becomes knowledge. Like other formal cultural expressions, also academic referencing follows formal properties of circulation, composed and upheld by technical infrastructures with specific features.

As also mentioned in the introduction, and hopefully clear at this point, ServPub explores self-hosting as an infrastructural practice, the potential for autonomy in the publishing process, and not least the role of communities in this. Referencing is to be seen in the same perspective – as an exploration of the potential for social and technical autonomy in the process of making knowledge, knowledge.

Referencing is part of a constellation of practices such as quoting, indexing, paraphrasing, annotating, writing footnotes, selecting, etc. Inherently, they can take many forms and do not necessarily work together. For instance, if I write an email to a friend saying, “my neighbour told me the traffic has dramatically increased in the street these last two years”, I am quoting and referencing. But I am not making my reference explicit (I am not naming my neighbour) and I do not index my reference. Academic publishing, in turn, establishes fixed and formal procedures to quote, index, annotate, etc. What are the logics of referencing and formatting knowledge in academic publishing – considering social, technical, epistemic or other forms of autonomy?

Radical referencing

A reoccurring term in the collective process has been ‘radical references.’ The notion comes from a distributed collective of library workers in the United States. An important task in librarianship is to seek and make available information, a process deeply dependent on the existence of catalogues; that is, an infrastructure of references, indexes and data. Many of the formal requirements in referencing (i.e., the stating of authors, publishers, years of publication in the correct manner) simply come from the need to build and maintain an infrastructure where one can identify and access publications.

Radical Reference (RR) question the existing infrastructure from an activist perspective. They argue that the librarian is both a professional and a citizen, who have come to realize an activist potential in their profession. As librarians Melissa Morrone and Lia Friedman put it “RR rejects a ‘neutral’ stance and the commercialization of data and information, works towards equality of access to information services,” and therefore actively seek to form coalitions with activist groups. RR is by no means a new thing. Members of the American Library Association (ALA) also took part in the ‘Freedom Libraries’ in the 1960ies, addressing the racist based inequities in American library services. In the time of its existence, RR would assist journalists and the public in anything from finding information of the radical right on college campuses to providing references on cycling in London. In this sense, ‘the library’ is not just a building with shelves, but potentially everywhere.

What has appealed to many of the participants in the writing of this book is the recognition of this wider and living library of references. There is a collective interest in situations where references are not always identifiable as objects of knowledge suitable for a conventional library (ascribed an International Standard Book Number (ISBN) or a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), for instance) – let alone listed at the end of a book. This would, for instance, include the practices of activists and others, who are not always considered ‘proper references’ in academic writing, and where the formal standards (or ‘styles’) of references can be hard to meet because the knowledge relies on collective efforts or is dynamic in nature (preserved in a wiki, or other technical system).

To some, there is also an appeal in the recognition of the librarian’s labour as an activist; or perhaps rather, the activist as a librarian. RR resembles other library projects found in grass-roots software culture, where it is common (also to the authors of this book) to use Calibre software to access and build ‘shadow libraries’. That is, for hackers and activists to become their own ‘amateur librarians’, building and sharing catalogues of publications – not only to distribute knowledge, but also to curate knowledge on particular subjects, and to preserve knowledge prone to erasure or other types of discrimination. Proper referencing here becomes a question of care and maintenance of an epistemic infrastructure, such as a catalogue or an index of references at the end of a book, in the pursuit of autonomy.

In the following, we take these appeals as points of departure for an exploration of the logic of referencing, and the potential implications for autonomous academic referencing. In other words, if referencing is a compulsory formality in the publication of research, we ask what purposes, and whose, does this formality serve? Referencing in a radical perspective is not just a matter of autonomy from certain references, or types of referencing (like the formal academic one), but rather an examination of the condition of all referencing, and potentially also an exploration of the forms that a liberation from referencing would potentially take – in recognition of other collectivities than the one that occur in a, say, a research community (connected by a network of references), and also in recognition of the various technical infrastructures (such as the wiki used for collective writing) that make referencing in the ServPub community possible in the first place.

Academic akribeia and citation styles

Writing culture extends more than 4,000 years and making reference to other manuscripts has always been practiced. For instance, Aristotle would often reference his mentor, Plato, but as Ancient Greek scholar Williams Rhys Roberts has argued: “The opening chapters of the Rhetoric do not give Plato's name, but I wish to suggest that they contain some verbal echoes of his Gorgias which are meant to be ‘vocal to the wise.’”. Referencing does not inherently involve a direct mention of a name, and the study of ancient texts involve much debate on these intertextual relations. Not until the 19th century was there a need to specify the ways in which one speaks of others. As readers of scholarly articles will know, there are nowadays set traditions of references that all authors will need to abide by, formulated as ‘styles’ of referencing. The organization of citing, listing, and other tasks finds, in other words, its form in a pre-defined template. This template is much more than a mere formality and belongs to an academic history of knowledge governance and an intellectual history of epistemic infrastructuring.

One widely used standard for referencing within the arts and humanities is the American Modern Language Association’s standard, the MLA format. MLA, along with several other standards like the Association for Computing Machinery’s (ACM format) or the American Psychological Association (APA format), indicates that the act of referencing belongs to an institutional practice of ‘scholarly’ work and academic akribeia; that is, a rigorous keeping to the letter of the law of the institution (and not just its principles). With a certain ethical undertone (‘the right way’), it performs as a marker of ‘proper’ knowledge within a particular field of knowledge, serving to demarcate it, exactly, as a field of knowledge. The Modern Language Association was, for instance, founded in the late 19th century when programs in language and literature were being established at universities to promote and preserve a national cultural heritage and identity. Formatting references was a way for librarians to index reliable and useful knowledge in a field, and to provide insights into a network of scholars referencing each other, as well as into what and whose knowledge mattered the most. Such practices of demarcation and impact cannot be separated from the governance of research and are no less important in today’s austerity measures of knowledge production.

Besides librarians (as mentioned above) and academic associations, also publishers were keen to build epistemic infrastructures for referencing. The Chicago Manual of Style (used in this book) was historically the first attempt to specify clear principles for making references – quoting in a text, and listing the works quoted. It was first invented by the University of Chicago Press in the late 19th century to streamline the work of editors who had to produce books out of handwritten manuscripts and therefore drew up a style sheet and shared it in the university community. Over time, it has become one of the most widely used reference guides for writers, editors, proofreaders. It comes in two versions: The “notes and bibliography” where sources are cited in numbered footnotes or endnotes, and the “author-date” where sources are referenced briefly in a parenthesis that can be matched up with the full biographical information in a concluding reference list. As we will discuss later in this chapter, a practice of making footnotes, and also of ‘bracketing’ references are more than anything a particular cultural practice that has become naturalized within an academic publishing world but also comes with particular histories and assumptions that reflect hierarchies of power, knowledge and knowledge production. For, after all, what is a reference? And under what terms and conditions does an academic reference and authority occur?

Authorship and research ethics

One place to begin is with the obsession of origin in scholarly akribeia: knowledge has to come from someone, somewhere, sometime. The typical bibliography encodes limited entities: time in the form of dates, spaces in the form of locations (sometimes), people or collectives of people in the form of names, organisations in the form of publishers. Here the figure of the author, treated as a self-contained unit, plays the most central role. The scope, here, is much broader than merely establishing ‘the letters of the law’ (to cite the formally correct way); it has to do with a more idealistic research ethics. Establishing authorship is a question of acknowledging the origins of knowledge, but it is also a scientific community’s promise of holding people accountable for knowledge, and for guaranteeing the validity of that knowledge: at all times, knowledge must be ready to be verified by others, and authors must be prepared to accept contradiction.

This type of research ethics was the topic of the acclaimed ‘Vancouver Convention’ in 1978, where a group of medical journal editors decided to establish a rule of conduct for scientists, editors and publishers, known as the ‘Vancouver Guidelines’. Although, these ethics standards were developed within the medical sciences, they have been applied within all the sciences, and also the arts and humanities. But are they easily applicable in a book such as the one you are reading now?

The Vancouver guidelines outline four criteria, by which all listed authors must abide:

1. An author is someone who has made a substantial contribution to the work.
2. An author must have reviewed the work.
3. An author must have approved the work.
4. An author is accountable for the work.

These ethical standards clearly bring a level of order (letters of law to abide by, in academia), but a critique often raised, is that they do not sufficiently consider the extent to which authorship, and making reference to authorship, are situated within cultural communities of practices. In some types of knowledge production, like particle physics, for instance, it will make perfectly good sense to include hundreds of authors who have all contributed with specific tasks, but who cannot all possibly have read the final proved version and therefore be held accountable. In other research traditions you would credit people who cannot read, like in some areas of social anthropology, acknowledging the productive role of local ‘informants’. In interdisciplinary research, an author within one field may have read and approved a section contributed by a researcher within another field, but with no authority to determine the validity of the knowledge.

In other words, even in the established world of research writing and research publication, the question of where an author is, and who speaks in a text, is central. This complexity of enunciation points to a different type of research ethics, where one is less concerned with the validity and verification of the content, and more with the ethics of textual production itself; that is, an attention to the often unorganized patchwork that knowledge sharing is and becomes in a text (including the writing of this one). As once pointed out by Roland Barthes, text functions as textile:

“a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash. The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture.”  

Not only in literary writing, but also in research writing, one might argue that language does not always refer to some-thing, but – in the extreme – also to a commonality, something shared; a set of conditions for common ground where the question of ownership and authority remains undefined, where meanings swerve, and new sensibilities and habits arise. In similar ways, the stipulated originality in science and research (‘The Vancouver Guidelines’) is partly refuted in this publication; the wiki4print is not only a repository tool for print but contributes to a larger whole and network of voices. No authorial voice can be raised fully; rather, it is a chorus of collective voices that takes on a name – ‘Systerserver’, ‘Ingid’, '"Creative Crowds", ‘ServPub’ – in full recognition of the wider ‘tissue’ of a culture’s immeasurable voices of people and collectives (including Martino Morandi's work wiki-to-pdfenvironments (TITiPI), Constant and Open Source Publishing's (OSP) work on web-to-print, and much more, mentioned in this book).

Intervention // The Demonic grounds for referencing

As we have seen, scholarly akribeia is tied to the assignation of an origin which takes the form of the author’s figure for tracking the origin of discourse as well as for verification. Rather than a fully coherent technique, this form of referencing falls short of accounting for the academic contexts in which knowledge is produced and cannot grasp the ‘textile’ dimension of discursive production. This has even stronger implications for those who produce knowledge outside of academia and those whose knowledge has been historically erased or appropriated. Indeed, referencing’s epistemic dimension cannot be separated from a larger problem of symbolic capital production. It is a key instrument in an economy of visibility central to the contemporary knowledge factory and a vector of exclusion of the subjects that are not deemed good “referents”.

In that perspective, scholarly akribeia needs to be challenged on a political ground as well. Katherine McKittrick’s discussion of Sara Ahmed’s intervention in the politics of referencing gives a sense of both the urgency of interventions and their complexity . In her book Living a Feminist Life, Ahmed adopts a citation policy that excludes white men . To absent white men from citations and bibliographies opens up a space for the inclusion of other scholars. It simultaneously emphasizes the pervasive reproduction of a gendered and racial canon by contrast. What is naturalized under the routinely referencing of the same canonical authors as a useful procedure for attribution gets revealed as a conduit for white patriarchal authority.

In her Footnotes essay, McKittrick acknowledges the “smartness” of Ahmed’s proposal but problematizes it further. Is it enough to simply replace some names by others leaving the structure intact? And “Do we unlearn whom we do not cite?” McKittrick’s proposal is that we “stay with the trouble” of referencing, that we suspend the urge to make the cut. Writing should acknowledge its unstable foundation on demonic grounds :

“the demonic invites a slightly different conceptual pathway—while retaining its supernatural etymology—and acts to identify a system (social, geographic, technological) that can only unfold and produce an outcome if uncertainty, or (dis)organization, or something supernaturally demonic, is integral to the methodology.” 

The reason for this goes beyond a mere post-structuralist stance. The reason is an insisting question that needs answering: what kinds of collectives are implied and elicited by different forms of referencing? How to relate and do justice to the kinds of collective attachments and entanglements that cannot be resolved by assigning a name? How to balance the generosity and necessity of acknowledging, expressing, nurturing one’s relations and resisting at the same time the form of interpellation that is inherent to the naming, the assignation? How to acknowledge one’s debt without any simple recourse to “credit”?

There isn’t really one satisfying answer to this question. Any answer is context-specific. A strategy that works in the citational economy of academia might simply fall flat in an activist context where fluctuating forms of presence are integral to a practice. Not to mention the problem of networks of collaboration that straddle different worlds with their different citational practices. This publication is a good example of this conundrum. We opted to attach all our names to the publication as a whole rather than by chapters. We aim to emphasize the collective nature of the effort. Indeed, if we didn’t all write actual words in every chapter, all chapters are the results in some form of a collective discussion and inspiration. There is a kind of diffused authorship that permeates the publication. Nevertheless, we belong to varying degrees to worlds where citational practices are part of an economy of visibility. Therefore, we still attach our names to the publication. This form of balance is an attempt to engage with the collective who worked on this manuscript whilst acknowledging our dependencies on modes of production such as academia. (here it could be interesting to list other forms of dependencies) This addresses only a part of the problem. The part of the problem that we can answer with a reassuring investment in indexicality where a name points to a delimited and singular well-bound entity. When it comes to the demonic ground what kind of practices do we mobilize? Before we get back to this question, concludingly, we must introduce another set of agents who weave the tissue of references: the machines, networks and protocols underlying the ServPub collective.

ServPub as a referencing technical ecology

To summarize, the exploration of the logics of referencing, in an autonomous perspective, implies a questioning of the authority of the text. When referencing, there are debts with credits, but also more demonic ones, without credit – exceeding the restricted economy of exchange found in academic conventions of referencing (such as the Vancouver Guidelines). However, this is only a partial answer. Textual authority cannot be excluded from the technical systems, intrinsic to the epistemic infrastructure of referencing. Referencing of text is maintained not only be authors, librarians, editors and publishers, but also by a range of software products, such as Endnote or Zotero – automating and reassuring the indexicality of the text, that quotations are formatted, their origins identifiable in the larger repositories of text, and that they are listed correctly; keeping the ledger and minimizing the risk of debts without credits, so to speak. But when it comes to the demonic ground of a text, what kind of socio-technical practices do we then mobilize?

This "book" is not only printed material, but it also exists in a technical layering, or what N. Katherine Hayles would call "postprint" Unlike previous publishing infrastructures, the subreptitious "code" of the book positions it as a product of its technical epoch and modifies its nature. Hayles underlines that the difference in the postprint This is evident in the content and skeleton of this project, where the book exists in a series of technical and social infrastructures, that afford different materialities (the server, the wiki, the html code, the pad), but it is also reflected in the social practices related to these materials. The former associations are what Hayles refers as a cognitive-assemblage framework, which enables a discourse " that focuses in individuals, but more importantly "on the more abstract flows that bind entities together into a collectivity" (p. 3). Hayles provides as an immediate example the XML code used in her own book: the code enables the cognitive-assemblage of humans and machines to function by enabling communicating between them.

The practice of referencing within this book is explicitly embedded in a technical ecology in a relatively traditional way, where for example a bibliography generated within Zotero both enacts the spirit of openness while encoding the information in a suitable “vancouver-complying" standard. This is not too different to the XML example: it enables indexicality and structures formats of reference. However, while in other projects these tools are merely instrumental, or even invisible, most of the technologies that make this book possible have been not only carefully selected but also built. The technical ecology of this project is very much a milieu with its own sense of accountability, verification and ethics. A self-hosted wiki for collaboration is not (only) an instrumental endeavor, but (mainly) a political and ethical stance. In a perhaps more complex setup, the server, the online meetings, the pads, and the CSS layouts, are "the collective" that this book both is and is about.

Perhaps the clearest example of this is the series of pads, where referencing practices exist but in a highly unstructured fashion: the pads (etherpad instances) traverse the whole production process, not only for each chapter, but also for coordination, planning, and communications. The post-print practice of referencing is also manifested here, yet in more subtle forms and without specific standards. Each pad brings a communal authorship (as there are no straight ids associated with the comments) and acts as a free-floating space for lineages, a variety of ideas, authors, remembrances, and even affective elements. A highly demonic ground for referencing beyond standards.

Both Ahmed’s strategy for inclusion, and our negotiated relation to authorship and communal authorship, are traversed by these infrastructures, which enrich and complicate how we integrate production. On the one hand, we play with the demonic inherent to any technological system by choosing a certain ecology of systems that prioritizes care, openness, transparency, and collaboration (e.g. Calibre, Zotero, the wiki format for referencing, and the pad). On the other hand, we are aware of the perhaps inevitable ways in which larger infrastructures capture our labor as a community of authors and practitioners.

Unconsensual indexing

However, technical infrastructures for collaboration, even if resilient, are not immune to un-consensual indexing enterprises, due to its capturable nature. As such, for example, the bibliographical reference is also modified to some degree by the infrastructures that mediate the assemblage. Embedded in networks, referencing takes place under a condition of general indexicality. If we index others (by referencing them), we are also indexed. Using a wiki as a format for writing allows for bibliographic automated tools to expand the ecology and sociometrics of an article. Zagorova et al, for example, monitor 55+ million references on the English wikipedia, to undersand the dynamics and temporal evolution of these objects. An obvious advantage of the former is to expand and monitor so-called "alt-metrics" as well as understanding where the references are pointing towards. For example, Singh et al identified, interestingly, that only 2% of all the referenced articles (that have a DOI identifier) are indexed in the Web of Science. Thus, showing some disconnection between these two knowledge archives. These are but a few examples of the index-capture relationship inherent to computational platforms, whether we talk about the neoliberal subject and the corporate software, or collaborative and open alternatives.

This testifies to the fact that there are multiple frames of reference for indexing and that the largest indexing operation is performed by search engines. Exposed to the scrapers of the likes of Google or Bing, words published online are ranked and indexed. This is the main condition through which digital texts are searchable. In this sense, the condition of referentiality cannot be limited to an economy of citations. It is also an economy of links. To the difficulty of formalizing a citational politics and its problematic assignation of names, we need to add the difficulty of formalizing a politics of the integration of our text in a politics of search engine discovery and ranking. Once this document circulates as a pdf with active links or as a wiki, it condenses a network of references redirecting to other (bound) objects.

In recent years, this condition of general indexicality created the basis for another form of textual production that culminated with the chatbots of generative AI. Indexed texts became components of datasets. Interestingly they undergo a different process. The search engine outputs links which connect a query to an actual page whereas the chatbot mostly absorbs the referent. Here to be exposed to scrapers means being digested into a statistical model that cannot reliably refer back to its constituent pieces. To expose one’s content to scrapers means to participate (unwillingly maybe) to the production of a mode of enunciation that is controlled by those who have the means to train AI models at scale (refer to Lury’s “epistemic infrastructure” that Christian introduced earlier). In that case, writing robots.txt files becomes an essential part of a practice of referencing as much as a list of references or footnotes. And a reminder that looking for a position regarding referencing also implies looking for versatile modes of opacity. (perhaps something about shadow libraries)

Conclusion

In that sense, this book is not about metrics and exposure only. Perhaps quite the contrary, the wiki (the vpn, the server, etc) where it rests, is more of an intimate space. As such, we can ask: what does our technical interfaces, the ServPub cognitive assemblage, allows for, that more scholastic bibliography does not? If there is no space, in Chicago, MLA or APA, for an affective dimension, the collective elaboration of this publication needs an approach of referencing that allows for the expression of admiration or tension. Approaches to a more affective approach to bibliographic production also state both the importance of a community of care and shedding more light into the emotional work associated with the labour of academic written production.21 While opening the space for queer within textual representation, Malcom Noble and Sara Pyke organized a gathering dedicated to discussing queer tools, methods, and practices within bibliographers. Queer Critical Bilbiography, notably, does not entail only a topical gathering, but also emphasises the intersectionality of the "academic" and the "practitioner", alongside the "emotional nature of queer bibliographic work". On that line, ServPub ... [something on community work, affective dimensions, and interfaces but also formats?]´

This emphasis on emotional labour has wider implications. For instance, if formats are not be simply thought as practical templates, how can they be invested with other energies? Erik Satie, the composer, was aware of the limitation of formatting. His music sheets, filled with notes for the performer, deviate from the expected notation (e.g. "pianissimo"), and instead take a sort of emotional and highly specific instructions: "Tough as the devil", "Alone for an instant. So that you obtain a hollow", "The monkey dances this air gracefully" or "If necessary, you can finish here." While there is a dadaist humor tinge in this example, Satie's scores break with the format, even in the form of annotations, of classical music, and allow for unconventional references. Perhaps in a similar fashion, the format for references has to represent better the practices of referencing. Escaping the format is a lost art in the realm of bibliographies... (Aristotle)

(Transition towards the practices of referencing of the contributors)

Questionnaire

Dear ServPub book’s contributor,

We, Christian, Pablo and Nicolas are busy writing the chapter on referencing. You can see its current version here.

In the discussions that prepared the writings of this chapter, the term radical referencing was used many times. In the text, we start with a genealogy of this concept and its connection to the figure of the librarian activist. We attempt to address the condition of referencing in recognition of other collectivities than the one that occur in a, say, an academic research community (connected by a network of references), and also in recognition of the various technical infrastructures (such as the wiki used for collective writing) that make referencing in the ServPub community possible in the first place. We discuss the various tensions inherent to mechanisms of attribution, the role of authorship and the need for transparency as well as for opacity traversing the practices of referencing and indexing. We would be very interested to weave into the chapter some examples of your practices of (or thoughts about) referencing. Could you look at the following questionnaire? Your contribution would be highly appreciated. (And don’t forget to tell us how you want it to be referenced :-)

Consider the following questions and answer in one or two (or three) lines:

• What does the term ‘radical referencing’ mean to you?
• How do you make ‘radical referencing’ visible in your text?
• How do collaborative infrastructures relate to referencing?
• How to refer to a text that is behind a paywall? Should we also engage in absenting our references using that criterium?
• How to refer to transient and conversational content that doesn’t have an identifier such as a stable URL?
• How to refer to content hosted on hegemonic platforms without feeding them traffic and therefore offering them value? (Think about X where you need to create an account to access content)
• When you are writing a text, when do you make your reference? Do you begin with a list of references in mind? Do you think of different degrees of referencing? Are you looking for references along the way?

Misc

the reference list is here: https://wiki4print.servpub.net/index.php?title=References

 Infrastructure Colophon

Pad for working https://ctp.cc.au.dk/pad/p/infra_colophon

Coordinator: Winnie & Geoff

Contributors: Everyone

Our book is derived from the larger project ServPub which uses wiki-to-print, a collective publishing environment based on MediaWiki software, Paged Media CSS techniques and the JavaScript library Paged.js, and which renders a preview of the PDF in the browser [1]. It builds on the work of others and wouldn’t be possible without the help of Creative Crowds [2], who themselves acknowledge the longer history which includes: the Diversions publications by Constant and OSP[3]; the book Volumetric Regimes by Possible Bodies and Manetta Berends[4]; TITiPI's wiki-to-pdf environments developed by Martino Morandi[5]; Hackers and Designers' version wiki2print that was produced for the book Making Matters[6]. As such our work is a continuation of a network of instances and interconnected practices that are documented and shareable[7].

Similarly the server infrastructure includes VPN server and static IP which are provided by Systerserver, Free and Open source software Tinc [8], VPN Server provided by Systerserver, Raspberry Pi mobile servers set up by In-grid, Domain registration and DNS management via TuxIC [9] based in the Netherlands.

For our communication and working tools:

• Monthly group meeting and discussion: jitsi, hosted by Greenhost [10];
• Etherpads hosted by riseup [11] and Critical Technical Practice (CTP) server from Aarhus University [12];
• Mailiing list provided by Systerserver;
• Poll system for meeting times by anarchaserver: https://transitional.anarchaserver.org/date/
• Git repository by Systerserver

Notes:

1. https://www.mediawiki.org + https://www.w3.org/TR/css-page-3/ + https://pagedjs.org

2. https://cc.vvvvvvaria.org/wiki/APRJA_Content_Form_-_Wiki-to-print

3. https://diversions.constantvzw.org + https://constantvzw.org & https://osp.kitchen

4. http://data-browser.net/db08.html + https://volumetricregimes.xyz, see https://possiblebodies.constantvzw.org & https://manettaberends.nl

5. http://titipi.org + https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Wiki-to-pdf

6. https://hackersanddesigners.nl + https://github.com/hackersanddesigners/wiki2print + https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Publishing/p/Making_Matters._A_Vocabulary_of_Collective_Arts

7. https://git.vvvvvvaria.org/CC/wiki-to-print

8. https://tinc-vpn.org/download/

9. http://tuxic.nl/

10. https://meet.greenhost.net/

11. https://pad.riseup.net/

12. https://ctp.cc.au.dk/

Bibliography

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