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Libre Solutions Network

Freedom in the digital age

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Attention Democracy with William Maggos

Mar 06 2024 Gabriel

In a special converation you would have a hard time finding elsewhere, Gabriel joins William Maggos to discuss the fediverse, attention economy, and the Culture War. Taking a sober look at the very foundation of our media and online discussions, William Maggos introduces the concept of attention democracy, where we can have a real impact on culture by choosing platforms that put people in charge of helping spread ideas and culture.

Digital Autonomy & The Arts with Hunter Stabler

Feb 18 2024 Gabriel

Thrilled to have had an excellent conversation with Hunter Stabler about digital autonomy and the arts. We spoke about many different topics, ranging from Free Software, community, and the broader impact of social media. It was a pleasure to connect with somebody who’s taken many steps towards reclaiming their digital autonomy, and has such incredible talent. You can take a look at Hunter’s creations on his Pixelfed. We share an affinity for Blender Antennapod and XMPP.

Digital Autonomy & The Arts with Anne Gibbons

Jan 12 2024 Gabriel

I’m pleased to have had the opportunity to discuss Digital Autonomy & The Arts with Anne Gibbons. Anne is a courageous cartoonist and an inspiration to those who want to learn to make their mark on the canvas of history. We discuss the unique challenges that impact our lives at the cross-section of digital autonomy and artistic expression. I really appreciated having a discussion with a creative and passionate voice with such a wealth of experience.

Digital Autonomy & The Arts with Margaret Anna Alice, Visceral Adventure & Liam Sturgess

Dec 13 2023 Gabriel

In what has become my most ambitious media project yet, I had the pleasure of hosting a conversation with people I look up to as among my personal heroes. The Digital Autonomy Series is now one of my favorite projects as it allows the Libre Solutions Network to truly start to live up to its name. Visceral Adventure I got to know Tonika through Operation Uplift. Her open mind, kindness, and drive are huge inspiration.

Papers Please: The Attack on Online Privacy

Nov 18 2023 Gabriel

Leaping at Shadows Calls to end anonymity on social media are not new, but every once in a while they return as tensions rise. These renewed calls will suggest more extreme measures against platforms that allow even mere pseudonymity, much less complete anonymity. These proposals aim to ensure that the cost of communication with others, or even the public will be privacy. The argument presumes that if everyone was forced to have everything recorded in their real name, then interactions online would always be more civil and productive.

Digital Autonomy and the Arts: Part 3

Oct 21 2023 Gabriel

It is my honor and pleasure to have worked alongside such a passionate and talented writer. Margaret Anna Alice is an inspiration to those worldwide who wish to resist and dismantle totalitarianism. She is one of many critical voices in these turbulent times. Margaret Anna Alice writes about media narratives, politics, propaganda, mass control, psychology, history, philosophy, language, film, art, music, literature, culture, and health with a focus on COVID at Margaret Anna Alice Through the Looking Glass.

Digital Autonomy and the Arts: Part 2

Sep 05 2023 Gabriel

Liam Sturgess and Visceral Adventure join Gabriel to discuss the arts and cyberspace. Watch Gabriel & Liam’s previous discussion on digital autonomy and the arts here You can follow Visceral Adventure on Substack, Twitter & Rumble Visit liamsturgess.com to stay up to date with Liam’s work. You can also follow him via Twitter or the Fediverse at @LiamSturgess@gigaohm.bio Don’t forget to check out his series Microjourneys on Rumble. Which is also mirrored on this instance

Digital Autonomy and the Arts

Jul 20 2023 Gabriel

This conversation is a follow-up to a piece written last year Art is the expression of the human soul, with it’s value being largely in the eye of the beholder. Corporations and governments can imitate art, or mass produce it with financial advantages, but they can’t compete with genuine creativity borne from real passion and real experiences. Tyranny isn’t beautiful, and slavery isn’t inspiring. When given a choice, people will naturally choose the free and beautiful over the rigid and stagnant.

Out-thinking the Culture Wars with Gary Sharpe

Jul 14 2023 Gabriel

I really appreciate Gary Sharpe‘s perspective on the emotional side of what people face. He has a wealth of excellent advice and I was pleased to have the opportunity to do this Q&A. Gary Sharpe’s Articles Q & A One of the threads I’m currently following is the Culture Wars, and how the public has been largely divided into a multitude of different ideologies that can often perceive each other as an existential danger.

Tools: the Good and the Bad

Jun 27 2023 Gabriel

If all you have is a hammer, suddenly every single thing starts to look like a nail. Hardly and tool itself is wholly evil or entirely good. Not only are the tools themselves important, how we use them matters quite a bit as well. This applies all the way from the entire software ecosystem, down to the hardware components themselves. The fundamental attributes of the tool will set the incentives for how they can be used, and how they are used creates incentives for how future tools will be made.

Has the technocracy already assimilated you?

May 29 2023 Gabriel

The technocracy is a managerialist top-down system of control with no accountability towards it’s subjects. From the perspective of the system’s owners, the subjects are at best livestock to be harvested and the worst is far too horrible to imagine. Such a cruel and deranged system seems quite alien to most people, despite often living it out in their own daily lives. Regardless of what disagreements divide people, far more are united under subservience to technological tyranny.

Raise your Shield

May 19 2023 Gabriel

It’s a cliche nowadays to point out that society is fractured. The Culture Wars are no longer a side-show for the politically obsessed, instead they are front-and center in the spectacle, aggressively inciting the wider public to participate. Hate your family? Hate your community? Hate your country? Even worse, do you hate yourself? There is no shortage of (often quite valid) reasons to keep you in a prison of rage and despair.

Conceptualizing Information Control

Apr 23 2023 Gabriel

Knowledge is power. Control over knowledge is immense power. This power isn’t merely used to advance sciences and create new technologies, instead it’s often used to take control of other people. Almost everyone these days seems to believe they’re surrounded by brainwashed masses. What if there really is something to that? Who, or what, is actually doing the brainwashing? It is a mistake to assume that someone who is acting differently than you is always making those decisions from incorrect information.

The Collapse of the Intangible

Mar 21 2023 Gabriel

I’ve reflected on how the rapid pace of change has warped my perspective relative to those significantly older than me. Becoming curious how upcoming changes and trends will leave me out of step with new experiences. Video: Yayoi Kusama Infinity Mirrors Advanced machine learning models have allowed people to hold a mirror up to the vastness of internet data. This is not just any mirror, but an infinity mirror. This phenomenal infinity mirror transforms a mere slice of the human experience into a kaleidoscope of infinite possibilities.

Backcasting 2030

Feb 07 2023 Gabriel

What is backcasting? Backcasting is when you imagine a scenario for an ideal future and try to trace a path to there from today. Instead of simply being comforted by a future world as we would like it to be, the goal is to identify opportunities to take action immediately. Backcasting is about discovering a blueprint for that better future and investigating how it can be made into reality. I will be using the scenario from the Solari Report:

In defense of anonymity

Jan 08 2023 Gabriel

“If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men. I will find something in them which will hang him” Cardinal Richelieu In a time where so much data about people is being constantly harvested in increasingly invasive ways, there is a lot of material to work with. As I’m sure we have all seen, there innumerable ways in which people’s own beliefs, mistakes or decisions land them in serious trouble.

How a Movement is Destroyed from Within

Dec 29 2022 Gabriel

Collapse is collaborative process Haven’t you noticed how almost everything these days descends into lame in-fighting and petty squabbles? Maybe it’s human nature, it could always have been this way. In the age of near-instantaneous communication it’s all effectively leverage for those who want to derail good causes. We all have to be careful how we empower those who benefit from undending conflict. Rules of engagement Nothing is new under the sun.

The False Awakening

Oct 31 2022 Gabriel

The changing of the guard is not the same as defeat of the guard. Twitter is under new management. There is all kinds of excitement and despair over what this means for the future of free speech on that particular information control system. Odds are, we can expect some noticeable changes on what is and is no longer allowed within the new paradigm. This should not be mistaken for an expansion of the people’s right to voice dissent.

The failure of intelligence

Oct 08 2022 Gabriel

In an ideal world, people would do their best to understand reality and share that understanding with others. Some call this journalism. This kind of journalism has been under attack for quite some time. The very reason that ideal world can’t exist is because being able to understand reality better than others, or to even conceal that reality from others gives one power. That power is sought by all kinds of people in all kinds of situations and it corrupts them.

Principle: Hardware matters

Oct 05 2022 Gabriel

Back to Basics There are innumerable examples of average people being unable to explain how the modern conveniences of their life work. From creating food, energy, and products to what it takes to make them accessible, nearly everyone is quite ignorant about these things. In an age of such rapid transformation it is quite understandable if not predictable. When it comes to technology, almost everything is quite obscured for a person who doesn’t take the time to look.

Redefining "high places"

Sep 21 2022 Libre Solutions Network

The technocracy is a terrifying, horrific and inhuman assault on our very being. People are under assault from all angles: financial, emotional, and intellectual. By keeping people alone and isolated, the technocracy can seem all-but-entirely unopposed. It is quite easy to fall into the trap of envying it’s power, or even wishing to share in the ill-gotten-gains. This trap is what can transform the most fervent freedom fighter into yet another foot-soldier for the machine.

Beware the false saviors

Apr 16 2022 Gabriel

There is a great deal of buzz about Elon Musk’s face-off against twitter. While it is impressive to see Elon specifically raise free speech issues against Big Tech, it is unlikely that even radical changes to twitter would actually create meaningful change. Sadly many people allow figureheads to lure themselves into a state of complacency. By buying into the idea of a fantastical leader to rally behind people can fall into the trap of thinking that change is sudden, and requires no work on their part.

Chewtoys: The alchemy of mastering mass anger

Apr 13 2022 Gabriel

The public has a lot of frustrations, especially when you’ve been isolating, poisoning, and stealing from them for many years. Surely this frustration has to go somewhere? Instead of this frustration being used on productive actions to organize, solve problems, or find out how they’ve been bamboozled; Social engineers would love to have a tool that would ensure this energy is entirely diffused pointlessly. John Titus has coined the term “Chewtoy”

Information Warfare Super-weapons

Mar 13 2022 Gabriel

Memes Memes are very often under-appreciated due to being simple or not taking themselves seriously. They are powerful tools to bring new insights to discussion. Social engineers target memes due to their incredible impact in spreading ideas. Many of the threats to liberty aren’t always actions of tyrants but rather the apathy or ignorance of the public. If we are to preserve liberty we need to greatly magnify our efforts to promote liberty as a cultural value rather than simply a personal asset The effectiveness of memes comes from their simplicity and the potential to evoke strong emotions.

The most valuable asset for the coming decade

Jan 04 2022 Gabriel

Trust Over the last decade individuals and institutions have shifted from covertly selling out their trust to overtly abusing that trust. Trust is essential to have in a civilization. So much of our society is built on assumed trust, or worse trust only maintained by illusion. By abusing the trust of their clients, partners, and the general public they are supplanting their own existence and in turn tainting those who rely on them.

Breaking Free

Dec 11 2021 Gabriel

How do you find the perfect app? What can we do when all the major services have been designed to track, manipulate and control us? Should we just turn everything off and run to the woods? Prepare your mind The systems built to manipulate and control us weren’t built in a day. It requires all of us to focus intently on building a human-centric instead of data driven digital experience.

Emancipate your mind from mental slavery

Nov 25 2021 Gabriel

You are not immortal, and you can be fooled from time to time. This is okay, admitting it is much more important than being right all the time. Admitting you are wrong, and can be is the very thing that allows you to escape the prison of lies. In fact, admitting it can do a great deal of good in helping free other people from false illusions. My goals with the Libre Solutions Network are: