:PROPERTIES:
:ID: 679c5e4b-8ee0-4d15-a0a1-2610a74c1cbc
:END:
#+title: 2013-11-04

* Chevening :academia:@personal:
:PROPERTIES:
:CREATED: [2013-11-04 Mon 11:33]
:MODIFIED: [2015-10-28 Wed]
:IMPORTED: [2023-02-08 Wed 19:22]
:END:

In late 2004, the young translator and editor I were decided to take a six months sabbatical to dedicate some time to be part of something bigger. Having an interest in the then-nascent Arabic content on the web, I helped start the Arabic Wikipedia, the Egyptian blog sphere and citizen journalism movement at a moment that turned out crucial for the course of years to come. The six-months-turned-six-years saw my initiation in public life, during which I developed my understanding of the complexity of economics, politics and power relations affecting my community, and was a time during which I supported individual activists and civil society groups, in Egypt and internationally in conceptualising, designing and implementing their campaigns, and in using technology for social change, and have played this role either in voluntary or professional capacity. The range of these operations range from media collectives, to local human rights groups, to Greenpeace and Amnesty International. This is a story that is closely related to the seismic changes Egyptian society went through in the recent years.

Since the beginning of Egypt's revolution, my focus has shifted more towards institutional reform. As the civil liberties director in one of the leading human rights groups in Egypt, I coordinated research, litigation and advocacy on issues as complex and explosive as freedom of religion and belief, gender and women rights, and counter-terrorism and national security. While doing that, I contributed in my capacity as researcher and campaigner on technology and information rights. Technology-in-society became my subject of interest rather than a tool as I have used it in the previous years. Inspired by the sudden global interest in communication rights and privacy since Egypt's internet kill-switch of January 2011 and incidents to follow, and realising from previous years how technology can be a game-changer for any social and economic context, my human rights research and campaigning efforts focused on legal reforms required in Egypt to remove legal barriers standing in the way of the emergence of a decentralised telecommunication infrastructure and services, owned and operated as a commons, which allows privacy, security, connectivity and economic opportunity for all. To do so, I coordinated and was part of two working groups: one to prepare amendments to Egypt's telecom act, and another drafting an entirely new freedom of information bill that goes in line with international human rights standards. I also advocated these two bills and the positions they represent in parliament and in public debate fora.

In my mind, compared to more traditional and established economic modes, the production, distribution and exchange mode suggested initially in the middle 1980s by the free and open source software model and adopted later on by several content creation projects, including Wikipedia, is offering a more-level playing field for a much wider group of people to learn, use, contribute, and create value. This is not new for software intangibles. However, over the past few years, this same model seems to be spreading to new areas where the products are only partly intangible 'software'. The intangible knowledge required to build and control manufacturing machines, 3D printers, laser cutters or computer-controlled mills, is indeed software, schematics, and content built and accessed over the internet, but the end-product, and the products it makes, which schematics are also increasingly freely available, are very physically real. Just as I have been a free software advocate in the 2000s, I am currently a free hardware advocate in the 2010s.

Primordial as it is now, there seems to be a pattern for such peer-to-peer development of knowledge for an entire array of human activities which seems to go beyond fabrication and industrial design: from vehicles for transportation, to telecommunication, to currency and exchange, to housing and utilities, to production of food and fibre, and seemingly even to power generation and resource harvesting. The effect of these technologies building on each other is compounding, and potentially game-changing.

Is peer-to-peer production really moving beyond intangibles? What is the role of the internet in such a development? How is intellectual property affected beyond software and cultural products? What are the evolution trends of a peer-to-peer mode of production? How much is peer-to-peer contributing to production economy, now and in the future? How democratising production by lowering capital requirements is affecting governance of societies? What is the ethnography of free hardware makers and how does it compare to that of free software? Through a studying in a Chevening-sponsored programme, I intend to develop ideas I currently find fascinating to questions which answers I hope to be working on finding beyond a taught masters programme.

It is becoming more evident year-after-year that problems of the environment, economy, society and politics are closely related and interdependent. The problems of climate change, desertification, loss of habitat are affecting food security and other resource availability, and are meeting an economic model that survives only in a state of constant growth head-on. This is affecting international relations, trade and immigration on an unprecedented scale.

Locally, as it is valid in many other countries, aspirations for freedom and better livelihoods are being met with the impossibility of building a welfare state, which is weathering away even in the most advanced economies, while austerity does not leave the majority of people with reasonable choices. Egypt's social change is struggling because fresh ideals are not followed by fresh ideas as to what to be done. A few years may allow both peer-to-peer technologies and the debate in Egypt to meet in another crucial moment.

When this happens, I am hoping to have gained a better understanding and knowledge of the dynamics between society and technology, and would have returned to Egypt to continue my engagement in the public sphere. My personal challenge then would be in finding a formula that allows me to contribute to building an alternative as I have done during my pre-2011 years, while continuing to play the policy reform role I took on in recent years. Part of the answer to this formula will come as a result of my studies. Including but not limited to the free software movement, how have commons been regenerated after enclosure has been established as the prevalent mode of ownership? With a clearer understanding of this and related questions, I will be able to build further on my current recognition as an agent for social change, gained in years of engagement in public life.
