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Was talking with a friend of mine in academia here in Ireland about introducing one of the universities in Dublin to the concept of the Small Web and Small Tech. She asked her faculty if they’d be interested.

Their response?

“We’re not looking to change things.”

I shit you not.

(In case you’re wondering why we’re fucked or who exactly is complicit. These are folks that have multi-million euro relationships with Big Tech.)

#BigTech #SiliconValley #academia #institutionalCorruption #education #neoliberalism #fascism #SmallTech #SmallWeb #humanRights #democracy #ireland #eu

#education #humanrights #fascism #eu #ireland #democracy #neoliberalism #bigtech #academia #siliconvalley #smalltech #SmallWeb #institutionalcorruption
This entry was edited (3 months ago)

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mray
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mray
• •
I guess the "never change a running system" mentality goes a longer way the further you are from technical understanding of what is actually going on. 🤷‍♂️
in reply to Aral Balkan

Steve Holden
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Steve Holden
• •
I'm sorry to say this kind of thing only works when it comes from the grass roots up. Universities are the Establishment. Continue to evangelise ... but yes, it's disappointing to realise how much energy is wasted stopping things from happening to support vested interests.
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Elsa
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Elsa
• •
Not being willing to change things is another way of Saying „don’t want to trouble myself.“ I know them too.
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🏰Christophe S.❄IceEnchanter🦢
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🏰Christophe S.❄IceEnchanter🦢
• •

I remember I discoverd Linux and free software at my university (ULB where FOSDEM happens), for our sections we had a room with DOS-Win3.1 / Linux dual boot, and a Solaris room where I learned emacs and Lisp. I could even phone the lab to get mail from home. When I was about to leave, I heard about renewing stuff with Windows...

I am glad I was there in the timeframe that shaped my computer life, but I am sad it shifted. I don't know about today, but comm' is within the corporate medias.

in reply to Aral Balkan

ricardo
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ricardo
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you’re trying to get them to drop MS office for libre office or something?
in reply to ricardo

Aral Balkan
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Aral Balkan
• •

@cpdxdev “introducing one of the universities in Dublin to the concept of the Small Web and Small Tech”

Small Web:

- ar.al/2020/08/07/what-is-the-s…
- ar.al/2024/06/24/small-web-com…

Small Tech:

- small-tech.org/about/#small-te…


What is the Small Web?

Updated June 19th, 2023 Sorry, your browser doesn't support embedded videos. But that doesn’t mean you can’t watch it! You can download Small Is Beautiful #23 directly, and watch it with your favourite video player.
Aral Balkan
@ricardo
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Abhiram
sharkey - Link to source
Abhiram
• •

I constantly run into this same exact attitude here in India too.

It is incredibly frustrating as an educator when you get stonewalled with no room for discussion because the people in charge just want to coast along and not actually do anything.

in reply to Abhiram

Joe Vinegar
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Joe Vinegar
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@axel I agree on the frustrating experience. but let's look at it from the other side: we're asking for more work, possibly requiring more qualifications without any educational support, more responsibilities, for the same job and wage. why any sensible person would respond to this with something different than "no, FCK you"?! we must move a few levels up: this must be a legal requirement, with a suitable budget.
@Abhiram
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Aral Balkan
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Aral Balkan
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@joe_vinegar @axel Not sure what you’re on about: they said no to even hearing about it. I was going to give a talk about it to them and see if we could work together on something. The budgetary and time requirement for them was exactly zero. So they should have told me to “fuck off?” Nice. (Don’t worry, they did tell me to fuck off in their own way so the world’s not all bad.) Would it be great to have budget/funding from a higher level? Sure. But take a wild guess what the asshats at the higher level think when they’re in the pocket of Big Tech too. And then in a few years time, they’ll all turn around and cry “buh, why did the fascism happen?”
@Abhiram @Joe Vinegar
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Aral Balkan
mastodon - Link to source
Aral Balkan
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@Grey Hadn’t. To be fair, have zero life to spare to even watching a parody of those assholes.
@grey
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Alx 🐈
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Alx 🐈
• •
It's especially disheartening when you compare it to how instead they move quickly to change things to use AI in academia and in the classroom.
Unknown parent

Aral Balkan
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Aral Balkan
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@Grey I’m not even fighting them. Waste of energy. I’m working on something that will hopefully make them irrelevant.
@grey
Unknown parent

Aral Balkan
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Aral Balkan
• •

@katrinakatrinka This wasn’t about procurement. It was about hearing about a different way of doing things. And possible collaborating on research, etc.

But yes, they get multi-million euro grants for working with industry. Hence why they’re perfectly fine with technofascism.

@Katrina Katrinka
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Lorraine Lee
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Lorraine Lee
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Tell them that smallweb is a vaccination against system changes.

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