The Vernaculars of Our Networks: From The Cloud to a Plurality of Grassroots Digital Infrastructures

Abstract

This thesis is concerned with DIY "off-the-cloud" networks as socio-technical models that can reinscribe a community's organizational processes, identity, and culture. It questions how these networks can break away from corporate and extractive services of "the cloud" in order to achieve digital sovereignty as well as resist the hegemonic understanding of Western universal technology. Rather than grafting an outside network onto a community, how might the nodes of a network emerge from the cultural ontologies and local knowledge systems, creating a "vernacular cloud," with political, epistemic, and ontological implications? The social practice of what I call 'net/work' involves the facilitation of local digital territories that create a grassroots politics of "organic internets." In Chapter One, recent attempts to break from monopolized services like Google and Facebook are examined, providing insight into why these networks are formed and how they “de-link” from “the cloud.” Drawing from Walter Mignolo's understanding of "de-linking," the thesis argues that this process is a political project that is also epistemologically and economically non-western. Chapter Two examines the notion of 'community' in community networks through the lens of grassroots organizing such as mutual aid, delving into the care and maintenance required for system administration. Chapter Two builds on Geri Augusto's understanding of "re/trans" as a project that has developed new assemblages of knowledge and integrated them into different landscapes. It examines community networks from the Global South, where network nodes have the potential to be cosmo-ontological. Chapter Three provides examples of the principles outlined in Chapters One and Two from my work in pursuit of technical autonomy within an organization.