Read this: http://www.chronicle.com/article/Why-a-Guerrilla/238696?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=1904d9b3b76b4e15a650f6d1cd866468&elq=98c6a2c6229148c0a830248f479b6c1f&elqaid=11846&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=4736
So, Penn started to save and archive all US government environmental data that is still on the web. PDFs, spreadsheets, websites, data sets, grocery lists, and did I mention entire websites? This is what I mean by Trump being scary: a whole shit ton of people see this guy get elected and, believing he’ll erase and censor information, have begun saving it in the way ants store food. As if everyone senses a Flood coming.
http://www.ppehlab.org/datarefuge/
I know it does, I know it connects to us, I just don’t fully grasp it yet. I’m a humanities major and my stock and trade has been so harried by censorship that I’ve had curricula based just around banned books. Knowledge is not power. It isn’t even the capacity to act, really. Being able to suppress or disseminate knowledge, on the other, is a tool of power. #DataRefuge, then, may actually become a truly guerrilla sorta deal when we find out what kind of informatic fuckery the Trump administration will pull; if it is no longer safe to leave information in one place (on a website’s server, for example) because our government is erasing data or neglecting its host server to death then preserving that information will fall on everyone who cares to share knowledge and believes it should flow freely.
By everyone I mean I want hordes of nerds saving and sending data all around the world. Huddled, sticky fingered, hunched over screens and keyboards. We the groaning, facepalming, and memeing multitudes will be needed. Are needed. Always already.* We don’t get to play around in academe because we know but because we swore to not stop knowing more. I hope. It’s a noble calling, I was told. We are the players and the shape of the game is much clearer to the public now: the winners control the Web, the nexus and mausoleum of so much information.
This intimation of clarity only means to me that the game is about to change again. We can expect new rules to be bought into play (pun intended) as universities struggle further with privatization. We can expect whole new appeals to ignorance and mistrust of bodies of knowledge and we can expect that to show up as the same pressures as always: state demands about profitability and student demands that are shaped by state demands. Students won’t pay us mind as readily when we say “research” if public faith in government information management takes a hit; state concerns will be that universities “cannot provide access to reliable information” and the effectiveness of public higher education will diminish.
Again, I feel like a game that’s only becoming less than completely fuzzy is about to become about as clear as stirred Turkish coffee. I hope the experience isn’t as bitter.
*snerk