[P2P-F] Fwd: how apple and android are supporting apptivism

Sat Jun 25 13:53:28 CEST 2011

full text, I created
http://p2pfoundation.net/Real-Time_Mobile_Protest_Applications

thanks for eventually suggesting similar Android applications

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Franco Iacomella <yaco at gnu.org>
Date: Sat, Jun 25, 2011 at 6:41 PM
Subject: Re: how apple and android are supporting apptivism
To: Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>

El 25/06/11 04:13, Michel Bauwens escribió:

 hi franco, for some reason I can't quote from this here, see
> http://www.redpepper.org.uk/**activism-3-0/<http://www.redpepper.org.uk/activism-3-0/>
>

Hi Michel, here is text content of that page (no secrets to copy it):

Activism 3.0
Protests are increasingly appearing on the internet in real time in a myriad
of ways. Adam Waldron takes a look at the smartphone applications that every
activist needs

Karl Marx famously said that capitalism would produce its own gravedigger -
and of course he meant the working class would overthrow the world order.
But the arch-capitalists at Apple are rapidly arming students and trade
unionists with the technology to agitate online, secretly organise direct
actions and then publicise them worldwide in seconds.

Apptivism has the potential to transform the spontaneous outburst of
demonstrations and renewed interest in the radical left into a coherent,
highly organised and efficient movement. When protesters go 'tooled up' to
demonstrations these days, they are grasping iPhones and Blackberrys
bristling with the latest applications.

Micah White argued in The Guardian that 'digital activists' promoting
'clicktivism' are endangering the very 'possibility of an emancipatory
revolution in our lifetimes'. But as Red Pepper launches its clicktastic new
website, here is a practical guide to Apptivism - because iPhone apps will
be used to equip the uprising out in the streets, in real time, and make
sure it is televised.

Apple's own iBooks (free) gives you a free of Marx and Engel’s Communist
Manifesto. Yes, every iPhone comes with a free copy of the Communist
Manifesto ready to install. And classics like Trotsky's An Appeal to the
Toiling, Oppressed and Exhausted Peoples of Europe and Pierre-Joseph
Proudhon's System of Economical Contradictions; or, the Philosophy of Misery
are available for sale from the Apple Store

Ustream Live Broadcaster (free). Your humble iPhone 4 becomes a HD
television camera with live broadcaster. Film protests as they happen and
stream them live to the world. Who needs Sky News with its multi-million
cameras and satellite uplink vans – this is citizen broadcast journalism.

iMovie (£2.99) from Apple allows you to edit footage from town hall riots on
your handset. You can add the Clash’s White Riot to the background, run
subtitles to help those who are hard of hearing and include Channel 4 News
style graphics - before uploading to YouTube. We now own the means of
television production.

Those who still like to write and publish must have BlogPress (£1.79) or
equivalent so they can post immediately to their blog or website live from
the meeting. Double up with Apple’s new AirPrint and you can have a printed
leaflet before the demo has even reached the rally.

Essential organisational tools include CalenGoo (£3.99) which allows you to
sync and manage calendars off the web and shows you where you should be and
when. Coalition of Resistance and the Right to Work Campaign could share a
calendar so their public meetings do not clash. Members can sync so they are
booked to attend in their private calendar automatically (this is known as
revolutionary discipline).

Things (£5.99) is an expensive but extraordinarily useful to-do list which
allows activists to manage their various tasks for the hundred and one
protest groups they are taking part in. You can add an item direct on the
phone during an organising meeting. Coders promise the ability to assign
tasks to cadre members (other people) very soon.

ProCamera (£1.79) is the best Apps for stills photography, with sharp 5
megapixel images of student graffiti on police vans and riot officers
overreacting immediately afterwards. These are good enough for national
newspapers and leftwing websites. For those of an artistic temperament, the
Album and Studio suite allows you to touch up the images before using Flickr
(free) to upload to the web.

For photographers who like to use a digital SLR but want to upload before
everyone else can buy a £39 lump of plastic, an app called ZoomIt (free)
takes files from your memory card and transfers them to the iPhone, before
posting online. The Eye-Fi App (free) will also upload - and if you invest
in a SD card with Wifi you can get images live to the web from the riot
zone. Your world changing photographs will already be online when you get
arrested.

TweetDeck (free) is universally acknowledged as the best app for tweeting
160 word microblogs - and can handle multiple accounts so you can post for
your party and your party front at the same time. Twitter (free) is losing
its edge as a propaganda tool but should be used to cascade information
secretly through organisations. Climate Camp could tell thousands of
activists to meet at Bishopsgate using a single tweet quicker than front
line police could get a decision from Gold Command.

Private mass communications are now possible with Groups 2 (£2.39), which
can send up to 100 texts at a time and mass emails. It allows the user to
create multiple subscriber lists for each of the campaigns you are helping
publicise. You can have separate lists for the steering group and the
membership, the local anti-cuts campaign and the local Palestine solidarity
group.

Reeder (£1.79) is the best way to access RSS feeds from your favourite left
magazine, blogs and campaign sites so you can keep up to date with dozens of
anti-cuts groups around the country (even if you are offline) while Google's
Reader is a free (online only) alternative.

Geolocation apps like HeyWAY Pro (59p) and Friends Around Me (free) should
already be used by organisations to help leaflet distributors, stewards and
activists best work together on marches and big events. You can make sure
you have paper sellers everywhere. AroundMe (free) will help hungry
activists find food (and banks, petrol stations, cash points) during long
demonstrations.

For the cultural, Alarm Clock Pro (59p) will wake you with a rousing version
of the Internationale while Grindr (free) and its women orientated and
heterosexual equivalents allow a social life away from comrades for those
with too little time for friends.

Cool extras include Mobile Mouse (free) for those PowerPoint displays to
liven up local meetings; JotNot Scanner Pro (59p) allows you to scan
documents and email them so you can take a picture of a leaflet and then
hand it straight back; RedLaser (free) used to scan barcodes of goods so you
can check if the latest edition of Das Capital is in fact cheaper over the
internet and Tube Map (free) so you can get around London to picket-lines
even when the roads are blocked by riots.

Apple has not yet produced an app that shows the working conditions at its
Foxconn cityfactory in China, allows you to send messages of support to
those on the shop floor contemplating suicide or to donate money to any
state-banned union. They could call it iPicketApple (free the workers). But
in the meantime, we're going to have to find a way to do this ourselves.

-- 
Franco Iacomella

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