Talks

I love giving talks.

If you'd like me to give a talk for you or be on your podcast, I'd be more than up for it. Just drop me an email.

Streams

Means of Organisation

"a conversation on the role of digital tools in political organizing and how they can help augment our collective capacities by focusing on the experience of existing organizations and their practices, structures, and challenges"

Hosted by The New Centre. As part of Common Knowledge, 2nd August 2022.

Podcasts

Tao of WAO - Networks of Networks

"This episode explores the difference between groups and networks as we talk to our guest Alex Worrad-Andrews from another cooperative in the CoTech network, Common Knowledge"

As part of Common Knowledge, February 2022.

General Intellect Unit - Common Knowledge

"In which we are joined by Gemma and Alex from Common Knowledge, a cooperative 'designing digital tools that make radical change possible'."

As part of Common Knowledge, January 2021.

Another World is Poddable - Common Knowledge

"Common Knowledge is a not-for-profit worker cooperative building digital tools for grassroots activists. Their aim is to empower people to directly resist all forms of oppression, form more resilient and autonomous communities, and organise themselves at ever larger scales. Alex Worrad-Andrews is a member and software engineer."

As part of Common Knowledge, March 2020.

Public Talks

Development of the Smart Forests Atlas

Discussion of the development of the Smart Forests Atlas. Recorded online on the Atlas itself.

As part of Common Knowledge. As part of The Forest Multiple, University of Cambridge, 27th October 2022.

Building digital sovereignty using common tools

In this presentation, we’ll introduce our worker cooperative Common Knowledge and explain how we use technology to build digital sovereignty on a collective level.
We founded Common Knowledge because we saw an opportunity to leverage the power and ubiquity of digital technology to multiply the impact and capacity of social movements. We want to use digital technology to reduce the barriers to direct political participation, enabling people to build relationships, organise themselves and directly address problems in their own lives and communities.

We believe that there are three key ingredients for achieving digital sovereignty: the technology itself, the knowledge of how to use it effectively, and people to steward and maintain it. We try to take a community-first approach to our work by cultivating an interdependent network of tech-literate people who have access to collective knowledge and tools for effective organising.

As part of Common Knowledge. Part of the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society conference Practicing Sovereignty: Interventions for open digital futures, 10th June 2022.

Digital Politics in the Twenty-First Century

As the world moves online, politics does too. Despite anxieties about the dangers and limitations of ‘clicktivism’, online organising has become an indispensable tool for actors on every part of the political spectrum: from independent activists to major political parties. Hacking, open-source development, mobile telephony, piracy and cryptography are indispensable tools for activists all over the world, and for individuals and communities facing power-imbalances of any kind. What are the implications for democracy and citizenship in the 21st century, and what should we be doing about it?

As part of Culture, Power & Politics seminar, 7th March 2019. With Paolo Gerbaudo, Jeremy Gilbert and Amit S. Rai.

"What Does Facebook Want From React?"

This talk will consider this particular open sourcing as a consolidation of Facebook’s politico-technological power in two ways explaining how this consolidation intertwines with technological capabilities peculiar to React. First, that in solving a complex technical problem in a repeatable cross-platform manner Facebook establishes a dependency on itself based on developer convenience. Its nearest rivals become clients of Facebook’s open source largesse. Second, in creating a methodology for UI development operating at a higher level of abstraction, Facebook stakes its independence from any given platform owned by rivals. With one technology Facebook is able to both make its rivals dependent upon it while establishing its own technological autonomy.

Talk during Politics of Platforms panel as part of Theorizing the Web, New York, 16th April 2016.

An Introduction to RoboCop

Invited introduction to the politics of RoboCop at Limazulu, London, September 27th 2013.

As part of All Talk All Action: The spectacle and ideology of action cinema series.

Organised and facilitated session with Jay Owens and Ed Manley that asked what it means to be intensively connected. What it does it mean for lives to be attached at every waking moment, blurring the boundaries of self-performance, work and leisure? How do the micro-banalities of every day life – from the daily commute to work, to the walk in the park – play out on a vast aggregate macro level of Big Data? What is it to have a self on a social network, a data self?

As part of Immaterial Labour Isn’t Working, 12th May 2013.

Open Access Publishing

Introduced and facilitated discussion with Alex Vasudevan, Georgina Voss and Alex Hern on contemporary trends in culture and intellectual property. How are developing technologies effecting the copyright regime, and how are difficulties in enforcing copyright leading to innovations in music, academia and computer games?

As part of Immaterial Labour Isn’t Working, 20th April 2013

The Memes of Production: The Political Economy of the Internet

Invited talk for The Left Society, University of Nottingham, April 30th 2012.

Open Source, Free Association and Housework or The Political Economy of Cute Animal Pictures

As part of the LuckyPDF School of Global Art, Fierce Festival, Birmingham, April 1st 2012.

Economics Noir: Friedrich Hayek, Cold War Cybernetics and Invisible Neoliberalism

As part of the Accelerationism conference, Goldsmiths, University of London, 14th September 2010.