Lucas Horta — Annotated Bibliography
Citation Style: RMIT Harvard — as exported from Zotero
Please view the up to date version at – https://localpiserver.tail1ff89c.ts.net/
Research Topic: This research maps the rhizome of alternative technical infrastructures that could serve the purpose of socialist, grassroots or commons movements. Including FOSS/FLOSS, local-first software, p2p protocols, mesh networking, and commons-based platforms. The research aims to develop flexible resources that enable people and communities to build, govern, and sustain viable alternatives to centralised digital products.
Baig R, Roca R, Navarro L & Freitag F (2015) guifi.net: a network infrastructure commons, in Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development, ACM, Singapore, pp. 1–4, accessed 11 May 2026. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2737856.2737900
With over 25,000 nodes deployed in the last 10 years, the guifi network stands out as the leading communally owned and operated distributed alternative network. It stands as a spearhead in the scene that most people would know of and certainly stands as one of the most recognisable projects within this space. Based predominantly in Catalonia, the guifi protocol combines wireless and fibre, public, private, and communally owned infrastructure — the network is “open to traffic from any kind of participant, including commercial purposes.” This paper mentions in brief the outline of guifi. And I thought it will stand as a useful reference for this simplicity; briefly outlining the governance system, use cases and the network location. Seeing as it is written by a member of the foundation additionally it has some authenticity to it's claims.
Walker, Reuben. 'It's Time to Savor the Flavours of Bonfire', The Fulcrum, accessed 13 May 2026. https://www.thefulcrum.dev/its-time-to-savor-the-flavours-of-bonfire/
Bonfire Networks. Bonfire Networks — Bonfire v103-social-beta10, accessed 13 May 2026. https://docs.bonfirenetworks.org/readme.html
The blog post on thefulcrum.dev by Reuben Walker is a good overview of the Bonfire system and its various use cases in real-world grassroots organising, social groups, scientific research and archival systems. The blog post steps through the different “flavours” of Bonfires that can be installed as a group. The methodology for setting up an instance of Bonfire is via Co-op Cloud for the simplest install, and seems much more straightforward than setting up various tools such as a fediverse platform, communications systems, Trello board alternatives and other useful pieces of cloud infrastructure for the different group types individually. Bonfire Networks are a direct application of considering accessibility and ease of use when it comes to setting up cloud infrastructure for grassroots purposes, and is a toolset I am actively experimenting with.
Gerhardt H (2020) Engaging the Non‐Flat World: Anarchism and the Promise of a Post‐Capitalist Collaborative Commons, Antipode, vol. 52, no. 3, pp. 681–701
This is probably my favourite paper that I have read so far while doing research into my topic. Within this paper Hannes Gerhardt seeks to break down some of the ideas surrounding anarchism and abstract hacktivism, discussing a new anarchist movement that is seeding around the world an intersecting of ideas, tying into Deleuze and Guattari's ideals of how capitalism reconfigures the commons for profit, and positing that there must be an escape from this. This rhizomatic, gradual uprising or mesh is the connective tissue that Gerhardt aims to weave through potential futures and methods of using existing technologies, highlighting how these could prefigure the post-capitalist commons. In the final passages Gerhardt aims to tie these into a unified predictive account leaning on a surveillance system and automated economic planning. Gerhardt loses me a little bit here but overall the various cases and ways of discussing opportunities lying within the ideologies of various communities, politics, and technical potential resonate.
Gerhardt H (n.d.) A Commons-Based Peer To Peer Path to Post-Capitalism: An Interview with Michel Bauwens
Michel Bauwens is the founder and “vision coordinator” of the P2P Foundation and additionally the director of research at commonstransition.org; a platform for policy development aimed toward policy design and is probably one of the more influential thinkers when it comes to the grassroots rhizome of slow revolution and its distinction from reformism.
I thought my initial notes summarise how the paper made me feel: “9 pages in and this is really blowing my mind there are some ideas here about how the P2P movement is distinctly a force to create a practice of attempting to work on common goods together within capitalism, then to attempt to subsist from the production of the common in some way, potentially feeding off of capital for some time for the purpose of the eventual leveraging of these established systems into broader.” Throughout the interview there is a tying through of commons, P2P systems, ethical finance, and cooperative economies and methodologies of aiming to keep capital within the commons ecosystem. There is additionally the introduction of the idea of cosmo-local here, which is almost like methodologies or protocols adapted by the broad movement and then localised in their existence; whether that be manufacturing, policy design, etc. Many things can be thought of within this cosmo-local lens, making one think that even though movements may be worlds apart, the protocols developed may be shared and leveraged towards independent means in varying contexts for varying degrees of emancipation.
Greco GM & Floridi L (n.d.) The tragedy of the digital commons
Greig JA (n.d.) Wireless mesh networks as community hubs
This study begins by outlining various Community Wireless Networks (CWN) around the globe, the study however is about the Detroit Community Technology Project's Community Wireless and Digital Stewards Program. The program focuses on “delivering community wireless mesh-network installation and use training to low-income and marginalized communities in Detroit”. The paper lists the projects accomplishments and principles, which may serve as useful in establishing or further developing documentation for similar projects or principles in Naarm.
“Design technological solutions for 'Everyone' not just 'Anyone'” (Greig, p. 253)
The paper goes on to outline in depth a variety of feedback, thoughts and ideals that emerged throughout the process of training and implementing. It reads as a story of praxis based research that is disseminated via overarching categories. The paper reflects on the thoughts of the community in engaging ways from recognising that tech education doesn't emancipate people from their broad conditions, general feelings of the community against the broad tech sector, dismantling myths such as a necessary level of education to repair or maintain technology. Additionally the paper communities are the broader communities, and therefor the concerns of people are embedded in the groups. This includes that of data surveillance of marginalised communities and the paper voices these concerns. However fails to specify how it aims to confront this.
Hardin G (1968) The Tragedy of the Commons: The population problem has no technical solution; it requires a fundamental extension in morality, Science, vol. 162, no. 3859, pp. 1243–1248
Kleppmann M, Frazee P, Gold J, Graber J, Holmgren D, Ivy D, Johnson J, Newbold B & Volpert J (2024) Bluesky and the AT Protocol: Usable Decentralized Social Media, in Proceedings of the ACM Conext-2024 Workshop on the Decentralization of the Internet, ACM, Los Angeles CA USA, pp. 1–7, accessed 7 April 2026. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3694809.3700740
This paper overviews the technical workings of Bluesky and the AT Protocol, separating some of the mechanisms from the other most popular decentralised social media application, Mastodon. “Bluesky is a microblogging application in the style of Twitter/X.” Some of the key differentiations between Mastodon and Bluesky are that Bluesky can be modularly adapted, with users being able to change the supplier of their recommendation algorithm, moderator, or even the PDS that hosts the user. The indexing infrastructure is thus very different. The Mastodon or federation setup consists of instances of various servers that may be outdated, running variations of the instance of Mastodon, and can be taken offline, thus making user experience somewhat less reliable. This paper not only serves as an eye opener for me but also serves as an introduction to some of the other protocols for social media or messaging on the decentralised net at the moment, including Nostr, Scuttlebutt, and blockchain-style systems — highlighting that blockchain systems are often linked to the financialisation of social media, where this is not the primary target of what Bluesky aims to achieve.
Kleppmann M, Wiggins A, Van Hardenberg P & McGranaghan M (2019) Local-first software: you own your data, in spite of the cloud, in Proceedings of the 2019 ACM SIGPLAN International Symposium on New Ideas, New Paradigms, and Reflections on Programming and Software, ACM, Athens Greece, pp. 154–178, accessed 6 May 2026. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3359591.3359737
This is the paper that revs the engine of the local-first software movement. The paper outlines broad concepts of what it means to create local-first software in a manner that is simple to understand. Leveraging useful anecdotes of various mainstream software to be able to explain to the reader the use cases of various protocols or methodologies for interacting, reading, writing and storing data. The paper heavily leans into how the use cases are useful for productivity but also a more innate sense. “It is important to feel ownership of that data.” Throughout the paper the authors a few times refer to this type of more embodied feeling that I find interesting. We see as well various explanations for the use cases of security, locally stored data and standardised or simple file systems that have a long lifespan or have been widely supported for a long enough time that we can predict there will always be a record of how to use the file types. The paper goes in depth into various applications for local-first software that has the potential to be edited at the same time by various peers working on the same documents or in the same space with varying levels of connectivity and mentions that this could then be leveraged for potentially other forms of connection that are not of the typical wifi network kind but that could be used by physically transferring data or potentially over radio or another alternative form of communication. Additionally one of my favourite parts is that at the end of the paper we see a call to action for researchers, practitioners, developers, and even for a startup and one of the interesting things is that the authors make concessions and advocate for taking the possible steps that are feasible. Not an all or nothing approach which is the methodology that relates most to my research.
Mansoux A, Howell B, Barok D & Heikkilä V-M (2023) Permacomputing Aesthetics: Potential and Limits of Constraints in Computational Art, Design and Culture, in Ninth Computing within Limits 2023, LIMITS, Virtual, accessed 6 May 2026. https://limits.pubpub.org/pub/6loh1eqi
On permacomputing – writing as sprawl.
Permacomputing as described in the paper aims to lay out the aesthetic ideals of permacomputing and grapples with this aesthetic and the material, political conditions of artistic output, grounding it in a sort of use of the old and not in a way that is buying new or retro. It is a refiguring of old technology for new means, a repurposing. It spans a discussion of how the aesthetic could potentially have an adverse effect on how it may be introduced into a broader design or art field and that this could in turn bastardise the practice. It sets out to say that we must interrogate the reasoning and the access of the individuals that aim to work in permacomputing, and why. It discusses that permacomputing can exist like CMA — or Computationally Minimal Art where “serendipitous discovery plays a much greater role than intentional design.”
Koerner BI (2026) Opposing ICE Might Save the Country. It Could Also Ruin Your Life, Wired, accessed 15 April 2026. https://www.wired.com/story/opposing-ice-might-save-the-country-could-also-ruin-your-life/
Rafael Concepcion teaches multimedia storytelling at Newhouse School of Public Communications in Syracuse. He had worked “around the edges” of the tech industry for two decades prior. In the wired piece the writer tells his story. Inspired by a grocery store owner offering free groceries delivered to people too afraid to leave their homes because of ongoing ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) raids in the New York finger lakes region. Initially Rafael vibe-coded an application that would educate people on their legal rights if confronted by ICE. But after a radicalising realisation, where a friends son was taken despite having pending asylum and complying with handing over his legal documents he realised he had to take action to “stop these people from falling off a cliff, stop these people from disappearing.”
“ICE is looking for millions,” Concepcion stated in a video promoting DEICER's official launch on July 28. “What if millions were looking for ICE?”
This article stands as the first I have read of a vibe coded application used for a form of direct action, it may not have been decentralised, it may have been created using frontier models that also have contracts with the defense departments Concepcion aims to undermine but it stands politically as a seed. A seed within it contains the same tone of the commons movement and broadly that which I aim to research.