Presenting the fifth issue of the Algorithms of Late-Capitalism zine: "Shifting the Power”
🤖 Digital Edition
🤖 Self-printing Edition
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In this era of increased reliance on algorithmic systems that we can’t
see and don’t control, how do we shift the power back to the citizen?
By knowing where, how, and to which effects algorithmic systems influence our lives – we can start finding ways to reconfigure our relationships with the systems pervading our digitizing public sphere. By interrogating and critically examining the underpinnings of these systems, from our unique perspectives, we can shift the power from the pervading technocracies back to the citizens.
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This zine was created by internet teapot (Karla Zavala and Adriaan Odendaal) and participants of the workshop: “Algorithms of Late-Capitalism: Zine Co-creation Workshop” that took place at the Mozilla Festival on 17 March 2021
* You can sign up for our upcoming board game co-design workshop here *
With International Tabletop Day around the corner, we’re counting down the days to the big celebration by highlighting friendly local gaming stores, their owners, and their awesome stories. Be sure to find an ITTD event near you so you can enjoy the festivities in your community. All...
I spent the last weekend of October at the Mozilla Festival, where I had the chance to play around with different digital making tools, including Mozilla’s X-Ray goggles, which really opened my eyes to basic coding.
The goggles are a very easy-to-use app developed by Mozilla Webmaker, that allow you to decode and recode web pages in your browser. I felt this was a great first step to understanding how HTML code works, by redesigning the web pages I usually browse.
Introducing Mozilla WebMakers Tools
Mozilla WebMakers Tools are super user-friendly tools developed by the Mozilla Foundation to make it easy for anyone to explore, remix and redesign the web. They have developed tools for all levels, from hacking a website to building your own mobile app.
How it works
The goggles, a simple add-on button in your Firefox browser, allow you to remix the elements of a webpage to gain an understanding of how it work. And this way to uncover and mess around with the building blocks of everyday web pages.
If like me you are not familiar with coding, using the X-Ray goggles is a great first step to understand what is ‘behind the curtain’ of your web browser, i.e. the simple HTML and CSS code that is used to build the pages you are using everyday.
Hacking the Tate website with the X-Ray Goggles
The workshop I attended at the Mozilla Festival was organised by Tate Digital, and it was exciting to be able to hack the website of such a great institution.
This is what the Tate website usually looks like:
And this is how I transformed it after 3 hours of playing around with the Mozilla X-Ray Goggles (of course I did not transform it for real, it is just a fake page in my web browser):
As you can see I have changed very simple HTML elements - images, links, and text - that compose any webpage. Once I got more familiar with the tool, I started to go deeper into the customization and managed to change the colour and font of the text. I even started to build code by creating some new HTML tags for the specific colour I wanted to use.
Some people even managed to put Harry Potter’s nemesis Voldemort into the Guardian website with the X-Ray Goggles. You should try them!
I really enjoyed working and experimenting with the goggles . In just a few hours it felt like I was learning the basics of a new language. It made me see how coding can be a creative and exciting activity, like making any other form of art.
Next step: build my first webpage from scratch using Mozilla’s web builder Thimble.
Marie James
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Marie James is a graduate from MA Innovation at Central Saint Martins. She is currently starting a social enterprise called ‘The Pink Pony’ (hence the many pictures of ponies) and helping manage the UAL Futures community.
Follow Marie on Twitter @ma_james
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MORE:
Read Marie’s review of the Mozilla Festival
Check out those 10 places where you can learn coding online for free
Hacking, Playing, Pimpin’ Making @ Mozilla festival
I spent the last weekend of October at the Mozilla Festival which took place at Ravensbourne University. The aim of the Festival is to gather the awesome community of Mozilla developers and creative technologists to discuss and build the Web of tomorrow.
‘Mozilla’? What does that mean?
You’ll know Mozilla if you are using Firefox as your web browser (you know the little red fox holding the blue planet). The Mozilla Foundation, creator of the Firefox browser and of many other open-source web products, has contributed massively to the Open-source and Digital Makers movements. A quick look at the Mozilla Manifesto will give you an idea of what this means.
During two exciting days, I had the opportunity to play, hack and make digital stuff with students, developers and members of the public. Here’s a review of my favourite moments.
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I made a bracelet of my favourite songs
Photo: Mozilla
Dan Burnett and Joel Porter are Makers who have developed the physical playlist, a tool to enable anyone to create a wearable version of his or her favourite playlists. The tool allows you to turn links to your favourite songs on Youtube or Grooveshark into badges, and then to assemble them into a bracelet.
Photo: Dan Burnett
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I hacked the Tate website with the Mozilla X-Ray Goggles
The Mozilla X-Ray Goggles is a open-source tool developed by the Mozilla Foundation which allows anyone to modify the code of any pages in a web browser. It is a great way to understand how basic coding languages like HTML and CSS work. I had so much fun playing around with the goggles that that I wrote an entire article about it.
My hack of the Tate website:
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I played Minecraft with 10 years-old Minecraft experts
Photo: Mozilla
Minecraft is a creative game that aims to brings kids (but also adults) into the mindset of building and coding digital products, instead of just consuming them. The creative mode of Minecraft can also serve as a platform for creatives to experiment with the possibilities of coding.
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I made my first digital animations with the Parapara app
Photo: Mozilla
The Parapara animation wall is a really user-friendly app developed by Mozilla Japan that aims to introduce young (and less young) people to the basics of digital animation. You first make your animations on a tablet, and then share them with other on the animations wall.
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What I learned at Mozilla Festival
Hacking and coding digital stuff can be a lot of fun and very creative. And it is by experimenting, trying-out and failing that I could start building tech skills. After this fun experience, I am looking forward to ‘pimpin’ and making more digital products!
Marie James
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Marie James is a graduate from MA Innovation at Central Saint Martins. She is currently starting a social enterprise called ‘The Pink Pony’ (hence the many pictures of ponies) and helping manage the UAL Futures community. Follow Marie on Twitter @ma_james.
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MORE:
Read Marie's review of the Mozilla X-Ray Goggles (to come)
We had a rather disjointed community call yesterday after the last one was cancelled, project lead Doug was ill, and people were preparing for the Mozilla Festival.
Instead of sharing the recorded audio, it's probably best to provide a bullet point overview of what we discussed:
The Web Literacy Standard will arrive as part of Webmaker at the weekend (and will be announced at MozFest)
There's a couple of sessions being run at MozFest on the Web Literacy Standard. It will also be demoed at the opening Science Fair.
We need to start roadmapping to develop the Standard in 2014 (including adoption / case studies)
The next community call will be on Monday 18th November as Doug's going on a post-MozFest holiday.
数ある展示の中でも、猛烈に「濃ゆ」かったブース。
Mozilla Resarchで開発が進められている次世代レンダリングエンジン「Servo」と、Servoのために作られたプログラミング言語「Rust」にまつわる、家系ラーメンの汁よりも濃ゆいお話が聞けた。
vimやemacsの話など、ハッカー談義にも花が咲いて楽しかった。
