The Bentway re-imagines how we build, experience, activate, and value [[public space
public]] space together. With From Later, they are hosting an initiative from March 1 to May 31 called Digital and/as Public Space (see From Later’s Public Notebook) which this site is a part of as a micro-residency.
Dawn Walker is a design researcher and PhD Candidate at the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto. Her research focuses on the possibilities for social transformation through the design of alternative and decentralized (web) infrastructures. She is a member-worker of [[Hypha
Hypha Worker Co-operative]], a tech worker co-operative, and co-organizes Our Networks, a conference about the past, present, and future of building our own network [[infrastructure
Garry Ing is a designer and researcher residing in Toronto. He is a member of [[Hypha
Hypha Worker Co-operative]] and sessional faculty at OCAD University teaching interactive media. Previous work and collaborations has been with the Strategic Innovation Lab (sLab) at OCAD University, the Technologies for Aging Gracefully Lab at the University of Toronto, Normative, Format.com, and Pivotal Software. He is a co-organizer of Our Networks, a conference on building distributed network [[infrastructure
infrastructures]], and A-B-Z-TXT, an autonomous school for art, design and computation in Toronto and Montréal.
Hypercore [[Protocol]] is a [[peer-to-peer]] data network built on the Hypercore logs. Hypercores are signed, append-only logs. They’re like lightweight blockchains without the consensus algorithm. As with BitTorrent, as more people “seed” a dataset it will increase the available bandwidth.
The [[Hypertext]] Transfer [[Protocol]] (HTTP) is an application layer protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the [[World Wide Web]], where [[hypertext]] documents include hyperlinks to other resources that the user can easily access, for example by a mouse click or by tapping the screen in a [[web browser]].
Hypertext is text displayed on a computer display or other electronic devices with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access. Hypertext documents are interconnected by hyperlinks, which are typically activated by a mouse click, keypress set, or by touching the screen. Apart from text, the term “hypertext” is also sometimes used to describe tables, images, and other presentational content formats with integrated hyperlinks. Hypertext is one of the key underlying concepts of the [[World Wide Web]], where Web pages are often written in the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). As implemented on the Web, hypertext enables the easy-to-use publication of information over the Internet.
We are a team of technologists, designers, and community organizers who value working with mission-oriented organizations.
Our values
Together, we have years of experience building open source technologies and sustainable communities.
Our core values reflect our understanding of what it means to cultivate respectful, resilient, and democratic technology ecologies.
Build change that lasts
Disruptive growth has its costs. We believe that the culture of “move fast and break things” is untenable. Instead, we seek change that strengthens our communities and nurtures our planet. We work thoughtfully and with care toward the futures we imagine.
Embody co-operative values
We serve our clients, members, neighbours, and the co-operative movement the world over. Hypha embodies the co-operative values of self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity, and solidarity.
Provide safe harbour
We acknowledge the sacred land we work on is the territory of many nations and was the subject of the Dish with One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement to peaceably share and care for the resources around the Great Lakes. Today it is still home to many First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples from across Turtle Island. We also recognize the ongoing history of oppression and marginalization in our society and workplaces. Hypha strives to be a safe harbour to all, regardless of race, class, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, religion, or technical skill.
The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) is a [[protocol]] and peer-to-peer network for storing and sharing data in a distributed file system. IPFS uses content-addressing to uniquely identify each file in a global namespace connecting all computing devices.
A communication protocol is a system of rules that allows two or more entities of a communications system to transmit information via any kind of variation of a physical quantity. The protocol defines the rules, syntax, semantics and synchronization of communication and possible error recovery methods. Protocols may be implemented by hardware, software, or a combination of both.
RSS (RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format. These feeds can, for example, allow a user to keep track of many different websites in a single news aggregator. The news aggregator will automatically check the RSS feed for new content, allowing the list to be automatically passed from website to website or from website to user. This passing of content is called web syndication. Websites usually use RSS feeds to publish frequently updated information, such as blog entries, news headlines, or episodes of audio and video series. RSS is also used to distribute podcasts. An RSS document (called “feed”, “web feed”, or “channel”) includes full or summarized text, and metadata, like [[publishing]] date and author’s name.
[[Hypha]]’s practice is situated across many topics that are present in the theme of Adaptive Reuse & Creative Misuse. Drawing from our collective experiences, histories, and methodologies, our goal for the micro-residency to investigate how notions of digital [[infrastructure]] can be reused, reinterpreted, and reconfigured, to realize a kind of [[public space]]. Our approach to this theme will be composed of a few, very preliminary, subjects that will ground the residency: the situated histories of digital infrastructure, the implications of protocols for [[publishing]] ([[Hypertext]], [[RSS]], [[Peer-to-peer]]) in defining public spaces, and the possibilities of cooperative approaches to maintenance and repair. Our intent is to make the process of this investigation [[public]] through online tools mapping our thinking about the theme (Open channels in Are.na as one example) and cultivating a [[Digital Public Garden]] as part of Hypha’s contributions to the initiative (a [[RSS
resyndicatable]] adaptive online notebook). The outputs from the [[bentway
micro-residency]] will be a written contribution to the Field Guide to the Digital Real and a micro-website containing the synthesis of our investigations and our evolving practice. The outputs will be textual and visual, and draw from our collaborative practices as a cooperative. They will explore ways to represent relationships with existing and emergent technologies within our communities. Through our micro-residency we will capture a poetic interpretation of the theme and provide prompts for institutions in the city on how they could reconfigure technology to create radically creative platforms.
A web browser (commonly referred to as a browser) is a software application for accessing the [[World Wide Web]]. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the web browser retrieves the necessary content from a web server and then displays the page on the user’s device.
