🪡 Knitting Our Internet 🧶

🪡 Knitting Our Internet 🧶 is an interactive workshop travelling through the history of the Internet, and proposing a collective re-imagining of participatory, decentralised alternatives.

This workshop aims at questioning the very essence of today’s social networks, exposing the critical limits given by centralization, monopoly, and surveillance capitalism.

A group of people sitting in a circle, connected by a red rope

ℹ️ About

🪡 Knitting Our Internet 🧶 is an in person interactive workshop about the Internet, its history, and its future.

In one hour, participants brought on a journey through the history of the Internet, and a collective re-imagination of participatory, decentralized alternatives.

This workshop aims at questioning the very essence of today’s social networks, exposing the critical limits given by centralization, monopoly, and surveillance capitalism.

Host the workshop!

📽️ The story behind this

This workshop was conceived in June 2023 by Tommi, who was looking for a simple yet critical and accurate way to introduce the concept of the Fediverse to non-experts. The content and structure of the workshop changed and matured over time, adapting to very diverse publics of any ages and backgrounds, at times including Tommi’s research for Computer Sciences are Social Sciences, his bachelor’s thesis.

In June 2024, after [having hosted the workshop in many occasions], Tommi decided to take 🪡 Knitting Our Internet 🧶 to the next level, involving a marvelous team of incredible people to give it a visual identity, a better structure, and publish its website—the one you are reading right now.

Domain name

I have been thinking a lot about the domain name for this website: sooo many ideas, too many possibilities—all quite costly. Not one convinced me fully, therefore I went with a nice one that was cheap enough. ourinternet.in highlights that we are in our Internet, and that we build it together, from the inside, by participating, being proactive, and involved.

🙋🏼 The team

Method

This workshop started as a personal project. Only after one year it evolved into a broader and more structured endeavour, involving many wonderful people.

When considering the idea of involving other individuals and ask for their time and efforts, Tommi did not want to do so for the sake of friendship only, but at the same time he did not have the funds to pay their work either.

For these reasons this whole project is brought forward on the principles of personal curiosity and mutual aid.

If you are interested in learning more, read the introductory email I sent to the first members of the team to invite them to get involved.