Tools will not liberate us (alone) (Delyo)

Others think of libre tools as just another middle-class approach seeking to legitimise itself as political to avoid doing "more important" things and comfort oneself's ego. With those I neither agree nor have much patience. Unless one is anti-civilisationist (primitivist), in which case one is not worth my time because of how much that standpoint can harm people, one must surely see how much of our lives today are intertwined with the streams of ones and zeros, the beep-boop of the black box, the very physical cables that cut across seas. One cannot afford to ignore the injustices in that domain as if they were of a metaphysical nature. The problems of the digital realm are those of our bodily and material realm, and they stem directly from it. We need only look at the fact that "digital" does not mean immaterial, on the contrary it is today among the most present materialities, and certainly among the most devastating.

Tools shape practices, that's granted. But that process takes time, usually months, if not years, depending on the frequency with which we engage in the practice. [...] If you have to release a text, a poster, or a publication in two weeks, there is no sense in immediately adopting a tool that will take you two months to learn, and six months or more to change your habits.

It is our position as mediators and libre propagandists to facilitate, explain, "educate" (in an "éduc pop" sense), and invite towards practices that make our and others' digital uses more independent, shared, open, and free. The proverbial cross, I mean the fact that those approaches and tools we like are not used, not understood or accessible, is ours to bear, ours to fix.