In the prospective to decentralize OFFDEM we have the possibility of organising a half day workshop as an OFF to BalCCon on sept 17th during the buildup BalCCon2k26 :: pretalx
We can develop OFFDEM ongoing topics demilitarisation and Synware
CODE IS POLITICS
OFFDEM community is larger than just Brussels. For years we have pursued to organize OFFDEM events in a decentralized fashion. This year OFFDEM leaves Brussels. We want to thank BalCCon2k26 organizers for welcoming a half-day OFFDEM workshop during BalCCon2k26 build-up, on Sept 17th.
BalCCon is a non-commercial, community-organized event, with talks and workshops by the Balkans hacker community for the community. BalCCon provides an opportunity for all the people in this part of Europe to connect and to cooperate.
Register:
To join the workshop please register to the dedicated workgroup here: O₆f₂fdem - hexaoxygen difluoride - OFFDEM
Focus: Demilitarization
The urge to demilitarize has never been so pressing. NATO is piling up weapons, the EU is preparing for war, all States at war are throwing insane amounts of resources into flattening cities and killing people, normalizing war propaganda and committing genocide. Ethical boundaries and international right are obliterated, there’s no limit: all bets are off.
The purpose of the workshop is to summarize actual ongoing work regarding demilitarization, and to expand existing propositions including zoethical research on the ties between extractivism, e-transitions, and the military.
But already here are some points of interest that we will pursue:
- Specificities of eastern Europe, the border as a transitional threshold where transition can happen.
- War propaganda, as this civilisation is in collapse war is not inevitable.
- Climate crisis Extractivism and War as 3 facets of the same triangle that are all intimately linked to technology production.
- Dual use, what are the military usage of the code you are developing, what makes free software tolerable for the military industrial complex.
Some definitions:
- extractivism: the economic regime in late capitalism that turns the Earth into a mining pool to extract as much metal as can be used by heavy industries to transform the planet into a large network of megalopolis islands in a wasteland ;
- e-transitions: the so called “green revolution” based on e-words like ‘energy’, ‘electricity’ and ‘electronics’ to transition to ‘ecological’ means of a prosperous future. In fact, e-transitions are green-washing for the unleashed expansion of capitalist violence across the globe, pushing all the natural limits to the carrying capacity of the Earth, and leading to an accelerated transition to oblivion.
- the military: the ever-expanding means of the capitalist empires to maintain complex life under the constant threat of replacement by robots, dead people, and destroyed habitat.