question / pregunta:
Can you direct me to any fairly recent articles or other material on the Global Square project (a social media platform for coordinating relations between local Occupy, M15, Syntagma, etc. organizations)? There was a lot of stuff on its forthcoming release early next year, and then it largely went quiet. I assume it went defunct or was moved to the back burner, but I'd appreciate any accounts of exactly what happened. Thanks.
Articles
The most recent is Virality: international media coverage of The Global Square
Wired on February 18, 2012
If you scroll to the bottom there are links to media coverage from all over the world,in 2011 and 2012
Status of the Global Square, according to Heather Marsh
It depends a bit on whether you're interested in the social movement side or the technical side.
As you may be aware, last spring-summer TGS activists put out a global call for coders to meet at the Berlin Biennale (see http://roarmag.org/2012/02/global-square-call-for-coders/). A fair amount of talking seems to have happened, but there are few tangible updates on the record in terms of articles.
On the technology side: Since they determined to build the project off of the Delft University of Technology's P2P file-sharing software, Tribler, this is what you should keep an eye out for if your interest is the technology.
You might want to try following the @globalsq Twitter feed, or at least check in occasionally.
According to Heather Marsh, who acted as a media spokesperson for those working on the GS concept last year:
The Global Square and Tribler p2p microblogging / livestreaming projects are indistinguishable at the moment, at least until we get the base functionality working smoothly. ... we hope to get more accessible documentation set up on the github site soon. We won't be ready for a wiki until we get the android app at least where we want it and then the Twitter will start posting more. The other sites were activists, we don't know what happened to them but we see other activists have set up new websites for TGS as well. They are working on the people networks, not the code.
The philosophy behind TGS is being written here: Stigmergy: Systems of Mass Collaboration http://georgiebc.wordpress.com/category/collaboration/ and that will be followed with another series about the software, on the same site.
All the best,
Heather Marsh
She also notes that "the code is being merged and documented right now." So perhaps there will be an update at some point, if you keep an eye out.
**EDIT: The above comment from Heather Marsh is not from a general press release, but represents her Feb. 27, 2013, response to my e-mail query. My apologies for the lack of clarity.**
I reached out to the Occupy
I reached out to the Occupy Research listserv (which might be a good place to get some additional information about this project - see http://www.occupyresearch.net/) and got a response from Heather Marsh, who confirmed the above message that "Global Square and Tribler p2p microblogging / video streaming projects are
indistinguishable, at least until we get the base functionality."
So it seems that the status is the same as the above press release. I'll be happy to pass on more information if it comes in from the listserv.