40 Years of Open

We are postponing the continuation of the 40 Years of Open series to save and redirect those energies towards meaningful solidarity efforts with Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. We will continue this programming when it makes sense to do so. Thank you for your interest.

September 2023 marks 40 years since the launch of the GNU Project and the Free Software Movement. In that time, a host of ideas once considered unfeasible or impractical have become foundational in tech, science, academe, and beyond. Open access, freedom to reuse, and decentralized networks are now even assumed across fields from citizen science to cryptocurrency.

What have we learned about the foundational premises and promises of open work over four decades? How have practices built on promises of freedom, openness, and decentralization affected how technologists and tech users imagine the future? What political ideologies have these assumptions been built on and which political lineages have they silenced and ignored? If the future of open technology is to continue to offer political promise and diverge from its past, how will open technologists need to shift their thinking? Join us for a sequence of three events exploring the histories, ideologies, and futures of open work.