New content! Dead Drops, Lo-Fi and LowTech manifesto!

content/manifestos/1999-LowTech-manifesto.md

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+# Lowtech Manifesto
+
+"Lowtech" means technology that is cheap or free.
+
+Technology moves on so fast that right now we can recover low-end Pentiums and fast Macintoshes from the trash. Lowtech upgrades every year. But we don't have to pay for it.
+
+Lowtech includes hardware and software. We advocate freeware and low cost software. We particularly advocate the use of low cost, open source operating systems.
+
+High technology doesn't mean high creativity. In fact sometimes the restrictions of a medium lead to the most creative solutions.
+
+Independence is important. Don't lock your creativity into a box you don't control.
+
+Access is important. Don't lock your creativity into a format we can't see.
+
+High tech artworks market new PCs. Even if they aren't meant to. Artworks that make use of new, expensive technology can't avoid being, in part, sales demonstrations. Part of the message of an online video stream, whatever its content, is "Hey, isn't it time for an upgrade?".
+
+Communicators concerned with the meaning and context of what they do may want to avoid this.
+
+We're skeptical about the consumerist frenzy associated with information technology. Lowtech questions the two year upgrade cycle.
+
+A lot of people say that new media is revolutionary. They say the net is anarchic and subversive. But how subversive can you be in an exclusive club, with a $1000 entrance fee?
+
+Lowtech counters exclusivity. Lowtech is street level technology.
+
+Text is great for communicating. Write down what you want to say. Make it clear and simple and non-exclusive.
+
+Email is still the "killer app". Fast, low cost global communication for the ordinary citizen is genuinely something new.
+
+HTML is good for lots more than web pages. Now you can author all sorts of graphical stuff with a plain text editor.
+
+Use the web for plain text and images. It's simple and cheap and quick and it works.
+
+----
+
+A rant approximating the content of this document was delivered to an audience of new media artists and activists by James Wallbank, Coordinator of Redundant Technology Initiative, at The Next 5 Minutes conference in Amsterdam, March 1999.
+
+Source: http://lowtech.org/projects/n5m3/

content/manifestos/2008-05-lo-fi-manifesto.md

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+# The Lo-Fi Manifesto
+
+## Preamble
+
+The time has come to reject expensive consumer and prosumer software that hinders the extensibility of digital discourse and limits digital production literacy to programs and file formats that are destined for disruptive upgrades or obsolescence.
+
+Digital scholars in the loosely defined fields of rhetoric and composition, computers and writing, and technical communication should create free and open source artifacts that are software- and device-independent. Discourse posted on the open Web can hardly be considered free if access requires costly software or particular devices.
+
+Additionally, the literacies and language we develop through engaging in digital scholarship and knowledge-making should enable us to speak confidently, unambiguously, and critically with one another about the intricacies and methods of digital production.
+
+And as teachers, we should actively work to provide students with sustainable, extensible production literacies through open, rhetorically grounded digital practices that emphasize the source in “free and open source.”
+
+## Defining Lo-fi Technologies
+
+Lo-fi production technologies are stable and free. They consist of and/or can retrograde to:
+
+1. Plain text files (.txt, .xml, .htm, .css, .js, etc.)
+2. Plain text editors (Notepad, TextEdit, pico/nano, vi, etc.)
+3. Standardized, human-readable forms of open languages expressed in plain text (XML, XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc.)
+4. Single-media files (image, audio, video) in open formats
+
+Despite their humble, decades-old base technology (plain text), innovative uses of lo-fi technologies can be remarkably hi-fi, as in the case of AJAX (whose most famous application may be Google’s Gmail service).
+
+## Lo-fi is LOFI
+
+“Lo-fi” describes a preferred set of production technologies that digital producers should strive to command, but as an acronym, LOFI outlines four principles of digital production that are essential for the advancement, extension, and long-term preservation of digital discourse:
+
+**Lossless:** Discourse presented through lo-fi production technologies neither degrades nor becomes trapped in the production itself. Text migrates and transforms from a single source (e.g., XML, or an application of XML) to any number of other devices and artifacts; images, video, and other media elements maintain their integrity as individual files that are orchestrated with one another at a reader’s moment of access, not at the producer’s moment of File > Import or File > Save.
+
+**Open:** Lo-fi artifacts’ source code and media elements are available for inspection, revision, and extension outside the scope of any one piece of production software and any one producer. Openness includes and encourages end-user/reader customization and repurposing.
+
+**Flexible:** Discourse artfully and rhetorically created with lo-fi production technologies can be experienced unobtrusively in multiple ways by different users equipped with a wide variety of conventional, mobile, and adaptive devices—all from a single artifact. No plugins, special downloads, or device-/reader-specific artifacts are required.
+
+**In(ter)dependent:** Lo-fi production technologies direct orchestration (like a recipe), not composition (like a TV dinner), allowing users and their devices full control to render (or not) and perhaps repurpose the media elements that constitute a digital artifact.
+
+## Manifesto
+
+1. Software is a poor organizing principle for digital production.
+2. Digital literacy should reach beyond the limitations of software.
+3. Discourse should not be trapped by production technologies.
+4. Accommodate and forgive the end user, not the producer.
+5. If a hi-fi element is necessary, keep it dynamic and unobtrusive.
+6. Insist on open standards and formats, and software that supports them.
+
+----
+
+Karl Stolley
+
+“The Lo-Fi Manifesto.” Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy 12(3). Available http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/12.3/ (May 2008).
+
+Sources: 
+
+* http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/12.3/topoi/stolley/
+* https://github.com/karlstolley/lo-fi
+

content/manifestos/2010-Dead-Drops.txt

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+# The Dead Drops Manifesto
+
+*Dead Drops* is an anonymous, offline, peer to peer file-sharing network in public space. Anyone can access a Dead Drop and everyone may install a Dead Drop in their neighborhood/city. A Dead Drop must be public accessible. A Dead Drop inside closed buildings or private places with limited or temporary access is not a Dead Drop. A real Dead Drop mounts as  read and writeable mass storage drive without any custom software. Dead Drops don’t need to be synced or connected to each other. Each Dead Drop is singular in its existence. A very beautiful Dead Drop shows only the metal sheath enclosed type-A USB plug and is cemented into walls.You would hardly notice it. Dead Drops don’t need any cables or wireless technology. Your knees on the ground or a dirty jacket on the wall is what it takes share files offline. A Dead Drop is a naked piece of passively powered Universal Serial Bus technology embedded into the city, the only true public space. In an era of growing clouds and fancy new devices without access to local files we need to rethink the freedom and distribution of data. The *Dead Drops* movement is on its way for change!
+
+Free your data to the public domain in cement! Make your own Dead Drop now! Un-cloud your files today!!!
+
+Aram Bartholl 2010
+
+Source: \url{https://deaddrops.com/dead-drops/manifesto/}

content/other/amazon-blurb.txt

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+<i>Manifestos for the Internet Age</i> is a reader that collects manifestos of computer culture, starting with Ted Nelson (<i>Computer Lib</i>), through the <i>GNU Manifesto</i> and the <i>Hacker Manifesto</i> (1986), up to current influential positions such as the <i>Zero Dollar Laptop Manifesto</i> (James Wallbank), the <i>Lo-Fi Manifesto</i> (Karl Stolley), the <i>Critical Engineering Manifesto</i> (Oliver, Savičić, Vasiliev), and many other writings from both artists and activists. 
+
+The present edition (as of May 2015) includes writings by Aaron Swartz, Adam Hyde, the Swedish Piratpartiet, Constant Dullaart, Edward Snowden, Piotr Czerski, David Weinberger and Doc Searls.