Editor´s introduction

Welcome to this reader, "Survival Kit", an assembly of short texts to support the 4th workshop in the series "Re-Approaching new Media"(RAM) to take place in Helsinki in November 2003.

The RAM project involves a grouping of diverse media culture initiatives in countries with widely different recent histories, current economies and social structures. Like many media culture initiatives of the past 10 years, RAM is part of a process of dialogue and community building that stretches across national, economic, social and cultural boundaries. This is a dialogue that has taken place not because of the efforts of any large NGOs or ambitions of nation states, but through the commitments and curiousity of individuals and small self-managed groups. Simple technological tools such as email lists that can run on the most basic computer hardware and network infrastructure have been essential in building this network that is truly - in the social sense - peer to peer.

RAM Helsinki has chosen "survival kit" as its theme. A catchy phrase, but one which requires some examination and brings up many issues once you begin to look. In the media and communications field, it becomes difficult to define matters of survival in an environment such as Finland or the UK that is saturated with competing networks, pocket-sized gadgets and ever more powerful computers whose necessity to everyday life corporate marketeers are keen to impress upon us. As many of us realise, once bought in we become subjects in an immense network of dependencies in which we, as individuals, have no control.

Therefore for this reader we have chosen to define matters of survival in a specific way. We have chosen to emphasise the activities of voluntary associations of actors in the technology and cultural field who are busy building communities, networks and technologies that are based on trust, voluntary affinity, creativity, a keen sense of how to operate in a specific context, and the willingness to share skills, knowledge and material things on a basis that groups define for themselves. Through these non-corporate activities, diversity of all kinds, respect for individuals, self-determination, communities, invention and creativity is able to survive, hopefully even thrive.

The basis to this book are five short commissioned introductory essays that outline some key areas of independent activity in the non-profit technical field: Open Source and Free Software development, Community Networking, projects that address inequality or the 'digital divide', Open Publishing and the Politics of the internet. The essays have been commissioned from people who are active as researchers and documentors in each of these areas. The introductions are followed by a number of short project reports or case studies, and in some cases, 'glossarys' which aim to provide a quick introduction to key terms. Like everything else in this book, the glossarys do not intend to be comprehensive. Rather they should be seen as a resource that can stimulate thinking and provide a starting point for further enquiry.

The short reports and case studies are quite randomly chosen; they are intended to function as illustrations for our topics to give concrete examples of initiatives. They are not in any way intended to offer a comprehensive survey. Instead they should be seen as representatives or examples for countless more small-scale endeavours. We only provide a tiny amount information about each project, and for every initiative that is included here, there are many more, equally worthy and interesting and we encourage our readers to search them out. We will be happy if this reader becomes an incitement to research, discover and perhaps even make new affiliations.

For the sake of clarity and to provide some kind of narrative, the short reports and glossarys have been categorised under the essays. Readers however will soon become aware that the themes inherent in the examples cross over into many, sometimes all, categories. Again we would like to encourage our readers to think about the connections between the projects and the topics, and perhaps, as we had to, the transformations in meaning of both the topics and the project that happen on re-categorisation. It becomes quite a lesson in how conceptual and administrative structures produce meaning!

We would like to thank all of the contributors to this book, especially the essay writers Biella Coleman, Steve Cisler, Frederick Noronha, Hanna Nikkanen and Patrice Riemens, and all those who have granted permission for quotes, texts and images to be reproduced. I hope that they will be happy with seeing their work represented here.

Many of the definitions and assumptions made here about "Survival Kit" will be challenged in the November workshop in Helsinki. We hope also that new ideas and initiatives will spring from this gathering. This is why we intend to produce a further publication after the workshop which, eventually, will be distributed together with this one. I hope therefore that you will read this publication as a work-in-progress; part of a developmental process that includes you, together with ourselves, all workshop participants and contributors, RAM organisations and members.

Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy this collection. Lisa Haskel on behalf of the Survival Kit editorial team.