"Technology is the campfire around which we tell our stories." - Laurie Anderson "Storytelling reveal meaning without committing the error of defining it." -Hannah Arendt "To define is to kill. To suggest is to create." -Stéphane Mallarmé
About me
I'm Jenny Ryan, an incorrigibly nomadic cyberanthropologist gone gonzo. I'm interested in and actively engaged with emerging movements rooted in the shared struggle to reclaim the commons, create public spheres through the cultivation of open spaces, and enable direct democracy through principles of federation and open source or Read/Write culture. Professionally, I'm an academia dropout working principally at the intersection of communication, technology, and grassroots social justice organizing through my work with Omni Commons, where I tend to whatever fires need tending to (with a hefty dose of autodidactic training in nonprofit law and accounting), the Peoples Open Network (a community-owned and -operated wireless network based in the East Bay), and Sudo Room, an activist hackerspace in Oakland, CA. In my spare time, I work on various collaborative projects (see below), write poetry, roll around in variably fertile and toxic soil, and serve as a connector of aligned humans, groups and projects.
Mycelia - Mycelia is a decentralized documentation and inventory tool, enabling individuals and communities to self-organize their own projects and associated data while also networking their object and skill inventories with other creative spaces, communities and individuals. Mycelia provides object, project and skill matchmaking for collaborative and grassroots endeavors.
Cryptoparty - Every third Sunday of the month, we gather at Sudo Room to learn about and teach each other how to use digital security tools (encrypted email, calls, texts, chat, etc;).
Hackpacks - A hackpack is a backpack with a set of "always carry" tools for hacking the world around us. The aim is to distribute hackpacks to local youth who attend a class on hacking at sudo ^_^
BACH - The Bay Area Consortium of Hackerspaces is a loosely-structured organization for promoting collaboration, mentorship and camaraderie across the various Bay Area hackerspaces.
"The Digital Graveyard: Online Social Networking Sites as Vehicles of Remembrance,” in Mike Wesch and Neil Whitehead (eds.), Human No More: Digital Subjectivities, Unhuman Subjects, and the End of Anthropology. University of Colorado Press. August 2012. PDFBuy on Amazon
"Weaving the Underground Web: Neotribalism and Psytrance on Tribe.net," in Graham St. John (ed.), The Local Scenes and Global Culture of Psytrance. Routledge: New York & London. June 2010. PDFBuy on Amazon
The Virtual Campfire: An Ethnography of Online Social Networking. Master's Thesis, May 2008. Website
October 2-3, 2014. Panel and Workshop at the International Summit for Community Wireless Networks at c-base in Berlin, Germany. Agenda
Panel: Women and Community Wireless: Addressing Challenges, Sharing Successes
Workshop: Coalition-Building for Community Wireless Networks
August 31, 2013. “Mesh the Planet! – A Presentation on the Oakland Community Mesh Network Project,” with Marc Juul at Information Day, hosted by The Public School and Sudo Room, Oakland, CA. Wiki Documentation
November 15, 2012. “Free the Means: Co-Creating Ethnographies of the Future,” at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, San Francisco, California. Crib Notes
November 16, 2011. “Reimagining the ‘Global Village’ in an Age of Networked Materiality: Designing Online Spaces for Group Coordination, Participation and Collaboration,” at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, Montreal, Canada.
Panel Title: No Matter Where: Tracking New Media Materialities and Ideologies.
Panel Organizers: Matt Bernius and Adam Fish
November 21, 2010. “Weaving the Underground Web: Neotribalism and Psytrance on Tribe.Net,” at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA.
Panel Title: Embodiment, Trance, and Gender: Papers on the Anthropology of Consciousness.
Panel Organizer: Jeffrey MacDonald.
December 8, 2009. “The Digital Graveyard: Online Social Networking Sites as Vehicles of Remembrance,” at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, PA.
Panel Title: Human No More: Digital Subjectivities, Unhuman Subjects, and the End/s of Anthropology.
Panel Organizers: Neil Whitehead and Mike Wesch.
April 24, 2008. New Media & the Internet Panel, Wesleyan University.
