Occupy Wall Street and Hackathons Produce Digital Tools and New Activitists

by Sarah Kessler Mashable, October 19, 2011

Groups of programmers gathered in three cities this weekend to build digital tools for the Occupy Wall Street movement. Several of those tools have already launched, and in many cases they’re being maintained by activists who’ve never held a sign in a park. “I was waiting to see how I should be involved,” says Jake Levitas, who attended the San Francisco hackathon.  … When he found out about the hackathon through Facebook, he knew how he wanted to participate. Levitas, working with a small team at the event, started a design library called OccupyDesign. … For full text of the Mashable article, click here.

The Power of Place by Timothy Zick, Concurring Opinions, October 16, 2011

Michael Kimmelman, the architecture critic for The New York Times, has an interesting piece in this morning’s Sunday Review about the manner in which the Wall Street protesters are using and creating public space.  The piece picks up many of the themes examined in Speech Out of Doors — the connection between medium and message; the human and social connections people have to actual places; the role of technology in mass public demonstrations; the solidarity and communicative values associated with public places; and the manner in which public places are inscribed with messages and memories. For full text of the NYT article, click on In Protest the Power of Place. For Tim’s book, click on Speech Out of Doors.

Related articles

• How Technology Made `Occupy Wall Street’ Both Irrelevant and Ubiquitous | MIT Technology Review (geodatapolicy.wordpress.com)
• Occupy Wall Street: There’s An App For That (huffingtonpost.com)
• The Occupy Wall Street Movement and the Power of Place (geodatapolicy.wordpress.com)