Submitted by Raxalor in AskRaddle

STEM fields, at present, tend to be extremely gauged towards capitalist desires (silicon valley, pharmaceutical industry, "defense" industry, etc). Much of what STEM professionals work on are not particularly useful to the material needs of our communities, especially when compared to trade skills workers like electricians, plumbers, mechanics, or farmers.

So, what are some useful things that we can contribute to?

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hermit_dragon wrote

Much of what STEM professionals work on are not particularly useful to the material needs of our communities

Maybe I don't adequately understand material vs other needs, but education about, and protection from, predatory and oppressive uses of sciences and technologies is one area where STEM folks can really fill a community need (imo)

Another is via skill and knowledge sharing of all kinds. Barriers to STEM knowledge and skills are high in most countries (that I can think of).

A few examples -

Medical skills = anarchist medics/black cross. Pharmaceutical knowledge = anarchist pharmacists, helping people access medicines

With regard to computer technology professionals - I don't know how on earth I'd be coping with the world as it is right now without the tech person who helps keep my use of technology safe and informed, who taught me good OpSec and who runs our home systems.

They have worked in Silicon Valley, and the work they did was (they say with loathing) 'meta-capitalism' - but they also have volunteered endless hours keeping activists connected and safer, created tooling for radical communities, and now plan to poke at Postmill.

So I guess basically - I think most STEM knowledge is useful to anarchist organizing and movements, even if a lot of the people with that knowledge are sequestered in awful capitalist walled garden hellholes. I think we need STEM folk who are willing and able to risk transcending those boundaries, and freely share what they have with others.

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rot wrote

programming and engineering can be useful for projects

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xowx wrote

in terms of the T in STEM, i'm reminded of a tumblr post on how deeply and troublingly the internet has bled into most parts of our lives, presented as a kind of lovecraftian horror piece (some ableism and other problematiicness -- it's lovecraftian after all): https://astercrash.tumblr.com/post/157419046864/did-anyone-notice-how-quickly-the-internet-turned

like

IP cameras filled our world with eyes and the magisters learned how to open almost all of them. We all carry magic slabs of glass that if you hold it up to your ear can sing to you with a loved one’s voice, but if you look at it with your eyes, can show you a corrupted human with bleeding orange skin scream the profane with a thousand voices. The other day I saw someone hack a moving vehicle. At one point they made it stop. At another they made it so it couldn’t stop. Some of our best and brightest are going to create an army of four winged bats hovering throughout every city and we are going to connect them directly to the dimension where the nightmares live.

but

There are mages who work to defend against this particular evil

be one of those mages

share your knowledge, build things for people instead of money, empower others to fight back against the world we've built

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JustBob wrote

This might be useful: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/article-13-protests

Berlin had a great culture inside their maker space. So many talented people working on privacy, encryption, and tools to fight the surveillance state. I think taking the same tools that the government uses, learn those tools, and then find ways to compromise or less their effect. Sorry, this is super vague. I am not a techie but I enjoy talking and learning.

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