Blockathon for Social Good Reception
- This event has passed.
Visualization of the Mariupol Drama Theater before the bombing by Russian troops. Courtesy the Center for Spatial Technologies
Join us for a closing reception on Sunday July 23, 5:00 – 8:00 pm for an awards presentation and to hear more about our work at the Blockchain@UBC Blockathon for Social Good. Light snacks and refreshments will be provided, and a cash bar will be on site.
As part of our Digital Strategy initiative, this partnership with UBC brings students, developers and archivists together to design new digital pathways to conserve important cultural works so that they are permanent, unalterable, and accessible on the decentralized internet.
What kind of information would need this kind of storage? Public records, artworks of social importance, open source documentation of digital protocols and software, and documentation of war crimes and liberation struggles can be lost if privately held, traditional internet servers cease to exist, are absorbed into another entity, or change their terms of access. To prevent what is referred to as link rot, we need a digital commons, supported by public institutions that provide free, open, secure and persistent access to this information. Several emerging permanent media and data storage solutions such as Interplanetary File System, Arweave, and Filecoin aim to solve this problem.
As a test case, 221A brings to the Blockathon the crucial work of former Fellow (2021-23), The Center for Spatial Technologies from Kyiv, Ukraine, who have been compiling witness testimonies and documenting the destruction of civilian infrastructure by the Russian military.
Unceded Territory
221A acknowledges that the area called Vancouver is within the unceded Indigenous territories belonging to the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples. 221A recognizes that the colony of British Columbia was created through organized dispossession and colonial violence. 221A seeks to shift its organizational practices to work together with Indigenous people to end ongoing violence, dispossession and displacement.