“In the panorama of existing operating systems we see that there are a great number of possibilities to listen to all kinds of ‘free to download’ players for audio, but no easy way for everybody to speak out loud and spread their word. The way communication is structured follows the hierarchy of powers already established in babylon’s mediascapes and, worst than ever, money is the main requirement for making a voice spread and be heard by others. Nevertheless, proprietary software spreads dependence on business companies through the populace: whenever we share knowledge on how to use certain software, we encourage people to buy the tools from merchants in order to express their creativity. This is great responsibility for anyone who teaches somebody to do something with software. The need to buy is slavery under the mercantile interests of capitalism. The roots of Rasta culture can be found in the GNU philosophy and consist of Resistance to slavery. RASTA SOFTWARE joins the struggle for Redemption and GNU Freedom. This software is dedicated to the memory of Patrice Lumumba, Marcus Garvey, Marthin Luther King, Walter Rodney, Malcom X, Mumia Abu Jamal, Shaka Zulu – and all those who still resist to slavery, racism and oppression, who still fight imperialism and seek an alternative to the hegemony of capitalism in our World.”
by: Jaromil
From introduction:
“Can we begin to see that conventional interfaces and operating systems cut the majority of users off from a deep understanding of what is actually taking place, and stops them from becoming active cultural producers? Might this be the purpose of cultural practice, to reveal these tendencies – to actively engage with the technical apparatus to elicit social change and challenge proprietary models? To engineer change and to believe in the possibility of social transformation, it remains necessary to transform the cultural producer ‘from a supplier of the production apparatus, into an engineer who sees his task in adapting that apparatus’”.
