〔←〕 Mutable Net 


  

    (3) This experience aims to discuss the collective governance that defines communitarian infrastructures. Drawing inspiration from agreements such as the Pico Peering Agreement and manifestos such as the Wireless Commons Manifesto, after an exchange we will generate a new collective manifesto that expresses the values and direction of the net created during the development of the workshop.
  



  


  

  


    
  

  A Manifesto for the Mutable Net, 2026
  

    

  The text that follows is a proposed manifesto to use as a draft to build upon and discuss, to introduce the theoretical framework of Wireless Community Networks experiences and as a basis to draw upon for the proposed labs. This text is written by Luca Marini, drawing on theory related to the explored subject.
  

    

      
The Private Net


      
In technical systems Power is not expressed through confinement but through a form of modulation.[1]


      
Through centralized governance, privatized networks concentrate data and define routes. Connectivity becomes a commodity.[2]


      
Privatized networks do not just transmit, they exercise authority at the level of the fiber-optic "vectors"[3] through which information travels.


      
Modulation regulates access or non-access to data and information, and codes and passwords are the shape through which it is expressed within a system.[4]


      
Private networks express control through a centralized topology. Their structure concentrates data flows, modulating access to information.[5]


      
The Private Network operates through a rigid, protocol-bound, hierarchically organized corporate infrastructure, gatekept by providers.


      
The private network presents itself as the only possible infrastructure. It is not. It has been structured for specific authorities and specific interests. This is not the nature of communication. It is the politics of communication.[6]

    


    
    

      
The Mutable Net


      
The Mutable Net does not operate by erasing control; it relocates it. The relocation is expressed through material act: encoded in routing protocols, firmware[7], and the electromagnetic fabric of its mesh.


      
Every technical infrastructure encodes the environment in which it was built. The Mutable Net encodes within its architecture a system that is neither private property nor commodity, but a commons.


      
The devices of Mutable Nets are open. Repurposed. Through the Network, Mutable Antennas are explored, hacked, and made commons.


      
Mutable Nets operate a "distributed leadership"[8] in their nodes.


      
Mutable Nets are based on distributed node-to-node connections and collective consent; they do not produce changes as distant horizons but as present reconfiguration of possibility.[9]


      
A "distributed" topology is not defined by the absence of centers, nor does it imply a form of decentralization; rather, a configuration composed of multiple centers operating at different temporalities. Some temporary, some enduring. None absolute.[10]


      
Mutable Nets restructure centralization. Through node-to-node connections, data authority is distributed within its topology, held by no one center alone.


      
Mutable infrastructures act as "collective hacks"[11]. "Collective hacks"[12] push infrastructures to their limit, "to sculpt it anew".[13]


      
Mutable Nets' physical machine is built upon communitarian participation and territorial care.


      
Mutable Nets anchor collectivity at the base of technological development.


      
Mutable Nets are not opaque and abstract but tangible and transparent for the communal members of their system.


      
In Mutable Nets antennas, cables, and firmwares operate in total transparency; they break forms of "structural invisibility."[14]


      
Mutable Nets treat their physical components as a commons, actively decommodifying the means of communication.[15]


      
Meshed connection systems propose a new form of "Infrastructural Imagination". Infrastructural imagination allows networking practices to become a site of collective becoming.


      
Forms of Infrastructural Imagination hack into existence a future in which collectivity is placed at the center of technological development.


      
Scale is not where Mutable Nets' significance is put. Mutable Nets demonstrate alternative futures for communication systems along with forms of collective care.


      
The "Counter-Net" emerges when the channels of the "Web" are strategically mobilized against the hierarchical structure, since it operates from within, opening free spaces to challenge centralized control.[16]


      
The Mutable Net acts to embody an electromagnetic expression of the "Counter-Net."[17]

    


    
    

      
The Communitarian Hacker


      
In the Mutable Net ecosystem, the hacker emerges as a figure capable of "producing new concepts and relations hacked out of raw data."[18]


      
The Communitarian Hacker rewires the "Web" in the creation of electromagnetic "Counter-Nets."[19]


      
The Communitarian Hacker opens code, shares skills, and exposes processes. They make control visible and therefore negotiable.


      
The Communitarian Hacker breaks asymmetries between the infrastructural operator and the dependent. They curate a meshed system that breaks modulation control through transparency and flexibility.


      
The Communitarian Hacker directly engages with technical systems through a "hands-on"[20] approach. They intervene and reconfigure the "vectors"[21] of information circulation.


      
In the context of global private networks, the Communitarian Hacker comprehends how control is expressed in such systems and actively repurposes its vectors in service of the community.

    


    
    


      

        [1]
        In Postscript on the Societies of Control (1992), Deleuze builds on Foucault's Discipline and Punish to trace a shift in how power operates in Western societies. Deleuze argues that contemporary control functions through codes, passwords, and continuous variation, modulating access to information rather than confining bodies in space. Gilles Deleuze, Postscript on the Societies of Control, October 59 (Winter 1992): 3–4.
      


      

        [2]
        Andrew Blum in Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet (2012) argues that imagining the internet as immaterial is a "willful delusion." The network is physical: submarine cables, exchange points, and data centers requiring land, energy, and maintenance. Fiber converges in a handful of controlled Internet Exchange Points (IXPs), where traffic is rerouted and concentrated. Andrew Blum, Tubes, 165–173.
      


      

        [3]
        McKenzie Wark in A Hacker Manifesto (2004) describes how contemporary forms of power (the "Vectorialist Class") do not operate on the mere production of information but by controlling the "Vector" — the medium through which information circulates. McKenzie Wark, A Hacker Manifesto (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), paras. 14, 19, 24, 29, 32, 34, 312–13.
      


      

        [4]
        Gilles Deleuze, Postscript on the Societies of Control, October 59 (Winter 1992): 3–4.
      


      

        [5]
        Deleuze, Postscript on the Societies of Control, 3–4.
      


      

        [6]
        In Protocol (2004), Galloway describes internet governance as a "bi-level logic" — horizontal distribution through TCP/IP balanced against vertical hierarchy through DNS, whose inverted-tree structure centralizes control at the root server level. Power is not imposed from outside the network but embedded in its technical standards. Galloway, Protocol, 143, 207, 243.
      


      

        [7]
        A firmware is the embedded software governing a device's core functions. In Wireless Community Networks, replacing proprietary firmware with open-source alternatives allows commercial hardware to be repurposed for collectively managed mesh infrastructures. Ninux.org Community, Fondamenti per Costruire una Rete Wireless Libera, translation from Italian by Author.
      


      

        [8]
        Concept evolved from the notion of "distributed leadership" defined by Rodrigo Nunes in Neither Vertical nor Horizontal (2021). Nunes, Neither Vertical nor Horizontal, 26–27, 163–64, 174–80.
      


      

        [9]
        Referring to the idea of utopian spaces of Avery Gordon in "Some Thoughts on the Utopian." Avery F. Gordon, "Some Thoughts on the Utopian," in Utopia, ed. Anna-Marie Smith (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 19, 45–57, 82–105.
      


      

        [10]
        Rodrigo Nunes, Neither Vertical nor Horizontal: A Theory of Political Organization (London: Verso, 2021), 26–27, 163–64, 174–80.
      


      

        [11]
        Concept evolved from the notion of "collective hack" in McKenzie Wark, A Hacker Manifesto (2004), paras. 29, 32, 34.
      


      

        [12]
        Concept evolved from the notion of "collective hack" in McKenzie Wark, A Hacker Manifesto (2004), paras. 29, 32, 34.
      


      

        [13]
        Quoting Galloway: the most effective response to forms of "protocological power" is hypertrophy — pushing a protocol to its limits "to sculpt it anew." Galloway, Protocol, 143, 207, 243.
      


      

        [14]
        Referencing the notion of "structural invisibility" introduced by Andrew Blum in describing how the global internet infrastructure is presented. Blum, Tubes, 7–13.
      


      

        [15]
        Wireless Commons Manifesto, 2003. personaltelco.org/wiki/WirelessCommonsManifesto (accessed February 13, 2026).
      


      

        [16]
        Hakim Bey, T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism (Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia, 1991), 106–14.
      


      

        [17]
        Bey, T.A.Z., 106–14.
      


      

        [18]
        Concept evolved from the notion of "hack" in McKenzie Wark, A Hacker Manifesto (2004), paras. 312–13.
      


      

        [19]
        Bey, T.A.Z., 106–14.
      


      

        [20]
        Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984).
      


      

        [21]
        According to the definition of "Vector" by McKenzie Wark. Wark, A Hacker Manifesto, 2004.
      


    

    

    
    

      
Bibliography


      
Bey, Hakim. T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism. Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia, 1991.

      
Blum, Andrew. Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet. New York: Ecco, 2012.

      
Deleuze, Gilles. "Postscript on the Societies of Control." October 59 (Winter 1992): 3–7.

      
Galloway, Alexander R. Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004.

      
Gordon, Avery F. "Some Thoughts on the Utopian." In Utopia, edited by Anna-Marie Smith, 19–105. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011.

      
Levy, Steven. Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984.

      
Ninux.org Community. Fondamenti per Costruire una Rete Wireless Libera. Translated by Author.

      
Nunes, Rodrigo. Neither Vertical nor Horizontal: A Theory of Political Organization. London: Verso, 2021.

      
Wark, McKenzie. A Hacker Manifesto. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004.

      
Wireless Commons. "Wireless Commons Manifesto." 2003. Accessed February 13, 2026. personaltelco.org/wiki/WirelessCommonsManifesto.

    

    

  

  

  


  
  

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