Archive - Book page

March 8th, 2015

Gambiarra: repair culture

Maker culture has gained a lot of ground in the last few years. Maybe too much, in fact. We can of course ignore those people who are only, as always, surfing the current wave of hype. They seldom have any clue of the ideas they are selling themselves with anyway. But it also feels as though everybody else is talking about maker culture. Those words are even being uttered by people who have always been opposed to what they should mean. Or is it me? Did I get it wrong all the way?

First time I read about a "maker culture", it was a sort of relief. I had finally found - or so I thought - a way to explain a number of initiatives some of us in Brazil had been involved for some years before that. Framing those things as "making" enabled us to mix critical thinking with DIY (as brilliantly put by Matt Ratto on "critical making"), proposing a sort of creative engagement that escaped the dead-ends of tedious market-driven innovation. A culture of conscious makers could recognize and promote alternative solutions and new perspectives for everyday problems, valuing distributed and collaborative approaches and seeking the common good. It would help overcoming traditional institutions and their clogged circuits of information. Local, cooperative formations would challenge the logics of global industrial capitalism, treating every human being - or small group, however loose it was - as potentially creative and productive. Industrial products that suffered of planned obsolescence would be repaired as armies of amateurs used the internet to share digital models of replacement parts. New kinds of meaning and engagement would evolve influenced by such approaches to material and cultural expression. Possibilities emerging from the free software and hacker movements would finally evert to the world of things.leia mais >>

Intro

Last year I spent two weeks as a designer in residence in Doha, hosted by the MFA in Design program at VCUQatar. The focus of the residency was working with the idea of a "repair culture" that first occurred to me while talking to members of the Bricolabs network during Pixelache Festival 2013, in Helsinki. Of course, repairing broken things is nothing new. But it seems to become less fashionable everyday in many parts of the world. Lots of economic as well as cultural issues contribute to that, at the same time as there are significant experiences resisting the disappearing of repair.

One specific concern I had was the way people are adopting the so-called "maker culture". Back in 2009, some of us were excited with the renewed interest in making and the promises of defying industrial capitalism - proposing alternatives to its heavy environmental impact, logistic costs and the fundamental drive to alienate people from the inner workings of the products they buy and discard. Currently, though, digital fabrication technologies seem to be increasingly turning into mere tools for new sorts of commercial entrepreneurship that can instead give new breath to the industrial age.

Qatar was a meaningful context to expand those thoughts. The country's economic development in high speed exacerbates the worst implications brought about by practices of contemporary post-industrial capitalism. Most people there are able to buy things and shortly throw them away. And being a country in which recycling is hardly viable, "away" may as well mean "somewhere in the desert". Or "somewhere abroad where we can't see".leia mais >>

Repair culture

Repair Culture
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Is maker culture as new and revolutionary as tech gurus lately claim? How are those practices related to the all so human creative impulse to solve problems - which has been around since the dawn of times? Has maker culture been appropriated by startup hipsters eager to become rich and famous?

Repair Culture is an outcome of my two-week period as a designer-in-residence in Doha last november, hosted by the MFA in Design program at VCUQatar. Seeking a critical take on maker culture and its current status of raw material to entrepreneurial hype, in this book I try to relate its roots to the background of critical, autonomous hacklabs and media activist groups, as well as draw a parallel with practices of brazilian digital cultures which articulate gambiarra as a social creative habit.

This first edition of Repair Culture is a shorter version, text-only. The upcoming full version will feature also reports of some experiments we've done while I was in Doha.leia mais >>

September 30th, 2012

Laboratórios del posdigital

Resúmenes en español de mi libro Laboratórios do Pós-digital. El libro original en portugues puede ser descargado (EPUB, HTML, PDF para monitor, PDF para impresora), comprado en Kindle Store o accedido por aqui.

Introducción

Tengo investigado recientemente formatos que permiten experimentación con todo lo que opera en la intersección de la vida cotidiana con las redes digitales libres (abiertas). Me interesan también las posibilidades basadas sobre expandir la idea de innovación. En general, innovación está relacionada con intenciones meramente instrumentales, formas de crear oportunidades para la exploración comercial.leia mais >>

September 5th

Laboratórios do pós-digital (english edition)

English abstracts for my book Laboratórios do Pós-digital. The original book in portuguese can be downloaded (EPUB, HTML, PDF for screen, printable PDF), bought in Kindle Store or accessed here.

Intro

In this book I present articles related to my research into formats and methodologies that will allow experimentation with everything operating in the intersection of free (open) digital networks and everyday life. I am also interested in possibilities based upon expanding the idea of innovation. Usually innovation is related to merely instrumental objectives, ways to create opportunities for commercial exploration. I suggest there is a huge potential in fostering the development of innovation also as a driver for social change, starting from a dialogue between the commons - open and networked production - and what could be called post-digital - the internet of things, physic computing, domestic fabrication, locative media and the like. There is still another line crossing these references: incorporating and valuing typically brasilian cultural traces such as the gambiarra as everyday creativity and the mutirão as dynamic and change-oriented sociability.leia mais >>

November 2nd, 2011

Festival CulturaDigital.Br

O Fórum da Cultura Digital Brasileira, realizado em 2009 e 2010 na Cinemateca Brasileira, em São Paulo. Em 2011, o evento deu origem ao Festival CulturaDigital.Br, que acontece em dezembro no Rio de Janeiro. Eu faço parte da equipe de curadoria e da produção do Festival.

Mais informações: http://culturadigital.org.br

Ubalab

Ubalab é um núcleo de articulação de Cultura Digital Experimental situado em Ubatuba, litoral norte de São Paulo.

Mais informações: http://ubalab.org.

May 10th

Cidades digitais, a gramática do controle e os protocolos livres

A busca por alternativas locais, sustentáveis e justas para o desenvolvimento de inovação e tecnologias livres aponta necessariamente para uma maior articulação entre duas classes de estruturas informacionais que se sobrepõem: a cidade e as redes digitais.

No terceiro capítulo eu citei a perspectiva de cidade como sistema operacional. Essa aproximação não é inédita. Na mesma confluência mas talvez em sentido inverso, o artigo Reading the Digital City, publicado no site Next Layer por Clemens Apprich, analisa justamente a influência que a ideia de cidade exerceu nos primeiros anos de popularização da internet, e como essa influência foi usada para estabelecer relações de controle e poder:leia mais >>

Laboratórios Experimentais: interface rede-rua

Qualquer cidade pode ser entendida como justaposição de fluxos de informação que se entrecortam, afetam-se uns aos outros e no processo criam realidades, oportunidades e também limitações. Essa visão quase óbvia sugere incontáveis formas de intervir na realidade local. Há alguns meses eu estava procurando um foco específico para concentrar esforços, um formato para inspirar e orientar. A imagem da interface pareceu um caminho interessante.

Inovação de ponta vs. inovação nas pontas

Há pouco tempo eu estava assistindo (com alguns anos de atraso) ao documentário Zeitgeist Addendum. Naturalmente, não consigo concordar com todas as teses expostas por ali. Me incomoda em particular a visão de um futuro impecável pintada por Jacque Fresco, que de certa forma coloca a tecnologia de ponta acima de todo o restante do conhecimento humano. Seu Venus Project tem uma visão algo datada de tecnoutopia, em alguns sentidos ingênua e em outros até opressora. Ele parece exigir conversão total para funcionar. Em outras palavras, demanda um contexto social em que não existe dissenso. Uma espécie de ditadura dos inventores - um futuro que eu não desejo para ninguém.leia mais >>

Inovação e tecnologias livres 2 - hojes e depois

Acesso é só o começo. Nos dias de hoje e no futuro próximo, a separação entre incluídos e excluídos digitais está se reduzindo cada vez mais. Mas existe outra tensão à qual precisamos ficar atentos: a tensão entre tecnologias de confiança e tecnologias de controle (como exposto por Sean Dodson no prefácio do Internet of Things, de Rob van Kranenburg). Essa situação já está à nossa porta.leia mais >>