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.
Cyberpunk on flip-flops
Written in 2009, this short article (also included in the Paço das Artes' Contemporary Arts Symposium that year) was a first attempt to relate fields that seemingly ran in parallel by that time in Brazil - on one hand the sort of activism concerned with the appropriation of information technologies, free/open knowledge, the critical use of available equipment hand, and on the other new media / electronic arts and its implications.
Rede//Labs - brazilian paths for experimental digital culture
During the second half of 2010, I was working in a project with the brazilian Ministry of Culture - by then still a big supporter of free and open culture - trying to understand what kind of policies would be useful in order to foster the development of "experimental digital culture"*. This article poses some issues about the brazilian context, previous experiences both local and abroad, and poses questions about how we should proceed in order to go beyond the 'media lab' models.
Metarecycling digital cities
MetaReciclando as Cidades Digitais was written in august 2012, following a talk on "digital cities".
Innovation and free (libre) technologies 1 - the past decade and 2 - todays and afterwards
Twofold article situating the status of free-open digital activism in Brasil during the last decade, and posing questions for the coming years in light of recent political changes.
Experimental laboratories: network-street interface
An attempt to expand the reflection on experimental labs exploring their potential role within urban issues.
Digital cities, the grammar of control and free protocols
How the bias towards a proprietary way to deal with information can have a negative influence in "digital city" projects.
* For those interested in the project with the Ministry of Culture: by the end of 2010 we had a specification of multiple-purpose labs and of ways to engage artists and researchers into using them. We also had an indication of a rather large budget the Ministry would offer to set up such labs, and an open call for projects already written. Unfortunately, 2011 started with a new Minister of Culture who decided all those ideas of 'open' and 'experimental' are crap, and that the government should push instead an agenda of 'creative economy' in which cultural production should prove itself profitable. The project stalled since then. There are signs that the recently appointed (september 2012) new Minister could make things move again. I'm still waiting.
