In comparison with this structure, which offers possibilities of connection that can be actualized, the importance of what has actually been noted is secondary. Many of the notes will soon become unusable or cannot be used at a given occasion. This holds both for excerpts which are only useful in the case of especially remarkable formulations and for our own deliberations. Theoretical publications do therefore not result from simply copying what can already be found in the slip box. The communication with the slip box becomes fruitful only at a high level of generalization, namely that of establishing communicative relations of relations. And it becomes productive only at the moment of evaluation, and is thus bound to a certain time and is to a high degree accidental.

At the moment we are experimenting alot with documentation - documentation is not just a 'how to' but it plays many roles, as text books, as proxy marketing material for software, as a process for developing communities of expertise, as self help guides, as a ladder to the next level of expertise in a specific subject, as sales material for developers, as support material for developers, as support material for workshops... there are a lot of corners documentation feeds into and we are trying out many of them.

So if you are figuring on hitting the jackpot and make a name for yourself through the traditional channels, and you are dampening efforts by others to write docs for the same project, do a quick ideological and reality check first. Then contribute to, and encourage as many people as possible to contribute to, free documentation about your project.

One could argue that perhaps what we see in this history is not the creation ofobjects as an ontological element but rather the development of a language to such alevel of complexity that it is finally able to describe objects that already exist in theworld outside of language. Against this objection, it must be noted that what we witnessin this history, what drives it forward, is the difficulty of relating language to world,whether it is a simulated world or a new world of computer graphics. Moreover, theexamples presented here and in the textbooks and manuals for object-oriented pro-gramming demonstrate the often-difficult art of defining the objects that will constitutea given system

None of these objects, e.g., bits, functions, classes, and even the object thatSmalltalk invented, exist as objects outside of language. This is not to say that they areonly linguistic or that they do not really exist. The digital real exists and exerts itselfwithin its ossification into object form, but in the real, there are no objects, merely avast field of electric difference. Likewise, it is not to say that everything is language orthat everything is material. A discourse that does not affect the electronic system withinthe machine can never flip a bit. Conversely, for electric difference to mean anything, itmust be delimited as an object, process, or other data type within language. Program-ming is a process and system of representing and simultaneously hiding the real inlanguage.

Smalltalk also advanced this metaphor of computation as objects along anotherrelated track that turned computation into a self-referential system of interactingcomputers. Kay (1996) describes this understanding of objects in relation to computers.Smalltalk is a recursion on the notion of computer itself. Instead of dividingBcomputer stuff^into things each less strong than the whole—like data structures,procedures, and functions which are the usual paraphernalia of programminglanguages—each Smalltalk object is a recursion on the entire possibilities of thecomputer. Thus its semantics are a bit like having thousands and thousands ofcomputer all hooked together by a very fast network. Questions of concreterepresentation can thus be postponed almost indefinit

Math and computation are obviously related, but thequestion that simultaneously unites the two and inscribes their difference is whether mathexplains a fundamentally computational world or the other way arou

Math and computation are obviously related, but thequestion that simultaneously unites the two and inscribes their difference is whether mathexplains a fundamentally computational world or the other way arou

These developments were not only a change in metaphors but also produced changes inthe underlying code of the compiler

Ultimately, while the compilability of a program and its set of rules for translationinto binary code constrain the possibilities of computer programs and language, the useof programs to communicate between humans and the metaphors and abstractionspermitted by object-oriented languages produce languages that approximate the com-plexity and creativity ofBreal languages.^

ms. Thus, the point isnot to suggest that the object is somehow an inevitable and necessary outcome ofthis process of linguistic abstraction. Rather, this history demonstrates how thecomputational object, as one possible outcome for a process of abstraction, offersa number of critical insights into the relationship between objects, language, andthe real

However, this assumption of an essentially “outsider” researcher, though true in many cases, deserves a degree of scrutiny and problematizing. In some cases, researchers come from the communities that they research (even if they are now part of an academic or other similar institution), in some cases researchers are not formally affiliated to a larger institution and may be performing work for local benefit at a local level (on behalf of a community group, for instance) and in some instances a researcher may be “between cultures” (for example, being originally from a Global South nation but having lived in a Global North one for a long period of time).

La pregunta sigue siendo, sin embargo, cómo hacer explícita la política onto-epistémica de la traducción que ocurre entren mundos bajo condiciones de conexión parcial que son, al mismo tiempo, relaciones asimétricas

’. Es esto quizás otra forma de pensar en lo que es el ‘diseño’ sin tener que invocar este concepto. Siguiendo esta idea, no hablaríamos de diseño sino de conversaciones para la coordinación del accionar y el emocionar (‘coordinaciones de coordinaciones conductuales’), y el espacio relacional generado por lo comunal sería el espacio por excelencia para ello, llamémoslo conversaciones para la acción (Winnograd y Flores), diseño, o simplemente conversaciones para el vivir y en el vivir comunal.

ay una gran necesidad de métodos que permitan el diseño colaborativo a lo largo de períodos más largos de lo habitual, que construyan a partir de los roles cambiantes de los diseñadores en esta temporalidad extendida (más allá de ser, digamos, iniciadores o facilitadores) y que tomen en serio la naturaleza distribuida de la agencia del diseño, incluyendo, hay que añadir, a los nohumanos. La articulación de prácticas de diseño-en-uso en el contexto de actividades colectivas de diseño de más larga duración es particularmente importante en este momento.

En todas estas experiencias la ‘comunidad’ es entendida en términos profundamente históricos, abiertos y no esencialistas. En todo caso, hay un énfasis en la creación de nuevos espacios para lo comunal. De ello se desprende que la realización de lo comunal es, siempre, un proceso histórico abierto. En el lenguaje de Maturana y Varela las comunidades, como sistemas sociales, son entidades autopoiéticas de tercer orden definidas por un sistema particular de relaciones entre los componentes que, a través de su dinámica recursiva, crean el sistema que es la comunidad. Esta ‘clausura operacional’ (a menudo codificada por los lugareños en términos de ‘la defensa de nuestra cultura’) se mantiene a lo largo de la relación de la comunidad con su entorno (el contexto sociopolítico y ecológico, en términos generales). En esta forma de relacionamiento siempre en marcha (acoplamiento estructural), las comunidades pueden sufrir cambios estructurales de distintos tipos (e.g., mediante la adopción de las TIC); sin embargo, el sistema básico de relaciones tiene que ser mantenido por la comunidad para preservar su autopoiesis, es decir, su capacidad de autocreación. La autonomía es el nombre dado a este proceso

‘caminar la palabra’, un concepto desarrollado por la minga social y comunitaria de los nasa para señalar la necesidad de hacerse visible, denunciar y tejer conocimientos, resistencias y estrategias de manera colectiva con otros movimientos. Las alianzas requieren la creación de inter-conocimiento y traducción entre movimientos y mundos para permitir la inteligibilidad y una medida de coordinación (

¿Es posible pensar en configuraciones no totalizantes que no se comporten como sistemas convencionales pero que, sin embargo, actúen como un todo? Dicho de otra manera, el pensamiento de sistemas se basa en la idea de que el todo surge de la interacción de las partes. Durante las últimas tres décadas las teorías de emergencia y auto-organización han puesto de relieve el hecho de que estos procesos dan lugar a sistemas complejos que no son fijos ni estáticos sino abiertos y adaptables y, a menudo, existen dentro de condiciones de inestabilidad y lejos del equilibrio

Para los posestructuralistas puede ser cuestionable el uso de este concepto que, como la estructura, la identidad o la esencia, ha sido fuertemente criticado y deconstruido por sus conexiones con la organicidad, la totalización y el comportamiento a la manera de una ley, sin siquiera mencionar las aplicaciones militares-industriales posibilitadas por el análisis de sistemas. Esta crítica es importante; sin embargo, es otro ejemplo de la manera como el posestructuralismo deconstruye demasiado y no reconstruye lo suficiente. Las nociones de redes y entramados (assemblages) han sido, por supuesto, importantes agendas reconstructivas (e.g., Latour 2007; de Landa 2006) pero es justo decir que la cuestión de las totalidades (wholes), la forma y la coherencia sigue sin resolverse en la teoría social. La teoría de la complejidad ofrece pistas útiles en este sentido. Como Mark Taylor (2001) señalara al discutir estos conceptos “después de considerar la lógica de las redes debe quedar claro que los sistemas y las estructuras —sean biológicas, sociales o culturales— son más diversas y complejas que lo que los críticos deconstructivos piensan. Los sistemas de auto-organización emergentes actúan como un todo pero no totalizan [...] En vez de reprimir las diferencias [como temen los deconstructivistas] la actividad global [i.e., sistémica] aumenta la diversidad de la que dependen la creatividad y la vida productiva” (

La generación de condiciones favorables para proyectos de vida colectivos exige la creación de entornos favorables mediante la “infraestructuración” apropiada. Las infraestructuras habilitantes —el resultado del co-diseño— tienen la intención de contrarrestar las infraestructuras desfuturizantes que están en la base de la mayoría de las actividades modernas —su subversión desde el interior (e.g., a través del reequipamiento, entendido en sentido amplio) o desde el exterior (nuevos diseños)—. Hacer el co-diseño posible y probable requiere que se establezca una multiplicidad de elementos, desde la investigación, la experimentación y la creación de prototipos hasta plataformas, redes locales y herramientas orientadas

. El diseño mismo se convierte en un proyecto en transición y se une a otros proyectos teórico-políticos que buscan enriquecer nuestro entendimiento de la vida y de lo humano.

Este espacio ya está siendo poblado por muchas diminutas islas de transición en las que la insostenibilidad y la desfuturización son mantenidas a raya. Pero todavía hay un largo camino por recorrer hasta que tales islas den lugar a los nuevos continentes donde la vida puede volver a florecer.

Una de las piedras angulares del enfoque es construir la resiliencia de la comunidad como “un proyecto de diseño colectivo” (Hopkins 2011: 45). Uno de los principales aportesde la iniciativa es repensar la resiliencia a través de prácticas de localización.

Esta metafísica es sustituida por una ontología en la que los humanos no ‘descubren’ el mundo sino que lo constituyen, ya sea a través de la enacción (Varela), el lenguaje (Winograd y Flores), las mallas y tejidos (Ingold) o la ineluctable proyección y articulación con las cosas (e.g., Fry, Willis, Tonkinwise). Las diversas lecturas representan diversos intentos por desarrollar enfoques no dualistas del conocimiento, la cognición y el diseño. De esta manera también van más allá de la crítica hacia formulaciones alternativas.

implica una concepción expandida del ser y podría fomentar un tipo de pensamiento de diseño y la creación de prototipos que encarnen lo nuevo que está emergiendo o quiere emerger. Este tipo de presenciación, como argumentan los autores, es propicio para un espacio de transición donde nuevos tipos de ‘practicantes de primera línea’, que operen desde posibilidades de futuro genuinas, aprovechen las configuraciones socio-naturales emergentes y donde la gente pueda crear nuevas conexiones comunales. Dichos profesionales de primera línea se darían cuenta de que «el verdadero poder surge de reconocer los patrones que se están formando y de ubicarse en ellos» (Scharmer 2009: 32). Abordarían, sin ambigüedad, el juicio de Varela de que la ciencia moderna no entiende la experiencia —ahondando en la experiencia (de forma no dualista) como una verdadera fuente para el diseño—. Su marco comprende una serie de etapas (desde descargar, ver y sentir lo nuevo hasta la presenciación, la cristalización, producción de prototipos y ejecución) que implican ‘dejar ir’, ‘dejar llegar’, enactuar y encarnar lo emergente. Estos cambios tienen lugar dentro de un espacio social de creación (presenciación) y destrucción (‘ausenciación’) colectivas que requiere una transformación personal significativa hacia modos de ser más relacionales.

La pregunta fundamental del diseño ontológico —“¿Cómo nuestras herramientas son parte del trasfondo en el que podemos preguntarnos qué es ser humano?” (Winograd y Flores 1986: 163)— se vuelve más complicada; debe ampliarse, al menos, considerando cómo cambia el entendimiento que tienen los diseñadores sobre lo ‘humano’ y sobre los ‘mundos’ cuando aparecen muchos tipos de no humanos y los entramados heterogéneos de vida que los no humanos contribuyen a traer a la existencia.

Las rupturas son momentos en los que se interrumpe el modo habitual de ser-en-el-mundo; cuando ocurre una descomposición de este tipo nuestras prácticas consuetudinarias y el papel de nuestras herramientas en su mantenimiento quedan expuestas y aparecen nuevas soluciones de diseño;

Como digo en broma, parafraseando, ‘denme una maloca y levantaré un mundo relacional’ (incluyendo las interrelaciones profundas entre los humanos y los no humanos); al contrario, denme una casa en los suburbios y levantaré un mundo de individuos descomunalizados, separados del mundo natural. Por eso el diseño genera, inevitablemente, las estructuras de posibilidad humanas (y de otros seres de la Tierra). El problema con el diseño moderno, sin embargo, es que ha estructurado la insostenibilidad como la forma dominante de ser

¿Por qué el diseño podría considerarse «ontológico»? La respuesta inicial a esta pregunta es sencilla: «encontramos la cuestión profunda del diseño cuando reconocemos que al diseñar herramientas estamos diseñando formas de ser» (Winograd y Flores 1986: xi). Si entendemos por diseño «la interacción entre el entendimiento y la creación» (Winograd y Flores 1986: 4), podemos decir que es ontológico porque es una conversación sobre posibilidades. Una forma más para llegar a la dimensión ontológica del diseño es abordando «la pregunta más amplia de cómo una sociedad engendra invenciones cuya existencia altera dicha sociedad» (Winograd y Flores 1986: 4-5). Las tecnologías digitales (como la imprenta, el automóvil o la televisión en el pasado) son, por supuesto, casos dramáticos de innovaciones radicales que abrieron ámbitos de posibilidades sin precedentes; transformaron todo un conjunto de prácticas cotidianas. Cada herramienta y tecnología es ontológica en el sentido de que, por muy humilde o insignificante que sea, inaugura una serie de rituales, formas de hacer y modos de ser (Escobar 1994). Las tecnologías son lo que Haraway llamó «actores materiales-semióticos” (1991) que contribuyen a dar forma a lo que es ser humano.Un segundo sentido en el que el diseño es ontológico, ya insinuado por Winograd y Flores, es que al diseñar herramientas los humanos diseñamos las condiciones de nuestra existencia y, a su vez, las condiciones de nuestro diseño. Diseñamos herramientas y estas herramientas nos diseñan. ‘El diseño diseña’ es la fórmula apta y corta dada a esta circularidad por Anne-Marie Willis:

Un principio general que me parece útil es que una ontología relacional es aquella dentro de la cual nada preexiste a las relaciones que la constituyen. En estas ontologías la vida es interrelación e interdependencia de principio a fin, siempre y en todo momento. El budismo tiene una de las nociones más sucintas y poderosas en este sentido: nada existe por sí mismo, todo interexiste; intersomos e interexistimos con todo en el planeta. Este principio de ‘interser’ ha sido ampliamente desarrollado en el pensamiento budista,23 pero, como he insistido, también caracteriza de facto muchas tradiciones culturales históricas. Una forma diferente de ver este asunto, desde la perspectiva de la biología fenomenológica, es la noción de la “coincidencia ininterrumpida de nuestro ser, nuestro hacer y nuestro conocer” (Maturana y Varela 1987: 35) que ya mencioné; en otras palabras, existe una profunda conexión entre la acción y la experiencia que, a su vez, infunde cierta circularidad en todo conocimiento y que Maturana y Varela resumen con la máxima “Todo lo que se hace es conocimiento y todo lo que se conoce es hacer [o diciendo que] cada acto de conocimiento origina un mundo” (1987: 26). Esta coincidencia de ser/hacer/conocer implica que estamos profundamente inmersos en el mundo junto con otros seres sensibles que son, igual e ineluctablemente, conocedores-hacedores como nosotros.

Es importante destacar que ninguno de los autores que estoy revisando está llamando a un rechazo total de la racionalidad cartesiana ni de la razón centrada en el sujeto, tan discutidas por los filósofos intramodernos de la modernidad (e.g., Habermas 1987); más bien, piden el debilitamiento de su posición dominante y el desplazamiento de su centralidad en el diseño del mundo y nuestras vidas. Est

A pesar de sus esfuerzos, ¿continúan las tendencias recientes sosteniendo, de alguna manera, un entendimiento intramoderno (fundamentalmente euroamericano) del mundo, como los teóricos decoloniales podrían argumentar? ¿Siguen estas tendencias críticas funcionando dentro de una episteme renovada pero todavía principalmente Occidental/moderna?

El primer punto es que el problema no es que los dualismos existan; después de todo muchas sociedades se han estructurado en torno a las dualidades, aunque en la mayoría de los casos estas dualidades son tratadas en términos de complementariedad de pares no jerárquicos (e.g., la dualidad yin/yang). El problema es la forma como son tratadas esas divisiones culturalmente, en particular las jerarquías establecidas entre los pares de cada binario y las consecuencias sociales, ecológicas y políticas de esas jerarquías. En el argot de la perspectiva decolonial latinoamericana esta característica se conoce como ‘colonialidad’ y es considerada central para el sistema mundo moderno/colonial que nació con la conquista de América y que erigió al mundo europeo en la cúspide de la civilización. Una característica central de esta colonialidad del poder es la clasificación jerárquica de las diferencias, lo cual conduce a la supresión, devaluación, subordinación o, incluso, destrucción de formas de conocimiento y ser que no se ajustan a los dictados de la forma dominante de la modernidad de origen europeo. En términos de género, la colonialidad cimentó la separación entre lo humano/civilizado (el mundo europeo), clasificado también en términos de género, y lo no-humano/no-civilizado (los mundos no-modernos de los pueblos racializados), los cuales solo podían ser descritos en términos de sexo biológico.

La pregunta que tendremos que hacernos de forma cada vez más refinada es si podemos imaginar y crear formas alternativas de ser, hacer, y conocer sin perder la capacidad de entender y maniobrar hábilmente en los meandros de la constelación moderna de ciencia, real, individuo, y economía. Se necesitaría una transformación ontológica relativamente profunda de nuestra parte para alcanzar esta meta.

Algunas de estas tendencias, además de mostrar cómo la hegemonía del conocimiento moderno trabaja para invisibilizar otros saberes y formas de ser o para convertirlos en alternativas no creíbles a lo que existe (Santos 2007), ponen de relieve los vínculos entre las prácticas hegemónicas de la ciencia y la violencia y la opresión en contextos no occidentales.

¿qué haría falta para que los diseñadores operaran sin una visión puramente objetivista y única de lo real?; ¿para que abrazaran la idea de que las prácticas del diseño también pueden contribuir a crear múltiples sentidos de ‘lo que existe’?; ¿para que tomaran en serio la idea de que la realidad es un flujo constante y continuo de formas e intensidades de todo tipo? V

Sólo tenemos el mundo que generamos con otros y sólo el amor nos ayuda a generarlo» (1987: 248).3 La noción budista de ‘co-surgimiento dependiente’, el concepto de ‘emergencia’ de la teoría de la complejidad y otras nociones afines concuerdan con esta opinión. Estos son principios de relacionalidad.

Tal vez el mejor punto de partida para mi propósito es la máxima de que enfrentamos problemas modernos para los cuales ya no hay soluciones modernas. Hablando ontológicamente uno puede decir que la crisis es la crisis de un mundo particular, o conjunto de prácticas de hacer mundo, que podemos llamar la forma dominante de la euro-modernidad (capitalista, racionalista, liberal, secular, patriarcal, blanca, o lo que sea) o, como ya he mencionado, el mundo de un solo mundo —el mundo que se ha arrogado para sí el derecho a ser ‘el’ mundo, sometiendo a todos los otros mundos a sus propios términos o, peor aún, a la no existencia. Si la crisis es causada, fundamentalmente, por esta ontología de un solo mundo se deduce que enfrentar la crisis implica transiciones hacia el pluriverso. Esto es, precisamente, lo que subraya otra de las principales premisas de las epistemologías del sur al afirmar que la diversidad del mundo es infinita; de manera sucinta, el mundo se compone de múltiples mundos, múltiples ontologías o ‘reales’ que están lejos de haber sido agotados por la experiencia eurocéntrica o de haber sido reducidos a sus términos.

el espacio vital que asegura la pervivencia como pueblo, como cultura en convivencia con la naturaleza y los espíritus. El territorio es nuestro verdadero libro histórico que mantiene viva la tradición de quienes habitamos en él. Representa y describe los principios y prácticas de nuestra cultura. Implica la posesión, control y dominio del espacio físico y espiritual. Como espacio colectivo de existencia, posibilita la convivencia armónica entre los pueblos. Fundamenta la cosmovisión indígena como razón de nuestra pervivencia”.

El diseño ha tenido una existencia cómoda y celebrada dentro de lo que usualmente llamamos, de una forma despreocupada, la ‘era moderna’. Esta era, sin embargo, es una compleja constelación de procesos que co-evolucionan, incluyendo una episteme particular, un conjunto de formas sociales (entre las que el capitalismo y la colonialidad ocupan un lugar preponderante) y una arquitectura ontológica estructurada en torno a los dualismos fundadores de naturaleza/cultura y Occidente/no-Occidente. Esta formación onto-epistémica y social está en la base del diseño. Liberar al ‘hombre diseñador’ de este complejo de fuerzas para que pueda volver a jugar un papel más constructivo en la praxis del estar vivo, está íntimamente ligado con la desaparición del Hombre como centro de todo conocimiento y como medida de la vida.

Pero la pregunta de la relación entre el diseño y la creación de órdenes sociales profundamente desiguales, insensibles y destructivos parece seguir siendo el ‘problema perverso’ del diseño.

Muchas personas consideran que la teoría de sistemas vivos es la base del diseño para la conservación, regeneración y cuidado de los sistemas naturales; estos objetivos involucran ‘sembrar’ todos los sistemas socionaturales con diversidad y crear resiliencia a través de redes inteligentes, aprovechando el potencial de autoorganización de los sistemas naturales y sociales. Algunos teóricos de la ecología van en contra de la dominancia del diseño experto y claman por [...] un proceso profundamente participativo en el que los lenguajes y las barreras técnico/disciplinarias se transformen hacia una comprensión compartida del problema del diseño. El diseño ecológico cambia las viejas reglas sobre qué importa al conocimiento y quién cuenta como conocedor. Sugiere que la sostenibilidad es un proceso cultural más que experto y que todos debemos adquirir una competencia básica en la formación de nuestro mundo [...] Durante demasiado tiempo hemos esperado que las profesiones del diseño transformen un mundo considerado como inerte de tal forma que funcione. La alternativa es tratar de catalizar, suavemente, las potencialidades de auto-diseño de la naturaleza (van der Ryn y Cowan 2007: 147, 130).

Este libro busca ser un aporte a la cultura crítica del diseño en momentos en que los diseñadores están redescubriendo las capacidades de la gente para dar forma a sus mundos a través de herramientas y soluciones colaborativas. Es, sin embargo, una contribución desde América Latina a la conversación transnacional sobre diseño, es decir, una contribución que se deriva de las experiencias y luchas epistémicas y políticas contemporáneas en América Latina.

La inspiración para esta propuesta viene de la idea de que la autonomía es la característica más fundamental de lo vivo; en la jerga de Maturana y Varela, que explico en los capítulos 3 y 6, la autonomía es la clave de la autopoiesis o auto-creación de los sistemas vivos. Esta idea servirá de ancla parcial para proponer una práctica particular y una forma de pensar sobre la relación entre el diseño, la política y la vida, que llamaré ‘diseño autónomo’.

El diseño ontológico surge de una observación aparentemente simple: que al diseñar herramientas (objetos, estructuras, políticas, sistemas expertos, discursos, incluso narrativas) estamos creando formas de ser. Una idea clave en este sentido es lo que Anne Marie Willis ha llamado “el doble movimiento de diseño ontológico” (2006), a saber, la toma de conciencia de que diseñamos nuestro mundo y que, al hacerlo, nuestro mundo nos diseña —en pocas palabras, que el diseño diseña—

mi principal preocupación es con la diferencia y cómo es invisibilizada, rearticulada en discursos que no le son propios, o normalizada. Este ha sido el ‘problema central’ que ha resonado en toda mi vida intelectual, en gran parte, de manera intuitiva. También tiene que ver con ‘vivir sin miedo con y dentro de la diferencia’, como señalan las feministas del Sur Global con frecuencia (e.g., Trinh 1989; Milczarek-Desai 2002; Lugones 2010a), es decir, con la práctica ética y política de la alteridad, que implica una profunda preocupación por la justicia social, la igualdad radical de todos los mundos y seres y la no jerarquía entre ellos.

. First, as has been underlined above, one needs to take into account both actors’ inward oriented and outward oriented communicative practices. In addition, it is understood that media representation today goes far beyond coverage by mainstream media as it relies on actors’ multi-layered media ensemble. Second, instead of arguing for a straightforward causal correlation between ‘media attention’ and social standing, this research reveals a more eclectic process: a spiral of legitimation that is based on the relation between the organization’s internal communicative figuration and the communicative figuration related to the public discourse around the political qualities of contemporary media technologies and infrastructures

The Club’s media ensemble and interactions with rel-evant actors perpetuate each other and co-determine the Club’s abil-ity to politicize media technologies and infrastructures. The dynamic at hand that best describes this process will be referred to as a spiral of legitimation.According to Mark Suchman, legitimacy is practically the basis of poli-tics as it addresses the forces ‘that constrain, construct, and empower organizational actors

Right from the start the Club had close affiliations with the then newly founded alternative tageszeitung (‘daily newspaper’), commonly referred to as taz, one of the Club’s co-founders (Wau Holland) being a column-ist during the mid-1980s. In addition, the hacker organization has pub-lished its own Datenschleuder magazine since 1984 (still ongoing) and was very active in enlarging bulletin boards systems (BBS) in Germany throughout the 1980s. Consequently, the Club’s media ensemble relied on practices related to analogue and digital media and comprised both coverage by and access to news outlets

Richard Ericson and his colleagues (1989) make a useful distinc-tion between media access and media coverage. By access, they mean the news space, time and context to reasonably represent one’s own perspec-tive, whereas coverage entails news space and time but not necessarily the context for favourable representations (Ericson etal. 1989: 5). This distinction is vital because it demonstrates that media access—as with access to all kinds of resources at institutional levels—remains a politi-cal question (Freedman 2014). While media coverage simply denotes the amount and prominence of attention and visibility a group receives, media access indicates that an actor has a particular standing and is treated as an actor with a serious voice in the media

a lower number of partici-pating members also meant a lower number of differing opinions; which, in turn, enabled the group to keep the frames of relevance more focused and to make decisions in a timely manner. Accordingly, performing direct digital action in the form of hacking was directly related to com-municative practices, as they later played an important role in relation to organizing, coordinating and executing the Club’s political project

In other words, with the increasing relevance of practices related to media technologies and infra-structures for social arrangements in general, and for political engage-ments in particular, media technologies and infrastructures increasingly become sites of political struggle in their own right (Kubitschko 2017). It is in this context that scholarly interest in ‘hacker cultures’—owing to the diversity of hacker collectives the plural is essential—has grown considerably in the past decade. While governmental institutions and mainstream media often use ‘hacking’ as an umbrella term for com-puter-related crime, these depictions are contrasted with insightful research that highlights hackers’ interaction with contemporary political landscapes.

Makingrightsclaimsinorbysayinganddoing‘I,we,theyhavearightto’isnotfoundedinisolationorasifitsprangfromnowhere:citizensubjectsareoftenordinaryratherthanheroicsubjectswhohavestruggledtoarticulate,claim,andmaketheserightsthroughmultipleandoverlappinglegalorders.Thedisappearanceorabsenceofthefigureofacitizenthatwehaveinheritedandwhocanmakeclaimsto‘I,we,theyhavearightto’isnotsimplyapoliticsoftradition:itisalsoapoliticsofacitizentocome.

Rather,andthisisDerrida’sintervention,theactbringsthepeople,itspoliticalsubject,intobeingthroughtheact.Thepeopleadeclarationnamesdonotexist.Derridawrites,‘[People]donotexistasanentity,itdoesnotexist,beforethisdeclaration,notassuch.Ifitgivesbirthtoitself,asfreeandindependentsubject,aspossiblesigner,thiscanholdonlyintheactofthesignature.Thesignatureinventsthesigner.’

Weareconcernedthatthedividebetweentheenactmentandinscriptionofdigitalrightsremainsdangerouslyopen.Thosewhoseattempttoinscriberightsinlawworkwiththeassumptionthattheirenactmentwillfollowtheirinscription.Thosewhoseactsenactdigitalrightsworkwiththeconvictionthattheirinscriptionwillfollowtheirenactment.WithRancière,wecansaythattheirinscriptionisapreludetotheirenactmentwhiletheirenactmentinspirestheirinscription.Thosewhoaremakingdigitalrightsclaimsinsayingsomething(inscription)areonaseparatebutnecessarilyrelatedpathfromthosewhoaremakingdigitalrightsclaimsbysayingsomething(enactment).Letusconsidermorecloselymakingrightsclaimsinsayingsomethingandbysayingsomething.

Thissensibilityisalsoakeytounderstandinghowthesedeclarationsarecumulativelybringingapoliticalsubject,asyetunnamed,intobeing.

Rancièrecallsbringingthesetwoaspectsofrightstogetherasdissensus.Itisdissensusratherthanconsensusbecausepoliticsisalwaysacontestationoverwhoiscountedandwhatcounts.ForRancière,apoliticalsubjectinvolvesthecapacityforstagingsuchscenesofdissensus.Thus,‘politicalsubjectsarenotdefinitecollectivities.Theyaresurplusnames,namesthatsetoutaquestionoradisputeaboutwhoisincludedintheircount.’

Itisalsotemptingtointerpretthem

Wewanttoreadtheemergenceandtransformationsofthedigitalrightsmovementfromtheperspectiveofdigitalactsasoneofthenecessaryelementsformakingdigitalrightsclaims.Whethertheseactscumulativelyconstituteadigitalrightsmovementcomparabletoothersocialmovementswillconcernscholarsintheforeseeablefuture,andwecannotaddressthatquestionhere.Instead,wewanttogatherfromdisparateanddisperseddigitalactstherecognitionofadimlyemergingfigureasthesubjectofdigitalrights.Itistheemergenceofthisspecificpoliticalsubjectivityarounddigitalrightsandtheclaimsthroughwhichithasemerged—andtheopeningsandclosingsithasinstigated—thatformsthecentralquestionofthisbook.

Twodecadeslater,CAE’sviewon‘electroniccivildisobedience’seemsbothprescientandnaïve

Whoisthesubjectofthesedigitalrights?Sinceweareinterestedintheprocessesthroughwhichtheserightsareenactedratherthantheirsubstance,ourquestionof‘who’concernsthatofpoliticalsubjectivitythroughtheInternet.[4]Aswehaveexpresseditinvariousways,‘who’doesnotcorrespondtoanalreadyformedpoliticalsubjectbutafigure:Howisapoliticalsubjectbeingconstitutedasaclaimantofdigitalrights?Wehaveillustratedthroughoutthisbookthatdigitalactstraversemultiplenationalbordersandlegalorders.Yetmakingrightsclaimsthattraversebordersisoftenaddressedthroughsovereignregionalornationallegalordersandtheirparticularunderstandingofrights.

Witnessing,hacking,andcommoningarethreedigitalactsthathavebecomepossibleoverthepastfewyearsandhavecreatedopeningsforbeingdigitalcitizensinorbymakingrightsclaims.Theresignificationofexistingortheintroductionofnewconventionsmadetheseactspossible:Bitcoin,copyleft,CreativeCommons,Digg,GitHub,GNN,GNU,WikiLeaks,andmanyothers.Nodoubtsomeoftheseconventionswillbereplacedordisplacedbyothers.Somewillbecomedefunct.Somewillperhapspersistasatestamenttothedigitalcommons.Therewillcertainlybenewconventions.Whatenduresistheperformativeforcethathasgoneintomakingtheseopeningspossible.IfweunderstandcyberspaceasaspaceofrelationsbetweenandamongbodiesactingthroughtheInternet,witnessing,hacking,andcommoningresignifyorinventconventionsandmakepossibletheemergenceofnewwaysofbeingcitizensubjectsincyberspace.

Copyrightderivesitslegalforcefromlawsthatprotectexclusiverightstoandcontrolofintellectualproperty.EvenifitsoriginscanbetracedtoearlymodernEurope(sixteenthtoeighteenthcenturies),itismoderninthesensethattheformationofintellectualproperty—thatis,theconversionofcreativeproductssuchaswords,data,images,andsoundintopropertyforexchange—isaresultoftheaccumulationofcapitalinmodernsocieties.

Colemanarguesthatbymostlycircumventingcopyrightlawswiththeircommitmenttothefreecirculationofintellectualproperty,hackerscontradicttheexistingliberalconceptionofintellectualpropertyastherighttoexcludeandcontrol.Yetbyadvancingvaluesofcivillibertiesandpromotingindividualautonomyand,aboveall,acommitmenttofreespeech,hackersarethemostardentpromotersofliberalvalues.Thus,forColeman,hackersoccupybothacentralandmarginal—wemightsayaparadoxical—placewithintheliberaltradition.

Forus,probablythemostpertinentdistinctionisbetweenprogrammersandhackers.Inorbysayingsomethingincodeperformsbothillocutionaryandperlocutionaryacts.

Asweaffirminchapter2,wethinkthatthecitizensubjectisnottheexclusivepropertyofthenation-state.Onthecontrary,thenation-statemayhavebecomealiabilityforupholdingthesubjectofpowerwehaveinherited.AsAllanwrites,manyoftheissuesthatcitizenjournalismraisesare‘setagainstthebackdropofincidentsaroundtheglobewherethenation-state’sideologicalappropriationofcitizenship—fromoutrightattacksonitslegitimacytothesteadyerosionofitsprotections,typically(andironically)inthenameofnationalsecurity—hasmadejournalismasastruggleover“therighttobearwitness”.’[39]Citizenwitnessingisanongoingandcrucialaspectofdemocraticcitizenship.TheInternet,bycreatingopeningsfordigitalcitizens,hasmadecitizenwitnessinganindispensablepartofapoliticalimaginary.Thisisnotwithoutitsdangersandperils(co-optation,assimilation,infiltration,taming,blocking,filtering,andsoon),butthat’swhatalsomakesitasiteofpoliticalstruggles.

TheethicaldimensionbecomesevenclearerwhenAssangesays,‘Thosewhoarerepeatedlypassiveinthefaceofinjusticesoonfindtheircharactercorrodedintoservility.’[33]Toputitinourwords,citizensubjects,preciselybecauseoftheircapacitytojudge,arenotmerelyobedient(orservile)butalsosubversive.Thisisbecausesubmissiontoconventionsrequiresusingjudgementonthetermsofsubmission.Althoughthecitizensubjectsubmitstoconventions,becauseofthiscapacity,thecallofsubversiontoruptureaconventionalwaysretainsitsforce.Assangeclearlyappealsheretoanaspectofjournalisticethics—bearingwitness—butheresignifiesitpoliticallybyidentifyingitasacalltoact.ThedebateoverwhetherWikiLeaksisaplatformforjournalismorwhistle-blowingoverlooksthatitprimarilyenableswitnessing—thattheworldmayknow(differently).Itisoftenarguedthatsuchwhistle-blowingexposesclassifiedsecretsandendangerstheintelligenceworkofthestate.Butwhatwhistle-blowingexposesisthattherearethosewhofinditintolerabletowitnessabusesandmisusesofauthorityandnotsharethem.Ifbankersdeceive,soldiersmassacre,agenciessnoop,anddiplomatslie,citizenshavetherighttoknowthat.Citizenshavearighttoknowwhatstateandcorporateauthoritiesaredoingin,andoftenwith,theirname.WikiLeaksandwhistle-blowingingeneralareessentiallyclaimingthisrighttoknow.

‘takethecurrenttechnologicallandscapeasgiven.’[75]Instead,shecallsformechanismsthatpreserve‘roomfortheactsoftacticalevasionandsituatedcreativity’thatallowcitizensubjectsto‘tinker,repurpose,andadapt’andpush‘againstthosestructures,sometimesconformingtothemandsometimesfindingwaystoworkaroundthem.’[76]CitingJonathanZittrain,Cohennoteshisprincipleofthe‘generativity’oftechnologies,whichreferstothecapacityofatechnologytoallowitsuserstotinker,revise,andmakenewthingsthatwereneveranticipatedbytheirdesigners

Bynotonlyciting,repeating,anditeratingbutalsoresignifying,citizensubjectscan,andasweshallseeinchapter6indeeddo,breakconventionsandtakeresponsibility.Criticssuchasthosecitedaboveoftenslipintodeterministandstructuralistaccountsoftheworkingsofplatformsbyinferringthatusersaredeceivedandunwittinglysubmittotheresultsofsearchqueries,newsfeeds,ortrendsandthattheseareforces‘shaping’themandsocieties.

Thatthesedemandshaveemergedinthespanofonlyafewyearsatteststowhatwecallthe‘closings’ofcyberspace.ThesedemandsandtheirclosingsareeffectsofthewayinwhichactingthroughtheInternethasresignifiedquestionsofvelocity,extensity,anonymity,andtraceability.Velocitycallsforregularandongoingvigilanceaboutrapidlychangingtechnologies,protocols,practices,platforms,andrulesaboutbeingdigital;extensitycallsforawarenessofwhereandtowhomdigitalactionsreach;anonymitycallsforlimitingandprotectingexposureandbeingcautiousaboutthepresumedidentitiesofothers;andtraceabilitycallsformanaginghowactionsaretracked,analysed,manipulated,andsortedbyunknownothersandforunknowablepurposes.Allofthesedemandsspringnotfromparticipating,connecting,andsharingalonebuttherelationsbetweenandamongbodiesactingthroughtheInternet,whichismadeupofconventionsconfiguredbytheactionsofdispersedanddistributedauthorities.Itistotheseconfiguringactions,whichwecalltheclosingsofcyberspace,thatweturntointhenextchapter,withafocusonfiltering,tracking,andnormalizing.

Toputitbluntly,fromourperspective,popularcriticshavebecometooconcernedaboutcyberspacecreatingobedientsubjectstopowerratherthanunderstandingthatcyberspaceiscreatingsubmissivesubjectsofpowerwhoarepotentiallycapableofsubversion.

Howcanthecallingtoparticipatethatwehaveidentifiedproducedigitalcitizenswhoseactsexceedtheirintentions?Toputitdifferently,atensionexistsbetweenthewaysinwhichthefigureofthedigitalcitizenisconceivedinhegemonicimaginariesandlegaldiscoursesandhowsheisperformativelycomingintobeingthroughactionsthatequiphertobeacitizeninwaysthatarenotacknowledgedoralwaysintended.

Mossbergeretal.,forexample,understanddigitalcitizenshipastheabilitytofullyparticipateinsocietyonline,whichrequiresregularaccesstotheInternet,withadequatedevicesandspeeds,technologicalskillsandcompetence,andinformationliteracy.[21]Equippingthusincludesnotonlyhardware,suchasinstallingcomputersinclassroomsandlibrariesandexpandinghigh-speedbroadbandservices,butalsodevelopingskillsandcapabilitiesthroughtrainingcoursesincomputing,coding,andprogramming

ForHalfordandSavage,whetherliberatingordividing,cyberspace(orwhattheyrefertoasthe‘Web’)isalwaysconsideredasanalreadygivenspace,anditssubjectsareseparate,independent,andpreformedratherthanperformed.Ratherthanassumingthat‘pre-formedsocialgroups“use”(ordon’tuse)technologies’,theyidentifya‘morecomplexprocessofmutualinteractionandstabilisation’wheredigitaltechnologiesarenotseparatedfromsocialprocessesbutinsteadinvolvedinconstitutingsubjectsindiverseandpervasiveways.[16]Inotherwords,theyadvancethattheWebisnotindependentfromtheactionsofsubjects.

ThepremiseofthisbookisthatthecitizensubjectactingthroughtheInternetisthedigitalcitizenandthatthisisanewsubjectofpoliticswhoalsoactsthroughnewconventionsthatnotonlyinvolvedoingthingswithwordsbutdoingwordswiththings.

Thisindividualisautonomousnotbecauseitisseparateorindependentfromsocietybutasitsproductretainsthecapabilitytoquestionitsowninstitution.Castoriadissaysthatthisnewtypeofbeingiscapableofcallingintoquestiontheverylawsofitsexistenceandhascreatedthepossibilityofbothdeliberationandpoliticalaction.

Onthecontrary,citizensubjectsperformativelycomeintobeinginorbytheactofsayinganddoingsomething—whetherthroughwords,images,orotherthings—andthroughperformingthecontradictionsinherentinbecomingcitizens.

ThisistheprincipalreasonwhyweneedtoinvestigatenotonlythingsdoneinorbyspeakingthroughtheInternetbutalsothingssaidinorbydoingthingsthroughtheInternet.

‘Theforceoftheperformativeisthusnotinheritedfrompriorusage,butissuesforthpreciselyfromitsbreakwithanyandallpriorusage.Thatbreak,thatforceofrupture,istheforceoftheperformative,beyondallquestionoftruthormeaning.’[22]Forpoliticalsubjectivity,‘performativitycanworkinpreciselysuchcounter-hegemonicways.Thatmomentinwhichaspeechactwithoutpriorauthorizationneverthelessassumesauthorizationinthecourseofitsperformancemayanticipateandinstatealteredcontextsforitsfuturereception.’[23]Toconceiveruptureasasystemicortotalupheavalwouldbefutile.Rather,ruptureisamomentwherethefuturebreaksthroughintothepresent.[24]Itisthatmomentwhereitbecomespossibletodosomethingdifferentinorbysayingsomethingdifferent.

Moreover,ourconcernwiththeInternetisnotthespeakingsubjectassuchbuthowmakingrightsclaimsbringscitizensubjectsintobeing.Howdodigitalactsbringcitizensubjectsintobeing?DoestheInternetintroducearadicaldifferenceforunderstandingcitizensubjects?DoesthelanguageoftheInternet—code—worklikenaturallanguage?

Ifthecomputerizationofsocietyraisessuchquestions,theanalysisoftheproduction,dissemination,andlegitimationofknowledge,onwhichithasaprofoundeffect,cannotberestrictedtounderstandingcomputerizationascommunicationorcomputer-mediatedcommunication.Rather,theobjectofinvestigationoughttobelanguagegamesthatbecamepossiblethroughwhatLyotardsawasnetworkedcomputers

WhatwefindinLyotard—albeitinincipientform—isthatratherthanconceivingaseparateandindependentspace,thepointistorecognizethatpowerrelationsincontemporarysocietiesarebeingincreasinglymediatedandconstitutedthroughcomputernetworksthateventuallycametobeknownastheInternet.

TheanathemaforLessigisthelossofthisfreedomincyberspace.Inrealspace,governingpeoplerequiresinducingthemtoactincertainways,butinthelastinstance,peoplehadthechoicetoactthiswayorthatway.Bycontrast,incyberspaceconductisgovernedbycode,whichtakesawaythatchoice.Incyberspace,‘iftheregulatorwantstoinduceacertainbehavior,sheneednotthreaten,orcajole,toinspirethechange.Sheneedonlychangethecode—thesoftwarethatdefinesthetermsuponwhichtheindividualgainsaccesstothesystem,orusesassetsonthesystem.’[37]Thisisbecause‘codeisanefficientmeansofregulation.Butitsperfectionmakesitsomethingdifferent.Oneobeystheselawsascodenotbecauseoneshould;oneobeystheselawsascodebecauseonecandonothingelse.Thereisnochoiceaboutwhethertoyieldtothedemandforapassword;onecompliesifonewantstoenterthesystem.Inthewellimplementedsystem,thereisnocivildisobedience.’[38]WhatLessigsuggestsisthatcyberspaceisnotonlyseparateandindependentbutconstitutesanewmodeofpower.Youconstituteyourselfasasubjectofpowerbysubmittingtocode.

Wehaveidentifiedthisasthecontradictionbetweensubmissionandsubversionorconsentanddissent.JacquesRancièrecapturesthisasdissensus.[27]Wewillreturntodissensusinchapter7.Second,whilearticulatingaparticulardemand(forinclusion,recognition),performingcitizenshipenactsauniversalrighttoclaimrights.Thisisthecontradictionbetweentheuniversalismandparticularismofcitizenship.

Ifmakingrightsclaimsisperformative,itfollowsthattheserightsareneitherfixednorguaranteed:theyneedtoberepeatedlyperformed.Theircomingintobeingandremainingeffectiverequiresperformativity.Theperformativeforceofcitizenshipremindsusthatthefigureofthecitizenhastobebroughtintobeingrepeatedlythroughacts(repertoires,declarations,andproclamations)andconventions(rituals,customs,practices,traditions,laws,institutions,technologies,andprotocols).Withouttheperformanceofrights,thefigureofthecitizenwouldmerelyexistintheoryandwouldhavenomeaningindemocraticpolitics.

Therightsthatthecitizenholdsarenottherightsofanalready-existingsovereignsubjectbuttherightsofafigurewhosubmitstoauthorityinthenameofthoserightsandactstocallintoquestionitsterms.Thisistheinescapableandinheritedcontradictionbetweensubmissionandsubversionofthefigureofthecitizenthatcanbeexpressedinaparadoxicalphrase:submissionasfreedom.

IfwefocusonhowpeopleenactthemselvesassubjectsofpowerthroughtheInternet,itinvolvesinvestigatinghowpeopleuselanguagetodescribethemselvesandtheirrelationstoothersandhowlanguagesummonsthemasspeakingbeings.Toputitdifferently,itinvolvesinvestigatinghowpeopledothingswithwordsandwordswiththingstoenactthemselves.ItalsomeansaddressinghowpeopleunderstandthemselvesassubjectsofpowerwhenactingthroughtheInternet.

Givenitspervasivenessandomnipresence,avoidingorshunningcyberspaceisasdystopianasquittingsocialspace;itisalsocertainthatconductingourselvesincyberspacerequires,asmanyactivistsandscholarshavewarned,intensecriticalvigilance.Sincetherecannotbegenericoruniversalanswerstohowweconductourselves,moreorlesseveryincipientorexistingpoliticalsubjectneedstoaskinwhatwaysitisbeingcalleduponandsubjectifiedthroughcyberspace.Inotherwords,toreturnagaintotheconceptualapparatusofthisbook,thekindsofcitizensubjectscyberspacecultivatesarenothomogenousanduniversalbutfragmented,multiple,andagonistic.Atthesametime,thefigureofacitizenyettocomeisnotinevitable;whilecyberspaceisafragileandprecariousspace,italsoaffordsopenings,momentswhenthinking,speaking,andactingdifferentlybecomepossiblebychallengingandresignifyingitsconventions.Thesearethemomentsthatwehighlighttoarguethatdigitalrightsarenotonlyaprojectofinscriptionsbutalsoenactment.

digitalactsresignifyfourpoliticalquestionsabouttheInternet

Wearguethatmakingrightsclaimsinvolvesnotonlyperformativebutalsolegalandimaginaryforces.Wethenarguethatdigitalactsinvolveconventionsthatincludenotonlywordsbutalsoimagesandsoundsandvariousactionssuchasliking,coding,clicking,downloading,sorting,blocking,andquerying.

WedevelopourapproachtobeingdigitalcitizensbydrawingonMichelFoucaulttoarguethatsubjectsbecomecitizensthroughvariousprocessesofsubjectivationthatinvolverelationsbetweenbodiesandthingsthatconstitutethemassubjectsofpower.WefocusonhowpeopleenactthemselvesassubjectsofpowerthroughtheInternetandatthesametimebringcyberspaceintobeing.Wepositionthisunderstandingofsubjectivationagainstthatofinterpellation,whichassumesthatsubjectsarealwaysandalreadyformedandinhabitedbyexternalforces.Rather,wearguethatcitizensubjectsaresummonedandcalledupontoactthroughtheInternetand,assubjectsofpower,respondbyenactingthemselvesnotonlywithobedienceandsubmissionbutalsosubversion.

citizenshipasasiteofcontestationorsocialstruggleratherthanbundlesofgivenrightsandduties.[41]Itisanapproachthatunderstandsrightsasnotstaticoruniversalbuthistoricalandsituatedandarisingfromsocialstruggles.Thespaceofthisstruggleinvolvesthepoliticsofhowwebothshapeandareshapedbysociotechnicalarrangementsofwhichweareapart.Fromthisfollowsthatsubjectsembodyboththematerialandimmaterialaspectsofthesearrangementswheredistinctionsbetweenthetwobecomeuntenable.[42]Whowebecomeaspoliticalsubjects—orsubjectsofanykind,forthatmatter—isneithergivenordeterminedbutenactedbywhatwedoinrelationtoothersandthings.Ifso,beingdigitalandbeingcitizensaresimultaneouslytheobjectsandsubjectsofpoliticalstruggl

Butthefigureofcyberspaceisalsoabsentincitizenship

While much attention is reserved for whistleblowers and hactivists as the vanguards of Internet rights, there are many more anonymous political subjects of the Internet who are not only making rights claims by saying things but also by doing things through the Internet.

Like other social spaces that sociologists study, cyberspace is not designed and arranged and then experienced by passive subjects. Like the physical spaces of cities that geographers have long studied, it is a space that is bought into being by citizen subjects who act in ways that submit to but also at the same time go beyond and transgress the conventions of the Internet. In doing so they are not simply obedient and submissive but also subversive and participate in the making of and rights claims to cyberspace through their digital acts.

Such a conception moves us away from how we are being ‘liberated’ or ‘controlled’ to the complexities of ‘acting’ through the Internet where much of what makes it up is seemingly beyond the knowledge and consent of citizen subjects. To be sure, one cannot act in isolation but only in relation to the mediations, regulations and monitoring of the platforms, devices, and algorithms or more generally the conventions that format, organize and order what we do, how we relate, act, interact, and transact through the Internet. But it is here between and among these distributed relations that we can identify a space of possibility—a cyberspace perhaps—that is being brought into being by the acts of myriad subjects.

The benefit of these spaces is best summed up as flexibility. Members are supported as they join the space, become peripheral participants, and potentially, become longstanding members engaged in ongoing projects. Hacking, like art, becomes not the domain of the elite or reified objects but intimately tied with everyday experiences throughout one's life (Dewey, 1934). The pragmatic devotion of HMSs to recursive problem-solving attracts members who see HMSs bringing informal education and collaborative sociality to their city. In interviews GeekSpace members freely offered beliefs about why they saw HMSs as vital to reforming their city at large. Flexibility, exercised through the constant churn of hands-on work on projects, was coupled with optimism for making a better future. Kligler-Vilenchik et al. (2012) describe a similar desire in civically-minded youth organizations as a "wish to help" (para. 1.5), a form of engagement more familiar to volunteerism than hackers that exert their collective power through protest or software (Coleman, 2012; Sauters, 2013). Above all else, this optimism drives HMS members as they seek to reframe what hacking and making can accomplish.

Hacker and maker represented not so much discrete categories as fluid identities that emerged by on mode of work, personal history, and comfort with cultural alignment. This cozy relationship troubles easy stereotypes of hacking as related to scientific rationality and making to felt experience. For example, as Lingel and Regan (2014) observe, the experiences of software developers can be both highly rational and deeply embodied, resulting in their thinking about coding as process, embodiment, and community. The thrill or pleasure of hacking being linked simply to transgression or satisfaction of completing a difficult job seems lacking (Taylor, 1999; Turkle, 1984). From the side of craft, Daniella Rosner (2012) draws a historic connection to the humble bookbindery as a material-workspace collaboration and site of personalized routines and encounters with tools that lead to complex collaborations. These ethnographies take into account passions and relative definitions of technology that are often neglected in organizational studies. Thus, these inroads to informal learning could be mutually informed by Leonardi's (2011) notion of imbrication, where material and individual agencies are negotiated through routines over time.

X closer examination of these myths nil1 reveal several interesting paradoxes. On the one hand, it is clear that we are in the midst of a cultural shift on a par with the great paradigm shifts in the history of science-our understandings of basic philosophical issues are changing. Tl'e can track shifts in our thinking about the nature of reality, the nature of knowledge and even the nature of the human being. On the other hand, there is e~idencc to suggest that not enough has changed in our thinking about certain philosophical issues, especially as these relate to the concept of 'information' and ideas about originality, privacy: citizen empowerment, democracy and community. I conclude with a list of questions that emerge from the transformation of one 'age' to another.

Civic hackathons are undeniably fraught. Our projections about civic futures are entangled with collective fantasies abouttechnology. This is a story at least as old as science fiction, yet never ultimately removed from our social realities. In some cases small tasks stimulated the civic imagination on larger public problems. In others, cultural reproduction led people to imagine technology that was already racialized, reflecting collective fears that rise to the top. Yet, I resist dismissing civic hackathons. Donna Haraway would certainly see the fallacy in demanding we return to the deliberation of Tocqueville’s town hall meetings. Plus, as anyone who has participated in local government can tell you, city council meetings are hardly a gold standard for civic participation. Mills reminds us that our rationalities are bounded and exist within a particular historic context. We might never get technology out of politics, or the politics out of technology. In a sense, civic technology may itself be a cyborg formed from our collective hopes and fears, one that we might better learn to live with.

Balsamo's notion of technocultural innovation is quite appropriate for negotiating between critical and design positions on hackathons. First, she defines technologies asmessy combinations of practices, materialities, and affordances. They were never fully captured in artifacts to begin with, and she would simply not regard civic hackathons as their sole point of emergence. Second, although designers hold a particular role in technocultural innovation, Balsamo makes it clear that everyday people can interact with, talk about, act out, and pitch ideas, thereby co-constructing technologies. Many of the examples she provides, such as interactive museum exhibitions, are very hackathon-esque spectacles that bring people into contact with technologies in the process of being designed. Third, Balsamo provides concepts and vocabulary for describing moments of collective design. Cultural models of technology might be reproduced or made anew through the technocultural imagination. Balsamo does not treat the influence of corporations or mythologies of technology (Balsamo, 1996)as necessarily spoiling innovation. Individuals all draw on specific models of technology — practices, affordances, materialities — from everyday life, which must include those created by large companies. Participants can get space of their own, as in the case of Xerox PARC’s RED group, that provide autonomy. Yet, they do not exactly get outside of technology, a point that McKenzie Wark has similarly driven home (Wark, 2004).

Civic hackathons are spaces where the technological imagination and civic imagination collide and jostle as people collectively envision future technologies. Finally, I suggest three lessons drawn from civic hackathons to demonstrate the contradictory and even treacherous ways civic innovation produces ideas. In the conclusion I consider how we might read civic hackathons alongside other modern political formations. After all, civic hackathons are just one part in a larger formation of “open government” that prioritizes direct participation and institutional collaboration as a pathway to reform.

Civic hackathons have been hotly debated in recent years. Critical studies scholars have lambasted civic hackathons for aligning with middle-class citizenship(Irani, 2015)and co-opting participant labor (Gregg, 2014a). Silicon Valley is often the fait accompliin these perspectives, bringing a flawed ideology that seduces organizers and participants into transposing technological language onto civic issues (Also see: Barbrook & Cameron, 1996; Morozov, 2013). In this paper I refer to this perspective as an “imposed civic ideology.” The second perspective comes from design scholars interested in material participation (Marres, 2012) as cohering publics to work on particular social issues. Lodato and DiSalvo (2016) suggested that civic hackathons served two purposes. First, they help people think through civic issues using props — “objects, services, and systems that engage with issues” (p. 16). Second, they cohere ephemeral proto-publics for short-term engagement on issues of public concern. As they summarized, "what is important is not the inventiveness of a particular prototype product or service, but rather, how the event fosters opportunities for collaborative or collective issue articulation" (p. 15). They drew attention to how outcomes of civic hackathons may more likely be social and cultural than functional material objects. I refer to this design perspective as an “emergent civic subjectivity.”

For these women, the values and practices of everyday life intertwine with technical labor. In the 1970s, theorists like Dick Hebdige, Henri LeFebvre, and Michel DeCertau took up everyday life as a site for radically re-imagining social life. The potency of domesticity and the social status of quotidian craftwork became a key precursor to contemporary Feminist thought. Today, it has reemerged in the work of modern-day hackers.By designing hackerspaces to serve domestic and familial needs, and by surfacing a new emotional style through failure, members of women-operated hackerspaces are

Upon closer examination of the appropriation phase, we distinguish three modes of tech-nology appropriation: baroquization, creolization, and cannibalism, by analogy with cul-tural appropriation. Baroquization is the filling-in of technological spaces that providers intentionally leave blank for users to personalize devices and applications; creolizationis bricolage, the recombination of the technology’s components to create something new; and cannibalism is creative destruction, an innovative act that requires breaking down the existing to invent something new.These three forms of appropriation correspond to increasingly confrontational stances users take vis-à-vis technology providers, within a context of asymmetric power. Baroquization is docile, where users follow an appropriation script laid out for them by the provider. Creolization is playful and unpredictable, where users re-mix the providers’ script with their own, in ways that may clash with providers’ interests. At the extreme, cannibalism is deliberately hostile to the providers’ interests. These various appropria-tion modes correspond to progressively deeper user involvement with technology, requir-ing increasingly sophisticated technical skills. All three modes represent creative ways for users to assert greater control over technology, mold it to fit their lives, and make it their own.

First, we view technology evolution as a three-stage cyclical process of adoption, appropriation, and repossession. Users drive adoption. Users and providers alternatively drive appropriation and repossession, as users lead appropriation, while providers react when reclaiming the resulting innova-tions. Second, we identify three appropriation modes—baroquize, creolize, and canni-balize—that represent increasing degrees of power contestation by users. And third, we identify three repossession modes—co-opt, combine, and block—that represent increas-ingly antagonistic reactions by providers and mirror users’ appropriation strategies.

Born in the Plantation, the Hacienda, the Latifundio, and the Mine, creolization is now “scattered in those sheet plates and concrete mazes where our common becoming is adventuring itself, in favellas and mega-cities” (Glissant, 1995: 87). Alive and well, cre-olization can be found where Latin Americans live, in the spaces where they are exposed to new technologies. Born of avoidance (like Internet Protocol (IP) packets that find a route around obstacles) and mixing (like mashups and re-mix), creolization fits the realm of ICTs.

Three strategies deserve particular attention for their symbolic value: cannibalism, baroque, and creolization. Cannibalism is appropriation trough dismembering, absorption, and chemical transformation. Baroque—an infiltration strategy—is the artistic appropria-tion of spaces through filling and layering. In-between, creolization is appropriatio

Throughout history, Latin American populations have had extensive experience with the appropriation of objects, people, and ideas from abroad, most often in unfavorably asymmetric situations. This tradition continues to pro-duce a culture of its own, born from multiple resistance and appropriation strategies.

This article frames appropriation as a political process.

Hacker and maker spaces are community workshops that promote notions of open-access and equal participation. Yet, they tend to embrace a contradiction. Their egalitar-ian goals paradoxically reflect a masculine geek identity anchored by an exclusionary “meritocracy.” Addressing democratization requires questioning how power and identity in hacker and maker spaces can be reconnected and re-programmed. Daniela K. Rosner and Sarah Fox illuminate just such a rich counter-narrative in the feminist hackerspace Mothership Hackermoms. Rosner and Fox argue feminist hackerspaces emerged from legacies of craft, engineering culture, and emotional style through failure. They argue that histories of craft and domesticity don’t just undergird engineering cultures—they provide concepts for women to re-imagine maker spaces in a feminist mold.

We have framed the theme of this issue as “The Democratization of Hacking and Making” to draw attention to the relationships between action, knowledge, and power. Particularly, hacking and making are about how practices of creation and transforma-tion generate knowledge and influence institutions. These acts concentrate and distrib-ute power through publics and counterpublics. Yet, the very mutability of hacker and maker relations makes them a challenge to identify and research. Hacking and making collectives have proven capable of constituting and reconstituting themselves in physi-cal and virtual spaces. They integrate across infrastructures, collaborative systems, socio-economic divides, and international boundaries.

The more pressing threat is that a fear of solution-ism and neoliberal connotations of “open data” together might dissuade political par-ticipation. Systemic social disparities are often intractable. The route to alleviate them has never been detachment or abandonment. Looking forward, we should pay attention to how data activism and advocacy might result in meaningful systematic change beyond the usual claims of “transparency.” To fulfill the possibilities for meaningful social change hinted at in their history, civic hackers might have to coordinate around specific mechanisms for change and articulate a deeper sense of democracy than the language of technology provides.

Might “utopian realist” be applicable to the practices of civic hackers, intertwined with particular repertoires, technologies, and affective publics? McKenzie Wark (2014) sug-gests that the relationship between utopian and realist might be mutually constitutive rather than dialectical. He re-frames utopia as a realizable fragment or diagram that re-imagines relations. From this perspective, civic hacking gets traction not because they were ever intended to be the sole “solution” to a problem, but they are ways of acting and creating that are immediately apprehensible. Prototypes capture the imagination because they are shards of a possible future and can be created, modified, and argued about (Coleman, 2009).

He proposes that “monitorial citizens” act as a watchdog for specific issues, ready to take action. From this perspective, civic hack-ers could be considered a monitorial elite, watching data streams and processes of algorithmic regulation for injustices and engaging directly with local politics. “The local” operates as a point of collaboration (Dunbar-Hester, 2013) and point of entry for geeks to engage with neighborhood issues

Two overall framings of hackers’ engagement with the political have dominated discussion: “hacktivists” or activists who leverage instrumental uses of online technologies for direct political action such as protest and disruption (Jordan and Taylor, 2004), and geographically distributed communities of practice where principles of openness enable forms of political action (Coleman, 2004). Gabriella Coleman (2012a) argues that pragmatism enables action on issues related to informational freedoms and reflects liberal democratic tenets such as freedom of speech. According to Coleman (2004), explicit involvement in “politics” in a formalized sense is distasteful to free and open-source hackers, as it is viewed as “buggy, mediated, and tainted action clouded by ideology” (p. 513). Civic hacking represents a third mode of participation among a group that often explicitly engages with political causes through designing, critiquing, and manipulating software and data to improve community life and infrastructures of governance. Civic hackers therefore have distinct histories, con-tours, and conflicts from other genres of hackers, even as they share a certain family resemblance (Wittgenstein, 1953).

Interactions through things, and perceptions about their potential, were ways to negotiate between seemingly conflicting imperatives of the individualism and communalism (A. L. Toombs, Bardzell, & Bardzell). Members would deliberately design activities that were incomplete to encourage a playful material improvisation. In these ways, the “material sensibilities” of members were particularly important. Similarly, reading a history of craft into software hacking, Lingel and Regan (2014) found that software hackers identified their work with craft as process, embodiment, and community. These sensitive readings of interactions with stuff seemed to more accurately capture the genre of hackerspaces, more so than action was guided by culture.

If you are lucky, you have the conditions and abilities to work all this through in a long, non-linear process also known as bootstrapping, where you go through many iterations of hacking apart and hacking together, all the while creating fundamentally different ideas about what technologies should do, and could do, matched by a succession of devices and practices that help shape these ideas, and “demo” to yourself and others that some utopias might not be out of reach. This is what radical engineers do.

Jessica Helfand in her essay The Dematerialism of Screen Space (2001) critiques the phenomenon of design practise being led by developments in software engineering. She argues that designers should take the initiative: “design must submit to a series of commands and regulations as rigourous as those that once defined Swiss typography. Aesthetic innovation, if it indeed exists at all, occurs within ridiculously preordained parameters: a new plug-in, a modified code, the capacity to make picture and words ‘flash’ with a mouse in a non-sensical little dance. We are all little filmmakers, directing on a pathetically small screen – yet broadcasting to a potentially infinite audience. This in itself is conflicting (not to mention corrupting), but more importantly, what are we making? What are we inventing? What are we saying that has not been said before?” Helfand here is referring to the web, but her argument applies equally well to designing tablet publications. Designers of book and magazine apps should be asking themselves those last three questions. Since tablet publishing conventions are in the process of being formed (like child invention), we have a unique opportunity right now to influence their direction.

Each whale is a perceptive messenger of the state of its species, the state of the cetaceans, the state of the oceans as a whole, as close and determined observation by Mayo and many others has shown. Now each piece of baleen is making those animals into messengers from the past, as we are expanding our own range of perception to understand.

but scientists have found that biochemical traces of some of its experiences persist in its body, even long after death. Just as geologists decode the history of the Earth from rocky strata, or dendrochronologists interpret past climactic conditions from tree rings, so biologists are now learning to read a whale’s life history as inscribed in its baleen. This anatomical oddity, part of a class of animal tissues that are emerging as tenacious biological recordkeepers, could reveal a monthly, even weekly, historical record of a whale’s life events stretching back as long as two decades. Just how much it will tell us remains to be seen.

I’ve collected the following list of needs based on what I’ve noticed across projects. I’ve tried to roughly organize it from critical (bottom of Maslow’s pyramid) to legacy (higher on the pyramid).

Open source projects don’t start as communitiesMany would agree that open source projects don’t start out as Bazaars, but just in case, I’ll emphasize the point. Raymond himself wrote:It’s fairly clear that one cannot code from the ground up in bazaar style. One can test, debug and improve in bazaar style, but it would be very hard to originate a project in bazaar mode. Linus didn’t try it. I didn’t either.Somebody has to be chiefly responsible for an open source project’s initial development. In Linux’s case, it was Linus. Somebody has to live and breathe the problem all day. Once that project is in a stable position, the community helps support it.

In open source, you can only have “my” in the associative sense. There is no possessive “my” in open source.”

Those in positions of power have always craved a mechanism with which to expose the inner beings of citizens, to reveal ‘the fragment of darkness that we each carry within us’, as Foucault described it. There are, or seem to be, rather dangerous and wild expanses within each individual. If we are to be controlled, that must be made known, and tamed. There is no better way to divide and subdue a people, and seduce them into self-regulation, than to expose their perversions but promise absolution.

Having a smartphone and access to the internet does not automatically equip us with the tools necessary for effective and respectful collaboration, negotiation and speech, such as democracy requires.

In the presence of ever-watchful witnesses, he said, physical coercion is no longer necessary. People police themselves. They do not know what the observers are registering at any given moment, what they are looking for, exactly, or what the punishments are for disobedience. But the imagination keeps them pliant. In these circumstances, Foucault claimed, the architecture of surveillances become perniciously subtle and seamless, so ‘light’ as to be scarcely noticeable.

Bazaars are rhetoric, not reality

As in any contract, there’s a balance of power. If the architecture of today’s web is any indication, that balance is skewed toward the designers. Unless we want to keep pinging around like Skinner’s pigeons (or like poor Michael S), it’s worth paying a little more attention to those whom our attention pays.

At first, if you want to make money, you sell whatever is in the room. Maybe it’s excellent journalism. Maybe it’s a game or a recipe. Maybe it’s an item that will get shipped to someone’s house. In this model, the internet offers a straightforward transactional experience in digital space.Over time, instead of making money from whatever is in each room, companies begin to monetise the doors. They equip them with sensors. Each time you go through one, someone gets paid. Immediately, some people will start adding a lot of new doors. Other people will build rooms that are largely empty, but that function as waystations, designed to get as many people as possible to enter and leave.

Avoid creating big decision hierarchies. Instead, invest in a broad, growing and empowered contributorship that can make progress without intervention. We need to view a constant need for intervention by a few people to make any and every tough decision as the biggest obstacle to healthy Open Source.

Sure, we get bad bugs, but we have a ton of contributors who can immediately work with people who log them to educate them on better practices and treat it as an opportunity to educate. This is why we have documentation on writing good bugs, in order to educate contributors, not as a barrier to entry.Creating barriers to entry just reduces the number of people there’s a chance to identify, educate and potentially grow into greater contributors.

This is what a healthy project should look like. As the demands on the project from increased users rise, so do the contributors, and as contributors increase more are converted into committers. As the committer base grows, more of them rise to the level of expertise where they should be involved in higher level decision making.If these groups don’t grow in proportion to each other they can’t carry the load imposed on them by outward growth. A project’s ability to convert people from each of these groups is the only way it can stay healthy if its user base is growing.

Empirically, I trace how civic hackathons in Los Angeles evolved in 2013 - 2015 from engineering exercises to spectacles where civic futures of technology were performed through communication, before turning to particular lessons drawn from civic hackathons. Civic hackathons’ emergence from technical cultures means they often produce conservative civic visions. I pay close attention to moments of failure – moments when possible technologies reproduced existing cultural divisions. Still, I resist describing them as completely co-opted and useless, as I found surprising moments of civic learning and exploration.

Weapons of the Weak is not just a political study, however; it is also an outstanding work of ethnography. Based on thorough research and careful, perceptive fieldwork, it manages to avoid some of the failings of traditional ethnography by its emphasis on the centrality of individual human beings in their particular situations. Whether or not it offers definitive answers to the questions it investigates, it certainly provides some solid ground to stand on in looking for them.