Internet Of Production Alliance Wants You To Think Globally, Make Locally

With the proliferation of digital fabrication tools, many feel the future of manufacturing is distributed. It would certainly be welcome after the pandemic-induced supply chain kerfuffles from toil…

The Radical Democratizing Power of a Better Way to Make Things, With Sarah Hutton — Solarpunk Presents

In ep 3. 4 of Solarpunk Presents Podcast, researcher Sarah Hutton of the Internet of Production Alliance explains what distributed production is, why it’s all about people power, and exactly why it is a completely radical and powerfully democratizing activity that is also better for local jobs, loca

STS Helsinki seminar 9.3. with Cindy Kohtala | STS Helsinki

Maana Electric – Powering Human Ambition

The Three Pillars of Functional Autonomy of Hackers - NanoEthics

We propose a conceptual framework for analysing the relationship between social emancipation and alternative technology development. Key is the “functional autonomy” of the collective of users and developers of the technology vis-a-vis state and capital. We draw on previous empirical work about three hacker projects to substantiate the claim that the functional autonomy of hackers rests on three “pillars of autonomy”: technical skill, shared values, and collective memory. These three pillars sustain the autonomy of a community of hackers so that it may successfully resist recuperation attempts by capital. We make this claim in contradistinction to looser constellations of users, citizen scientists, DIY hobbyists, etc., where the functional autonomy tends to be much weaker. Hence, in the latter case, we should expect the actors to be recuperated in short time. The emancipatory promises that they make in regard to their practices, and are often mirrored in the academic literature about user innovation, citizen science, etc., will then turn sour. From this observation, we develop a second-order reflection on the role of the scholar studying purportedly emancipatory technology projects. As against the popular “follow-the-actors” approach, we defend the continued need for scholarly critique. We do so with the caveat that critique must in part be conducted as self-critique.