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Bits, Atoms, and Information Sharing: new opportunities for participation
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Orientador(es)
Resumo(s)
The particular characteristics and affordances of technologies play a significant role in human
experience by defining the realm of possibilities available to individuals and societies. Some
technological configurations, such as the Internet, facilitate peer-to-peer communication and
participatory behaviors. Others, like television broadcasting, tend to encourage centralization
of creative processes and unidirectional communication. In other instances still, the
affordances of technologies can be further constrained by social practices. That is the case,
for example, of radio which, although technically allowing peer-to-peer communication, has
effectively been converted into a broadcast medium through the legislation of the airwaves.
How technologies acquire particular properties, meanings and uses, and who is involved in
those decisions are the broader questions explored here.
Although a long line of thought maintains that technologies evolve according to the logic of
scientific rationality, recent studies demonstrated that technologies are, in fact, primarily
shaped by social forces in specific historical contexts. In this view, adopted here, there is no
one best way to design a technological artifact or system; the selection between alternative
designs—which determine the affordances of each technology—is made by social actors
according to their particular values, assumptions and goals. Thus, the arrangement of
technical elements in any technological artifact is configured to conform to the views and
interests of those involved in its development. Understanding how technologies assume
particular shapes, who is involved in these decisions and how, in turn, they propitiate
particular behaviors and modes of organization but not others, requires understanding the
contexts in which they are developed.
It is argued here that, throughout the last century, two distinct approaches to the development
and dissemination of technologies have coexisted. In each of these models, based on
fundamentally different ethoi, technologies are developed through different processes and by
different participants—and therefore tend to assume different shapes and offer different
possibilities.
In the first of these approaches, the dominant model in Western societies, technologies are
typically developed by firms, manufactured in large factories, and subsequently disseminated
to the rest of the population for consumption. In this centralized model, the role of users is
limited to selecting from the alternatives presented by professional producers. Thus, according to this approach, the technologies that are now so deeply woven into human
experience, are primarily shaped by a relatively small number of producers.
In recent years, however, a group of three interconnected interest groups—the makers,
hackerspaces, and open source hardware communities—have increasingly challenged this
dominant model by enacting an alternative approach in which technologies are both
individually transformed and collectively shaped. Through a in-depth analysis of these
phenomena, their practices and ethos, it is argued here that the distributed approach practiced
by these communities offers a practical path towards a democratization of the technosphere
by: 1) demystifying technologies, 2) providing the public with the tools and knowledge
necessary to understand and shape technologies, and 3) encouraging citizen participation in
the development of technologies.
Descrição
Palavras-chave
Digital technologies Participatory culture Digital fabrication Do-it-yourself Democratization Makers Hackerspaces Open source hardware Tecnologias digitais Cultura participativa Fabricação digital Democratização