User:Artemis gryllaki/Thesis outline

Thesis outline

Artemis Gryllaki . 14-11-19 . XPUB

Topics

Hackerspaces, Hacklabs, Feminist Tech initiatives

Focus

Feminist Tech initiatives

Introduction

Background

Technologies are situated and socially shaped along with their meanings, functions, domains, and use. We currently live in a sociopolitical reality where ever-growing profit is the main goal; capitalist tech production is a very flexible system, which constantly finds ways to reproduce the existing economic and power structures. "Technological innovation is the main engine of economic development." (Arthur, 2011)

It is a mainstream idea that technology keeps on improving because human needs and demands for technology keep on changing. However, we have to ask: who is being served? "...too often it seems to make things harder, leaving us with fifty-button remote controls, digital cameras with hundreds of mysterious features and book-length manuals, and cars with dashboard systems worthy of the space shuttle." (James Surowiecki)

Technological development is supposed to help our lives in many ways, helping us to do things faster and more efficiently, through high-quality devices and computers. We could say that this points to autonomy, but at the same time, it also raises another very serious matter: dependence. "You depend on those who develop and distribute it, on their business plans or their contributions to social value. And you change with it. Are Whatsapp and Telegram not changing the way we relate to each other? Is Wikipedia not changing the culture of the encyclopedia? And you change it too, in turn." (Margarita Padilla, 2017)

It is critical to keep on asking questions about what technological horizons are relevant for us and how we are building them. Some communities are already practicing and building alternative spaces to gain agency in technological issues. This research looks at spaces where tech practices are happening outside, or at the margins of the tech industry, such as hacklabs and hackerspaces. Then, it questions what their perspectives and directions are, and also looks at how they reproduce social hierarchies or biases. Who fits in?

Finally, it explores the potential of inclusive feminist hack/tech initiatives to re-politicise technology; what do they suggest? what relations do they propose? what issues do they face? why is it important to amplify and protect their work?

Thesis Statement

Local and international feminist tech initiatives and the communities around them are influential and useful in the current sociopolitical technological landscape; their suggestions and practices raise awareness about gender and other social exclusions happening in tech, while they point towards re-politicising technology, by practically engaging with it.

Body

Topic 1

Hackerspaces; where people engage with technology in ways that make them more than just consumers and users.

Point A – Hackerspaces act towards opening up the access and engagement with technological knowledge and practices.

Argument 1

Values and practices from the free and open-source software movements are embedded in hackerspaces.

• The right for everybody to use, study, share and improve technology and thus explore personal and collective freedoms.

Argument 2

They influence a potential re-distribution of the power of creating technology to local communities.

• They suggest ways for integration of technology by non-techies, through educational character and cooperative practices.
• Do-It-Yourself and Do-It-Together movements can become a challenge to the apparatus of the technology industry - an apparatus of transnational corporations that currently produces 'experts', 'copyright licenses' and 'patents', which again produce monopolized authority over technology.

Point B – The political direction and potentials of different hackerspaces vary according to their historical and ideological genealogies.

Introduction

In the wide spectrum of community tech spaces, words like "hacking" and "technological freedom" have very different meanings. What do hackerspaces suggest? Alternative tech production? Academic practice-based research? Activism? Resistance? Exciting hobbies? Or new business models? The terms “hacklab” and “hackerspace” are now broadly used to describe the same thing. However, there are differences in their historical and ideological origins and their political perspectives. In this research, I want to reflect on the possible political directions that these spaces point to.

Argument 1

Hacklabs have roots in the counterculture movement of the 60s and 70s. (Hacklabs: Term used to describe the early hackerspaces in Europe, which started to operate in the mid-1990s and became widespread in the first half of the 2000s.)

• Johannes Grenzfurthner and Frank A. Schneider argue that the history of the so-called hackerspaces fits best into a countercultural topography consisting of squat houses, alternative cafés, farming cooperatives, collectively run businesses, communes, non-authoritarian childcare centres. ("Hacking the spaces", Johannes Grenzfurthner and Frank A. Schneider, 2009)
• “The first hacklabs developed in Italy have been connected with the autonomist social centres, and in Spain, Germany, and the Netherlands with anarchist squatting movements.” (Simon Yuill, 2008)

Argument 2

Hackerspaces developed in the libertarian sphere of influence around the Chaos Computer Club are not necessarily defining themselves as overtly political. (Hackerspaces: Term used to describe hackerspaces which started in the late 1990s and became widespread in the late 2000s.)

• For a genealogy of Hacklabs and Hackerspaces, read "Hacklabs and hackerspaces: Tracing two genealogies", Peter Maxigas, 2012.

Argument 3

Not having political direction can be useful for existing power structures.

• New capitalist labour models; Californian ideology, a fusion of Hippies and Entrepreneur / Nerds, appropriates practices from the hacker culture in favour of neoliberalism.
• There are a number of more variations community tech spaces, such as makerlabs, medialabs, fablabs, innovation labs and co-working spaces. They are set up in different contexts such as a university, a company, a foundation. Many of them operate within and for the benefit of capitalist tech production, even though they claim to be a-political.