This is the second part of the text:
All three projects propose unique technologies based on decentralized models, decentralized software means that each instance of the software is hosted on a different server (each of them situated physically in a proxy or remote relation to the community or person(s) using the service), meaning that each hosting place, person or community organizes and determines the condition of usage of its instance of the software differently, sometimes formulating clear criteria, and governance. Moreover as Baobáxia and Metareciclagem, implement participatory management of servers in communities, all projects reassemble technologies, expose immense possibilities of underused technologies, transform the usage of standard tools, and eventually associate technological build up to a ritualized event. Those projects understand decentralization as a technological choice as a premise that is inclusive of a dedicated decisional process. As we have seen, they have made distinctive choices, forming new concepts in the light of ancestral and community organization, adapting existing technical possibilities inclusive of the ones discarded by tech monopolies. They have worked out a number of technological processes, that associate technical uniqueness to a specific cultural expression and active resistance. This follows different models of "Re-appropriation" (Fonseca 2016). We will analyze here the technical choices and their entanglement to historical modalities of resistance and community organization that are worked as a model of decision making . We will finally propose that the specific affirmations made by those networks towards fostering Singular technologies are a side step that opens the way to technological processes countering populist strategies.
Cultural coherence and infrastructure: decentralized technology a choice made for collective organization.
Decentralized computing can be simply defined as the allocation of resources, both hardware and software, to each location. However it has many implications, from the technical point of view, it is considered as a solution to existing problems caused by the accumulation of power in centralized monopolies, since it allows to moderate each implementation of the software locally, distributing the decisional capacity and the risks of failure and authoritarian control ; however, it is not a straightforward application, as many issues arise including access to the network, and existence of technical knowledge, we will address how the possibility of autonomy that resides in the technology is in fact activated by the community practices cultivated along centuries in networks of resistance such as Quilombolas.
While decentralization has been a major trend in the last few years, it is scarcely discussed as a possibility for a structural reorganization of decisional processes. Decentralized technologies should be associated to community organization, but sometimes they are blind to this possibility and by building on existing infrastructure and cloud services they do not actively think about ways to reconfigure existing distribution of power in technology. In this scope, the conversation needs to not only be technical, decentralized infrastructure must also imply a distributed system of decision making, and the distribution of according accountability and responsibility.
Decentralized computing, allows for a diversity of identities and models of governance to happen, therefore the it is necessary to clarify the modalities of a decentralized network organization that are characterized by technical features. A decentralized network needs a determined protocol to organize the communication between nodes, clarifying the modalities by which they exchange and make for a useful technology. Practically, the organization can happen along 2 major different type of protocols, peer to peer or federated that make for 2 different network architecture. A peer to peer system partitions tasks or workloads between peers, all nodes are equivalent, whereas in a federated system some nodes act as relays to other nodes.
Tcnxsnm Metareciclagem and Baobaxìa, all have experienced decentralization technologies in different modalities, decentralized servers, mesh networks, eventually connected networks, using both peer to peer and federated networks, always in consideration of relevant social organization and modalities of re-appropriation. Most importantly they have developed unique technologies such as the previously mentioned eventually connected network : Baobáxia. The software developed for Baobáxia is a social media based on Git; Git is a very important and otherwise widely used software, indispensable for developers to work together, as it permits to deal with version control in large software development projects. However, the usage that Baobáxia makes of Git as a basis for a social media software, is unique and very adapted to the context of the Quilombos, where access to network and electricity can be scarce. Using Git as a basis, permits that users locally upload media to the "mucuas" without needing connectivity, when they do have connection they can share it to the rest of the Baobáxia network, this is uniquely responding to the needs of remotely situated Quilombos.
In the Baobaxìa methodology/spirit, congruence between accurate physicality of the encounter and accurate construction of the digital archive and distributed social network is promoted throughout the whole process. This translates into the project being discussed during encounters/pajelança (rituals) that follow the models of governance and organization of the communities themselves, from the Baobaxìa archives stored on the wiki, we see that technical workshops were organized among other subjects and equally to them. The reports make describe as much the ritual then the technical processes, all participants are called by the name used and function within their community. The reports also describe specific ritual practices and important discussions about quilombolas identity and their relation to technical processes; for example:
"In the sacred presence of the Baobab, which represents our African roots, TC draws attention to the importance of spirituality and passes the word to Mother Beth of Oxum, of Olinda, to pass on the axé, the spiritual strength, the communication. She sang a song for Ossanha, accompanied by the drums. She remembered the importance of strength through the leaves, because we are around the Baobab. He also did a song for Oxum and Yemanjá."[1]
While the workshops were transmitting important technical knowledge about how to implement, use and maintain a Mucua, Baobáxia implementation also engaged Quilombolas in a reflection on how they understand their relation to communication and technology, in collaboration with local social centers, such as Casa Taiña, also part of Rede mocambos. The chosen model relates to the history of Quilombos; where preserving culture and organizing life has been done since centuries hiding away from the oppressor. Indeed, the relation to visibility and invisibility is crucial to the history of Quilombos, and this concern is well translated in the network infrastructure of Baobáxia, that permits to deal locally not only with the connectivity issues, but also allows for an autonomous platform to share information of value for the community away from mainstream exposure, keeping up with a century old resistance strategy.
Those encounters also focus on very important political issues such as sustainability where community sustainability and larger ecological issues are entangled and technology is envisioned in relation to both, making for important political discussions. In addition, care is taken to publish reports online in their integrality, including the many interventions of different nature; this demonstrates how the attention is put to build and deploy a technology that converges with all existing reflections in the comunity, being atuned not only with existing models of community organization, but also with political revendication and ll the reports archived on the wiki of the organisation would it be thinking of governance issues such as collective reflection on the space of the encounter, for example:
"During the conversations and openings of the days, the relationship between ancestry and technology was deepened in the perception of the appropriation of technology as one of the tools for the diffusion of quilombola and community contributions."[2]
Transformative practices and affirmative resistance are the contexts set here, characterized not only by the choice of cecentralising, the specific eventually connected network, but also as Baobaxìa sits at the fringes of mainstream technological model, freecycling its hardware components in Gambiarra and autonomizing its technology, organizing dedicated decision making processes through workshop happening in each of the 200 nodes of the network, defining its own network and proposing unique community produced media. However, complete autonomy does not exist and even less in technological domains or media practice, while the model situates itself in the context of occidental domination, it also exists in line with centuries of invisibleness and active resistance of the Quilombos, the millennial culture of indigenous people, and active resistance of other people involved, who despite minorization have maintained their voices and a strong and unique culture.
Metarecliclagem: Gambiarra and free-software.
Gambiarra has been advocated in the Metareciclagem network as an upcycling makeshift, that is also usually translated as Kludge or hack, but also deploys an antropophagic approach to the process by reclaiming the technological processes in a cultural environment [3] Although the term gambiarra is largely used and in several professional areas such as programming, electronics, cinema, theater, plastic arts, architecture, design,the gambiarra is often understood in a pejorative way. However Metareciclagem does mean it in this way, by reformulating the relation to the computer in favor of the less technologicaly proficient people. Gambiarra creates a space of familiarity with the object, when the precious technical object becomes smething made out of recycled parts creatively decorated, not only it loses its features of dominance and makes space for a creative use. and what Felipe Fonseca calls: “Hypertropical Programação”. In the same movement free-software is also approached as a liberation tool. Free Software is usually understood as “software that gives the users the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software .” [4] This implies 2 things, first that the source code is accessible under a copyleft licence, (individual freedom) and that the user is able or has access to someone who can understand the program(collective freedom) Thus, "free software” again is not only technical matter, but encompasses different issues of social and economical organization that have been addressed in the context of Metarecliclagem. Indeed the implementation of those computers happened in different local cultural and social centers and Puntos de Cultura, giving access to digital tools to a number of social structures, theater groups, musical studios, kids etc… The holistic approach of Metareciclagem, and “Hypertropical Programação” is inclusive and oriented towards fostering access and creative appropriation in the context of existing structures and supported by official programs.
Diffraction and resonances
Making for a very notable start, all 3 projects affirm claim to be networks "redes" rather then software or localized community projects, for example Fabi Borges explains: "Tcnxsm is a network, it does not develop specific projects but builds from existing projects, Baobaxìa is one of them. But Tcnxsm works many technologies, from radio to alternative electricity production, targeted towards autonomy; although considering autonomy as a pathway, a process that never really achieves since everything is always connected." By this positioning not only do they set the ground for a differential model of organization a Third Technoscape, but they also foster, the relation between network and cultural organization, allowing for technology to be transformed by cultural practice and become a transformative practice itself.
“Technoshamanism is neither the beginning nor the end, it is a medium.” Tcnxsnm is a space of articulation, a network.
Those networks put in question occidental civilization from its ontologies, however they situate themselves in the free culture movement and advocate a new domain in the free culture movement. Fabi Borges explains that she understands free culture not only as produced under a specific copyleft licence, but litterally as "liberated culture". This important aspect is the reason for this interdisciplinary network participating to a number of domains, an open platform that aggregates different "knowledges"and environments to produce resonances within actual capitalist society.
Conclusion:
Starting from taking back the future, and the intuition that a specific situation in Brazil at the beginning of the millennium has allowed for the development of Singular Technologies that emerge from the appropriation of technologies by communities of resistance, we observed a process that engages language and technology reconstruction, in coherence with existing creative or historical community organization. The 3 networks we chose to present Metareciclagem, TCNXSM and Baobáxia, address from different scopes and contexts technology as compounding to liberation and organize their networks in correspondance with the modalities of their research and their communities. Technology is understood in a broader scope then only digital(although it does include the latter), and the pathway they undertake leads to bridge practices and organizations in the prospect of allowing for the formation of a Third Technoscape.
Each project presented deploys its own understanding of technology, envisioning different type of functionalities, scopes of application, and relations, and they all associate the notion of freedom not only to freesoftware, but also to building technology that is of liberation. In this paper, we have developed different meanings of this assertion, from deploying constitutive language to Singular networks technologies that comply with the communities conditions, for example the lack of effective network connection, and resistance models. Furthermore the presented projects take a holistic approach, thinking historical relation to communication, epistemology and technology in relation to the new emergence of ICT. The networks have been thought from scratch as a tool allowing to serve resistances and their model of organization. This diffracting positioning permits to embrace the full scope of the technology situation from a history of domination, it the first necessary step to confront the destruction of cultural practices as they are fed into the productivist agenda.
Those projects need to be considered as unique models that present functional example of resistance communication strategies allowing for a diversity of expressions and social media organization, they include all aspects of the community models of governance in the technological organisation providing example of decentralized software that is developed and implemented to the service of minorised population and at their conditions.
However, it feels that despite the importance of those projects they are scarcely reported or studied, there has been across time an episodic relation to international academic environment with some scarce support for their researchers; but morover, despite the importance of the projects, and how much they managed to achieve with scarce support they are mostly invisibilized and considered minor. It is crucial to recognize the existence of decentralized networks hosted in different communities working together to compose free technology at the service of human creativity and historical resistance.
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"Na presença sagrada do Baobá, que representa as nossas raízes africanas, TC chama a atenção para a importância da espiritualidade e passa a palavra à Mãe Beth de Oxum, de Olinda, para passar o axé, a força espiritual, a comunicação. Ela cantou um canto para Ossanha, acompanhada pelos tambores. Lembrou da importância da força pelas folhas, pois estamos ao redor do Baobá. Fez ainda um canto para Oxum e para Yemanjá." ↩︎
"Durante as rodas de conversas e aberturas dos dias, a relação ancestralidade e tecnologia foi aprofundada na percepção da apropriação da tecnologia como uma das ferramentas para a difusão das contribuições quilombolas e comunitárias." ↩︎
Gambiologia, the Brazilian art and science of kludging – We Make Money Not Art ↩︎
What is Free Software? - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation ↩︎
