ARTICLE: Taking back the future: a short history of singular technologies in Brazil.
Abstract:
In this article we discuss unique free software -based digital infrastructures and networks that were developed in Brazilian communities, presenting situated models of resistance. We will discuss the background of the networks and characterize their practice and infrastructure, that are largely under-studied. The analysis we pursue highlights the importance of minorized decentralized technological practices that convey integral organizational models opposing capitalist hegemony. In order to describe the intersection of these alternatives in the Brazilian context, we will mobilize a feminist epistemology looking at the transformation they propose to the understanding of the nature and practice of technology, which considers necessary principles of “intra-action” (Barad 2007) across heterogeneous socio technical spaces.
We will describe how different projects intersect, among them: Baobáxia, “a rota os Baobabs” an eventually connected network, that can exist both on the larger Internet and disconnected from it, as a local local network, which nodes are located in quilombolas communities; “Metareciclagem”a collective of Brazilian technologists promoting the “up-cycling” of discarded computing technologies and their usage for artistic expression through “Gambiarra” (“makeshift”) re-appropriations; and another political articulation of the reflection about the appropriation of digital technologies that has given rise to an international network and practices which are identified by activists and artists as “Technoshamanism.” We will also look at a new generation of feminist providers exemplified by “Rede Kefir”.
The role and place of digital activism in the Brazilian context is uniquely tied to the support of a left wing government. However, the unique examples of construction of what we have called “singular technologies”, that is: “intentional and contextual technologies, developed specifically by a community to respond to their specific context.” differ. In Brazil, they emerge from a decolonial position and cultural narrative re-appropriation, supported by a benevolent policy. This brings us in the conclusion to qualify the construction of singular technologies that stem from the need to characterize daily practice by citizen groups that deploy their successful institutional arrangements and affordances under the radar and outside the competency of traditional institutions. These concepts do not try to define any tangible essence, but rather articulate social dynamics of the studied groups. We will qualify these social dynamics as the unique relation that technological processes emerge from.
intro: take back the future
“Take back the future” is an expression that emerged from parallel conversations, documents and communications in the context of Brazilian autonomist networks. The specificity of those Brazilian projects reside in a hybrid transdisciplinary methodology they employ. We claim they are “singular technologies” we mean intentional and contextual technologiesi, they exist most coherently in decentralized technological infrastructures, they develop along different paths, their hybridization with a community or a place creates spaces of resistance. They converge with community organization to create a unique terrain for identity construction, resistance, expression, and solidarity, that contrasts with dominant perspectives. As Global Information Society reportsii, community networks worldwide is under documented and their support often conditioned to the need of bringing connectivity to remote fragile population doesn’t bring forth the agency they contribute to develop (Echániz, López, 2018).
Working from a necessary distance, this writing was led by the direct implication of one of the authors in those networks, and a long term relation of the other through independent international online groups and mailing lists that have been active for the past 10 years, which also highlights the long lasting international connection of those initiatives. We used a participatory methodology and worked through an online platform where we invited active members of the projects to comment from the beginning. The platform is open and accessible to all upon subscription iii, it reveals many of the preparatory conversations. The cross-reading of the digital archives, is also referenced along the text.
Technology usage and production is a place where oppressions intersect often resulting in technological illiteracy, augmented by the sense of a lack of legitimacy to even approach those tools. From a feminist perspective we will look at how the initiatives we discuss relate to infrastructure and technology development by referring to different existing community "knowledges"iv and from this epistemology transform the practice and the production of technology, sometimes allowing to address different layers of oppression. This approach considers necessary principles of intra-action (Barad), across the study apparatuses are conceived in situation and opening ways to understanding phenomena emerging from their agents.
The analysis we offer of important, although minorized free software projects in Brazil, is aimed at understanding the resistance spaces they have contributed to build. Our essay focuses on seizing a specific discourse of digital activism in the Brazilian context, to describe how technical alternatives emerges from an anti-colonial position and cultural narrative re-appropriation. In the light of the historical Manifesto Antropófago v , a historical Brazilian decolonial reference presenting an anthropophagist model for the reapropriation of the colonial assets by the oppressed. “Anthropofagia” signifying literally a metaphorical eating of other people’s idea: The digestion process takes some things in and discharges what is not needed; similarly, “Anthropofagia” eats occidental culture, but doesn’t keep everything that is imposed, some of the things are “shitted”. We will consider their anthropophagist organization, in which modernist practices in computer networks and technologies are absorbed and regurgitated transformed to the use of Afrobrazilian communities. Our study presents three projects: Metareciclagem that took place in a number of “Pontos da Cultura” around the country, Baobáxia referring to the afro ancestry in Brazil, and Technoshamanism (TCNXMNSM) who associates with the Pataxo community. They expand in time from the beginning of the 2000s to the present day, but to the exception of TCNXMNSM that is more recent, they were especially dynamic during the first decade of the century as government organizations supported free software and “cultura livre”. We will finally look at feminist networks who gather along with other international groups to build security knowledge and resources towards autonomous technological practice. We will describe them separately and examine how the process they put in place addresses epistemological issues from the grounds up and how this allows re-configuring of technological infrastructure proposing also institutional arrangements (Ostrom 1990) by and with the communities concerned including concepts and vocabularies.
Independent networks associate free culture, and community organization
The importance of the free software movement in Brazil has been at the core of Brazilian cultural and digital politics at the beginning of the millennium, Free software is a terminology adopted in the early 1980s, that is usually understood as “software that respects users’ freedom and community” where “the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software .”vi Free software was used throughout the public sector, and its advocates encouraged by government policies. Rafael Evangelista explains "The Brazilian free and open software movement showed to be of great efficiency if compared with other international FLOSS (Free/Libre/Open Source Software) communities: it became influential on political parties both locally and nationally"vii. Among other things it originated the Free Software International Forum (FISL) which first edition happened at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) in 2000 during the World Social Forum. This was a little bit before Luis Ignacio “Lula” da Silva presidency where he appointed in 2004 Gilberto Gil (a key figure of the Tropicalia avant-garde movement of the 60’s in Brazil), as minister of culture. It worth noting, that the systemic support free software initiative received while being crucial to their existence, and originating many important developments, can be considered negligible compare to the one received by major companies who were supported in establishing new capital accumulation strategies for the capitalist Internet economy (Fuchs 2015). Free Software was used and promoted by the federal government both as a way of accessing technological sovereignty and as distinct cultural approach, for example in the context of the program "Pontos da Cultura " aiming to “: public initiatives in remote areas that offer network access and general information to communities about digital practice, promoting a larger access to cultural initiatives from groups and communities and augmenting access to means of production”viii, the program ‘Cultura Viva’ is still supporting around 300 Pontos da Cultura around the country. Gilberto Gil famously said of himself "I am a hacker. A minister hacker."ix to signify his participation as a government member, which triggered some critics in the community. There are a few studies presenting this situation, Aaron Shaw explained that in Brazil "FLOSS agenda emerged as a result of the actions of a network of insurgent experts"x. Rafael Evangelista’s ethnographic analysis presents the participants along 4 categories characterized by their outfit: government business, activists, and developers. They both focus on the technological disputes and the relation to the industry, not explaining how inequalities are addressed nor acknowledging the overlapping of discriminatory systems that can be experienced based on sex, gender, race, ethnicity, class and other axes in an intersectional perspective. While Adrianne Paula Vieira Andrade studies of gender in the adoption of information technology, she notes a strong defense of free software by women.The previous observation is confirmed by recently published reports about feminist community networks in Brazil, by Bruna Zanolli and al where the founders of a community neighborhood feminist network explain "However, even in the free/libre and open technologies activist field, our first impression was that this space did not belong to us, as we faced a predominance of white males and only a few women working with infrastructure and free networks"x, they further explain that in their feminist initiatives free software could be imposed as a preset rather then something that could be adapted and a pathway to technological appropriation, which the feminist and community group eagerly seek for. Still, they do insist on the technology being a central concern: "we see evidence that mere access to new technology could reinforce rather than reduce inequalities. This observation seems important to break the invisibility not only of technological infrastructure, but also of the asymmetries of power that are clear from an intersectional perspective. "xi therefore they claim the necessity to have access to infrastructure technological understanding and tools that they would be able to determine.
Our analysis will further this approach by looking at grassroots initiatives that existed already along the Brazilian free software movement at the beginning of the millennium. There was a strong orientation at this time to “bridge the digital gap” and bring connectivity “everywhere”; in Brazil, the size of the territory, the number and heterogeneity of different communities, the importance and the isolation of their many “knowledges”, made for a very unique terrain to develop connectivity. The development of free software networks is supported by interconnected networks of people from the technical the political and the cultural sphere (Murillo 2010). Metareciclagem and Baobáxia also contributed to the program “Cultura Viva” with, among others, Casa de Cultura Tainã (“way of the stars” in Tupi-Guarani), a cultural center in an impoverished neighborhood of Campinas. We will be looking at the organizational choices they made, and consider their position as one of resistance, who also built on this movement focusing on bridging to communities by working with them different aesthetics and languages and governance models, addressing intersectional issues in different ways that we will unfold. Finally we will find resonances in independent feminist hosters who associate in several community projects, such as Base Commun. We hope this argument be a pledge for the capacity of grassroots initiatives, when they receive adequate support.
Baobáxia; Rooting technologies
Baobáxia is an autonomous digital network project rooted in specific concepts used by communities pertaining to a network of Q uilombos , from conversations with Baobaxia developersxii, referring to discussions they had at Casa Taina, we propose to understand Quilombos as: communities of African seized people that resisted to Portuguese and European slavery and culture. Baobáxia network allows the communities to share their media and information independently among them, across communities, and to the outside, it presents itself as: “A Network of local serversxiii, a conversation wheel with the theme Baobáxia, the Route of Baobabs.”xiv as we will explain, the network is based on a unique software specifically developed for the needs of remotely situated quilombos. Baobáxia is supported by Rede Mocambos, by the name of precarious houses that might serve as hideouts in the middle of the woods, such as quilombolas houses. The name while associating to these communities, also signifies the idea of a certain level of precariousness that the group is working with. Quilombos have been existing in continuity since the 16th century xv . Since the end of the 1980s they have undergone a redefinition, “Through the political pressure exerted by black peasants throughout Brazil, the government established explicitly that Quilombos should be defined by their being communities formed by black peasants in general, part of the present agrarian structure and contemporary society, not only by their relation to the past as runaway-descendants.” xvi Another important recognition has been the characterization of the collective and communal organization including historical self determination of the community itself (Leite 2000), meaning the ability to determine the criteria of inclusion as much as the model of governance. This was recognized under Lula’s governance, allowing to better address actual intersectional issues rather then cornering the Quilombolas in the identity of the runaway. Quilombos recognition is put at risk under current government. Baobáxia follows and takes part to the community organization of the quilombos where it is implemented, and pays attention that the distribution of capacities and access to the network is decided by the community itself and represents their chosen balance of power. Each implementation of a Mucua (server node in the network named after the fruit of the baobab) is dedicated to a community and assorted to a community-oriented workshop, presenting and sharing the technology and reflecting on its nature and its purpose through specific cultural practices.
The Mucuas are distributed all over the country extending in other South American countries, several African countries and some in Europe. A map is available on the website of rede mocambos:
Baobáxia is well documented on an online wikixvii also used as an open organizational tool for the community: hosting reports of numerous workshop events, technical meetings, funding requests, assembly minutes, etc. The decision of the implementation and its maintenance integrates traditional community organization, and is discussed along their concerns following their governance model. This archive represents well many different aspects of the project, and this account is also based on a direct involvement of one of the authors in the project. On the project’s wiki one can read for example:
“Some of the conversation themes were the Principles and Reflections on the Mocambos Network - the conversations were oriented around the name Mocambos and the technology of the drum; the form of organization of the Quilombo dos Palmares was in Mocambos, so were their houses called. Another symbolic element, the Baobab, was the center of the conversation round; the philosophy of the Baobab and the drum are central to the Mocambos Network: they are at the service of humanity, offer meaning to the world and strengthen a political commitment: never stop fighting.”
"Pajelança do dia 27 de maio e 3 de Junho de 2013 IV encontro da rede Mocambos"xviii
We will further explain the ways in which the technical choices made in Baobaxia are defined by the community organization and how the transformation of an epistemology puts in front the knowledges held by otherwise invisibilized communities.
Metarecliclagem: Gambiarra and free software
Metareciclagem network was active mostly between 2002 and 2012, it is one of the largest free software projects in Brazil, central to the governmental project of ‘Pontos de Cultura’, and was also linked to the protest movement ‘lixo electrônico’ that condemns electronic waste, it has been instantiated all over the country by local and federal institutions, and some implementations continue their existencexix.Metareciclagem was a multiple entity movement, a dynamic that has been permitted by the hard work of many people and activists, only some of them will be referenced here, more extensive research would be needed to federate all existing archive, and reconstitute the original information,xx As Daniel Pádua presents it: “Metareciclagem is a methodology, a free knowledge project network, a universal access movement, a massive game and could be also a band.:).It’s all about sharing knowledge for autonomous/communitarian reality replication/transformation.”xxi We will only look at a specific approach to repairing and reusing. Metareciclagem organized the creative up-cycling and reuse of discarded computers to the benefit of a number of citizen groups, promoting not only free software but mostly creative appropriation of electronics as “Gambiarra” and “Hyper Tropical Programação” (Fonseca, 2015). Metarecliclagem implemented computers in different local cultural and social centers and “Pontos de Cultura”, giving access to digital tools to a number of community structures, theater groups, musical studios, kids activities, etc… The approach of Metareciclagem, and “Hyper Tropical Programação” is inclusive and oriented towards fostering access and creative appropriation in the context of existing structures supported by official programs. Free software implies: first that the source code is accessible (often under a copyleft license), (individual freedom) and that the user is able or has access to someone who can understand the program (collective freedom). In the same movement free software is also approached as a liberation tool, and cultural production is also at stake, Aymeric Mansouxxxii, grounds the principles of free culture in the experience of Metareciclagem, encompassing technical aspects, cultural and political positioning, that have been addressed in different manners by the project.
Tecnoxamanismo (TCNXMNSM)
TCNXMNSM positions itself in resistance, it is dystopian and pessimistic, yet entropic as it resonates creating noise in this dystopian future, aiming at taking back the future. TCNXMNSM network builds from existing projects targeted towards autonomy but considering autonomy as a pathway, a process that never really completes, since everything is always connected. “Technoshamanism is neither the beginning nor the end, it is a medium.” xxiii TCNXMNSM is a space of articulation, a network (Borges 2017). Also TCNXMNSM pushes further appropriation practices by developing a clinic, entering the sphere of healing and addressing notion of subjectivity, creating an immersive process for mental health and conviviality. Fabi Borges the main organizer of TCNXMNSM explains that this process is also relevant to the free culture practice, in the sense that it federates a collective process in the formulation of communication models aiming at subjective reconfiguration. In this prospect TCNXMNSM organizes rituals liberating “networks of unconscious, with the free cosmologies and free cosmogonies, with the communities of the specters (or entities that we have constituted to help us make new mythologies – or mythologies – an imaginary recycling).” This is central to TCNXMNSM who enters the practice of technology by integrating communication practices from other spheres of knowledge, including dream. This re-appropriation process liberates subjectivities trapped in “capitalist ontologies” as it fosters “shamanic ontologies” that make accessible other modalities of being together, activated by artistic practices. In addition their propositions aim at productions, performance, audiovisual, cinema, installation, etc. TCNXMNSM is the network with the most international connections, that claims its international existence by performances happening during a variety of artistic events in Europe, were some members are living. In Brazil TCNXMNSM is working in relation with the Pataxó community, a Tupi Guarani community settled in Bahia, and through activating their European Network they have been crowd funding a health center in 2019.xxiv
All three projects are related, as they are intertwined to a specific moment of Brazilian history where support was given to free software and multidimensional cultural projects. While they expand on a timeline from the end of the 90’s to today, they continue despite the difficulties provoked by actual political conditions in Brazil.
Feminists Servers:
During the encontrADA meetings that hapened from 2013 on in Nuvem - Estaçao rural de arte e tecnologia (Visconde de Mauá-RJ), feminist server organizations gathered resources and methodologies about feminists technologies. They explain: "One of the definitions of feminist technology is the application of knowledge from science to support the feminist cause, and this knowledge is developed and maintained by women who challenge the status of the normative patriarchal system, proposing new ways to politicize the debate on technology and its uses."xxv
They exemplified feminists networks along principles such as: “consent and intimacy”: relating privacy issues to acknowledgement and consent , “situated knowledge and memory” : the networks develops within a community it bears its memory, “seeded connectedness”: autonomous networks that deploy their conditions of existence with the community and outside from the Internet to which they can still connect, “autonomous decision making”: implementation and organization decisions are taken from the grounds up involving the community in the technical process. Fuxico "an autonomous mobile device of exchange and collaboration, made to connect people present in the same physical space. Fuxico creates a wireless network outside the Internet to exchange digital content such as images, videos, audios, documents, chat room and chat wheels."xxvi was built on feminist network premises.
As Nadège from rede Kefirxxvii explains, the workshops at encontADA focused on the energy rather than the critic and they contributed to build an important base of resources and technological knowledge built by and for feminists. They also were hands on in a hacklab were they experienced error starting their projects “from the stuff that does not work”. She also illustrated eloquently the website of redes autonomas feministas presenting the intrication between technology and situated community.
The feminist server Vedetasxxviii and rede Kefir were central to this process that started at AWID 2017 xxix meeting, the group also gathered also during other international events, such as IFF. Already in 2017 the cultural support in Brazil was threatened to by the government crisis and these movements contrary to the preceding ones have been supported by US grants. Rede Kefir is now in a transformation process, and they are migrating their data, thinking the process of “transitioning an infrastructure” explains Nadège.
Diffraction and resonances
Making for a very notable start, all 3 projects claim to be networks “redes” rather than software or localized community projects,for example Fabi Borges explains: " TCNXMNSM is a network, it does not develop specific projects but builds from existing projects, Baobáxia is one of them. But TCNXMNSM 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, 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.” TCNXMNSM is a space of articulation, a network.xxx
These singular technologies put in question existing approach to computing from its ontologies, while situating themselves within the free culture movement, understanding it not only as produced under a specific copyleft license, but literally as liberated culture Mansoux (2015), to produce resonances within actual capitalist society.
These projects develop in a culture of resistance manifesting itself through language, cultural appropriation, spiritual quest and a necessity for independent infrastructure. Baobaxia engages Quilombolas, Metareciclagem remote rural cultural centers TCNXMNSM shamanic knowledges and Kefir feminist methodology to co-construct the technology, they redistribute the responsibility to different agencies. As we acknowledge their history we also intra-act recognizing the specificity of actions coming from spaces where oppressions intersect. We will observe how they successfully put in practice taking back the future by “rooting technology” a double-entendre: first, “rooting” as in growing roots, with reference to locality ; then, “rooting” as in the hacker jargon for gaining privileged access (superuser, or root ) to a system. Re-appropriation of technological production, meets the acknowledgement of ancient history. Across all three projects we will look at two specific angles:
First, we will emphasize semantic appropriation through a dedicated language . Baobáxia, TCNXMNSM, and Metareciclagem each have developed a language they deem more appropriate because it fits better their conception of communication. This can be understood as an important process of absorption allowing for different models of expression in the digital space.
Further on we will examine how they build coherence and intra-act in the technology itself, it is the essential meaning of taking back the future . Associating technology to community and ancestral “knowledges” results in the development of specific decentralized infrastructure, developed with dedicated free software .
Language as a process of absorption
Singular technologies such as the ones presented here share modalities that differ both in their organization and coding language. As N. Katherine Hayles has described it: “Language alone is no longer the distinctive characteristic of technologically developed societies; rather it is language plus code” (Hayles 2010), for what she calls this: regimes of computation. Language analysis and critique, Hayles suggests, needs to situate technology in the different ways that it materializes. The necessity to reformulate contextual interaction has been addressed by feminists who explain that some parts of society, have been excluded from discourse by simply underusing or devaluating their vocabulary, denying the epistemic authority of these communities. As a response, Singular Technologies in Brazil, have developed unique networks, reorganizing its functions, and through a differentiated formulation of key concepts, renaming them and the elements of the network. While this practice towards technology is frequent in creative practices, because technology development is dominated, it is rarely the case that less privileged groups have the possibility of imprinting their semantics in its construction, as most often technological concepts are imposed from a dominant culture without consultation of the others.
As Hayles explores the impact of code on everyday life, she argues that language and code have grown more entangled, the lines that once separated humans from machines, analog from digital, and old technologies from new ones have become blurred; this is concomitant to different forms of colonization of everyday life led by major telecommunication companies. Singular Technologies engage in activating different starting points using their own sets of references, language is a specific part of those many aspects, as well as other forms of cultural significance such as time place/localization. Challenging the necessity of the expert to deal with technology, projects such as Baobáxia and Metareciclagem operate through situated modes. They work towards opening the technology construction, decisional and semantic elements come from principles that are shared among to those who relate to the them. They also significantly rename concepts and tools, transforming the relation to technology in a community-centered process. In this prospect, Fabi Borges suggests the practice of “Ancestrofuturismo” (Borges 2016): she explains that it consists in bridging the timeline from ancestral “knowledges” and technologies of communication, such as shamanism, to actual technological practice. In order to reach her purpose she looks for entropic interference s and noise that recombine themselves to bring forth “shamanic ontology” to technological production rather than, what she calls, a “capitalist ontology”. She explains “it is entropic because it inhabits this paradoxical set of forces and maintains an improbable noise – its perpetual noisecracy, its state of disorganization and insecurity is continuous and is constantly recombining itself.” (Borges, 2016) She brings this recombination of language to the larger scope of concepts, and ontologies, affirming a resistance across time and places, in a hybrid process that inhabits many spaces.
While American corporations are taking over the digital economy, digital colonialism (Kwet, 2019), all those projects are active in decolonizing language, a process that runs in parallel to decolonization of technology, characterized by the use of free software and decentralized infrastructure. Keeping the infrastructure in local hands they prevents those corporation build infrastructure according to their need (Kwet, 2019). Both processes are complementary, constitutive and intrinsic to the project, such a thorough endeavor cannot be justified by the sole necessity to respond to a lack of infrastructure, or a specific situation of some isolated communities. On the contrary, the presented projects are born from an attempt to remodel technology, encompassing needs and “knowledges” of communities and to develop hybrid infrastructures whose institutional arrangements differ from existing organization of centralized networks. As mentioned, Baobáxia’s developers have taken great care in renaming all the elements of the technical infrastructure composing a digital network, this renaming is essential to the structure of the project, it is based on a language that refers to the organization of Quilombos . Those words, baobab , mucua , tambor , etc. function as building blocks in the service of their resistance carried over centuries. While the implementation of Pontos da Cultura in Brazil has sometimes been criticized for bringing the “worst of the Internet”, by allowing the penetration of commercial companies in otherwise remote places (Foster 2008), the approach those three networks took is opposite, developing dedicated tools and governance systems responding to the exchanges with communities. Baobáxia associates directly to local processes of governance by including the issues about the governance of the network in the community assemblies, as documented in the reports available on the Baobáxia wiki, Metarecliclagem, along similar lines, articulates for the re-appropriation of technology, as presented in video documentation presenting the creative and educational processes as a primary motivation, and motor for “Gambiarra” xxxi “Gambiarra” meaning “makeshift”, solving problems creatively in alternative way with low cost and spontaneity, or giving unusual functions to everyday life objects. To Metareciclagem not only does it implies repairing and enhancing machines, but doing so thanks to collective effort, invention and creativity. These Singular Technologies are organized along institutional arrangements that brings together collective and community organization and public funding. They are at different degrees formulated in collaboration with the persons who use and them and are paired to dedicated coaching in the different locations. To the difference of Baobáxia, Metareciclagem, while being implemented in remote rural communities, is directly implemented in publicly funded ‘’ Pontos da Cultura" following their organization and governance. The the choice of the term “Gambiarra” is an attempt to valorize otherwise dismissed culture and give a sense of accessibility to technology by adding intimate and personal value. Most importantly this process is integrated in a social and community organization as an upcycling makeshift, also translated as kludge or hack, understood as the possibility to intervene in a technology, gambiarra similarly reclaims the technological processes in the Brazilian cultural environment. The term “Gambiarra” is largely used and in several professional areas such as programming, electronics, cinema, theater, plastic arts, architecture, design, the practice, but countering the often pejorative use of it, Metareciclagen appropriates it in a attempt to address the intersectional oppressions that strain the relation to the computer and bring forward possibilities in favor of the less technologically proficient people, across the social spectrum, through their implementation in both urban and remote social centers. Gambiarra creates a space of familiarity with the object, when the precious technical object becomes something made out of recycled parts, nicely decorated, losing its features of dominance and making space for creative use, and what Felipe Fonseca names “Hypertropical Programação” (Fonseca, 2015). In those projects, decolonization of language functions there as performative utterances, they are speech acts (Austin, 1962). They embed a different relation to technology countering the fact that important specific concepts pertaining to the domain of communication are not represented, therefore rendered difficult to use.
Significant areas of social experience are obscured from collective understanding of technology, such as ancestral indigenous conceptions of communication, social organization and consciousness. In addition, the dialogue with feminist scientists such as Karen Barad can be readily established: while these projects value the relational understanding of communication presented in indigenous communities TCNXMNSM is particularly clear in stating as a ground fact that shamanism is a communication technology. When she explains Ancestrofuturismo, Fabi Borges argues that indigenous “knowledges” have been ripped out, "there has been a violent destruction of ancestral knowledge and technologies to leave space for science following monotheist principles."xxxii. By re-affirming Ancestrofuturismo, Fabi Borges formulates a diffracting relation (Barad 2007), to re signify histories of technology on other terrains, allowing for an intra-action that modulates ancestrofuturistic relations based on ancestral “knowledges” and contemporary technologies. Ancestrofuturismo breaks the sense of continuity, (re)configures the relation to space and time and develops other modalities, it asks us to think with and through dis-continuity (Barad 2007). This approach diffracts across the spectrum of time and space, and therefore allows to reconfigure the scenes, from a large set of perspectives, read them through one another, and thread through one another. “Faced with this, techno + shamanism is an articulation which tries to consider historical trauma, these lost yet not annihilated leftovers, and to recover (and reinvent) points of connection between technology and wasted ontologies,” (Borges 2016). They are concerned by cultural processes based on a form of re-appropriation very true to “Anthropofagia”, TCNXSMN also activates different resistance models, producing diffracting and decentralized intra-actions, as it revises current concepts and organizes technologies that can better serve resistances and reconfigure their capacity through the use of ancestral language, and communication practices in dedicated decentralized networks. Tecnoxamanism network gather some people around Brazil and Europe. Currently there are seven people, mostly women (São Paulo 3; Bahia 1; F̷̪̤̋ṟ̵͙̾͗a̷̛̩̎n̴͙͙̿́c̸̙͙̈e̵̪͒ 2; Spain 1) in constant communication about a project in the Pataxó community (Bahia).
All projects expose immense possibilities of underused technologies, transform usage of standard tools, and eventually associate technological build up to a ritualized event. The development is also accordance, based on decentralized technological infrastructure. This 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). Each hosting place, person or community organizes and determines the condition of usage of specific instance of the software, sometimes formulating clear criteria, and governance. Decentralization as we will explain it, is very coherent with both free software and community organization, inducing a political and community organization. Those projects conceive decentralization as a premise, 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 Internet monopolies. In what follows, we will analyze the technical choices and their entanglement to historical modalities of resistance, community organization and models of decision making. And conclude with the examination how singular technologies opens the way for to technological processes countering populist strategies.
Decentralizing technology for collective organization.
Decentralized computing can be simply defined as the allocation of resources, both hardware and software, to various location. However this model has many implications, from a technical point of view, it is considered the 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, its implementation is not as straightforward, many issues arise including access to the network, and availability of technical knowledge. We will address how the possibility of autonomy that resides in the technology made more concrete when activated by the community practices cultivated for centuries in networks of resistance among quilombolas (residents of Q uilombos ), allow to organize a decolonial network that is true to the community culture and model of organization co-create the Internet (Echániz, López, 2018).
While decentralization has been a major digital trend, it is only recently discussed as a possibility for a structural reorganization of decision making processes, 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. This debate is not only technical, but cultural and political. Decentralized infrastructures, must also imply a distributed system of decision-making alongside with the distribution of according accountability and responsibility. A diversity of identities and models of governance can happen, and the modalities of a decentralized network organization are also characterized by technical features. A decentralized network needs a determined protocol to organize the communication between nodes, and clear modalities by which exchange is made possible. Practically, the organization can happen along two major different types of protocols, peer-to-peer or federated that make for two different network architectures. 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 acting as clients.
TCNXMNSM, Metareciclagem, and Baobáxia have experienced decentralization technologies in different modalities, using decentralized servers, mesh networks, eventually connected networksxxxiii , using both peer-to-peer and federated protocols. 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 widely used software, essential for developers to work together, as it allows to deal with version control in large distributed 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 Q uilombos , where access to network and electricity might be scarce. Using Git as a basis permits that users locally upload media to the “mucuas” without needing Internet connectivity; so when connection is re-established, they can share with the rest of the Baobáxia network. This is responding to the needs of remotely situated Quilombos in rural parts of Brazil.
Metareciclagem has been very forward thinking under the impulse of Daniel Pádua in discussing possible infrastructure for autonomous networks using recycled technologies, their reflections happened on mailing list conversations and are articulated and documented on developers community organization tools, wiki, and Git hub issues.xxxiv
In the Baobáxia methodology, congruence between accurate physicality of the encounter and accurate construction of the digital archive and distributed social network is promoted. This translates into the project being discussed during encounters/ palejança (rituals) that follow the models of governance and organization of the communities themselves. From the Baobáxia archives stored on the wiki, we see that technical workshops were organized among other topics, the reports describe as much the ritual as the technical processes, all participants are called by the name used and function within the 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."xxxv
While the workshops transmit important technical knowledge about how to implement, use and maintain a Mucua , Baobáxia engages quilombolas in a reflection about their relations to communication and technology, in collaboration with local social centers, such as Casa Tainã , also part of Rede Mocambos. Their model relates to the history of Quilombos where preserving culture and organizing life has been done for centuries hiding away from the oppressor. Indeed, the relation to visibility and invisibility is crucial to the history of Q uilombos , 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 centuries old resistance strategy.
Those rituals also focus on 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 integrity. This demonstrates how the attention is put to build and deploy a technology that converges with all existing reflections in the community, being attuned not only with existing models of community organization, but also with political claims. All reports are archived on the organization’s wiki, would they be about governance issues or reflecting 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."xxxvi
Transformative practices and affirmative resistance happens in contexts where an active choice to prevent decentralization is exercised, as the Baobáxia sits at the fringes of mainstream technological model, free cycling its hardware components with an approach to gambiarra for creating autonomous technology, organizing dedicated decision making processes through workshops happening in each of the different nodes of the network, defining its own network and proposing unique community produced media. Complete autonomy does not exist, however, even less in technological of media practices, affordances are modeled after occidental approaches to computing, it exists, rather, in the process of active resistance of the Q uilombos , the millennial culture of indigenous people, and of other people involved, who despite minorization is re signified for developing singular technologies.
Conclusion
What does taking back the future means, in the context of Brazilian minorized networks? In this essay we started from the intuition that a specific situation in Brazil at the beginning of the millennium and the appropriation of technologies by communities of resistance, offered a different vantage with respect to the problem of computing in/of/and from the South. We observed cases that allowed for the development of singular technologies that emerge from the appropriation of technologies by communities of resistance. We suggested that those are important examples that engage both language and technology in processes of reconstruction, in coherence with existing creative or historical community organization. The 3 networks we chose to present, Metareciclagem, TCNXMNSM and Baobáxia, address from different scopes technology as compounding to liberation and organize their networks in correspondence with the modalities of their research and their communities. Technology is understood in a broader scope, and the initiatives they undertake enable different form of practices to organize .
Each project presented here deploys its own understanding of technology, envisioning different types of functionalities, scopes of application, and social relations, associating the notion of freedom fundamental to free software, insisting on building technologies of liberation. We have described different approaches, from deploying constitutive language to singular networking technologies that comply with resistance models and community conditions, for example the lack of effective network connection. Furthermore the presented projects take a holistic approach, thinking historical relation to communication, epistemology and technology in relation to the new emergence of ICT. These networks have been conceived and practiced as foundations to serve resistances and their models of organization. This diffracting allows to examine histories and situations, it is the first necessary step to embrace the full scope of the technology situation from a history of domination.
Those projects are models that present functional examples of resistance communication strategies, allowing for a diversity of expressions and social media organization, they include all aspects of community models of governance in the technological organization providing examples of decentralized software that are developed and implemented to the service of minorized population and under their conditions.
Despite the importance of these projects they are hardly reported or studied, yet they manage to achieve autonomous modes of organization that are mostly invisibilized and considered minor despite their relevance. It is crucial to recognize the existence of their decentralized networks that compose free technologies at the service of human creativity and historical resistance, in various political locations.
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iiiComputing in/from the south call for papers
iv"knowledges"; is used here as a reference to Dona Haraway, “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective” Feminist Studies, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Autumn, 1988), pp. 575-599
vOswald de Andrae, Manifesto Antropófago, Em Piratininga, Ano 374 da Deglutição do Bispo Sardinha, (Revista de Antropofagia, Ano I, No. I, maio de 1928.) http://www.ufrgs.br/cdrom/oandrade/oandrade.pdf
viWhat is Free Software? - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation
viiEvangelista, R. (2014)
viii"valorizar las iniciativas culturales de grupos y comunidades, ampliando el acceso a los medios de producción," source: http://www.brasildamudanca.com.br/es/cultura/puntos-de-cultura last checked March 8th 2019
ix"Sou hacker, Um ministro hacker"Interview published on june 16th 2008 by the national journal Estadao https://www.estadao.com.br/noticias/geral,sou-hacker-um-ministro-hacker,1853
xShaw, A. (2011).
xiibid
xiiArchived here: Computing in/from the south call for papers - #18 by befree
xiiiA server is a technical term to designate the device (or program) that provides functionalities for programs to function on another computer.
xivUma Rede de Servidores Locais - a roda de conversa com o tema Baobáxia na Rota dos Baobás" NPDD/Baobáxia - Rede Mocambos (last seen 07/02/2019)
xvQuilombo dos Palmares located in the captaincy of Pernambuco hosted over 10 000 people. It was ruled as a kingdom according to Angolan tradition. It existed from 1605 until its suppression in 1694 after 15 years of war led by king Zumbi.
xviSource: De La Torre, Oscar (2013) “Are They Really Quilombos?” Black Peasants, Politics, and the Meaning of Quilombo in Present-Day Brazil. University of North Carolina at Charlotte. OFO: Journal of Transatlantic Studies VOL. 3, Nos. 1 & 2, p.10
xviiA Wiki is a collaborative editing software that permits to redact, edit and display information for all to share online, an example is Wikipedia wich uses Wikimedia as an engine, and there are many others.
xviii"Alguns dos temas das rodas de conversa foram os Princípios e Reflexões sobre a Rede Mocambos - neste momento as falas foram orientadas em torno do nome Mocambos e da tecnologia do tambor; a forma de organização do Quilombo dos Palmares era em Mocambos, assim chamavam suas moradias. Outro elemento simbólico, o Baobá, esteve no meio da roda; a filosofia do Baobá e do tambor são centrais na Rede Mocambos: estão a serviço da humanidade, oferecem sentido ao mundo e fortalecem um compromisso político: nunca mais deixar de lutar" Introduction to the Pajelança Quilombólica Digital, Territorios Digitais Livres - Materia da TVB - Record (Abril 2015) referenced on https://wiki.mocambos.net/index.php/NPDD/ Baobaxìa (last seen 27/02/2019)
xixhttps://agencia.sorocaba.sp.gov.br/metareciclagem-reaproveita-lixo-eletronico-e-monta-computadores/
xxMetareciclagem wiki hosts a lot of information https://metareciclagem.github.io/ As we are writing the last editions to this article, it seems is slowly back online after a major crash but it was not available when we did the research for this article, we missed it a lot.
xxihttps://br.linkedin.com/in/dpadua
xxiiAymeric Mansoux, “Sandbox Culture, A Study of the Application of Free and Open Source Software Licensing Ideas to Art and Cultural Production”, 2017 available https://www.bleu255.com/~aymeric/dump/aymeric_mansoux-sandbox_culture_phd_thesis-2017.pdf
xxiiiFabiane Borges Futuros sequestrados x o antisequestro dos sonhos in Desterros, teirreros pós cadernos 02 coletâneas, Rio de janeiro 2017 ISBN: 978 8595820128 http://editoracircuito.com.br/website/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/desterros.pdf
xxivhttps://tecnoxamanismo.wordpress.com. The network is doing encounters in Brazil and Europe and currently raising resources for building a Pataxó health center in Bahia.
xxv “Uma das definições de tecnologia feminista é a aplicação de conhecimentos da ciência para apoiar a causa feminista, sendo que esses conhecimentos são desenvolvidos e mantidos por mulheres que desafiam o status do sistema patriarcal normativo, propondo novas formas de politizar o debate sobre tecnologia e seus usos.” source: http://redeautonomafeminista.org/index.html
xxvi “É um dispositivo móvel autônomo de troca e colaboração, feita para conectar pessoas presentes em um mesmo espaço físico. A Fuxico cria uma rede sem fio fora da internet para troca de conteúdos digitais como imagens, vídeos, áudios,documentos, sala de bate-papo e Rodas de conversa. Totalmente anônima!” source http://redeautonomafeminista.org/fuxico/#sobre
xxvii Kefir red is a latin american feminist server https://kefir.red/
xxviii Vedetas is a Brazilian feminist network https://vedetas.org
xxix AWID is a global feminist network whose administrative offices are in Canada
xxxSource: Em Rede – Fabiane M. Borges: Tecnoxamanismo como meio de recuperar (e reinventar) pontos de conexão entre tecnologia e ontologias diversas | Em Rede (last seen 07/01/2019)
xxxihttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLZhWpskek4 (last seen 07/02/2019) Gambiologia, the Brazilian art and science of kludging – We Make Money Not Art
xxxiiSource: Em Rede – Fabiane M. Borges: Tecnoxamanismo como meio de recuperar (e reinventar) pontos de conexão entre tecnologia e ontologias diversas | Em Rede (last seen 07/01/2019)
xxxiiiVincenzo Tozzi, Redes federadas eventualmente conectadas 2011, https://baobaxia.mocambos.net/media/mocambos/kalakuta/arquivo/16/01/11/redes-federadas-eventualmente-conectadas-3ba96.pdf (last seen 14/03/2019)
xxxivOs primórdios da MetaReciclagem | Mutirão da Gambiarra
xxxvNa 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.
xxxviDurante 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
