In a world in which knowledge, technological reflection and technology itself have been conceived and constructed within rationalist, western, white, male frameworks, it is urgent that we reconnect with technology from our affections and affinities, our caregiving and the values that sustain us, to create other possible futures; futures that are dignified and techno-diverse.
Technoaffections is a project that reconsiders technology from a feminist, decolonial, situated perspective, one which supports thought and action about our relationship to technology through a theory and content that present the visions of affected communities, along with methodological proposals for workshops and an online campaign aimed at the broader public.
The project is intended to give people an opportunity to rethink our affective relationship with technology: our ways of doing, the ties that enable or disable, the proximate and distant impacts. We want to activate our capacity for collective creation, our possibilities for political articulation, revive our collective ways of doing together, through reconnection and affection; act on our desire for recognition as a community and as a possibility, our commitment to assuming responsibility as collective action. We want to explicitly state our intent to generate desired impacts and our potential to transform worlds. Our aspiration to build a dignified and just future for all.
Technoaffections. Actions to (re) connect and transform technologies
WHAT IS YOUR MOBILE PHONE MADE OF?
More and more, we use technological devices; for example, in 2016, smartphone sales reached 1.500 million worldwide (according to FMI statistics), 5% more than the previous year.
Perhaps we've given some thought about where devices end up after their disposal and maybe even how they're produced (beyond labor conditions of workers, mainly from China, India, and other Southeast Asian countries). However, the initial phase of a device's lifecycle tends to be more obscure.
Smartphones manufacturing is one of the most resource-intensive products in the world. Each phone is made up of more than 200 minerals, 80 chemical elements, and over 300 alloys and types of plastic, which necessarily implies extracting these materials, to a great extent, from the Larger World. This and other technological products are based on the exploitation of commons like lithium, copper, tin, cobalt, nickel, coltan, gold, and silver, which translates into a huge impact. The expansion of the extractivist model and the so-called energy transition led to a lithium boom throughout Latin America. For every tonne of lithium extracted industrially, around two million litres of water evaporate.
We often hear news about the data extractivism that is inherent to the business model of the large digital platforms. But we know very little about the “other” extractivisms found throughout their chain of production. The assumption behind the production of these technologies, from their very design, is that the world has infinite resources, when in truth we live in a world of finite resources.
Uruguayan Eduardo Gudynas considers that one of the main figures in this (neo)extractivist model is the state, which "plays a more active role, and achieves greater legitimacy through the redistribution of some of the profits by means of social policies". Neo-extractivism refers rather than to a specific activity to a type of extraction: all those activities that remove large volumes of natural goods and (almost) without any process are moved far from the area of origin. Mining, oil, gas, dams, monocultures (cereal or forestry), agro-industry, intensive livestock or fishing, information, etc. fall into this category. Mining is the one that can deplete the largest amount of non-renewable resources in the shortest time.
These extractive policies do not consider local communities and ecosystems, causing environmental devastation, deforestation, contamination, violence and land dispossession.
EXTRACTIVE TECHNOLOGY
Minerals are part of our daily lives, without them, life as we know it wouldn't be possible. However, the implications and consequences of exploitative extractive capitalism and its large-scale production are unsustainable. In terms of megaprojects, mining has the most severe impact at an environmental and human level. It simply can be 'sustainable', 'green', or 'socially responsible'.
Extractive models don't feed local economy, they resort to precarious working conditions and cheap labor while the transnational corporations that implement projects fill their pockets (and not always with transparency). To that effect, they are known for legalizing territorial and patrimonial dispossession wherever they set foot; promoting local community disarticulation; contaminating water, land, and air, affecting people's health: skin and eye diseases, and even severe chronic health conditions. Human rights violations are constant and systematic.
This is already a moment in which no proposal that does not place the sustainability of the reproduction of life at the centre is incompatible with an idea of the 'future'. And the consumer system in which we live does nothing more than externalise liabilities (environmental, human, cultural) while it talks in fine rhetoric about how it will face a civilisational crisis without changing one iota its forms of production, transport and consumption at the cost of exploitation.
These statements also include the big technology corporations basing their business model (one of the most profitable worldwide at present) on the lack of transparency about their use and waste of raw materials, for example.
The climate discussion owes societies enormous debts by focusing on discussions around what environmental groups call 'false solutions to climate change'. Actions that propose small changes to change essentially nothing. This is the trend that tech companies are jumping on with their green talk and zero carbon emissions: payment for environmental services, for example, could be summed up as continuing to consume at the current rate while those who have historically accumulated capital pay other people and groups in places far from the centres of power to clean up the waste that they will not stop emitting.
In consequence, wherever extractivist projects establish, resistance rises with strength.
RESISTANCE AND TERRITORY/LAND DEFENSE
When we look at the economy of materials we find a linear system. Raw materials are harvested and extracted, transformed, transported, assembled, transported again, consumed, transported yet again and finally disposed of as waste. And in each of these stages the variable of “people” is not factored into the equations.
In the short term, one of the big problems of mining is waste rock. To get to the place where there is a "profitable concentration" of the metals you want to extract, you have to get rid of what is above. All that rock that we used to see as mountains and "no good" will now be transformed into mountains of waste that will leak heavy metals stored in them into the air, water and soils. These wastes cause acid drainage, a contamination that can last for, without hyperbole, thousands of years. The Iron Mountain mine in California closed in 1963 but will continue to pollute the Sacramento River with acid drainage for another 3,000 years.
This model impacts the lifestyle of many communities and threatens nature. Organizations, collectives, communities, and entire regions articulate their organization and resistance on their land and rise against projects of so-called "progress" and "development". They claim that "to defend this territory is to defend life; to defend the land of their ancestors is to protect their culture and the preservation of their communities and people." (Mexico, 2017)
However, we live in a world of finite resources, of cycles and not linear systems, with people involved in every tiny aspect of these chains of production. Moreover, in these systems some people are heard more than others, while the web of public policies and economic diplomacy favours corporations over local populations.
Those who participate in the resistance against these megaprojects organize a variety of actions to create awareness of the issues they face and to defend ways of worthy and dignified living. They participate in local and regional gatherings to share knowledge and experience; they carry out impact studies, legal reports, and complaints; they visit areas damaged by mining and expose exploitation sites; they create public statements, direct action, and resources about land defense and raise awareness on social, cultural and environmental impact.
They also organize against the criminalization and repression exerted by the police and paramilitary and military forces that increasingly responds to the interests of corporate power.
Technoaffections. Actions to (re)connect and transform technologies
WHO'S BEHIND TECHNOLOGY?
The so-called technology development supply chain is a complex network of intertwined procedures and mechanisms that produce and distribute devices and materials that enable connectivity.
A supply chain commonly consists of three components: supply, manufacture, and distribution. The sourcing phase covers all the required elements for manufacture, such as extracting raw materials. Secondly, these raw materials are transformed into components and assembled to produce the products we use. Lastly, distribution gives us access to these products. Supply chains involve global networks of production, transportation, and storage: no technological product can be produced in a single country.
Additionally, once digital technology devices "come to life", other processes roll in like software development and server maintenance. And then there's a whole universe of "ghost work" in platform economies that we rarely acknowledge, ranging from content moderation to jobs that fuel the AI industry, like labeling data for machine learning. And there are many, many intermediary groups.
All of this is possible thanks to humans, actual people that work. It seems obvious. What isn't so obvious is that no company guarantees a supply chain under fair labor conditions. Instead, they exploit workers, the vast majority from the Global South.
But the industry twists the narrative completely and presents us with advanced and luring technology that hides the ways, the sources, and the people that produce them. So, the more we know about the variety of supply chains involved in technological production and data economy, the better we can identify our capacity for taking action and putting forward fair alternatives.
IN THE BELLY OF TECHNOLOGY
People involved in technology labor can be affected in different ways. The extraction of minerals and metals causes chronic respiratory diseases, pneumoconiosis, and lung cancer. The four essential minerals in technology development: coltan, an electric conductive favorite; tin, used to solder circuits; tungsten, which allows mobiles to vibrate; and gold, used to cover wiring, are so-called 'blood minerals' because they are often mined in conflict zones in the Global South.
People that work in 'maquilas' (factories that are largely duty-free and tariff-free) experience physical trauma in their hands and wrists and are exposed to chemical poisoning and bronchial irritation caused by lead and tin-based solder fumes. 'Maquila' companies usually hire young women (between 15 and 25) to reduce salary costs. Also because they perform tasks with precision, repetitiveness, and great agility. However, after a few years, women workers lose vision and get joint and back pain from working long hours on their feet, often at night and early morning, without rest and even with restrictions to go the bathroom.
In content moderation, the most common affectations are linked to post-traumatic stress, reduced neuronal activity, and loss of social and family ties. In 2020, Facebook agreed to pay $52 million to US-based content moderators who suffered from post-traumatic stress. But what happens to Filipino workers that perform the same exact labor?
These precarious working conditions exacerbate structural inequities. As long as companies pile up enormous profits, workers can't reach a dignified life.
The wealth gap is part of the hegemonic technological development model. Apple's profit margin is known to mount up to at least 64%. In Apple's factories, there are 94 production lines and approximately 400 steps to assemble an iPhone, including grinding, welding, drilling, and adjusting screws. A facility can produce 500,000 phones per day, approximately 350 per minute. In Asian supplier factories, some of these activities are carried out illegally by students with 11-hour shifts.
Regarding the salary gap, back in 2014, on average, executives earned USD 16,200 per month, while excavators in the Congo earned between $10 and $50 per week. Around 40,000 children work in mines of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and it would take them 700,000 years to earn what Jeff Bezos earns in one day.
In terms of gender, a study by the Project Management Institute (PMI) shows that the gap is increasing. Male project managers outnumber women by a difference of 58%. Additionally, women earn around 20% less than men for the same work.
RESISTANCE AND ACTION FOR DIGNIFIED LABOR
Because technological production unfolds at a transnational scale and many companies operate overseas, issues regarding the dignity of labor reflect on different dimensions and involve an array of local and global actors. One of the main areas of action led by related movement building and resistance is to enable access to labor rights that guarantee dignified and fair conditions, as well as alternative economic models. Efforts include establishing unions that defend workers and co-op rights as an alternative economic model. As well as initiatives that promote laws that demand companies meet labor commitments. Fundamentally, movement building is a force to reckon with wherever we go.
The
Coalition of Former Workers of the National Electronic Industry (CETIEN) is a collective based in Jalisco, Mexico, and the northern border of the country. In addition to fighting for "dignified and stable work," for years they have denounced the effects of the technology industry on health and the environment. They organize action to research, promote and defend their human rights through training opportunities that include health care, despite the industry's negligence to guarantee them. This organization promotes coordination with community organizations dedicated to territorial and land defense.
The
Argentine Federation of Technology, Innovation and Knowledge Work Cooperatives (FACTTIC) is made up of 28 technological cooperatives across the country working together to strengthen its members and disseminate this vision of work and technology. They broadly name this understanding through fostering bonds, relationships, and mutual help that, not only addresses organizational and economic aspects but conflict resolution. For FACTTIC "cooperatives are democratic companies that are invested in the development of the community in which they live".
In many countries, laws have been passed that allow platform workers to be effectively considered as workers, that is, entitled to compensation, vacations, and other benefits. For example, in Mexico, a
legal proposal was made requiring platform companies to become accountable for accidents and/or even mortal incidents regarding their workers. It also addresses legal entities that operate, manage, and/or use computer applications or platforms and requires them to consider the people that work for them as actual employees.
These are just a few examples that show how political and economic organization and platform labor regulation are essential for workers to achieve decent labor condition.
Technoaffections. Actions to (re)connect and transform technologies
CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON INTERNET INFRASTRUCTURES
According to Larkin (2013), “infrastructures are built networks that facilitate the flow of goods, people, or ideas and allow for their exchange over space.” In our day-to-day experience with the internet, we seldom think about the infrastructures that make it possible. Infrastructures are not just the material underpinning of the internet. They have a political, epistemological, ethical, cultural, economic and social dimension. Therefore, they have social effects, and have been conceived around a specific worldview.
The physical infrastructures of the internet are comprised of cables and satellites, antennas and web servers. There are also content distribution networks (CDN), database servers, modems, routers, storage devices, extenders, controllers, water pipes, fans, sprinklers, generators. Some of these elements can be found in what are called datacenters, server farms, or, colloquially, “the cloud.” But by now you’ve undoubtedly heard that there is very little that is immaterial or ethereal about the cloud, and that it is a fairly centralized space.
Data infrastructures also have a complex framing. A data center can have various purposes. Some sections of this framing may made up of local operators, internet service providers or small data centers. We might find regional operators and mid-sized data centers. There are also international data centers like network access points, national operators and large data centers.
In fact, the backbone of the internet consists of what are called network router trunks, which are the main paths for data between networks of strategically connected computer networks and central routers. They are often composed of multiple fiber optic cables, and most of them are below the sea. Today, the internet travels by air, land, even underwater.
We can also talk about digital infrastructures of standards and protocols by which these physical infrastructures communicate with each other. Above (or within?) this framing of infrastructures lies what are called service infrastructures and applications. There are content managers and other web services, databases, instances, APIs, bots (like web crawlers). This great framing is available to us through devices like computers, tables, smartphones, watches, refrigerators, ATMs, and much, much more.
With this brief overview, we have seen that there is a layer of infrastructure whose environmental footprint is larger than what we usually see. Understanding how these infrastructures function, their architecture, their meaning and their impact on territory, their consumption of energy and water, production of waste and social effects, can help us to create and strengthen alternative infrastructure projects.
THE EXTRACTIVIST MODEL IN INFRASTRUCTURES
Infrastructures are political; they reflect the social imaginaries and matrixes from which they emerge. We often speak of platform capitalism, but we don’t oven relate it with the aspect of infrastructure. There are global and local forces that encourage our infrastructural dependence on private multinational capital. Most of the capacity to deploy infrastructure, particularly the most crucial components, is not to be found in the public or social sphere. In our region, we have a public infrastructure deficit. As individuals, we have little right of access to these infrastructures.
According to
Data Center Knowledge the 15 largest data center colocation providers in the world control around half of the market, and the remainder is highly fragmented. This gives the largest ones the power to impose their rules and decisions on the other infrastructures and persons connected to them.
The lack of transparency with which these private companies operate means we have no information, for example, on their servers’ cooling systems, or their consumption of energy and water. Some of the largest companies boast zero-consumption policies based on the use of renewable energy or recycled water. These practices are necessary. But they do not question the scale of the data storage and processing model, and this has a direct impact on the volume they consume. In 2021, one study calculated that solar panels would generate eight million metric tons of waste in three decades. What would be the desired impact of a server farm owned by a technological multinational and fed by a solar panel farm? Another part of the problem is that to ensure efficient data processing, the storage hardware must be frequently replaced, increasing the production of technological trash. These models are based on an idea of “infinite” consumption that bears no connection to the finite reality of our planet.
In the same year, other studies estimated that digital technologies were responsible for between 1.4% and 5.9% of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than all airplane emissions combined. Every Google search requires the mobilization of various types of software (web crawling and indexing, algorithms, search suggestions and adwords). Browsing Facebook on a smartphone for 3-4 minutes, or viewing a 45-second high-res video, consumes as much energy as a LED lightbulb that stays on for an hour. Forty percent of the internet’s carbon footprint comes from the design of websites. Finally, the tendency to migrate everything to “cloud services” requires a constant, ubiquitous internet connection that requires hardware and software available for remote private use 24/7.
Extractivism is not just a material phenomenon. In university education, for example, we are witnessing a rapid, silent and devastating process of privatization and dismantling of the university as a public service, also through infrastructures.
RESISTANCES AND OTHER-INFRASTRUCTURES
So have Other-Technologies succeeded in escaping the extractivist model? It would be impossible to do so altogether. But that model is being heavily questioned, and steps are being taken to build the infrastructures we desire, as a community.
The defense, construction and right to infrastructure should be taken as a central concern for our collectives, social organizations and academic spaces. Some communities believe that we should progress toward greater autonomy and self-determination through community-governed models of data and infrastructure. And given the existing restrictions on resources and capacities, we think that there are more options in projects or initiatives developed according to the principles of
minimal computing, as mentioned by Alex Gil, or
pocket infrastructures, as Offray Luna proposes: light, free, and distributed.
We also recognize the proposals on community internet networks that have come, for example, out of Mexico, Argentina and Colombia. And the proposal of
Wiki Katat, the first virtual social and community mobile operator of cellular telephony and internet services.
We are interested in Other-Technologies like autonomous or community-managed servers like
May First or Greenhost, which also
publish a detailed annual report on the difficulties of attempting to be “sustainable.” And we are excited when those same proposals are linked and sustained by feminisms like
MariaLab or
Anarchaserver.
With all of this, it makes sense to adopt the perspective of the infrastructure of affection, as Thiane Neves proposes in her
Rede transfeminista de cuidados digitais: “it means thinking of ourselves as producers of technology, including ancestral technologies as a whole, focused on caring for ourselves and our support network, creating affective materials, never creating a hierarchy of wisdom and knowledge, not allowing a discourse or a doubt from women to be something small or to diminish their steps, their struggles. If we consider all infrastructure to be political, the infrastructure of affection is a political-methodological decision whose foundational pillars are free exchange and knowledge. It is a working methodology that aims to forge affective bonds. It is interested in listening; the word is supreme. It entails the philosophies of the Free Software movement, Hacktivism, and also the perspective of Feminist Technologies” (Neves, 2023).
Technoaffections. Actions to (re)connect and transform technologies
CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON INTERNET USES
It’s common to view technology as an indicator of a society’s progress, as an engine of history. In
Technology: The Emergence of a Hazardous Concept, Leo Marx explains the etymology of the word (from the Greek techne, an art or craft, and the suffix -ology—a branch of learning), and notes that the concept came into the English language in the 17th century to refer to a field of study, not an object of study. This changed in the 19th century with the Industrial Revolution and the “mechanical arts.” From then on, technologies became anchored in the idea of development.
What place do the technologies we use occupy in society? For many people, technology refers only to digital technology, because the internet has dramatically reshaped how we relate to each other, work, and communicate. But we have increasingly narrowed our reference further, to only a small portion of digital technologies: hegemonic, closed media that instead of democratizing access and knowledge, only make us more dependent, less autonomous. In the way these technologies have become socialized, people are conceived as “users,” not as transformative agents. Big businesses give us little containers, windows to “participate,” and say, “use it!”.
From technology to the internet, from the internet to the web, from the web to platforms and from platforms to apps, spaces have been narrowing. Why do we “connect”? What spaces are we accessing? We’re social beings and the “networks” know it, they exploit it.
Way back in 2017 a Facebook “repentant” revealed that to get us to consume as much of our time and attention on the internet as possible, tech companies realized that they had to “give us a little dopamine hit every once in a while because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post ... The inventors, creators — it's me, it's Mark [Zuckerberg], it's Kevin Systrom on Instagram, it's all of these people — understood this consciously. And we did it anyway.” In other words, they used human psychology to foster dependence on “social” platforms.
Our browsing history is an open book for these platforms, and it runs through the arteries of their infrastructure straight to their data center, directed by opaque algorithms that they refuse to disclose. Having pushed us to accept the premise that “privacy doesn’t exist anymore,” they say we shouldn’t worry “if we’ve got nothing to hide.” And that’s just what we could normalize: if there’s nothing to hide, why do they have to snoop around?
THE EXTRACTIVIST MODEL IN BROWSING
With all of this, an all-but inarguable trend emerges: connection is “desirable.” So we are continually being offered more connected devices, spaces, relations. Technologies don’t take no for an answer. But there are people who set their own rules and see things from the idea of
opting out of connectivity.
This trend toward hyperconnectivity greatly widens existing gaps. Half the world isn’t connected. Many people still don’t even have electricity. Although access is lacking for much of the world, it’s not limited to just a connection. There are major inequalities that persist even once one is connected to the internet: there are gaps in usage, browsing, appropriation, resignification, the ability to pursue one’s ambitions, that are perhaps greater than the connection itself. More so the underlying relations and powerplays of technology on other way of being, knowing, doing, feeling and living. To inhabit the internet, we need to understand it, know about its power and complexities, but its uses were designed for the accumulation of capital, not self-determination or autonomy.
So if basic services like education, health, and asylum, are mediated by digital technologies as the only option, we’re excluding not just the half of the world’s population with no internet connection but also the vast majority of others who are unfamiliar with digital media. The exclusion gap widens while capacities for extraction multiply.
RESISTANCE AND DIVERSE WAYS OF INHABITING THE INTERNET
There are other ways to use and create technology, beyond those that have been imposed on us. Free and open technologies are an opportunity, they enable us to inhabit them, too, from a critical perspective. These free technologies encourage a shared, community-based and distributed construction of knowledge. They have a know-how code, a political code and an ethical code that allows for other ways of relating to the object, with the code that writes the object, and with the people who use or write the code of that object.
Resisting to exist in digital territory means placing other values, intentions, dreams, hopes and technologies at the center. Other forms of life, of being and knowing.
Nadia Cortés and Eugenio Tisselli speak of technological rewriting , in other words “rewriting the tacit values of technologies, understand the agency we have and which involves us in a process of incorporation and realization of a technology in our contexts. How do technologies write us, and what place to we occupy in that process?”
Taking a critical step back from technology is desirable and necessary. Questioning both its algorithms and its paths of production is the first step to beginning to transform them. To build future technologies that can care for life in its various layers, we need to reconnect with local, proximate models of consumption, which foster diversity and connection with the producers and listen to life cycles (nature took millions of years to produce minerals and oil), with designs that respond to these premises. Thinking about technologies (these and others) that enable play, shared and relational liberties, shared learning: expansive technologies that open up ties to others, and to otherness.
Technoaffections. Actions to (re)connect and transform technologies
CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON INTERNET WASTE
Early in 2023, the United Nations Environmental Programme announced that close to 50 million metric tons of e-waste are generated every year: the weight of 1,400 Eiffel Towers. This figure is expected to double over the next three decades. E-waste is
the fastest-growing flow of trash in the world. Twenty percent of it is properly recycled; the rest ends up in clandestine dumps.
Even though our daily lives are bound up in our close relationship to technological devices, we rarely stop to think about what happens to them when we dispose of them. As global technological consumption increases, the marginalized communities of the majority world suffer the consequences of our insatiable appetite for electronics.
This logic of intensive consumption of devices is not a matter of chance. The prevailing model of technological development requires that we consume more and more, constantly upgrading the devices we use and turning a blind eye to the impact of this practice.
To mention just a few examples: “a single fluorescent light tube can contaminate 16,000 liters of water; a nickel-cadmium battery like those used in cell phones, 50,000 liters of water; and a television, up to 80,000 liters of water”.
Mass production, mass consumption, corporate design strategies, and condescending regulations imposed by governments, are all contributing to unprecedented environmental degradation and social injustices.
EXTRACTIVIST MODEL IN WASTE
Some of the practices companies and governments encourage perpetuate the cycle of extractivism. This includes
planned obsolescence, anti-
repair policies, greenwashing and the export of e-waste to majority-world territories.
Our devices are designed strategically to last less than they should. Companies deliberately rely on planned obsolescence, designing products with a limited useful life to force consumers to perpetually repurchase them, which boosts their profits. This culture of
“buy, discard, buy” promotes mass production and intensive consumption, driving a linear economy that perpetuates waste generation.
The anti-repair policies followed by electronics manufacturers block consumers’ capacity to repair or update their devices independently. Planned obsolescence and the limited possibility of repair not only create more e-waste but also tighten companies’ control over people and their possibilities for appropriating technology.
In response to growing social concern for the environment, some companies have opted for what is called “greenwashing.” This means they market their products as environmentally respectful, but the changes are merely superficial. The circular economy, often presented as a solution to this problem, is an attempt to reduce waste by encouraging recycling and product reuse. The problem with recycling is that it is not a solution in itself. Recycling is a complex process. It can be very expensive, and even with the most advanced techniques there are many valuable materials that can’t be recycled. This approach doesn’t attack the root of the problem, because extractive, exploitative production practices remain invisible. A circular economy also requires a political approach centering on de-growth and redistribution.
The majority world and populations living in the most precarious conditions bear the brunt of e-waste disposal. It is a massive business opportunity for a privileged few, and a health risk for the majority. Industrialized nations often export their e-waste to countries where regulations are laxer and labor costs lower, creating “electronics graveyards” in those regions: Abogbloshie, in Ghana, is, along with Chernobyl, one of the most contaminated places on the planet.
RESISTANCES AND TECHNOLOGIES TO LAST
It is urgent that we begin to mitigate the adverse effects of technological waste, and this requires a fundamental shift in the dominant paradigm of development. As a society, we have a responsibility to demand that companies and governments adopt the principles of sustainability, environmental justice and social equality in technological development. Technology must be produced in reciprocity with natural and human environments.
Some have suggested that we assume our responsibility for technological consumption first by reducing it: not consuming what we don’t need, extending the useful life of our devices. Also, reducing energy consumption, minimizing resource extraction and ensuring that production processes are environmentally respectful can significantly reduce the environmental footprint of technology industries.
Many communities in the Abya Yala territory have initiatives that aim to subvert the dominant development order through a communal, permacultural vision of technological development. To radically change technological production, we might think about how to subvert the way in which technology is designed, produced and consumed. For example, localized production reduces the carbon footprint associated with global supply chains and supports local economies. We can also advocate for transparency in the lifecycle of technologies, to know where they’re produced, consumed, and discarded. In many parts of the world researchers are working to make these chains visible.
We must also promote a culture of repair and demand that products be made more durable and repairable, more modular (like
Fairphone), so that users can easily replace defective components. Repairing a device produces 70% less CO2 emissions than the purchase of a new one. Some examples of this type of effort are
Nodo Tau,
Club de Reparadores y
Cibercirujas en Argentina,
Resistencia Programada en Uruguay. There is also the
IFixit community, which offers “repair guides for just about everything” a quick answers forum and a blog with the latest news on device repair, and the British company
Minifree which modifies old Lenovo laptops, unlocking both its software and hardware, turning them into more durable computers. Finally, there is the French
Commown cooperative,which considers electronic devices a “common good,” and since 2018 has been renting smartphones, computers and headsets. All of its products are easy to repair, which guarantees a long useful life.
We should also encourage participative, open technological development. Participative design promotes the involvement of the community and guarantees that its needs and perspectives are considered. Promoting open source technology fosters collaborative innovation and the exchange of know-how to democratize knowledge and support the emergence of decentralized, community-based technological initiatives.
Technoaffections. Actions to (re)connect and transform technologies
These are some of the actions we can take to contribute our little bit.
EXTRACTIVISM
What can we do?
✅ Buy fewer devices. Ask ourselves: which ones are indispensable to our life and work? Which are the most environmentally “friendly”?
✅ Reuse equipment. Is there some project in my community that reuses old equipment? Does anyone in my family or group of friends need a technological device I’m getting rid of?
✅ Recycle the materials devices are made of. We should demand that this is considered from the manufacturing phase. There are social projects that recycle devices, but not always for continuing use.
✅ Repair. It’s better to replace the parts instead of buying a whole new device.
✅ We can also Reflect, Reject advertising that “invites” us to constantly buy “the latest” technology, and Reclaim legislation and oversight to address these problems.
LABOR
It is vital that we become more aware of the “invisible” reality of production and consumption of digital technology. From each of our own spaces, we can:
✅ Promote organization among affected communities in dispossessed territories and technology industry workers.
✅ Share experiences of resistance and join in formulating common goals.
✅ Build and participate in spaces for knowledge with a critical perspective on technologies, including all their eco-social dimensions and impacts.
✅ Demand policies on the production and development of digital technology that prioritize the lives of people and natural environments.
INFRASTRUCTURE
Infrastructures are political. They reflect the social imaginaries and matrixes from which they arise. What can we do?
✅ Become more aware of the “invisible” reality of digital technology production and consumption.
✅ Participate, encourage and strengthen the construction and sharing of local and community technologies that suit the needs of the communities themselves.
✅ Support regulation of the design, production, use and disposal of electronics to achieve technological sovereignty, regional autonomy and full respect for people’s lives and the environment.
USES
Resisting to exist in digital territory means prioritizing other values, intentions, dreams, hopes and technologies. What can we do?
✅ Inhabit technologies by perceiving our inner time and the times of natural environments.
✅ Act to alter lifestyles, reduce consumption, promote the right to repair and eradicate planned obsolescence.
✅ Use technologies that are (a little) healthier and closer by. Remember that Free Software is a great enabler for this.
WASTE
To mitigate the adverse effects of e-waste, we need to change the dominant paradigm of development.
✅ Assume shared responsibility for our technological consumption and try to reduce it. For example, we can begin by not consuming what we don’t need. Can we do this conversation, research, dance or meeting (or some parts of them) with no digital technology involved?
✅ Promote transparency in the lifecycle of technologies, to know where they’re produced, consumed, and discarded.
✅ Promote participative, open technological development.
✅ Promote a culture of repair and demand that products be made more durable and repairable, more modular (like Fairphone), so that users can easily replace defective components.
✅ Demand that companies and governments adopt principles of sustainability, environmental justice and social equality in technological development.
Technoaffections. Actions to (re)connect and transform technologies
Resources & Readings
Extractivism
Labor
Infrastructure
Uses
Waste
Technoaffections. Actions to (re)connect and transform technologies
