Processes

Objective: To encourage participants to question the relationship with their devices through an “icebreaker” activity.

Time: 20 minutes.

Materials: Participants' smartphones (or backup devices provided by the facilitator), and at least one disassembled device (allowing students to view its internal components), and a blanket to place the smartphones on the floor.

Invite the group to stand in a circle. Place the blanket on the floor in the center of the circle. Collect the participants’ smartphones (supplemented by any extra devices you brought, including the disassembled one) and lay them out on the blanket. Ask everyone to look at them for a moment. Encourage the participants to pick them up, pass them around, and examine them closely.

After a brief moment of observation, begin the introductions. Each participant shares their name (or how they prefer to be addressed) and answers the question: What do I see when I look at a smartphone? (The goal here is to prompt the group to share what they already know about this technology: e.g. how they perceive it, what they imagine lies behind its inner workings, and how these devices ultimately end up in our hands.)

At this stage, ask open-ended follow-up questions to spark curiosity and invite participants to dig deeper into what they know about this device.

Conclude the activity with a brief introduction to the journey ahead. Let the group know that over the course of the workshop, they will be diving into the hidden layers of digital technology—exploring how smartphones are manufactured, how we use them in our daily lives, and what happens to them once they are “discarded”.

Use the ideas and questions shared during this opening round to take a quick pulse of the room. This brief informal survey will show you how much the group has already explored these concepts, helping you establish a meaningful starting point for the rest of the workshop.

Objective: To reflect on how extractivism affects territories by exploring the initial phase of technological production.

Time: 25 minutes.

Materials: Recycled paper and markers.

Reference material: Inhabitting Tecnoafecctions — Extractivism section.

Invite the participants to pair up. A quick way to do this is to have everyone line up in two parallel rows facing each other, creating automatic pairs with the person standing opposite them.

Hand out a single sheet of recycled paper and markers to each pair. Instruct them to find a comfortable spot on the floor. Each person will draw on their respective half of the shared sheet. Ask them to illustrate how they imagine their territory, encouraging them to include anything that would make it feel alive or meaningful to them (e.g., trees, rivers, flowers, family, friends, animals, or community spaces).

As soon as the pairs finish drawing, have them stand up again in their two rows, facing each other. Instruct them to place their shared drawing on the floor directly between them. At the facilitator’s signal, both participants must simultaneously try to pull the sheet toward themselves and claim it.

Have the rows switch positions and repeat the dynamic so everyone experiences both sides of the movement.

Did anyone manage to fully take over the other person’s territory? How does it feel when someone takes something that belongs to you? Conversely, how did it feel to take someone else's territory? How do you think this physical exercise relates to our smartphones?

If needed, take a moment to define "territory," starting with our own bodies. Encourage the group to think of territory as everything they consider sacred or precious—the things they protect, defend, and deeply care for.

Direct the conversation toward the human and environmental costs that underpin smartphone manufacturing. Build a collective definition of extractivism and discuss how minerals are mined for technological production. Intentionally bridge this conversation to the dimension of LABOR, setting the stage for the next phase of the technological lifecycle.

Objective: To build awareness and reflect on the working conditions underpinning the technological production model through bodily movement.

Time: 30 minutes.

Materials: Pens with caps, a strongly scented lotion or ointment, a metal pot, and a metal spoon.

Reference material: Inhabitting Tecnoafecctions — Labor section.

Standing in a circle, have participants count off from 1 to 3 to divide the group into three teams. Assign each team to a different area of the room, setting up three distinct workstations.

Explain that each group will be assigned a single, highly repetitive task to perform continuously:

1. This team is given a capped pen per person. Their only task is to continuously cap and uncap the pen without stopping.
2. This team is given a strongly scented lotion or ointment, which they must smell repeatedly.
3. This team must perform non-stop physical exercises (such as squats, push-ups, or burpees).

At the facilitator’s signal, everyone begins executing their assigned movements at their own initial pace. Shortly after, the facilitator starts dictating the production speed by loudly banging the metal spoon against the pot, creating a harsh, disruptive, and jarring metallic noise. Gradually accelerate the tempo of the loud banging, forcing the participants to speed up their movements until it becomes completely impossible for them to keep up with the pace.

Then instruct the groups to rotate stations: Team 1 moves to Station 2, Team 2 moves to Station 3, and Team 3 takes over Station 1. Repeat the dynamic until every participant has cycled through all three workstations.

Gather the group back together and ask them what they thought and how they felt while performing those actions. Explain that electronic components are heavily produced in maquilas under a mass-production model that enforces extreme speed, rigid repetitive motions, low wages, and a severe lack of labor rights. What do you think about this? If you found yourself in this situation, what actions would you take to defend your right to dignified work? What impacts do you think this kind of continuous, high-pressure work has on a person's long-term physical and emotional health? What is the connection between these intense factory conditions and the smartphone in your hands? How do you think these conditions could be transformed and improved for the people working in these factories?

If any participants are unable to perform physical movements, you can swap the dynamic for this low-impact alternative: Have participants sit in a row. Hand them loose skeins of yarn that they must pass along and wind together to form tight balls. The facilitator dictates the production pace using the same metallic banging method, accelerating the rhythm over time and gradually throwing more skeins of yarn into circulation.

During the activity, actively encourage participants to keep up with the rhythm and push the teams to complete their tasks as quickly as possible.

At this point, we recommend a 20-minute break with light refreshments.

Once we have explored the extractivism and labor exploitation hidden behind our smartphones, the next step is to examine internet infrastructure. In this upcoming section, we break down what this infrastructure actually consists of, how it shapes our daily lives, and the environmental impact it leaves behind. By grounding ourselves in these realities, we lay the groundwork for the next dimension: smartphone consumption and usage.

Objective: To reveal the physical and digital infrastructure of the internet, familiarizing the group with the massive material components that make our daily connections possible.

Time: 25 minutes.

Materials: Printed images (A4 size) illustrating internet infrastructure: undersea fiber-optic cables, satellites, antennas, modems, routers, massive data centers, servers, industrial cooling systems, batteries, etc. [Appendix 1]

Reference material: Inhabitting Tecnoafecctions — Infrastructure section.

Invite the group to gather in a circle. In the center, spread all the infrastructure images face-up on the floor in a completely mixed-up arrangement.

Ask the group to observe the images for a moment. In an open brainstorming session, invite participants to share what they think each image represents.

Once the initial ideas are shared, briefly explain the actual function of each component. Then, challenge the group to work together to rearrange the images on the floor to show how the network functions—mapping out the "pathway" an instant message takes to travel from one smartphone to another.

Conclude the activity providing a clear overview, explaining how each of these physical components work and how they interconnect.

We examine the direct link between our internet habits and the physical infrastructure behind them—exploring what gets activated at the moment we use our phones.

This activity is meant to be brief and packed with concrete information, focusing on building a shared, accessible, and engaging collective understanding.

Encourage the group to imagine and throw out ideas without any fear of being "wrong" or making a mistake.

Once you have co-created a baseline understanding of the internet's complex materiality, use this momentum to bridge the reflection to our next theme: the social, psychological, and environmental impacts of our daily smartphone habits.

Objective: To reflect on how smartphones shape our personal lives and have a global impact by critically examining our own experiences related to daily digital habits.

Time: 30 minutes.

Materials: A long rope or masking tape to mark a line across the floor.

Reference material: Inhabitting Tecnoafecctions — Usage section.

Use the tape or rope to divide the room. Designate one side of the room as "Yes, that’s me" and the opposite side as "No, not me." Have the entire group stand directly along the center line. Explain that you will read a series of statements. After each one, participants must step to the side of the room that matches their personal reality:

Gather the group back into a sitting circle on the floor to ask these questions: what do you think are the reasons we have become so dependent on our smartphones? Can you pinpoint the specific emotions that you experience while using social media? Do you know what an algorithm actually is, and how it works? How can we engage with our devices and digital platforms without letting them affect our real-life relationships with friends and family? What concrete actions can we take to ensure that we are the ones using our cell phones, rather than letting the devices and their algorithms use us?

Invite the group to think if there are any daily smartphone uses, habits, or feelings that weren’t on the list but that they notice in their own lives.

After facilitating this collective brainstorm on personal, community, and environmental care regarding the consumption and usage of smartphones, prepare the group for the final dimension: electronic waste. To introduce this reality, we will use a creative analogy to evaluate how we treat the things we cast away.

Objective: To reveal what electronic waste is and use an analogy to reflect on how it affects specific territories.

Time: 30 minutes.

Materials: A large world map, red markers, and candies (any treat that minimizes non-biodegradable waste). [Appendix 2]

Reference material: Inhabitting Tecnoafecctions — Waste section.

Gather the group back into a circle. Hand out one wrapped candy and a marker to each participant.

Begin by posing a brief question: “Besides our smartphones, what other devices around us make up our digital world?”

Co-create a quick list of electronic devices (e.g. smart TVs, virtual assistants, laptops, tablets, wireless headphones, smartwatches, chargers, and cables). Instruct everyone to write directly onto their candy wrapper the names of the tech devices they believe people replace, upgrade, and discard most frequently.

Place a large world map in the center of the circle. On this map, the world’s largest electronic waste dumpsites should already be circled or highlighted in red marker.

Invite everyone to open and eat their candy. Give a clear instruction: As soon as you finish your candy, you must take your discarded wrapper and place it directly over any of the red-circled dumpsites on the world map. Invite the entire group to stand close together in a circle, looking down at the map from above.

We share what an e-waste graveyard is and who consumes and discards these devices the most, what “planned obsolescence” is and how anti-repair policies work. Open the dialogue with the following questions: Would you want to learn how to open up and fix your own smartphone, or try to have it repaired when it breaks? How would our daily lives change if smartphones were built to last, or if we had cheap, accessible ways to repair them? What concrete actions can we take right here in our local communities?

If you want to deepen this analysis, you can expand the world map exercise using a color-coded system. Use different markers to identify the places where extractivism occurs and where the production facilities for digital technologies are located.

Having explored all five dimensions, we now move into our final activity. This closing space is designed to bring our collective reflections together—allowing us to share the insights and new knowledge we have co-created. We want to see how these insights can spark transformative proposals and can be actively integrated into our everyday lives.

Objective: To wrap up and evaluate the entire workshop journey using the original illustrations from the “Tecno-Affections” project.

Time: 30 minutes.

Materials: Full-color prints of the “Tecno-Affections” project illustrations (A4 size), printed labels naming each of the five dimensions, a flipchart paper (A1 size), and markers. [Appendix 3]  PROCEDURE 

Divide the participants into five smaller teams based on affinity.

Give each team an illustration from the project that has been cut into a three- or four-piece puzzle. Explain that each completed illustration features a distinct contrast: one section rendered in grayscale and another in full color. Once a team pieces their puzzle together, ask them to review the five dimension cards and decide which label best captures the essence of their illustration.

With their puzzle assembled and their dimension locked in, have the teams discuss the core reflection questions below. Instruct them to capture their main thoughts using markers on the A1 flipchart paper.

Open the floor to the larger group to validate the choices—if a different dimension resonates more deeply with the image, adjust the labels collectively. Each team shares their thoughts.

To close the workshop, invite everyone to share a closing takeaway, a single word about their lived experience during this encounter.

Give the smaller groups time to sit with their assembled puzzles and encourage the discussion around these questions:

• What does this image mean to you now?
• What are the primary threats to “buen vivir” (collective well-being) embedded within these processes?
• Where in this image do you see signs of life and active resistance?

As you move between the groups, identify the specific forms of resistance that emerged across the five dimensions. Bridge them with real, tangible struggles happening right in their local territory. Challenge the participants to co-create concrete proposals or collective actions that can be implemented in their own spaces.

To ground these final reflections and spark collective imagination, read and take into account the following acts of resistance. They are designed to enrich the analysis of each dimension: