30 research outputs found

    Biohacking and code convergence : a transductive ethnography

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    Cette thèse se déploie dans un espace de discours et de pratiques revendicatrices, à l’inter- section des cultures amateures informatiques et biotechniques, euro-américaines contempo- raines. La problématique se dessinant dans ce croisement culturel examine des métaphores et analogies au coeur d’un traffic intense, au milieu de voies de commmunications imposantes, reliant les technologies informatiques et biotechniques comme lieux d’expression médiatique. L’examen retrace les lignes de force, les médiations expressives en ces lieux à travers leurs manifestations en tant que codes —à la fois informatiques et génétiques— et reconnaît les caractères analogiques d’expressivité des codes en tant que processus de convergence. Émergeant lentement, à partir des années 40 et 50, les visions convergentes des codes ont facilité l’entrée des ordinateurs personnels dans les marchés, ainsi que dans les garages de hackers, alors que des bricoleurs de l’informatique s’en réclamaient comme espace de liberté d’information —et surtout d’innovation. Plus de cinquante ans plus tard, l’analogie entre codes informatiques et génétiques sert de moteur aux revendications de liberté, informant cette fois les nouvelles applications de la biotechnologie de marché, ainsi que l’activité des biohackers, ces bricoleurs de garage en biologie synthétique. Les pratiques du biohacking sont ainsi comprises comme des individuations : des tentatives continues de résoudre des frictions, des tensions travaillant les revendications des cultures amateures informatiques et biotechniques. Une des manières de moduler ces tensions s’incarne dans un processus connu sous le nom de forking, entrevu ici comme l’expérience d’une bifurcation. Autrement dit, le forking est ici définit comme passage vers un seuil critique, déclinant la technologie et la biologie sur plusieurs modes. Le forking informe —c’est-à-dire permet et contraint— différentes vi- sions collectives de l’ouverture informationnelle. Le forking intervient aussi sur les plans des iii semio-matérialités et pouvoirs d’action investis dans les pratiques biotechniques et informa- tiques. Pris comme processus de co-constitution et de différentiation de l’action collective, les mouvements de bifurcation invitent les trois questions suivantes : 1) Comment le forking catalyse-t-il la solution des tensions participant aux revendications des pratiques du bioha- cking ? 2) Dans ce processus de solution, de quelles manières les revendications changent de phase, bifurquent et se transforment, parfois au point d’altérer radicalement ces pratiques ? 3) Quels nouveaux problèmes émergent de ces solutions ? L’effort de recherche a trouvé ces questions, ainsi que les plans correspondants d’action sémio-matérielle et collective, incarnées dans trois expériences ethnographiques réparties sur trois ans (2012-2015) : la première dans un laboratoire de biotechnologie communautaire new- yorkais, la seconde dans l’émergence d’un groupe de biotechnologie amateure à Montréal, et la troisième à Cork, en Irlande, au sein du premier accélérateur d’entreprises en biologie synthétique au monde. La logique de l’enquête n’est ni strictement inductive ou déductive, mais transductive. Elle emprunte à la philosophie de la communication et de l’information de Gilbert Simondon et découvre l’épistémologie en tant qu’acte de création opérant en milieux relationnels. L’heuristique transductive offre des rencontres inusitées entre les métaphores et les analogies des codes. Ces rencontres étonnantes ont aménagé l’expérience de la conver- gence des codes sous forme de jeux d’écritures. Elles se sont retrouvées dans la recherche ethnographique en tant que processus transductifs.This dissertation examines creative practices and discourses intersecting computer and biotech cultures. It queries influential metaphors and analogies on both sides of the inter- section, and their positioning of biotech and information technologies as expression media. It follows mediations across their incarnations as codes, both computational and biological, and situates their analogical expressivity and programmability as a process of code conver- gence. Converging visions of technological freedom facilitated the entrance of computers in 1960’s Western hobbyist hacker circles, as well as in consumer markets. Almost fifty years later, the analogy drives claims to freedom of information —and freedom of innovation— from biohacker hobbyist groups to new biotech consumer markets. Such biohacking practices are understood as individuations: as ongoing attempts to resolve frictions, tensions working through claims to freedom and openness animating software and biotech cultures. Tensions get modulated in many ways. One of them, otherwise known as “forking,” refers here to a critical bifurcation allowing for differing iterations of biotechnical and computa- tional configurations. Forking informs —that is, simultaneously affords and constrains— differing collective visions of openness. Forking also operates on the materiality and agency invested in biotechnical and computational practices. Taken as a significant process of co- constitution and differentiation in collective action, bifurcation invites the following three questions: 1) How does forking solve tensions working through claims to biotech freedom? 2) In this solving process, how can claims bifurcate and transform to the point of radically altering biotech practices? 3) what new problems do these solutions call into existence? This research found these questions, and both scales of material action and agency, in- carnated in three extensive ethnographical journeys spanning three years (2012-2015): the first in a Brooklyn-based biotech community laboratory, the second in the early days of a biotech community group in Montreal, and the third in the world’s first synthetic biology startup accelerator in Cork, Ireland. The inquiry’s guiding empirical logic is neither solely deductive or inductive, but transductive. It borrows from Gilbert Simondon’s philosophy of communication and information to experience epistemology as an act of analogical creation involving the radical, irreversible transformation of knower and known. Transductive heuris- tics offer unconvential encounters with practices, metaphors and analogies of code. In the end, transductive methods acknowledge code convergence as a metastable writing games, and ethnographical research itself as a transductive process

    Design revolutions: IASDR 2019 Conference Proceedings. Volume 2: Living, Making, Value

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    In September 2019 Manchester School of Art at Manchester Metropolitan University was honoured to host the bi-annual conference of the International Association of Societies of Design Research (IASDR) under the unifying theme of DESIGN REVOLUTIONS. This was the first time the conference had been held in the UK. Through key research themes across nine conference tracks – Change, Learning, Living, Making, People, Technology, Thinking, Value and Voices – the conference opened up compelling, meaningful and radical dialogue of the role of design in addressing societal and organisational challenges. This Volume 2 includes papers from Living, Making and Value tracks of the conference

    Open design and medical products

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    This research details the use of Open Design to enable participation in the conceptualisation, design and development of medical products for those who are excluded by their chronic health condition. The research was directed according to the Action Research methodology outlined by Checkland & Holwell (1998); Action Research being highlighted by Archer (1995) as a method compatible for practice-led design research. Open design directed the design practice, which consisted of a long case study spanning 18 months from February 2012, through to July 2013. This case study, dubbed AIR involved the creation of a bespoke online social network, recruitment of people living with cystic fibrosis, and the facilitation of collaborative design work resulting in prototype medical devices based on the lived experience of the participants. The work involves research into design within health as the context for this research. In order to place design in this wider context, it has been tempting to adopt the mantle Evidence Based Design Evans, 2010) – however in this research the position of design as phronesis, in a similar manner to health practice (Montgomery, 2005) is adopted. This allows for an alignment of the work done in both fields, without the problematic associations with an evidence hierarchy (Gaver & Bowers, 2012; Holmes, Murray, Perron, & Rail, 2006). The contribution to knowledge is an Open Medical Products Methodology, consisting of the artefacts supporting the evidence of the methodology’s ability to foster genuine participation amongst those who are excluded from traditional participatory design. The artefacts constituting this submission are this thesis, the reflective log kept during the research (Appendix A on page 135), the prototypes from the collaborative research (Appendix B on page 212), and the online social network that contained the work (AIR1 ). The Open Medical Products Methodology is expected to be of interest primarily to designers of medical products, design management and policymakers- although Open Design as a product methodology has appeal to other sectors and the future work into standardisation, regulation, distributed manufacture and recruitment detailed at the conclusion of this thesis has application broader than the medical field

    The impact of workspace environment on creativity and innovation: empirical evidence from makerspaces in China

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    Numerous studies have identified the critical role of creativity and innovation on the sustainable development of an enterprise especially facing with uncertain and complex external environment. Among the various aspects affecting the creativity and innovation, workspace environment is a factor that has not been fully considered for most of organizations. Compared to the existing literature on innovation, few empirical studies have investigated the influence of workspace environment on creativity and innovation. Based on the previous literature, this thesis first develops a theoretical framework, i.e., workspace environment-employee’s conduct- innovation performance paradigm to reveal the mechanism. We differentiate between the physical and non-physical environments to examine their roles on creativity and innovation performance, respectively. Then taking Ucommune as example (i.e., one of the largest makerspaces in China), this study empirically explores to what extent workspace environment affects the individual and team creativity and innovation in an organization. The main results include: (1) physical and non-physical workspace environments positively contribute to employees’ individual and team behaviors; (2) individual behavior can help to improve employee creativity and enhance team behavior, but its direct impact on innovation is not significant; (3) team behaviors can improve organizational innovation performance. Our findings empirical support the increasing importance of workspace environment - particularly the physical one - on creativity and innovation, providing both theoretical and practical implications. In particular, the main theoretical contribution is to enrich both the environmental psychological theory and innovation theory by providing a mechanism on how workspace environment influence creativity and innovation within an enterprise.São vários os estudos que identificam o papel crítico da criatividade e da inovação no desenvolvimento sustentável de uma empresa, especialmente em ambientes externos incertos e complexos. Entre os vários fatores que afetam a criatividade e a inovação, o ambiente do espaço de trabalho é algo que não é tido em consideração pela maioria das organizações. Nesse sentido, a presente tese apresenta, em primeiro lugar, um enquadramento teórico que projeta o paradigma do desempenho individual e organizacional face ao ambiente de trabalho, tendo em conta a conduta do empregado e os determinantes de inovação. De seguida, procede-se à distinção entre ambiente físico e não-físico para examinar as suas influências na criatividade e na inovação. Por fim, tendo o "Ucommune" como exemplo (i.e., um dos maiores espaços partilhados de fabricantes da China), este estudo explora empiricamente até que ponto o ambiente de trabalho afeta o indivíduo e a criatividade e a inovação da equipe nas organizações. Os principais resultados alcançados sustentam que: (1) ambientes de trabalho físico e não-físico estão positivamente relacionados com os comportamentos individuais e de equipe dos colaboradores; (2) o comportamento individual pode ajudar a melhorar a criatividade dos colaboradores e da equipe, mas o seu impacto direto na inovação não é significativo; e (3) o comportamento da equipe pode melhorar o desempenho da inovação organizacional. Estes resultados suportam ainda a crescente importância do ambiente do espaço de trabalho - particularmente o espaço físico - na criatividade e na inovação, trazendo implicações teóricas e práticas para a gestão empresarial

    The Counter-testimony of the Maker

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    The chapter begins with the question of critique, mainly how and why does one critique but more importantly why does no one critique effectively anymore. Such is a sentiment echoed by Bruno Latour in the paper Why has Critique Run out of Steam? He states: “It does not seem to me that we have been as quick, in academia, to prepare ourselves for new threats, new dangers, new tasks, new targets. Are we not like those mechanical toys that endlessly make the same gesture when everything else has changed around them?”(Latour, 2004:225). According to Latour, the absence of principles is to blame. As he puts it, critique has battered through all claims to a ground and the lack of a sure ground argument has backfired. The result is that there isn’t even a sure ground for criticism. Without a ground, it’s hard to differentiate a rigorous critical claim from a conspiracy theory. That’s why conspiracy theory books are best sellers. Latour mourns the death of critique. In its remnants lies a whole industry denying the Apollo program. My claim is that the absence of principles transforms critique into an issue around the strength of evidence and the credibility of the testimony. Effective critique is synonymous with a counter-testimony of a reliable witness. A witness is someone who is present at the time of an event, often a crime, and is able to testify before the law. They are able to give direct evidence in relation to the events. However, they often rely on foggy memories and blurred vision. It is not too difficult for the defence or prosecution to put the reliability or credibility of the witness in doubt. Here is where the role of making comes into play. More often than not, in the post-critical age, a testimony, or counter-testimony, is not simply uttered but is rather constructed. Latour is the first to admit that a critique has to be made. As such the eyewitness is no longer a person but a photograph, a video or other forms of surveillance. Juries are more decisive when they are presented with the facts, the evidence, more often submitted as objects as opposed to a fuzzy testimony of a witness. Critique, or counter-testimony, is a material process enabled by infrastructure. Is a practice-based question of physics, chemistry and the material forms of agency. Given all this this chapter explores further the role of critical making as counter-testimony. From aesthetic practices of forensics, counter-forensics to the role of labs in media archaeology and investigative practices, I will tell the story of makers that present their objects as a counter-narrative to pressing socio-political issues. More importantly, however, I will address the issue of how critical making practices can establish credibility in a world of fakes and loss of belief

    A Network of One’s Own: Struggles to Domesticate the Internet

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    This thesis is a design research practice-led inquiry into the domesticated Internet. It first seeks to complicate simplistic corporate and academic visions by naming some of the struggles it encounters – not least to assert a private home and network of one's own. It is argued that a century of domestic technologies has emphasised invisibility, ubiquity, and automation in ways that obscure a network of exploited people and finite resources. Furthermore, these technological ambitions are met through machine surveillance, in ways newly enabled by the domesticated Internet, that threaten the privacy of the home. In response, this thesis seeks some practical ways to design alternatives that assert a network of one's own and makes the work it implicates visible. The methodological approach is broadly Research Through Design supplemented by a practice described as designerly hacking through which hidden technical potential is revealed and given meaning. Two empirical studies are described that together make an account of the technical possibility and social reality of the networked home: an autobiographical technical exploration of the author's home and network with the making of hacks and Research Products privately and in public; and a cultural probe engagement with six rented households surfacing contemporary accounts of the domesticated Internet and in particular the challenges and opportunities of wireless networking. Together this yields a series of technical and social insights for design and two forms are offered to communicate these: a framework for understanding change in the networked home (The Stuff of Home) and a set of 30 design patterns for a network of one's own; each invites different analyses. The conclusion then draws together the multiple threads developed through this thesis and offers some reflection on the complexity of doing contemporary technical design work

    Convivial Making: Power in Public Library Creative Places

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    In 2011, public libraries began to provide access to collaborative creative places, frequently called “makerspaces.” The professional literature portrays these as beneficial for communities and individuals through their support of creativity, innovation, learning, and access to high-tech tools such as 3D printers. As in longstanding “library faith” narratives, which pin the library’s existence to widely held values, makerspace rhetoric describes access to tools and skills as instrumental for a stronger economy or democracy, social justice, and/or individual happiness. The rhetoric generally frames these places as empowering. Yet the concept of power has been neither well-theorized within the library makerspace literature nor explored in previous studies. This study fills the gap between the rhetoric and the reality of power, as described by the stakeholders, including staff, trustees, and users of the library. Potentially, library creative places could be what Ivan Illich calls convivial tools: tools that manifest social relations involving equitable distributions of power and decision-making. A convivial tool ensures that users may decide to which end they would like to apply the tool, and thus are constitutive of human capabilities and social justice. However, the characterization of library makerspaces in the literature evokes a technologically deterministic entrepreneurialism that marginalizes many types of making, and reduces the power of individuals to choose the ends to which they put this tool. This multi-site ethnographic study seeks to unravel the currents of power within three public library creative places. Through participant observation, document analysis, and interviews, the study traces the mechanisms and processes by which power is distributed, as enacted by institutional practices—the spaces, policies, tools, and programs—or through individual practices. The study finds seven key tensions that coalesce around the concept of conviviality, and also reveals seven capabilities of convivial tools that the users and providers of these spaces identify as crucial to their successful and satisfying implementation. As a user-centered exploration of the interactions of power in a public institution, this study can benefit a range of organizations that aim to further inclusion, equity, and social justice

    Data and the city – accessibility and openness. a cybersalon paper on open data

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    This paper showcases examples of bottom–up open data and smart city applications and identifies lessons for future such efforts. Examples include Changify, a neighbourhood-based platform for residents, businesses, and companies; Open Sensors, which provides APIs to help businesses, startups, and individuals develop applications for the Internet of Things; and Cybersalon’s Hackney Treasures. a location-based mobile app that uses Wikipedia entries geolocated in Hackney borough to map notable local residents. Other experiments with sensors and open data by Cybersalon members include Ilze Black and Nanda Khaorapapong's The Breather, a "breathing" balloon that uses high-end, sophisticated sensors to make air quality visible; and James Moulding's AirPublic, which measures pollution levels. Based on Cybersalon's experience to date, getting data to the people is difficult, circuitous, and slow, requiring an intricate process of leadership, public relations, and perseverance. Although there are myriad tools and initiatives, there is no one solution for the actual transfer of that data
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