Critical Notions of Technology and the Promises of Empowerment in Shared Machine Shops

Abstract

A variety of making, fabricating, fabbing, tinkering, assembling, prototyping, coding and manufacturing shops are promisingly opening up opportunities for decentralized and collaborative engagements with technology, not only related with material and technical experimentations, but also with economic, cultural, social and political consequences, and ultimately with conceptual and epistemological changes. With due attention to their differences, there is a common and shared rationale that supports an openness when approaching and thinking about technology. This article, however, calls for a closer attention to current narratives that are enveloping the realities of making. It argues that they are popularizing a certain meaning of technology that may grow afar from more critical and democratic understandings. The article concludes with some alternative insights to further advance the realities and spaces of personal fabrication in terms of how technologies themselves are designed, by who, for who and for what.JRC.G.6-Digital Citizen Securit