Hacking the public sphere

Hacking the public sphere

from Sharing to Cognitive Commons

Clément Renaud@clemsos

www.sharismlab.com

#sharing, learning,social networks, hack, china, urban...

About Sharism Lab

Sharism Lab is anindependent research centerbased in China experimental methodology & community to empower society by sharing

founded by Isaac Mao

Digital social sphereFrom public to individual sphere

Private

Private

Private

Public

Private

Public

Private

Public

WEB

Social

Public sphere & social spaces (cafès, salons...)

Lecture de la tragédie de l'orphelin de la Chine de Voltaire dans le salon de madame Geoffrin. - by Lemmoneit (1812)

Millions of services blooming!

Wikipedia actualises Aufklärung : better knowledge, better society

Diderot & d'Alembert1751-1772

Wikipedia2001- 2012+

Habermascoined the term public sphere ...

Public sphere = production of elite?

... as "bourgeois" : projection of private interests as a public sphere

Technology as areflect of social production

Digital public sphere structure (accumulation)

Who is producing the tools to build this digital public sphere ?

404 : Page not found

Great Firewall in China

Fang Binxing, Chief engineer of the Great Firewall

Appropriation of technologyHow is produced technology? Who owns knowledge?

Build a common memory :

crowd produceSharing to build our public sphere

Crowd are not masses

New way to produce : the crowd-

We-report is a crowdfunding website for news in Chinese

Quoracrowdsource

answers

Crowdfunding support

Jue.so

How to make technologies differently?

Changes in cultural industries Produce less, but more specific

ex. Harvard Book Storeprint-on-demand

Fab Lab : just what you need

Fab Lab in Amsterdam

Small-scale workshop offering (personal) digital fabrication (from Wikipedia)

3d printer for USD 1800created in NYC Resistor print objectssolve problems locallyshare YOUR solution

a a Makerbot

From DIY to DIO

+ produce in small quantity + design products that fit our needs = identify our needs ! + create objects we need / love with others

Arduino provides open-source hardware to create objects.

Answer requests from the market

● local production “made in my city”● very high personalization “made only for

me”● direct customer relation “made by my old

friend in Canada” ● valorization of customer experience “I found

exactly what I needed”● etc.

What about knowledge?

Not everyone is an engineer ! How to use those machine? How to design an object?

Learn at low cost : hack !

China counterfeit products

Shanzhai 山寨

subverting industry copy = create ?

Many universities are now opening their courses online to public audience(MOOC)

Open courses : lifetime learning

From DIY to DIO : Collective individuation

Xinchejian, a hackerspace in Shanghai

Hack to learn, share your skills with society

"Quit your stupid job !"Mitch Altman, father of hackerspaces

Get the meaning back into social

Identify problems around you Involve friends and strangers to solve real-life design problems Create small-scale sustainable business

How to grow plants in 1m²?

From Xinchejian, Shanghai hackerspace

Technology as individuation an ongoing process to become human

Technologies are memories

Technology is an externalization of our memories to face the impossibility of transmission to others Leroi-Gourhan

3 types / scales of memories

Geneticmemory

Externalmemory

Sensitivememory

How tocrowd produce our public sphere ?

How to do it? Should we destroy the machines? Are they friends or foes?

Luddites destroying their work tool

Haps and mishaps of the social brain

Towards cognitive commons

Semantic Web and the machine

● Linked Data● Internet of Things● Smart cities● Ontologies... Semantic Web aims at explaining our human world to the machines (so they can help us...)

Why are we building machines?What should we do with the human?

Are we updating Skynet?

Will robots save the earth?

Technology is not a free gift

Threat AND Salvation

We should face issues before the crash

Keep your things in your pocket ! Control access to your data through different requests (family, friends, boss, marketing company, etc.)

Privacy : Get your data back !build a personal data space

Do you want to share your browsing history for $10 per month?

Maketing company asked :

Social computingPublic data space

Share computing power using existing devices

Create public data spaces

New data geographycreating public space around technology

Photos du projet Dakar Dead Drop Fiction

Social clusteringdistributed structure

A structure reflecting dynamics of group and communities

Digital public spaceshould empower the society

What you need is needed by others. Take the space to make it

Solar powered traffic lights presented in Maker Faire Africa 2010

Describe new models based on common approach

Sharing is an act Sharing is rewarded Sharing is (co-)creating

Sharism

Hack and

share!!

Describe societyIdentify needsSolve problemsChallenge yourselfDefine ideasFind your spaceLearn in doingDesign thingsMake stuffWatch other improve it.... then start again !

@sharimlab

Thanks !

Questions?