Common Circuits: Hacking Alternative Technopolitical Futures

A digital world in relentless movement---from artificial intelligence to ubiquitous computing---has been captured and reinvented as a monoculture by Silicon Valley "big tech" and venture capital firms. Yet very little is discussed in the public sphere about existing alternatives. Based on long-term field research in the Pacific Rim, Common Circuits explores a transnational network of hacker spaces and projects that stand as potent, but often invisible, alternatives to the dominant tech industry. In what ways have hackers challenged corporate projects of digital development? How do hacker-activist collectives prefigure alternative technological futures through community projects? In this talk, I will address these questions through the analysis of the hard challenges of collaborative, autonomous community-making through technical objects conceived by hackers as convivial, shared technologies.

Luis Felipe R. Murillo is Assistant Professor in Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame. His work is dedicated to the anthropological study of the "commons" in science and technology with a focus on the intersections between moral economies, political cultures, and infrastructures of computing.