Common Circuits - by Luis Felipe R Murillo (Paperback)

About the Book

"How hackers facilitate community technology projects that counter the monoculture of "big tech" and point us to brighter, innovative horizons. 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 across San Francisco, Tokyo, and Shenzhen, Common Circuits explores a transnational network of hacker spaces that stand as potent, but often invisible, alternatives to the dominant technology industry. In what ways have hackers challenged corporate projects of digital development? How do hacker collectives prefigure more just technological futures through community projects? Luis Felipe R. Murillo responds to these urgent questions with an analysis of the hard challenges of collaborative, autonomous community-making through technical objects conceived by hackers as convivial, shared technologies. Through rich explorations of hacker space histories and biographical sketches of hackers who participate in them, Murillo describes the social and technical conditions that allowed for the creation of community projects such as anonymity and privacy networks to counter mass surveillance; community-made monitoring devices to measure radioactive contamination; and small-scale open hardware fabrication for the purposes of technological autonomy. Murillo shows how hacker collectives point us toward brighter technological futures--a renewal of the "digital commons"--where computing projects are constantly being repurposed for the common good"-- Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

How hackers facilitate community technology projects that counter the monoculture of "big tech" and point us to brighter, innovative horizons.

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 across San Francisco, Tokyo, and Shenzhen, Common Circuits explores a transnational network of hacker spaces that stand as potent, but often invisible, alternatives to the dominant technology industry. In what ways have hackers challenged corporate projects of digital development? How do hacker collectives prefigure more just technological futures through community projects? Luis Felipe R. Murillo responds to these urgent questions with an analysis of the hard challenges of collaborative, autonomous community-making through technical objects conceived by hackers as convivial, shared technologies.

Through rich explorations of hacker space histories and biographical sketches of hackers who participate in them, Murillo describes the social and technical conditions that allowed for the creation of community projects such as anonymity and privacy networks to counter mass surveillance; community-made monitoring devices to measure radioactive contamination; and small-scale open hardware fabrication for the purposes of technological autonomy. Murillo shows how hacker collectives point us toward brighter technological futures--a renewal of the "digital commons"--where computing projects are constantly being repurposed for the common good.

Review Quotes

"Common Circuits contributes to the history of computing by shedding light on hackerspaces' long-lasting conviviality experiments. It also offers hackers' firsthand accounts on how these alternative forms of organizing conviviality were collectively enacted, reoriented, and reflected upon over several years. Ultimately, through this and other microhistories of computing, Common Circuits offers insight into the cultivation of hackers' ethics as conviviality guidelines or, as the author puts it, political prefiguration." --Verónica Uribe del Águila, Technology and Culture

"Through Common Circuits, Murillo offers a new lens and case studies to understand how hackers utilize their expertise to create new, more open sociotechnical worlds that challenge the traditional role of technologists in academia, corporate settings, and government spaces." --Marilyn S. Baffoe-Bonnie, H-Sci-Med-Tech

"In paired chapters on places and people--multi-locale pilgrimage sites and personal trajectories as social hieroglyphs--Murillo introduces us to the significance of hacker spaces, including Noisebridge in San Francisco, Chaihuo in Shenzhen, and Tokyo Hacker Space. They are driven, respectively, to create: radical open communities; networks of gift-commodity-gift exchange; and pro-data neutrality of open science collecting and visualizing. Murillo's beautifully written book provides important material for thinking about how to open rather than close the creative commons, and the history of the global circuits and fluorescence of hacker and maker spaces." --Michael M. J. Fischer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

"Original and timely, Common Circuits makes visible alternatives to the mainstream, neoliberal tech industry, spotlighting how hackerspaces are organized around knowledge exchange, friendship, and mutual aid. With a nuanced assessment of hacker politics, Murillo brings into focus fascinating and overlooked facets of computing cultures and history." --Gabriella Coleman, Harvard University

About the Author

Luis Felipe R. Murillo is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame.