Disruptive technologies for a read/write society and the reverse engineering of objects

I recently gave a talk at the ThinkTwice Conference "Disruptive technologies for a read/write society and the reverse engineering of objects" [Slides]

Society and government are read and write. We can view them complex systems or black boxes, make assumptions and models about how they work and then create our own APIs (application programming interfaces) and apps.
Disassembly and repair teach engineering so changing the status quo can be as simple as ignoring the 'void warranty' sticker and taking things apart.
People can now create their own API (application programming interface) to government and come up with novel ways to be civically engaged. People that want to start or engage in a dialogue can create civic apps or release a technologically disruptive invention.
Depending on the problem, starting the process of 'achieving change' may be as simple as looking for a technical and symbolic intervention which fills a structural hole and empowers a group of people.

Also here are my speaker's notes:

Disruptive Technologies for a read-write society and the reverse engineering of objects

1. Introduction

Good morning everyone, this morning I am going to be talking about 'Disruptive technologies for a read/write society and the reverse engineering of objects'- a topic that I am very passionate about. But before we get into that first let me introduce myself and tell you a little bit about what I have been doing for the past few years. I am an Electronic Engineer, Activist, Hacker, Maker. I studied Engineering at Durham University (2006), London Hackspace (August 2010), UK Student Movement @ UCL Occupation (November 2010), Sukey (January 2011), Occupy London Tech (October 2011), Occupy Geneva, Occupy Frankfurt (January 2012), Occupy Wall Street (May 2012), Cryptoparty (September 2012), Hurricane Hackers (October 2012). Open Source Ecology Project (November 2013), Nomadic (January 2013), C-base (January 2013) Currently a Hacker in Residence at a small Hackerspace / 3D printing shop in Mitte, Berlin.

Ok so back to the theme of the talk. I am proposing that society and government are read and write. We can view them complex systems or black boxes, make assumptions and models about how they work and then create our own APIs (application programming interfaces) and apps.
Disassembly and repair teach engineering so changing the status quo can be as simple as ignoring the 'void warranty' sticker and taking things apart.
People can now create their own API (application programming interface) to government and come up with novel ways to be civically engaged. People that want to start or engage in a dialogue can create civic apps or release a technologically disruptive invention.
Depending on the problem, starting the process of 'achieving change' may be as simple as looking for a technical and symbolic intervention which fills a structural hole and empowers a group of people.

So let's begin by looking at

2. Read–Write (RW) Culture

• People participate in the creation of their culture and the re-creation of their culture as opposed to Read Only Culture where culture is only consumed but the consumer is not a creator.

• Read-Write culture (RW) entails a reciprocal relationship between the producer and the consumer for example taking works, such as songs, and appropriating them like remixing a song on youtube for inclusion in a meme or viral video which says something different.

• And so digital technologies provide some of the tools for reviving Read/Write (RW) culture and democratizing the means of production. But why stop in the digital world?

• Void-warranty stickers are a symbol of how manufacturers don’t want consumers to open their devices.

• In the a read-write society people create their own content, own software, own infrastructures, own hardware. And thus they create their own realities, their own truths, their own society.

• Can an individual create the infrastructure that she needs in order to meet basic needs?

• How hardcore is our DIY? How much can we make on our own?

• Currently our way of life requires collaboration and co-dependance on non-free regimes and the suffering of others, what we refer to as externalised costs. As we try to increase our understanding of the distribution of wealth and work in the world and increase our empathy it might make sense to look at what we can make locally to reduce the cost and the damage to the health and lives of other people and to the planet.

• It is important to draw links between this new form of creativity and expression in the light of the narrative developed around the War on Piracy. Similar to the “War on Drugs”, “War on Terror”, “War on Hackers”, this kind of US political rhetoric and discourse frames the re-appropriation and recreation of culture as an act of war.

• Further, this “war on hackers” is actually just the first salvo in the war on general-purpose computing. To paraphrase Cory Doctorow's “The Coming War on General Computation” at the 28th Chaos Computer Congress in Berlin

• “…all of our sociopolitical problems in the future will have a computer inside them, too—and a would-be regulator saying stuff like this:

• “Make it so that self-driving cars can’t be programmed to drag race”

• “Make it so that bioscale 3D printers can’t make harmful organisms or restricted compounds”

• Which is to say: “Make me a general-purpose computer that runs all programs except for one program that freaks me out.”

• Not only do we need to retain the ability to determine how our computational devices work, but we also need to push back and open up many more inventions, devices and processes which constitute the critical infrastructure and engineering which it takes for us to enjoy a modern standard of living.

3. Disassembly and Repair teach Engineering

(cross section of a worm dive / gear system)

• London Hackspace Rule 4: “If something is broken, fix it; don't complain.”
  
  
  
  Here are some Highlights from the Self Repair Manifesto:

• Repair is better than recycling.

• Earth has limited resources and we can’t run a linear manufacturing process forever. The best way to be efficient is to reuse what we already have!

• Repair teaches engineering and is necessary for understanding our things

• The best way to find out how something works is to take it apart!

• If you can’t fix it, you don’t own it.

• Repair connects people and devices, creating bonds that transcend consumption. Self-repair is sustainable.

• Repair transforms consumers into contributors

• Repair empowers and emboldens individuals

• Repair inspires pride in ownership

• Repair injects soul and makes things unique

• Repair is independence

• Repair requires creativity

• Repair is joyful

• Repair saves money and resources
  
  
  
  We have the right:

• To open and repair our things—without voiding the warranty

• To devices that can be opened

• To error codes and wiring diagrams

• To troubleshooting instructions and Flowcharts

• To repair documentation for everything

• I would add: the documentation for everything> (creative commons licenses for existing repair manuals as well as access to source files)

• To choose our own repair technician

• To remove ‘do not remove’ stickers

• To repair things in the privacy of our own homes

• To replace any and all consumables ourselves

• To hardware that doesn’t require proprietary tools to repair

• To available, reasonably priced service parts

4. Black Boxes

a black box is a device, system or object which can be viewed in terms of its input, output without any knowledge of its internal workings.

• The opposite of a black box is a system where the inner components or logic are available for inspection, also known as a white box.

• The process of increasing transparency in governance could be looked at as turning black boxes into white boxes.

• It has been painful to watch as David Cameron and the Department for Culture, Media & Sport mandated that ISPs would have to switch on their customers' content filters (to block everything from "extremism" to "esoteric content") by default, and only deactivate them if the customer rang up and demanded it.

• The question is, what is the real political and social motivation behind this initiative? How can we start to deconstruct the Certainly, this has given the technical ability for a select group of people in power to arbitrarily block or censor dissidents and activists.

To paraphrase Vinay Gupta, the Inventor of the Hexayurt disaster relief shelter:

• One engineer is no engineer, you have to check each other's work, you have to look for signs of vested interest or self interest and you have to find the places that people are fooling themselves because they are in love with an idea.

• The openness of the processes by which we design civilisation is key to our ability to not make mistakes.

• This is why the 'secret state' must be confined to making decisions in a very small area, even if those decisions must be very secret, but when you start making large-scale governance decisions in secret, if there is folly then it will go undetected until it is wrought at an immense level.

• All we can offer is openness, honesty and sincerity and a culture in which the risks that we take are fully public so they can be audited by other experts and volunteers so you can know what we are doing and prove that it is in everybody's best interest and if we are not sure about what to do then we will document both sides.

5. Reverse Engineering

• In the absence of direct knowledge of how a system is built or designed one can use a process of discovering the principles of a device, object, or system through analysis of its structure, function, and operation.

• This often involves disassembling something and analysing its components and workings in detail.

• One reason to go backwards in the design process, or reverse engineer things, is to support the creation of a new device or system that does the same thing but maybe in a different way, i.e. without using or simply duplicating (without understanding) the original mechanism.

• This is one of the great aspects about being a prosumer or a producing consumer. You are empowered to revisit design decisions and remake things to suit your needs and preferences.

To paraphrase Vinay Gupta again:

• “Engineering is important because many of the good things that you have in your life came at some level from Engineering.

• Engineering is the art and science of taking the material things in front of you and rearranging them to provide you with what you need to survive or flourish.

• If you go beyond survival and flourishing and make something which is beautiful and wonderful then you are an artist and you have gone beyond the simple functional engineering.

• But the simple functional engineering is what is keeping us all alive. It is providing the platform on which the art could be created one day.

• Linking back to the self-repair manifesto I would add that I would like the 3d data to enable us to make our own replacement parts.
  
  

6. Disruptive Technologies

• Contrary to appearances, this is not a Katamari ball that has just rolled over a child's construction set. This is, in fact, the Universal Adapter Brick from the “The Free Universal Construction Kit” a set of adapters for complete interoperability.

• There is a Silicon Valley understanding of the term 'Disruptive technologies' which are those that change the market and in most cases replace an existing technology, they are characterised by their capability to do so over a relatively short period of time.

• What I mean by the term is technologies that empower people and can help create disruption and action.

7. Theory of Change

• A theory of change is the opposite of a theory of action — it works backwards from the goal, in concrete steps, to figure out what you can do to achieve it.

• To develop a theory of change, you need to start at the end and repeatedly ask yourself, “Concretely, how does one achieve that?”

• When considering complex global issues, we are often trapped in a local maxima of sorts. It is important to think about local and global maxima because it is precisely this which gives an awareness

8. Complex Systems

• One way to describe complex systems is as an approach to study how relationships between constituent parts of a system give rise to the collective behaviours of a system and how the system interacts and forms relationships with its environment.

• Let's look at a complex situation such as what what happened when last year, David Cameron essentially used pornography and abusive images of children as an emotional argument, or vehicle, to justify the installation and use of internet censoring technologies in the UK.

• ISPs have switched on their customers' content filters by default and they actually block everything from "extremism" to "esoteric content".

• The Great Firewall of Cameron to date is responsible for both overblocking and underblocking and notable failures include the blocking rape-crisis centres and child-focused sex-education sites. Predictably, the ISPs' spokespeople have said that it's all a matter of honest mistakes that will be addressed in due time.

• In the end, the internet routes around damage and this form of censorship is fairly easy to overcome with anonymising proxies, VPNs or Tor. One thing is for certain, it certainly does not So why did they do it? The real political motivation behind the implementation of such a system is often very very difficult to ascertain. But we can
  
  
  
  • Politicians
    
    
    
    • short-term political gain, 'scoring political points'
    • ability to silence political opposition
  • Civil Servants
    
    
    
    • implement the policies of the politicians.
  • Law Enforcement, uniformed and secret services
    
    
    
    • always looking for new tools to do their job, no cost is too high when national security is at stake.
  • Pro-censorship activists
    
    
    
    • no cost is too great, we need to protect the children.
  • Anti-censorship activists
  • Business Lobbyists (from ISPs)
    
    
    
    • often anti-censorship since filtering is an additional cost of doing business
  • The General Public
    
    
    
    • After closely reading a speech delivered by David Cameron on 22nd July 2013, it is clear that this was framed as a way to make a 'safer internet for children' but, at least to me, it is pretty clear to see this as the first strike from a state that is trying to gain control is just continuing to erode our right to privacy, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly online.
    • Another important point is to predict what kinds of behaviour or trends will emerge as a result of this, whether incidental or by design, this policy decision will lead to more self censorship and more actual most likely lead to As soon as their view is not 'pro-government' they are liable to be attenuated by the media complex, which will now logically extend to the fifth estate (or the blogosphere) as centralised government gains the ability to filter extremism. Just to put this into perspective, my participation in OccupyLondon more than qualifies as domestic extremism.
  • The media
    
    
    
    • key in communicating to the public

9. Structural Holes

• a structural hole is a gap between two individuals or groups with complementary resources or information. When the two are connected through a third entity, the gap is filled, empowering both groups. When two separate clusters possess non-redundant information, there is said to be a structural hole between them.

10. Technical Approaches

11. Sousveillance

Sousveillance has also been described as "inverse surveillance", based on the word surveillance (from the French sur, "from above", and veiller, "to watch"), and substituting the prefix sous, "from below"). I am particularly interested in what is known as "Hierarchical sousveillance" which refers, for example, to citizens photographing police.

12. Resilience

13. Civic Engagement

Civic engagement or civic participation

• "Individual and collective actions designed to identify and address issues of public concern."[1] Civic engagement has many elements, but in its most basic sense it is about decision making, or governance over who, how, and by whom a community's resources will be allocated.

• The principle of civic engagement underscores the most basic principle of democratic governance, i.e. that sovereignty resides ultimately in the people (the citizenry).

• Civic engagement can also be summarized as a means of working together to make a difference in the civil life of our communities and developing the combination of skills, knowledge, values, and motivation in order to make that difference. it means promoting a quality of life in a community, through both political and non-political processes.

• Civic engagement is about the right of the people to define the public good, determine the policies by which they will seek the good, and reform or replace institutions that do not serve that good.

• We live in a time when the standard tactic of the US government is to have laws passed in the so-called 'war on terror' that can be used to turn dissidents and activists into terrorism suspects.

• Once you are a felon, a law breaker- effectively a second class citizen, the state has normalised the process of subjecting people that speak out to draconian forms of state repression and control. The same tactic was used during the anti-communist hysteria of the 20th century to destroy union leaders, writers, civil rights activists, intellectuals, artists, teachers, politicians and organizations that challenged entrenched corporate power.

14. Community

15. Movements

16. Questions?