Bare-Life Innovation

The Western high-tech elite, being too busy with defining and re-defining what the digital divide is and endlessly trying to compensate it, is definitely missing one the best lessons it could learn. It is a fact that developing countries are low-tech by definition, so they are always struggling to improve their minimal infrastructure by creating and exchanging ideas, rather than by assembling and delivering pricey chunks of electronics. In »bare-life« territories, there is a need to develop technological innovations while being aware of technical limitations. The focus here is on their creative exploitation or on slight but effective improvements that enable radical changes. Whereas, in the so-called industrial countries, we feel more and more »connected«, perpetually and unavoidably - even in the countryside or on the road - to the invisible communication networks, people not living in G8 countries are in a completely different situation: they have to hack communication systems to get what they need. Mobile phones, for example, have already provided the infrastructure for political movements in these kinds of countries, and have already been successfully used in this context.
One of the most famous historical cases is the »People Power II« movement in Manila in 2001, where thousands of people linked by SMS were able to coordinate non-violent demonstrations against President Joseph Estrada and his institutional corruption, finally leading to his impeachment. What made the difference was an efficient distribution structure that allowed the messages suddenly to reach an impressive number of people, reconfiguring the one-to-one message system for a large community. This structure was then enhanced and amplified for emergency conditions, and in the end the new scheme led to success and was permanently adopted.
A similar structural exploitation was carried out in Colombia in 2004. The Nasa ethnic group called for a three-day protest march against conservative government policies, which were increasingly oriented according to neo-liberal positions. But when the community radio station of the Nasa was seized by the government, the huge crowd of marchers benefited from a special hybrid combining a medium and a means of transport: the »radiocicleta«. It consisted of a tandem bicycle for two people fitted with a microphone connected to a low-power FM transmitter and an antenna. The radio transmission was then picked up and re-broadcast from many other community radio stations all over the country and even streamed on the Internet by one of them. The collaborative support here highlighted the symbolic value of media resistance to the forces of repression, using Spartan tools that were even completely legal. Sharing low-powered but meaningful signals in a collective effort returns the focus to the community itself instead of to the medium. In fact, what media can do for communities is to strengthen their social and cultural ties, thus improving their unity and self-awareness. But to keep communities together, an infrastructure is needed, and such an infrastructure is neither always available nor simple to construct. For example, in Cambodia, also in 2004, the MIT-Media Lab funded a support program for connecting rural villages without building an expensive infrastructure. The initiative aimed to create a »network« among 13 different rural schools that were not even connected to the electricity network. With a few solar panels, there was enough electricity to power three computers in each school. The connection at the other end was guaranteed by a mixed human/digital infrastructure. Five motorbike riders (named »Motomen«) make a daily tour of all the schools, stopping in front of each of them for some period of time. The motorbikes are equipped with a PC, powered by the bike\'s battery, with a wireless board and an antenna that automatically connects with the school\'s computers, uploading and downloading email messages. This digital »Pony Express« makes the tour of the schools five days a week, ending in Ban Lung, the capital of the Ratanakiri province, where a satellite connection finally connects the PCs to the Internet. In this way, the rural and remote places are connected with a bearable delay, overcoming the natural and economic obstacles with a real-life mechanical and social »hack«. In the West, the general concept of hacking (finding an elegant technical and conceptual solution to a problem) is strategic when the domain of knowledge is the intelligent reuse of resources. Hacking resources and putting them back on the track of collective benefit would mean breaking the lethal cycle of consumption with smart moves. Michael Rakowitz, in his »paraSITE« project, applies the classic parasite approach to resources, sucking them from another organism without actually damaging it. He builds inflatable shells for homeless people, heated by appropriating external ventilation systems through an adaptable plastic tube that allows the air to inflate and heat the structure. These shells can be collapsed and then carried around in a simple bag or a backpack.¹ Such objects embody a political gesture against social systems that increasingly don\'t want to »see« in public what lies behind their media propaganda and marketing facade. At the same time, they brilliantly uncover waste and indifference. The work could even be not so much considered as a specific solution, but more as a symbolic challenge, making unavoidably visible the people that live in very basic conditions in Western urban territories. The level of innovation in most of these reconsidered technologies is aimed at changing people\'s living conditions and opportunities, not at mass production schemes or market penetration. It relies on simple and basic mechanisms, without getting stuck in technicalities, and always involves essential, real-life support. How much would such an approach benefit all current Western digital culture as well!