Questioning technology in South America

Introduction

Free and open source software (F/OS) movements have received a great deal of academic attention, from their relation to capitalism (Soderberg, 2008), political values and understanding about intellectual property rights (Lessig, 2006; Stallman, 1999) to the possibilities for the democratization of technology and knowledge (Milberry, 2014; Ratto, 2011; Ratto and Boler, 2014). Free and open source software and hardware has also garnered the attention of development theorists (Smith and Reilly, 2013), who argue that open network models have the potential to transform the field of development. Development studies accounts, however, tend to focus on the use of technology as a means to solve specific issues, relating it to, yet it separating it from, the construction of social meanings and power relations.

According to Andrew Feenberg’s theorization of the society-technology nexus, technology cannot be conceptualized in relation to an ‘essence’ but understood contextually and locally. From this point of view, technological design is never neutral and is inherently political (1999, 2002). Feenberg argues that technical frameworks are sustained through ‘the use of technical delegations to conserve and legitimate an expanding system of hierarchical control’ (1999: 103) and ‘[d]isputes over the definition of technologies’ are settled by privileging one among many possible configurations, forming what he terms a ‘hegemonic technological rationality’. He uses the concept of ‘technical code’ in order to bring to light the social meaning that technology acquires and how power asymmetries are reproduced, but also argues that the technical code is contingent and open to contestation by various actors. Feenberg considers tactical resistances to established designs can create new values and form a ‘new democratic politics of technology’.

Feenberg’s focus with regard to interventions in technological design, however, has been on specific movements and sectional campaigns of activist-led resistance in relation to rationalized technocracy, in which states are viewed as playing a part. This paper contemplates how not just individuals and activists but also governments may perform acts of resistance within technical politics. The central argument of this paper builds on Feenberg’s concept of radical democratic politics of technology to take into consideration how challenges to hegemonic technological rationality may differ in countries that question current configurations of global capitalist interests. The case study presented here is that of Ecuador’s FLOK Society (Free/Libre Open Knowledge Society), an activist project, appropriated by the Ecuadorian government of Rafael Correa (2007–2017) in its aim to modify the productive matrix of the country away from the exporting of primary resources towards the creation of a knowledge economy. The paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between April 2015 and April 2016 and content analysis of FLOK and related government documents, observations and interviews with FLOK project managers.

The FLOK Society project consists of a move toward common, free and open access to technology (www.floksociety.org). The project on the one hand helps us to expand on Feenberg’s notion of technical politics, as the government becomes an actor in challenging hegemonic technological rationality. At the same time, the state also plays a role in maintaining the technocratic order, which at times limits rather than promotes the integration of indigenous ancestral knowledge, a key component of the project.

Much has been written about Ecuador’s Plan Nacional de Buen Vivir (PNBV: National Plan for Good Living) 2013–17. However, little has been discussed in relation to its congruent frameworks of Buen Conocer/Good Knowing (Vila-Viñas and Barandiaran, 2015) and Bioconocimiento/Bioknowledge (Ramirez, 2016). These frameworks are based on similar premises to the PNBV, but focus specifically on proposals for new public policy and inter-institutional collaborations based on creative commons, free and open source technology, implemented to varying degrees across the country, as several government agencies initiated a move to open source software in March 2016. The paper begins by considering the Ecuadorian government’s appropriation of the movement for Open Access in terms of technological resistance, not only in terms of bottom-up organization but from a national point of view, and the complex ways in which the national agenda and grassroots activism have become interconnected. The paper is interested in these developments in relation to Feenberg’s concepts of rationalized technocracy and ‘democratic interventions’ and considers the complex networks involved in creation of the FLOK Society movement. It then examines Feenberg’s arguments concerning democracy and populism.

The second section of the paper explores Feenberg’s concepts of technical politics and ‘the good life’ in relation to the Ecuadorian Plan for Good Living (Plan Nacional de Buen Vivir, PNBV) and one of its offshoots, the plan for ‘Buen Conocer’ (Good knowing). This section considers Feenberg’s arguments in terms of the nature of representation in the technical sphere, including how technology can be understood as political and how technological design can be seen to function as legislation (1999: 137). It also considers the ways in which time-space configurations interact in the shaping of authority, concepts about ‘the Good Life’ (or Buen Vivir in the case of Ecuador). The argument made in this section is that Feenberg’s concept of technical politics and how he conceives of the ‘good life’ are consistent with the aims of Buen Conocer to redesign and open up technical code to users, yet the categories of strong and deep democracy may need to be conceived of as more fluid rather than exclusive.

The third and final section considers the tensions involved in the incorporation of traditional or ancestral knowledge and assuring the participation of less visible groups within technical politics. These coincide with Feenberg’s argument concerning the historical contingency of technology and understanding technology beyond modern capitalist terms (1999: 222–3). However, rather than viewing the traditional in contrast to modernity, the point made here is that traditional views, as demonstrated by the Ecuadorian case, are integral to the shaping of technical politics and crucial to the advancement of projects that seek to challenge current hegemonic structures and configurations in relation to technology and the information economy.

Rationalized technocracy and democratic interventions

According to Feenberg, ‘The design and configurations of technology does more than merely accomplish our ends, it also organizes society and subordinates its members to a technocratic order’ (1999: 17). Feenberg argues that the shaping and implementation of technology is carried out through uneven power relations and the hegemony of technological rationality. The idea here is that technology is performed through a scripted activity or technical code, whereby people and objects co-produce designs and reproduce power structures and dominant ideologies concerning technology.

Feenberg presents user interventions that challenge the power structures embedded in the prevailing technological rationality as ‘democratic interventions’ (1999: 93). This section examines Feenberg’s notion of democratic interventions in relation to the hegemony of technological rationality by first of all considering the complex networks involved in the development of the FLOK Society project. In doing so, however, it also considers the development of technical resistance beyond grass roots social movements, as the case of Ecuador demonstrates a wider connection to regional government-led resistance to global capitalism.

The involvement of the state in the promotion of open access widens the possibilities for challenging of hegemonic technological rationality and at the same time brings into question the limits of Feenberg’s notion of technical politics, as the state is not simply involved in the subordination of its citizens to a technocratic order, but also a participant in challenging rationalized social contexts.

With regard to studies of the internet, the work of social network theorists, such as Bruno Latour, has been important to our understanding of technology’s relation to networks and how people and objects are co-constructed through a wide range of associations. Feenberg builds on Latour’s Actor Network Theory (ANT) to argue that: ‘Modern societies emphasise systematization and build long networks through tightly coupling links over huge distances between very different types of things and people’ (2010a: 76). In the case of FLOK Society, networks underpin its framework for action. The project’s founding documents and research streams are part of academic networks between Ecuador and Spain, Europe and North and South America, and involve a wide range of actors. As the movement’s foundational document states:

The challenge being faced is extraordinarily complex. It requires the participation of international experts, academic investigators, hackers, lawyers, community leaders, activists, business leaders, etc. in an investigatory process that will define and create policies and regulatory principles in order to guarantee the success of a productive model based on the open commons of knowledge. (www.floksociety.org)

In addition, interviews with informants and FLOK Society documents suggest that the movement not only incorporates hackers, but can be seen to be built on a ‘hacker ethic’, which is based on openness, cooperation, sharing and community creation (Moody, 2001; Himanen, 2001), challenging what Feenberg terms technological hegemony, where technologies are chosen and used by dominant interests:

Guiding the selection process are social codes established by the cultural and political struggle. Once introduced, technology offers a material validation of that cultural horizon. Apparently neutral technological rationality is enlisted in support of a hegemony through the bias it acquires in the process of technical development. (Feenberg, 1999: 87)

This resistance has the potential to move the boundaries of what is understood as technology and also impacts on how technical political struggle takes place. This coincides with Feenberg’s notion of ‘boundary of technique’. According to Feenberg: ‘the boundary of technique is never clear. In fact, identifying that boundary is one of the most important stakes in the struggle for and against alienated power’ (Feenberg, 1991: 58–9). The example of Ecuador, however, contrasts with the examples of democratic interventions mentioned by Feenberg, such as those based on conflicts over medical treatment, or pollution, which end in legislation and public practices due to public pressure. FLOK Society came about not only from below, through the efforts of activists, but also from above, through state structures and funding in resistance to the global capitalist information economy. The move toward open access in Ecuador is therefore not a result of conflict, but part of an integrated government initiative of collaboration with activists on technological change and the building of new models and approaches to development, based on free and open access to the internet and computer software and programs.

The FLOK Society project set out to re-imagine how Ecuador might make a strategic transition to a workable post-capitalist knowledge economy. It examines the practical challenges of making commons-based peer production a widespread, feasible reality as a matter of national policy and law, focusing on a range of research projects, including a focus on human capabilities and institutional support for capacity building and open learning and community-driven collaboration. Learning in this model is viewed as a pillar of development and growth in the context of a broad transition to a social economy that embodies reciprocity and commons-based value creation. This includes a focus on active public policies that respond to social challenges. Turning away from models of education that expand capitalist production, the project seeks new models of development, emphasizing commons-based resources and practices. The coordinators of the human capabilities research stream (Daniel Araya and Paul Bourard) argue that:

While scarcity may be a precondition for the economics of supply and demand, knowledge itself is not a scarce resource.…As a symbolic good, any number of people can construct, consume and use knowledge without necessarily depleting its value. While conventional systems of production depend upon closed proprietary structures, commons-based peer production utilizes open networked production to harness the creative energy of mass collaborators. (www.floksociety.org, 2015)

These developments of government involvement in countering the hegemonic technological rationality of western capitalism expand on Feenberg’s concept of democratic interventions, as the weight of the movement toward Free and Open Source software is shaped not via conflict, as Feenberg suggests, but based on a collaborative process between networks of activists and key government actors. The Ecuadorian case therefore draws into question the boundaries and actors that may be involved in shaping technical politics.

Good living: Reshaping the parameters of technical politics

This section considers the nature of representation in the technical sphere, including how technology can be understood as political (Feenberg, 1999: 137) in relation to Ecuador’s Good Living and Good Knowledge framework in particular. The section argues that FLOK Society is not only impacted by the networks discussed, nor are they solely about ‘democratic interventions’, but they are also conditioned by other social factors, such as the political drive for development.

In Ecuador, sweeping changes in infrastructure, such as roads and education, have been embedded in a context of regional governments that have introduced structural changes aimed at reducing the poverty gap through paradigms at odds with multilateral lenders and corporate interests. The national strategy for development has put into question current forms of production and consumption. An important theoretical and political starting point for FLOK is the National Strategy for ‘Buen Vivir’ or ‘Good Living’ 2013–17 and its reference to a Knowledge Revolution:

The Knowledge Revolution proposes innovation, science and technology as the foundations for a change in the productive structure, which is conceived as a distinct form of production and consumption. This transition will take the country from a phase of dependence on finite resources to one of infinite resources, such as science, technology and knowledge. (SENPLADES, 2013: 19)

As Feenberg argues, ‘technical design responds not only to the social meaning of individual technical objects, but also incorporates broader assumptions about social values’ (1999: 86). Accordingly, ‘technologies are selected by dominant interests from among many possible configurations. Guiding the selection process are social codes established by the cultural and political struggles that define the horizon under which the technology will fall’ (p. 87). René Ramirez, the director of the Secretariat of Higher Education, Science and Technology (SENESCYT) for example, elaborates on the development of a knowledge economy, in juxtaposition to neoliberal models, by proposing Open and Commons-based approaches in relation to development:

A radical pragmatism of the left should discover and articulate the cooperation of millions of brains (and collective intelligence) and produce a commons for knowledge, based on digitalization, information and open access to technologies in all the corners of the country for all citizens. If neoliberalism sought the construction of fiscal paradises, the socialism of Buen Vivir should seek ‘paradises of open knowledge’ for the common good of humanity. This proposal is viable so long as we can overcome the vicious circle and main barrier keeping us from constructing a knowledge society, the cognitive gap of digital illiteracy, which affects our ability to generate creative and innovative knowledge. (2016: 443)

Feenberg argues that ‘where the public is involved in technological design, it will likely favour advances that enlarge opportunities to participate in the future over alternatives that enhance the operational autonomy of technical personnel’, thus concurring with Richard Sclove (1995) with regard to the transformative possibilities opened up by public participation in relation to elitist culture and design criteria.

In his analysis, however, he is critical of populist approaches and argues that ‘when technology is factored into the political equation, agency, representation and locality all take on a new aspect that does not quite fit the strong democratic framework’ (1999: 135). Feenberg criticizes the ‘strong democracy’ of populism as implausible due to what he terms the fragmentation of the technical public.

Feenberg states that the technical leadership has a distinct place in the division of labour and ‘will always remain separate from the mass, and cannot be replaced by popular action’ (1999: 146). In addition, he argues that, the fragmentation of technical publics limits their impact:

where politics in the familiar sense of the term is involved at all, it draws the conclusions of an initial round of struggle that follows the links in technical networks. Unfortunately, all too often, the fragmentation of technical publics renders them politically impotent and things never get this far. (1999: 135)

Furthermore, FLOK Society is at odds with the capitalist accumulation evident in the globalized network society. This raises the question of how technology and technical codes may play a decolonizing role, deconstructing power relations and creating new spaces for social struggle (Acosta, 2013: 69). Rather than consuming data and information, the proposal of FLOK has to do with creating a flexible, open, permanent, trans-territorial and ecological collective space, based not on intellectual property rights but on the notion of creative commons.

Tensions between ‘expert knowledge’ and activists: Incorporating ancestral knowledge into technical politics

Feenberg (2010b) points out that often left out of actor-network accounts are less powerful groups, those who are not represented in these processes or networks and lack the power of organizations involved directly in the creation and management of technology:

Although it would seem possible in principle to include them, missing in most constructivist accounts are these latent groups, the ‘irrelevant actors’ who lack the power to influence design decisions. (Feenberg. 2010b: 14)

Informants claim that the use of workshops with local stakeholders involved in the co-creation of policy proposals has so far been one of the most successful ways of engaging wider discussion and elaboration of the initial proposals: ‘Through meetings with local groups in different areas of the country, we have been able to both debate and modify our initial proposals’ (interview, FLOK Society, May 2015). The process of the involvement of groups possessing ancestral knowledge, however, is not straightforward and presents one of the greatest challenges to the implementation of changes proposed by activists, which will be discussed below.

While resistance to global capitalism underpins much of the work in the free and open access movement in Ecuador, substantive change on the socio-technological front is dependent on the need for a cultural shift, which at present is limited in its scope and reach, particularly in terms of social class, the urban and rural divide, production and consumption practices. There are several tensions that arise when it comes to public participation that is not based on ‘expert knowledge’. This section considers the challenges involved in the incorporation of traditional knowledge and assuring the participation of latent groups within technical politics. The central argument here is that traditional approaches should not be read in contrast to modernity, as presented by Feenberg, but may also be considered as integral to the shaping of technical politics and crucial to the advancement of projects that seek to challenge current hegemonic structures and configurations in relation to technology and the information economy.

Feenberg, in one of his more prominent arguments, states that: ‘modern societies emerge from the release of the power of questioning against traditional forms of thought’ (2003). As a result, in Feenberg’s view, science and technology have formed the very basis of modern culture, where traditional belief systems have been replaced by a techno-rational sociopolitical order. Maintaining this order, in his view, are several actors, including government. What happens, however, when the actors responsible for maintaining the technological order, such as government, also seek to challenge the rationale of the current sociopolitical order?

In the case of the research lines generated by the project, including that of ancestral knowledge, there were several moments of conflict with government authorities responsible for the collaborative elaboration of documents pertaining to the project. An illustrative example is the ‘Policy Paper on Traditional and Ancestral Knowledge’ (FLOK, 2015). According to a key informant who led the policy paper discussions:

In this case we had more hurdles than collaboration with the state institution, as they had their own department of Ancestral Knowledge and they wanted to take total control over the project and design the paper that was going to come out. However, given our relation with various organizations linked to indigenous movements of the confederación de nacionalidades indígenas del Ecuador (CONAIE) [currently opposed to many government interventions in indigenous territories]…there were very clear clashes and contradictions, but we could not give over control to the government as we very much wanted to include these local positions. On the one hand, SENESCYT [the National Secretariat for Higher Education and Science and Technology and co-sponsor of the project] as a public institution wanted to defend its policies and lines of action and demonstrate that they had done a lot for indigenous peoples. On the other hand, indigenous populations said that they had been betrayed and had not been taken sufficiently into account…So we ended up playing a bit of a role of mediators in this case. (interview, FLOK Society, May 2015)

The legislation to incorporate ancestor knowledge in technology and education demonstrates significant tensions in relation to technological development and consumption practices. The state for example, in response to indicators of malnutrition in the Amazon and other rural areas, has attempted to improve children’s nutrition through a broad programme of pre-packaged foods for distribution in state schools in these areas. The programme, however, has been unsuccessful, due to the lack of integration of the processes of developing food technology in relation to local eating habits. In many cases, the food distributed goes to waste or is given to pets or livestock, with the food packaging contributing to waste management issues in the Amazon. In these cases, as with the examples below, we can see that there is a conflict of rationalities taking place, as the government has yet to adapt to the cultural necessities of local communities.

The curriculum of government-sponsored millennium schools in rural regions, which aims to democratize education and ensure access to the internet, is another example of the lack of integration of ancestral knowledge in the design of these schools at a local level. The new emphasis on the development of a unified national curriculum undermines local communities’ current practices of self-governance in favour of teaching focused around improving the production matrix of the country and employability of its graduates. For tribes in the Amazon, however, the objectives of ‘employability’ cannot be conceptualized or applied in the same way as for a student who is a city dweller in Quito.

Whilst there are educational policies in place to encourage interculturality based on ancestor and intercultural teaching, the national curriculum prioritizes the teaching of science and technology to improve the nation’s productivity and level of innovation in the first instance. In many cases, this results in the symbolic rather than meaningful integration of cultural values of the community into the curriculum, as the frames of reference for productivity and innovation remain entrenched in western definitions. Teaching, for example, in many cases is not offered in local languages as qualified teachers are rarely local, and teaching materials are only available in Spanish. This is a further example of the tensions that exist with regard to culturally adapting well-intentioned campaigns to broaden the reach of education and technology.

Whilst on the one hand indigenous values underpin the FLOK Society documents which present tradition as inherent to technological design, the participation of indigenous and other groups in the shaping of the technical code remains limited by state policies that associate science and technology with a limited vision of modernity, independent from traditions. These examples demonstrate, however, that rather than viewing traditional approaches in contrast to modernity, they are fundamental and cannot be separated out in the context of technología para todos (technology for all). This also furthers the argument of Latour (1991) that dualism between nature and culture is an insufficient perspective and that ‘we have never been modern’.

Conclusions

Feenberg’s work is useful to unpack several aspects of the current social-technological nexus within the Ecuadorian context. The case of FLOK Society demonstrates the layers of actors and a wide range of interests involved in this early stage of implementation, where we can see contrasting points of view as well as opposing logics, as the case of ancestral knowledge demonstrates.

FLOK Society makes a utopian attempt at providing more sustainable and accessible alternatives for members of society who currently have the least access to technology in Ecuador. However, the implementation of nation wide programmes aimed at improving technical know-how also demonstrates that this needs to be understood as culturally or historically contingent, as Feenberg points out. This implementation also needs to be problematized and further studied in relation to the approaches promoted by the government, which are limited by its reliance on expert opinions that do not fully integrate the demands of latent groups in its pursuit of making technology available for all.

Feenberg’s concept of technical politics may also include marginalized governments, and, as this case study demonstrates, at times they can also play roles of resistance within technical politics. The limits of technical politics therefore need to be further examined in countries that question current configurations of global capitalist interests in relation to network society.