Scholars have explored the influence of the field of cybernetics on scientific thought and disciplines. However, from the inception of the field, ‘‘cyberneticians’’ had explicitly envisioned applications reaching beyond the purview of scientific disciplines; cybernetics was remarkable for its portability and potential application in a wide variety…[Read more]

This article considers two activist projects involving attempts to export communication technologies. Groups of technologists based in the United States and Europe designed a radio station and an “oral wiki” for use in Tanzania and Rwanda, respectively. Both projects stalled before they could be fully implemented. But they did not languish bec…[Read more]

Dunbar-Hester vividly cuts to the heart of gender issues embedded within computing cultures by exploring questions of “diversity” tied to FLOSS
and hackerspace projects. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork within these sites, she reveals a wide array of motivations behind diversity programs. In doing so, she assesses the potential of such pro…[Read more]

In this paper, I consider the activities of a group of individuals who tinker with and build radio hardware in an informal setting called ‘Geek Group’. They conceive of Geek Group as a radical pedagogical activity, which constitutes an aspect of activism surrounding citizen access to low-power FM radio. They are also concerned with combating the…[Read more]