Mutirão da Gambiarra - english

PrixArs

felipefonseca — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 12:06:37 +0000

CaseStudy

Application sent to the Digital Communities category of Prix Ars Electronica 2006, in which MetaReciclagem an honorary mention.
Written by Felipe Fonseca

Entry in Category: Digital Communities 2006

Submitter

Name: Felipe Fonseca
Company / Institution: MetaReciclagem
City: São Paulo
State: SP
Country: Brazil
Fax:

Title of submitted project: MetaReciclagem

Year the work was created:

Type of project: Community-Projekt

Description of project: MetaReciclagem is not an independent collective. MetaReciclagem is not (and as for today never needed to be) a formal NGO - even though it is effectively an organization that is both non-governmental and nonprofit. MetaReciclagem does not define a group of people, but instead a name that some people use to identify and refer to an open methodology about the re-appropriation of technology to foster social transformation in different parts of Brasil. MetaReciclagem becomes concrete in three kinds of instances:
1)Spores are physical labs where people develop MetaReciclagem, both in technical and theoretical aspects. Since 2002, nearly ten different spores have been created in different cities.
2)MetaReciclagem Online Infrastructure is the environment where conversations about MetaReciclagem take place. It is responsible for the maintenance of a strong connection between all the main instances of such a decentralized project. It consists also of some online environments created to face the demand for interaction environments in which people can exchange information and practices related to MetaReciclagem.
3)ConecTAZes are permanent or temporary labs that “benefit” from MetaReciclagem actions. They range from a lowtech paper-and-pencil collaboration workshop to a Linux InstallFest or a video installation in an arts festival. ConecTAZes often (but not always) become or generate independent multimedia telecenters.

Running across all the three levels of MetaReciclagem are some special projects that require resources from more than one spore or that consist of plenty of ConecTAZes. Examples are the development of brasilian Ministry of Culture's Cultural Points – 600 multimedia centers spread around the country, the Ministry of Communication's GESAC program - satellite internet access - or the Casas Brasil project – 90 expanded telecenters, with multimedia infrastructure and computer recycling labs. MetaReciclagem actions and members influenced these three projects, among many others.

URL of the work: http://metareciclagem.org

Project Details

Objectives: The collective objective of MetaReciclagem, if it's possible to name one, is to develop a de-constructive approach to the technological discourse, promoting the re-appropriation of ICTs upon processes which lead to a closer relationship between people and technology. Most people join MetaReciclagem network because of a special interest in a particular subject related to technology or media appropriation, and soon starts collaborating in an emergent organization that allows the expansion of their own ideas. What most members of MetaReciclagem project have in common is a need to develop free (open) infrastructure and new uses to technology.

Language and context: MetaReciclagem is deeply related to different kinds of local context in Brasil: from projects based on the paradigm of digital inclusion to ones related to multimedia production and art interventions. For instance, a spore of MetaReciclagem has been created in a communitary center in Sacadura Cabral, a slum in Santo André, and maintained for almost an year by people from the community. Other spore of MetaReciclagem has been developed together with the Brasilian Organized Hip Hop Movement (MHHOB) in Teresina, Piauí, providing the infrastructure for the creation of three telecenters. Piauí is the poorest state in Brasil. On the other hand, MetaReciclagem is also planning an experimental laboratory inside USP, one of the largest universities in Brasil, and members of MetaReciclagem often provide the infrastructure for artistic interventions or collective celebrations (a.k.a. parties). And there are at least a dozen other places in which MetaReciclagem is being developed and applied.

Project History: MetaReciclagem was created as the infrastructure solution to a wide range of demands from Projeto Metá:Fora, a “collaborative incubator” that in 2002-2003 aggregated almost two hundred people all around Brasil around the development of projects that dealt with art, media, education and technology, under a perspective that knowledge should be free and re-usable. Its members came from different areas: journalists, artists, designers, software developers, social scientists and others. Nearly 25 projects have been created, structured and developed collectively. Among them, the first brasilian Tactical Media event (prov0s, 2002), a collaborative website about nonprofits and entrepreneurship (metaong.info), an online publication on technology, economy and society (buzzine), research related to a de-centralized laboratory of language, narratives and art experimentation (memelab), public interventions (recicle1politico), webradio experiences and conecTAZes – multimedia celebrations, like neuromob :: book xchange, a party / bookcrossing.

During projeto Metá:Fora's short life span, we reached a point where we needed some kind of infrastructure to develop the projects. At the time, we were trying to bring the perspective of collaborative production and collective creativity to the world of digital inclusion, and we needed computers to test some hypothesis. We thought of asking for a donation to a north-american institution that got used computers from companies and delivered them to NGOs, but the bureaucracy was too complex. Someone reminded us that brasilian companies also dumped lots of computers every year, and the idea of MetaReciclagem was born: we would get those computers, recycle them using F(L)OSS and deliver them to social projects.

At first, we made an agreement with Agente Cidadão, an NGO that manages donations in São Paulo: we would take care of every technological device they received (from computers to old VCRs or faxes), in exchange for a place to work and internet connection. We then started working within their network of nearly one hundred NGOs. With time, we conquered other spaces: the Parque Escola (School Park), in Santo André, and a laboratory downtown São Paulo, in Olido Gallery.

Based on our defense of the idea of free knowledge, in a given moment we realized that MetaReciclagem was not a group identity for some people in São Paulo, but rather a de-centralized methodology that should be appropriated, replicated and re-created everywhere, by whoever would want to. Since then, MetaReciclagem has got many different faces: from a one-man spore with no computer in the coast of Bahia to a educational approach strategically adopted by huge projects developed by the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Communications.

People: The access to MetaReciclagem project is completely open: we have a mailing list and a wiki, and most colllective decisions are made there. There are not fixed positions or responsabilities, as everything is de-centralized and self-organized. Hierarchy, if there is any, is based on reputation. Some of the people who created MetaReciclagem have some influence over the others, but the same is true for others who joined the network six months ago. There's usually a group of nearly a dozen engaged people, who dedicate a good part of their lives to develop MetaReciclagem, another twenty or thirty who collaborate, say, once a week or twice a month, and the other hundred lurkers. But these numbers vary from time to time. The mailing list (today) has 158 members, and plenty of other people develop MetaReciclagem in the spores.

Lessons learned: Since the project started, we have faced a lot of difficulties. Perhaps the worst is the fact that we developed a way of organizing that has no legal counterpart. We took a while to decide for an emergent approach: there is a set of principles on what is MetaReciclagem, based on which anyone can decide whether what they do is or ain't part of the project. The advantage of that positioning is that we were able to be present in different organizations: some NGOs, one or other companies, the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Communications, universities, the city administration of São Paulo. If we were to incorporate into one NGO, we could not have the autonomy to be in all those places. We organized MetaReciclagem not as an organization, but a movement instead. The downside is that we always have problems in getting funding, as we have no legal existence as a group. That makes us too dependent on political issues of specific partnerships. We are not able to force collective decisions, because in every instance we are, we're more individuals than a group. Sometimes, the fragmentation overcomes the threshold of understandable complexity. But then again, there are more advantages: since we don't have a static structure, there is no routine, and creative dynamics is maintained. We are always re-inventing what MetaReciclagem is and what it does. The collective innovation is an ongoing process.

Technical Information

Technological Basis: Since the beginning, MetaReciclagem decided to use free and open source software for everything, not only for economical reasons, but because of its flexibility and freedom to understand the code. It is true even for uses that are not that easy of software: for the autolabs project, a project on mediatic alfabetization, and later for the Pontos de Cultura project, MetaReciclagem members had to struggle against the resistance of people who were already used to buy pirated software to their projects. There was always the excuse that using pirated software was a tactical, protest use of technology, with which we never agreed: teaching 300 youngsters to use pirated software, we're creating a new generations of slaves to the proprietary software. If we use free and open source software instead, we are bringin more people to its development, even if their only contribution is test software.
In that sense, all the projects we have developed are based on GNU/Linux environments and f(l)oss. Audio workstations are configured with Jack + Ardour, rezound, audacity, hydrogen and many others; graphic workstation with scribus, sodipodi, the gimp, blender and inkscape; and video workstations with kino, cinelerra, jahshaka and others. The telecenters often use a TC-TS (Thin Client - Thick Server) to optimize the use of old computers. All of our online environments are developed with free scripts for LAMP, such as drupal, wordpress, scuttle, mailman and others.

Solutions: : MetaReciclagem is not exactly a software, but a de-constructive approach to all possibles uses of technology, including software. Our uses of software usually look for the development of different ways to make people talk to each other. In that sense, a telecenter running on Linux with instant messenger clients or a mailing list available on the web are the same thing.

Implementations: Our online environments are available on the world wide web:
http://wiki.metareciclagem.org
http://lista.metareciclagem.org
http://agregador.metareciclagem.org
http://blog.metareciclagem.org
Local implementations of MetaReciclagem tech methodology can be found in all the current spores and ConecTAZes: Galeria Olido, in São Paulo downtown; Centro de Referência do Movimento Hip Hop, in Teresina; Bailux in Arraial d'Ajuda; the development center for the Pontos de Cultura project, west zone of São Paulo; IP media center, in Lapa, Rio de Janeiro; the Humanist Place in Santa Cecília, São Paulo; and many others.

Users: Anyone willing to create different uses of information technology – from a charity aiming at providing internet access for its community to artists who wish to experiment the limits of technology and human interaction.

License: Everything we develop is published under open licenses, even non-technical production. All the documentation in our wiki is under a GNU-FDL license, including the projects, methodologies and texts.

Statement of Reasons: Because we are successfully influencing thousands of people about how to handle technology in a more human way and made them aware that technology is not a black magic box (it might be, but then everyone can be its wizard).

Planned use of prize money: MetaReciclagem, as a network, has many needs. The most important are developing further the methodology and ellaborating documentation. We have already started to draft an outline of the Green Book on MetaReciclagem, but we must provide ways for people to dedicate to it. If we get prize, the Green Book would be product of the prize money.

Role:

Representative of the project

Salutation:

Mr.

First name:

Felipe

Last name:

Fonseca

Company / Institution:

IPTI

Role:

Representative of the project

Salutation:

Mr.

First name:

Hernani

Last name:

Dimantas

Role:

Representative of the project

Salutation:

Mr.

First name:

Dalton

Last name:

Martins

Company / Institution:

Pirituba 33

Role:

Representative of the project

Salutation:

Mr.

First name:

Fernando

Last name:

Henrique

Company / Institution:

IPTI

Role:

Representative of the project

Salutation:

Mr.

First name:

Daniel

Last name:

Pádua

Company / Institution:

Ministry of Culture

IfapSuccessStories

felipefonseca — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 12:00:32 +0000

CaseStudy

Text sent to Unesco's IFAP Success Stories website.

Written by Felipe Fonseca

MetaReciclagem

It has emerged as a typically Brazilian yet globally replicable way to think and do human-centered technology development, supporting ethical principles such as collaborative production and social uses of technology. After five years, the network has become a reference in technological appropriation in Brazil, counting hundreds of collaborators, as well as being used as key methodology for the elaboration and implementation of large-scale governmental projects such as the Pontos de Cultura, Casas Brasil and others. More than a technology project, it has aggregated educational perspective, artistic experimentation and the development of alternate economic cycles, having received honorary mentions on Prix Ars Electronica Digital Communities in 2006 and on APC Betinho Communications Prize in 2005, and being listed a finalist for the APC Chris Nicol FOSS prize in 2007.

The evolutionary and maturation processes of MetaReciclagem started with a group of people in São Paulo who proposed the re-use of second-hand computers, with the objective of creating informational spaces in communities which did not have yet access to that kind of infrastructure. Based on the perspective of technological de-construction to create inclusive processes, not limited to offer only access, but also foster the forging of networks of social mobilization and distributed learning.

Over time, MetaReciclagem could no longer (or did not want to) be understood only under the generic and opportunist definition of digital inclusion, and its members started to look for more ellaborate levels of critical action and the understanding of technology as social phenomena. Concepts such as collaboration, collective knowledge production, re-signification of technology and critical appropriation became the fundaments for other levels of experimentation and creativity. MetaReciclagem has transformed the way of defining itself plenty of times, and that is one of the factors that allows it to survive scale and still be creative and productive.

CaseStudy

felipefonseca — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 11:54:12 +0000

References

Texts produced for the WaagSarai platform (2004)
Application that resulted in the PrixArs Honorary Mention (2006)
DrewHemmentSampa visit
Unesco's IfapSuccessStories (2008)
Form filled by eCommunita for the GLobal Young Social Entrepreneurs' Competition: http://www.globalknowledge.org/ysef07/applicationform/registration_form....

Chapter proposal for the book "ICTs and Sustainable Solutions for Global Development: Theory, Practice and the Digital Divide" sent in july 15th, 2008:

MetaReciclagem: brazilian technological appropriation

MetaReciclagem is an open project created in 2002 in Brazil. At first a collective in São Paulo proposing the re-use of donated electronic equipment with free and open source software, soon MetaReciclagem turned into a distributed network of multiple identities working towards the de-construction of technology – taken here in a broad sense: computers, toothbrushes, language - and its re-purposing and re-signification in different contexts, articulating the collective agency of social change.
While opting not to follow a common path in Brazil – closing up a methodology, creating an NGO and earning loads of money from the government by repeating the same practices over and over again-, MetaReciclagem has established deep dialog with projects in the government and civil society, universities and businesses, proposing a participatory approach to collaborative exchange between people and institutions.
During its six years of existence, MetaReciclagem has become a reference in critical appropriation of technology, counting hundreds of collaborators, as well as being used as key methodology for the elaboration and implementation of large-scale projects. More than a technology project, it has aggregated educational perspective, artistic experimentation and the development of alternate economic cycles. Members of MetaReciclagem have been, in an emergent way, an important influence to dozens of projects in fields such as digital inclusion and technological appropriation; free and open source software, knowledge and culture; e-waste; media and technological education; distributed learning, open innovation networks and media arts.
MetaReciclagem has received honorary mentions on Prix Ars Electronica in 2006 (Digital Communities category) and on APC Betinho Communications Prize in 2005, and was listed a finalist for the APC Chris Nicol FOSS prize in 2007.

Brazilian cultures - mutirão and gambiarra

MetaReciclagem has emerged as a typically Brazilian yet globally replicable way to think and do human-centered technology development, supporting ethical principles such as collaborative production and social uses of technology. Two of its main references from brazilian cultures are gambiarra and mutirão.
Gambiarra is a Brazilian expression that defines any informal deviation of technical knowledge. It is a widespread cultural practice, consisting of all kinds of improvised solutions for everyday problems with any available material. It is a good definition for the will to creatively transform whatever one wants or needs to transform by exploring the indetermination of technology. Gambiarra is less a solution than a process: in the boundary of "temporary" and "definitive" solutions, it is always about trying, observing, learning and trying again. That unstable condition, even if sometimes less effective, allows for a great deal of spontaneous innovation. Bringing that understanding to the perspective of information technology and working with the ideas of free software, open hardware, open spectrum and open content, deeply involved with social contexts, has been proving a powerful way to interfere in some contexts in Brazil.
A mutirão is the tropicalized form of the multitude, requested whenever one needs help to accomplish goals bigger than her/his capacities permit: buildind a wall, cleaning a home, fixing street lamps or anything. Whatever the personal differences, people tend to see the mutirão as a collective effort towards a greater good, that temporarily suspends tensions and puts people to work together. A mutirão is usually non-hyerarchical and dynamic. Each one contributes with what s/he wants or can, and the result is often satisfatory. It can be seen as a very productive way for a community to accomplish common goals.

An emergent methodology

The name MetaReciclagem does not define a group of people, but a definition that some people use to identify and refer to an open methodology. It becomes concrete in three distinct but inter-related levels:
1.Esporos (“spora”) are reference centers of MetaReciclagem that receive equipment donations, host talks and events and act as network nodes. Since 2002, at least two dozens of esporos have been created in different parts of Brazil. What characterizes MetaReciclagem as a radically de-centered networkis the fact that any space can define itself as a spore, provided that it follows a short set of principles: working for social change towards a collaborative, participative society; using and developing free software for critical appropriation of technology; informing the network and releasing documentation with free licensing in the infralógica (see below).
2.Infralógica (“logical infrastructure”) are all the online environments in which conversations and documentation about MetaReciclagem take place. It is responsible for keeping a strong sense of community among all the diverse nodes of the network. All the online environments are developed with free and open source software. The infralógica is in itself object of constant research and reinvention. Among the next steps of its development are resources for distributed logistics and the creation of sub-groups.
3.ConecTAZes (“connected temporary autonomous zones”) are any collective actions that benefit from MetaReciclagem, both presentially or online. They range from lowtech paper-and-pencil collaboration workshops to Linux InstallFests, seminars, public interventions, hotsites or plain meetings. ConecTAZes often (but not always) become or build independent multimedia telecenters.

Background: Projeto Metáfora

The mailing list Projeto Metáfora (metaphor project) was created in June 2002. In less than three months, there were tens of active members and at least a dozen projects in areas such as education, art and media, from a series of public interventions to discussions of (what turned out to be) the Brazilian tactical media lab, MidiaTaticaBrasil. Hernani Dimantas, one of its members, describes it as a free incubator for collaborative projects. Its members came from different areas: journalists, artists, designers, software developers, social scientists and others.
Nearly 25 projects have been created, structured and developed collectively. Among them, the first brasilian conference on tactical media (prov0s, 2002), a collaborative website about nonprofits and entrepreneurship (metaong.info), an online publication on technology, economy and society (buzzine), research related to a de-centralized laboratory of language, narratives and art experimentation (memelab), public interventions during the elections (recicle1politico), webradio experiences and multimedia celebrations, like neuromob :: book xchange, a party / bookcrossing. All the projects followed a few principles:

They emphasized the idea of collaborative development, inspired by the free software movement. By publishing the knowledge created during the process, it would be easier to replicate the projects; therefore, they were all based on copyleft and free knowledge concepts;
A different perspective from other projects that deal with technology. We did not want to train people to become accustomed to computers, but transform technology to change their lives;
An effort to keep the conversations free from specialist jargon, so that anyone could understand, and open to anyone willing to participate. There was also a concern to fight the notion that technology is something apart from everyday life and that online and offline activities are opposite.

To develop the project, technological infrastructure was needed. MetaReciclagem was created to face that need:
“In a given point, we realized we would need computers to get those projects running. Someone sent the group a link to accr.org website, an American organization that delivers used computers to NGOs. A member suggested we ask for donations. Other pointed out that transportation would be too expensive, and a lot of Brazilian companies and people also had old computers. What if we asked them? We were not an organization, how could we formally justify and process the donations? A draft of what we then called MetaReciclagem was created on our wiki site.
Who was the author? Everyone, I guess. Then I met Agente Cidadão, a NGO working with what they call ‘Social Logistics’: they pick up donations all around São Paulo and deliver them to charities. At that point, they had some computers and didn't know what to do with them. I talked about our project and in less than one month we started working together. They offered us exactly what we needed – space, old computers, internet access and energy, but, furthermore, the most important: a goal. We would transform technology using free software to help people in need.”
Felipe Fonseca to Bia Rinaldi, 2004

Digital inclusion?

The basic idea was to restore computers which were broken or considered obsolete, configure them with free and open source software, and then donate them to social organizations. Hernani Dimantas notes that, although MetaReciclagem was supposed to be a pragmatic project of computer recycling, its members started developing a conceptual approach that went far beyond that. To Hernani, the group’s work is characteristic of a “third phase” of digital inclusion. Restoring computers and passing this ability to others is more than what other “digital inclusion actions” usually do, he observes. Simply providing access to the internet and access to information was something done at the first stages of the movement. What MetaReciclagem does is provide people with the means to produce their own knowledge. It fosters the appropriation of technology, bringing a critical approach to the use of communication tools. It’s not about mere inclusion or exclusion, but a conscious and creative use of technologies instead.
Over the years, concepts such as collaboration, collective knowledge production, re-signification of technology and critical appropriation became central for other levels of experimentation and creativity. MetaReciclagem has transformed the way of defining itself plenty of times, and that is one of the factors that allows it to survive scale and still be creative and productive.
Following the strong support of the idea of free knowledge, at some point MetaReciclagem was perceived not as a group of people in São Paulo anymore, but instead a de-centered methodology that could and should be appropriated, replicated and re-created everywhere, by whoever wanted to. Since then, MetaReciclagem has got many different faces: from a one-man spore with no computer in the coast of Bahia to an educational approach adopted strategically by government projects.

MetaReciclagem is…

As an open and diverse network, MetaReciclagem has almost as many definitions as it has members. Some of them follow:

“MetaReciclagem is a project that tries (and miraculously achieves) to make computers that were considered obsolete work with free software, and to introduce people in need to the idea of digital inclusion. To me, it’s also a chance to learn and teach others how free software works.”

“It’s a pirate operation. People get together when they want to, and use MetaReciclagem as a form of expression. That’s why the voluntary side of our work is so big. The connection between us follows the logic of our individual projects.”

“It’s construction of technologic independence to political and social actions”

“Garbage is only garbage because it’s in the wrong place. Things at their right places have value. To some, it’s nothing, to others… it’s an inversion of values.”

“It’s a great school, a place to look for help, where we can create.”

“To recycle ideas, minds and hearts. To raise blue flowers in dry land.”

“It’s a family with freedom of expression; although it is work, there is autonomy to come and go.”

“It’s a collaborative methodology of technological appropriation to social change.”

“MetaReciclagem successfully influenced thousands of people about how to handle technology in a more human way and made them aware that technology is not a black magic box (or else, it can be a black magic box of which anyone can become a wizard). It is all about fostering a closer relationship between people and technology.”

Success stories - MetaReciclagem

felipefonseca — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 22:43:06 +0000

Há umas semanas recebi uma chamada pra enviar 'histórias de sucesso' em um site do programa informação pra todxs da Unesco. Deixei meio de lado, mas hoje de manhã cortacolei uns parágrafos em inglês sobre a MetaReciclagem que tinha aqui e enviei lá. E aceitaram.

MetaReciclagem

MetaReciclagem is an open network created in 2002 in Brazil. It has been the result of intensive exchange through the internet of over a hundred people from different sectors in a mailing list. At first a collective in São Paulo proposing the reuse of donated electronic equipment with free and open source software, soon MetaReciclagem turned into a network of multiple identities working towards the deconstruction of technology, taken in a broad sense, and its re-purposing and re-signification in different contexts aiming at social change. While opting not to follow the common path in Brazil - creating an NGO and earning lots of money from the government by repeating the same practices over and over again-, MetaReciclagem has established distributed and deep dialog with projects in the government and civil society, universities and businesses, proposing a participatory approach to collaborative exchange between people and institutions. Members of MetaReciclagem have been, in an emergent way, an important influence to plenty of Brazilian projects related to subjects such as digital inclusion and technological appropriation; free and open source software, knowledge and culture; media and technological education; open innovation networks and media arts; and many others.

It has emerged as a typically Brazilian yet globally replicable way to think and do human-centered technology development, supporting ethical principles such as collaborative production and social uses of technology. After five years, the network has become a reference in technological appropriation in Brazil, counting hundreds of collaborators, as well as being used as key methodology for the elaboration and implementation of large-scale governmental projects such as the Pontos de Cultura, Casas Brasil and others. More than a technology project, it has aggregated educational perspective, artistic experimentation and the development of alternate economic cycles, having received honorary mentions on Prix Ars Electronica Digital Communities in 2006 and on APC Betinho Communications Prize in 2005, and being listed a finalist for the APC Chris Nicol FOSS prize in 2007.

The evolutionary and maturation processes of MetaReciclagem started with a group of people in São Paulo who proposed the re-use of second-hand computers, with the objective of creating informational spaces in communities which did not have yet access to that kind of infrastructure. Based on the perspective of technological de-construction to create inclusive processes, not limited to offer only access, but also foster the forging of networks of social mobilization and distributed learning.

Over time, MetaReciclagem could no longer (or did not want to) be understood only under the generic and opportunist definition of digital inclusion, and its members started to look for more ellaborate levels of critical action and the understanding of technology as social phenomena. Concepts such as collaboration, collective knowledge production, re-signification of technology and critical appropriation became the fundaments for other levels of experimentation and creativity. MetaReciclagem has transformed the way of defining itself plenty of times, and that is one of the factors that allows it to survive scale and still be creative and productive.

Web 3 - Conspirando pra manter a rede pública

felipefonseca — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 22:40:00 +0000

Sunday morning I woke up in Berlin with my mind telling me I should change some things in my presentation at transmediale. I started to play with the text and eventually got rid of almost everything I have written before, because I thought there was something way more important than repeating the common web 2.0 criticism: it is a stock market hype; it weakens p2p while centralizes traffic in order to earn profit out of users' ability to create and maintain relationships; and so on. Not that I disagree with that kind of criticism, but I don't think I have much to add to that. There's a great article by Dmytri Kleiner & Brian Wyrick in Mute about that. Now, my impression is that sometimes the criticism is totally focused in the business model and in the fact that somebody is making money out of it, and it is not the users. I personally don't care as much about amateur video producers making money as I care about trying to create communication technologies that feel more human. And that should be the starting point to what I have tried to speak at the panel. Below is the script I wrote in the couple of hours before the panel (and during a part of my colleagues' talk, I must admit). It is far from objective or polished, and I have the feeling I might have slipped away from the topic, but it is a beginning. In the following days I might add some new thoughts to it...

---

METARECICLAGEM E EU

In the last five years or so, me and a growing group of people have been exploring possibilities for technology-driven social change in Brasil. We have started as a mailing list, and came up with the idea of collecting computer donations, remanufacture them using free and open source software, and deliver them to social projects. We partnered with an NGO in São Paulo and started to receive equipment and gather volunteers interested in helping. Then we have had a Lab in Santo André, a city close to São Paulo, inside a public park where practically everything was recycled. We would experiment there with information technology: free software for multimedia production, online streaming, wireless connectivity and so on. That more experimental approach has moved us away from the traditional “digital inclusion” initiatives: we were not as much interested in numbers or teaching things as in trying new ideas.

Since then, things have spread. Some of us have been invited to help ellaborating and implementing a huge government project, the Pontos de Cultura, who have been supporting the creation of hundreds of grassroots cultural centres throughout the country, equipped with free and open source technology for multimedia production.

These years in direct contact with the appropriation of technology in Brasil has helped me understanding a few issues that are related to the theme of this panel. I'll try to bring some of these issues into the discussion.

WEB 2

I will avoid repeating arguments here, but want to make clear I don't care much about the name web 2. There is an excelent article by Dmytri Kleiner & Brian Wyrick in Mute magazine titled Infoenclosure 2.0 that describes web 2.0 as a business model, and quotes Tim Bernes-Lee saying that everything in web 2.0 was already possible with web 1.0. Web 2.0 websites has also a lot of mean effects for the net ecology: they centralize traffic, threat privacy and autonomy. They hardly allow anonymous posting. Perhaps worst of it all, they collect information about patterns of use, and profit from the users' ability to maintain relationships or their will to create their own media by serving contextual ads.

Despite all that, I believe the last few years have seen some fundamental changes in the understanding of what the web is, and how it should be developed and used. I will try to explore something that came together with the web 2.0 wave, but is not always regarded as a web 2 tool: online social networks.

Outside the web, Brasil is a networked society. Whatever you need to do, there is always somebody who knowes somebody who can help. Despite that, five years ago, whenever we tried to talk about online collaboration with school principals or NGO directors, it would go the same way:

“That's cute, but our teachers won't have time to control that”.
“That's the point, there won't be control”.
“Are you crazy? If we let them do whatever they want, it will be only porn and games!”

Well, I see no problem with porn and games, a lot of people I know have got their internet skills by browsing similar subjects.

When we first started to plan the workshops for the Pontos de Cultura project, there seemed to be an opportunity. We needed to be quick and effective, as the budget for implementation was limited: only 5 days of immersion to show the possibilities of free information technologies. We have got the Ministry supporting us to show collaborative uses of the internet because it would save us resources in support: once the people in the centers knew how to find support online, they could help themselves – or else, use the web to ask us how to do things.

For that, we came up with a workshop called “Se Joga na Rede”, something like “throw yourself in the web”. It was a brief introduction to the “social” web: weblogs, mailing lists, forums, wikis, eventually RSS and... social networks.

First thing we have learned: everybody was already jumping in the web. Via Orkut. I don't know if you have heard about the use of Orkut in Brasil. Brasilians have adopted Orkut as the ultimate online communication tool. Current Alexa rating shows Orkut as the most visited website in Brasil. You can blame John Perry Barlow. I have watched yesterday a video of Barlow claiming he was among the first users of Orkut and sent all his invitations to brasilians.

I must have been in the second or third generation of these. Some time after subscribing, I've seen the brasilian Orkut fever: everybody was there. Even people who have never used e-mail. At some point, I gave up the social voyeurism and quit. What happened next is interesting: still working in the Pontos de Cultura project, whenever I met someone new – what happened a lot – I had to explain why I wasn't registered to Orkut. On the other hand, whenever I asked someone's e-mail address, I would probably hear something like “I have e-mail but don't check it that often”.

For me, that sounded weird. I receive more than a hundred e-mails a day, and a lot of what I have done in Brasil is related to mailing lists that got organised somehow. But in present time all around Brasil... e-mail is for old people. Mailing lists are an addiction to an outdated tool.

E-MAIL AND MAILING LISTS

Mailing lists are all about statements. I have to say something worthwhile, to be held in consideration by my peers. That might make sense in other countries, but this is not a common kind of conversation in Brasil. Actually, the metaphor in which the e-mail is based does not make much sense in Brasil. I remember writing 2 or 3 letters in my life.

I have seen “digital inclusion” projects “teaching” people to create e-mail accounts and then... what?

“now you all can type a letter to your friends”
“but saying what”?
“whatever you want to tell them”
“but I have nothing to say”

The upper middle class in Brasil says Orkut users are people who are yet to learn how to use the internet. Even some coordinators of Pontos de Cultura would come to us and ask:

“can we block Orkut”?
“there's no way to do that”. (we were lying, sure)
“but they should make a proper use of the computers”.
“and how's that”?
“filling a resumé, posting it to employment agencies”

There's one thing in social projects in Brasil called “citizenship classes”. In essence, most of these classes teach people how the political system should work, and how one should trust the democratic government will listen to people who organise themselves in the possible formal ways. Everyone knows it's not like that, that things only happen if you know somebody who can connect the dots, but the citizenship classes are enforced in social projects.

Well, I think the “proper use of computers” is something like that: how to drive a mouse, type in some text editor and use the internet to read news and post one's resumé to find a job. No one says that there are no jobs anymore, that more than half the working people are unregistered. The important is look like if you're doing the average use of the internet.

This kind of initiative allows no creativity, only conformation. And creativity is something you do see in the streets of Brasil. People are in eternal negotiation, creating their realities, making connections, networking. I don't mean fancy meetings every first tuesday (even though those also exist), but really networking at street level, finding opportunities, making a living everyday.

The use of Instant Messaging is even more strange to me: they barely say anything, keep exchanging emoticons, animated GIFs and the like. Yet, whenever they need to articulate anything , things happen really fast.

UPDATE OUR METAPHORS

All that to say one thing: all the “web 2” craze has brought at least one interesting element: people no longer the see the web as a mere collection of pages. I mean, it should be nothing new for this audience that digital information does not need to fit into “pages” or even “files”, right? Going beyond our metaphors is a task hard to accomplish. Let's leave the library! I was involved with some projects that intended to propose different interfaces to online communications: Ductiles, Livenodes, Xemelê. None of them succeeded. The web 2.0 hype has at least made our life easier by helping people to acknowledge how important self-publishing and collective environments are.

The same NGO coordinators or school principals who called us crazy five years ago now come to us and say

“do you know this web 2 thing”?
“yeah, we've kind of heard about it”
“so, we want that for our projects”

When I was a consultant for the Minister of Culture, a friend who works there asked me:

“what if the kids publish a video complaining about the Minister”?
“there's nothing you can do to avoid it”.

This time I wasn't lying. A more collaborative web used in large scale can bring interesting elements into the social tissue. I know, the web has always been collaborative. Sharing is the core of its infrastructure. But what is a recent development are tools that allow people to share without any specific knowledge of HTML or web servers.

But for those who do know a little more about servers and code, there are possibilities that, despite already being around for some years, now can be more easily understood and accepted. For instance, we have built a social environment for the members of Pontos de Cultura using only free software. When the ministry was still supporting it, we had over 4,000 registered users talking to each other, blogging, joining communities.

What is needed now it getting that awareness of the benefits of online collaboration and show people that they don't need corporations to keep their own self-published, collective infrastructures. To be clear: web 2.0 as a business model is bad. Earning profit out of home-edited videos or from the ability people have of building relationships is malandragem da brava. That's something we've got to find a way to change. But all that fuzz may have brought a deeper understanding of the internets as made out of people, not documents.

WEB 3.0?

Sure, I back all those who want the web to be more de-centralized, upon P2P infrastructures, and even with the aid of darknets and local networks. But I disagree with those who claim “there's no need for these social, instant messaging, folksonomy thingies, my e-mail client is enough direct communication”.

Some people foresee a possible “web 3.0” as being the semantic web. That may make sense in terms of sequential evolution: if the web is a giant indexed library, let's build better libraries. Well, I do like the idea in some specific cases, but I don't think the semantic web will be the whole web. Parallel to that, I would like to see some more experimentation about structures and microformats – RSS, ATOM, RDF, FOAF, the recent dataportability effort. I'd like to see many, multiple, virtually infinite, private online environments, sometimes p2p systems, sometimes darknets, sometimes local networks, that allow people to decide how their information should flow.

But I would also like so see experimentation in different kinds of symbolic abstractions for computer-mediated communication. If the web is made out of people, why not trying to make it look like that? But sadly, in this specific point the stock market hype has been a lot more effective. Will we let them do it their way?

Loose notes on MetaReciclagem

felipefonseca — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 21:34:34 +0000

I have been doing more reading in a week than I used to do in a month, and I always keep a notebook (those made of paper, not electronic ones, remember?) in order to make notes. This week I was opening and reading, with no discipline, Negri and Hardt's Multitudes, one book by Paulo Freire and another about him, Deleuze and Guattari's Mille Plateaux vol. 1, Hakim Bey's TAZ, the last year UnCommon ground session reader, and some of the hundreds of PDFs I'm willing to read in the near future. In between, William Gibson's Pattern Recognition and Calvin and Hobbes. All that while reorganizing metareciclagem website and thinking about the two presentations to make in Amsterdam in two weeks. Follow some notes I got from my notebook.

Knowledge Transfer is an illusion. Teaching as an intransitive verb. Teaching as ethics. A political act, always.

The contents of MetaReciclagem? Howtos. People who get together not because they oppose to something, but because of an interest in how things work. Metaphorical learning - opening and tinkering with hardware may be the same as hacking software, as playing with the meaning and ethimology of words, as sharing cooking recipes, as building your own drums, or piling up bricks in one's home or in a community center back in the neighbourhood. All those actions are a continuum. Opening up means deviating, overcoming the invisible and often invented limitations of purpose, lifetime or meaning. There's an ethics behind deviation, one of non-conformity, of inventing and creating things. Treating the world as raw materials.

Still active. New people every week in the mailing list. A 16 yr old skater, a 15 yr old boy on "MetaReciclagem" classes. And they are not treated as n00bies (except when they ask for it ;)

People tend to be disappointed because I am not a software hacker or something like that. I know how to solve some problems by using the web and irc, but that's all. I can't program a line of proper code.

MetaReciclagem as sensibility. Not what but how.

Co-dependence.

People who share a sensibility. People who experience. Epiphany: I understand. People keep on arriving.

Deviance, howtos, lowtech. Inner parts, almost in a erotic sense. DIY whatever.

It is in the process that MetaReciclagem defines its own purposes.

Network shape. Rhizome

Ethics of collaboration, humanism, improvisation and collective effort.

Curiosidade epistemologica.

Not including people, but growing a network.

Sergio Amadeu asked me: but MetaReciclagem requires people who want to understand technology from the inside. No, but yes. We are not serving the public good, looking for equality or access to everyone. That is important, and happens during the process. But MetaReciclagem, the organless body, is constantly looking for potential innovators who will join the network and transform it somehow. The "users" exist and are well treatedm but they are not as important as the transforming nodes.

A drive to see things from the inside. Erotic discovery.

Purpose is liquid.

Autonomy needs catalysers. De-centralization is never accomplished by silencing the active nodes. Collective construction follows individual efforts. There is no collective without individuals. Actually, there is, but it is always stupid.

Treating multiple as a substantive. Multiplicity.

Even rooted trees make rhizome.

Mutirao is the tropicalized multitude.

When I say MetaReciclagem is anything, do not take it as a fact, but hope.

Feeling lost. Epiphany. Understanding.

Re: Too much technology

felipefonseca — Mon, 28 May 2007 21:36:15 +0000

Just sent this email to the people involved with the panel I'd be joining in IETM plenary session "Technophobia vs Technophilia", this week in Montreal.

I think that following this kind of perspective I could be seen as leaning to technophilia, although assuming a critical position.

I'm part of a network here in Brasil - MetaReciclagem - that proposes a de-constructive approach to technology, meaning an almost intimate human-machine relationship. But that does not mean we are seduced by the so techno-fetishism that is unfortunately so common. We criticize exactly the programmed obsolescence of technologies - why shouldn't our equipment last longer if we knew how to do it, hack it, customize it? Coming from that, the more intimate we get to technology - free and open source software, freeing hardware and the such - likely more open are the possibilities.

I mean, I'm talking here of a kind of sensibility and a kind of perspective in which technology should not be seen as something apart from human culture. Technology is culture, technology is human. It's a matter of understanding technology in a broader sense - a toothbrush, an axe, the ability to control fire and language, are all examples of technology, of knowledge applied in order to make life easier.

One could spend some time talking about greek drama and the idea of machina - deus ex machina and all that stuff. In that sense, technology and the performing arts can always bring back the idea of ritualizing the use of applied knowledge. A flying belt or a sensor-arduino-pd-operated PC are all in the same level, as I see it.

Ciclo Gambiarra - Diálogos na Casinha (eng, I)

felipefonseca — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 20:48:12 +0000

(e-mails enviados pra lista da plataforma waag-sarai)

Hey all

we've had here in São Paulo the first meeting of Ciclo Gambiarra.
it has been a good conversation with Braulio Brito, a.k.a. Çtalker,
a semiotics teacher who's beginning his doctorate studies. He talked
for more than one hour about machines, technological appropriation
and Gambiarra, metaphors, bricolage and political action.

For those who understand portuguese:
http://www.interney.net/blogs/metapub/2007/04/15/dialogos_na_casinha

----

Translating two excerpts

((Importância da metareciclagem, bricolagem. gambiarra: estão no limiar de inventar novos dispositivos de mediação e construção de relação que vão gerar transformações sociais que interessam pra nós, e não simplesmente atender funcionalidades externas como gerar lucro ou o poder de controle sobre os governados. aí o que a gente está fazendo é uma ação de política radical - criar máquinas e ferramentas para forçar a sociedade, as relações entre nós e com o mundo natural - embora essa separação já não faça algum sentido - transformar essa relação que a gente tem em outra - gerar espaços novos de relação em que a gente possa ter outra subjetividade - pseudônimos de internet mostram isso.))

The importance of MetaReciclagem, bricolage, gambiarra: they are in the edges of inventing new devices for mediation and relationship building that will generate social transformations relevant to us, not simply fulfilling external demands such as generating profit or controling people who are governed. So what we're doing here is radical politics - create machines and tools in order to force the society, the relationships between ourselves and with the natural world - even though that separation does not make sense anymore - to transform this relationship we have into another - create new relationship spaces in which we can bring another subjectivity. Nicknames on the internet show that.

((Trabalhar mais nesse sentido - gerar novas instituições através das máquinas. quando você age de maneira explicitamente proposital de interferir nos processos, ir contra, resistir, estabelece uma funcionalidade pré-concebida em relação a sua ação, isso gera muita resistência. basta a microsoft lançar uma modificação no sistema operacional pra galera das listas, do "movimento cyberpunk brasileiro", descerem o cacete completamente. e com razão. mas seria muito diferente se aparecesse sem muito motivo, de um lugar desconhecido, uma rotina que fizesse tal coisa que começa a ser apropriada de maneiras muito diferentes por pessoas diferentes como o próprio computador, um projeto de garagem que ninguém sabia direito pra que servia, e isso foi gerando a própria funcionalidade, a própria lógica, as próprias relações sociais peculiares. isso é de uma astúcia sem par. em vez de agir para produzir um resultado, age no sentido de criar espaço onde outros agentes tomem aquele espaço como digno de ser usado pra produzir resultados que elas queiram. wu-wei, agir vazio, central nas artes marciais, taoísmo, zen-budismo. wiki, lista de discussão, não são criadas com uma pré-definição de conteúdo. abrem espaços vazios. isso que interessa pra gente em termos de ação política. romper com a ação deliberada, com finalidades pré-determinadas, pré-concebidas.))

Work more in this sense - generating new institutions through the machines. When you act with the explicit purpose of interfering on processes, standing against, resisting, you establish a pre-conceived functionality related to your action, you generate a lot of resistance (...). It would be really different if, out of nowhere, without a reason, appeared a routine that did some specific thing that started to be appropriated in different ways by a lot of different people, like the computer itself, a garage project that nobody knew well what it was meant for, and that started to generate the functionality itself, the logic itself, the peculiar social relationships. that is really clever. instead of acting to produce a result, acting in the sense of creating spaces where other agents take that space as proper to be used to produce the results they want. (chinese) wu-wei, to act empty, essential on martial arts, taoism, zen-buddhism. wiki and mailing list are not created for pre-defined content. they open empty spaces. that's interesting for us in terms of political action. to break the delliberated action, with pre-determined, pre-conceived goals.

Technologies of Resistance: Transgression and Solidarity in Tactical Media

felipefonseca — Wed, 31 May 2006 21:51:33 +0000

Via: "Miguel Afonso Caetano"

Dear Nettimers:

I have recently finished a M.A. dissertation about
Tactical Media that I've talked about here a few years ago
(www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0311/msg00063.html).
I'm sending you here the English version of the abstract
and the table of contents. In the thesis, I make some
criticisms of the concept of tactical media in terms of
its current validity. Also, in the second part I cover in
detail some projects of the vibrant brazilian tactical media
scene: Metareciclagem (www.metareciclagem.org) - who has
received an honorary mention in this year's Ars Electronica
(www.aec.at/en/prix/honorary2006.asp) and the now deceased
Projeto Metfora (http://ogum.metareciclagem.org/metafora).

Since Nettime's 10th aniversary meeting is happening right now
in Montreal, I think it would be good to start a debate here in
the list about the actual relevance of tactical media in the
age of Web 2.0, which has embraced (co-opted?) much of the same
DIY ethos in places like Flickr and MySpace. On the other side,
we're also living in the midst of the "state of exception"/War
against terrorism where every subversive activity is considered
suspicious - the bioterrorism paranoia case against CAE.

Judging from the brazilian example, I think that it is becoming
more adequate to think about tactical media in peripheral
countries like Brazil and India where there's a sense of more
severe urgency in social transformation, of reappropriation of
technology by the people.

Best regards from Portugal,

Miguel Caetano

Technologies of Resistance:
Transgression and Solidarity in Tactical Media

Miguel Afonso Caetano

Resulting from the convergence between media, technology, art
and politics, tactical media are a set of cultural practices
and a theoretical movement which started in Europe during the
first half of the 90s, having spread to North America until
the end of the millenium and, afterwards, to the rest of the
world. Initially taking advantage of video camcorders but also,
later, of digital technologies such as CD-ROMs and the Internet,
the producer of this kind of media acknowledges himself as as
a hybrid, performing simultaneously the role of an artist,
activist, theorist and technician.

These subversive and/or creative uses of information and
communication technologies by individuals who normally don't
have access to them are characterized by experimentalism,
ephemerality, flexibility, irony and amateurship. Based on the
distinction between tactics and strategies developed by Michel
de Certeau and continued by David Garcia and Geert Lovink, this
dissertation examines the way tactical media present themselves
as "media of crisis, critique and opposition". By applying
a theoretical analysis of some collectives, we intend to
demonstrate that the protest tactics of these media production
forms represent a position of permanent struggle against a
concrete and explicit opponent (nation-state, supranational
institution or transnational corporation).

After addressing the dangers that this antagonist model of media
as a weapon of resistance can lead to, we propose an alternative
perspective of tactical media built on an empirical analysis of
two brazilian projects, Metfora and MetaReciclagem. Finally,
we argue that these and other grassroots initiatives adapt the
practices of subversion and resistance visible in the activist
collectives of developed countries to the local settings of
a peripheral country like Brazil. By fostering technological
reappropriation for social transformation, these groups unleash
the creative and communication capacities of these communities,
towards their self-sustainability and autonomy.

Keywords: tactical media, strategies, media activism, alternative
media, hacker, free software, technological reappropriation,
recycling, Brazil.

Table of Contents
Introduction

9
Methodological and Epistemological Notes
12
Dissertation Plan
17
1 - Elements for The History and Characterization of Tactical Media
21
1.1 - Genesis of The Movement
21
1.2 - Main Definitions
25
1.3 - Theoretical Approaches
27
1.4 - Distinction Between Alternative Media and Tactical Media
35
2 - Genealogy of Informational Mobilizations
42
2.1 - 70s and 80s
45
2.2 - 90s
51
2.3 - Mediactivism: From The Right to Information to The Right to The
Self-Management of Communication 54

3 - The Influence of The Free Software Movement and of The Hacker
Ethic 60

3.1 - The Free Software Development Process
69
3.2 - The Hacker Ethic
72
4 - Tactics and its Theorerical Metaphors
75
4.1 - Tactics and Strategies in Michel de Certeau
76
4.2 - Tactics as Dtournement
79
4.3 - Tactics as Rhizome
83
4.4 - Tactics as Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ)
87
4.5 - Tactics as Swarming
92
4.6 - Tactics as Multitude
98
4.7 - Tactics as Smart Mob
103
5 - Tactical Media Practices
110
5.1 - Culture Jamming: Semiological Guerrilla
110
5.2 - Hacktivism: Cyberspace's Counter-power
117
5.3 - Artivism: Crtique and Subversion in net.art
129
5.4 - The Indymedia Information Network: Open-Source Journalism
144
5.4.1 - IMC-Portugal: A Small Case Study
152
6 Contributions For a Critique of The Concept
168
6.1 - "The Alt.Everything of Culture and Politics"
168
6.2 - The Specter of Cooptation by Capital
170
6.3 - The Eternal Return of The Technological Sublime
172
6.4 - The Impossible Subversion of Media
175
6.5 - The Rhetorics of The Enemy and The Terrorist Metaphor
178
SECOND PART
1 - The Brasilian Digital "Jeitinho": "Gambiarras", "Mutires" and
"Puxadinhos" 188
1.1 - Mdia Ttica
189
1.2 Contratv
195
1.3 Re:combo
195
1.4 - Free Radios: Rdio Muda
196
1.5 CMI-Brasil
198
1.6 - Brazil, A Hacker Nation
201
2 - Metfora Project: Chaos and Order in a Collective Intelligence
205
2.1 Events and Projects
210
2.2 - The Participation in Midia Ttica Brasil
216
2.3 The Attempt to Create a NGO and The End
217
2.4 - Leadership and Motivation in a "Chaorder"
222
3 - MetaReciclagem: Reappropriation of Technology for Social
Transformation 226
3.1 - The Replication of MetaReciclagem's Methology
233
4 - Analysis of Survey Data
239
4.1 - Profile of Metfora's and MetaReciclagem's Collaborators
239
4.2 - Opinions Towards Metfora and MetaReciclagem
243
4.2.1 - Political Motivations of The Projects
243
4.2.2 - Distinction Between Digital Inclusion and Social
Reappropriation of Technology 244
4.2.3 - Evaluation of Strenghts and Weaknesses
247
4.2.4 - Personal Visions About Metfora and MetaReciclagem
249
Final Conclusion
251
Bibliography
258

Another status update on MetaReciclagem

felipefonseca — Mon, 08 May 2006 20:34:49 +0000

(e-mail enviado para a lista da waag-sarai platform)

After some time trying to rescue the lab in Olido gallery, we gave up. After all, as I said before, it's major elections year, and the city telecenters coordinator didn't want to understand that we work with the federal government, but are in no way affiliated with PT or any other party. For them, it's easier to think in terms of "who's with them is not with us".

Then came A Teia, the megalomaniac meeting of the cultural hotspots, solidary economy and related subjects. You won't understand the size of it with the pictures. It was big. Too big, some say. Comments are that BRL 8,5 million (~ USD 4 million) from fiscal incentives were spent in the event. It happened in Bienal, the huge building designed by Oscar Niemeyer in the middle of Ibirapuera Park. Over 500 projects from all around the country were able to exhibit their products.

Products? Yeah. Ideas such as solidary economy and grassroots entrepreneurship dominated the event, and are becoming more and more present in the Cultural Hotspots. More important than cultural production itself. But that may be subject for another e-mail. One of the best results of A Teia has been that 25 cultural hotspots finally got their "multimedia kits", composed of one server, one multimedia workstation, one thin client, video camera, printers, audio equipment and more, and brought the kits back home, with a customized multimedia GNU/Linux distribution configured.

Last year, we were promised BRL 50k for a MetaReciclagem meeting during Teia. Then it became to BRL 16k. Then less money and more responsibilities. We gave up on the national meeting, and Dalton decided to create an exhibition on things that he and Glauco have been doing. Nevertheless, we scheduled a MetaReciclagem meeting, with people from São Paulo and all the metarecyclers who were in the city for Teia. Around twenty people attended. It has been our first meeting since august, and a very important one. For the first time, Dalton was not the center of the meeting. If we are to succeed in adopting a de-centralized methodology, we can not depend in one person or group of people to lead everything (even though we acknowledge the importance of leaders, even in self-organized structures). Some people got to know each other that day. By the end of the meeting, we decided to re-design our online infrastructure and to write down some important concepts that are needed to define whether or not a specific action can be labeled MetaReciclagem. Some new ideas appeared, such as a periodic two-page PDF publication to be printed and distributed in the Spores; comix-style educational material related to MetaReciclagem; and a weekly podcast. Let's see if any of that comes true. I'm very optimistic with it.

In talking with people involved with MetaReciclagem in São Paulo, one decision has been made: some of us will try to create a space in São Paulo that does not depend on the municipality or any federal resource. We'll still need to get paid, but the idea is to set up a space that is somehow self-sustained. We're having conversations on whatg is the best form for that to happen, and are planning to have concrete plans in the next months. Now, I realize that that is what Waag/Sarai platform requested us two years ago, but perhaps we were not ready yet. And, anyway, I am really excited with the way things are developing with des][centro. This space, of course, will be part of des][centro.

Then again, some of us are still involved with the federal government. We have been called to create content for online courses on MetaReciclagem for the Casas Brasil project, that is developing 90 "expanded" telecenters, with library, multimedia studio, auditorium and... MetaReciclagem labs. It's been great in the sense that we were able to focus on questions such as _what is MetaReciclagem_, and how do you make people understand that. There are two courses, being released with open licenses in the next weeks: one on MetaReciclagem concepts, and the other on the praxis of MetaReciclagem. We'll publish them in our own e-learning environment as well.

And some breaking news: this is not to be publicized yet, but MetaReciclagem got honorary mention in digital communities category for Prix Ars Electronica 2006. I don't know exactly what to expect from that...