The hidden histories of technology - at re:publica 2015

Notes de l'éditeur

1. ZARA
2. LUIZA: Here in Europe, when we talk about innovation, we often put European and North American forms of innovation on somewhat of a pedestal. If I were to generalise, it looks something like this:
3. ZARA: Or, we measure ‘innovation’ and ‘technological developments’ by clearly biased metrics, like the number of patents registered in different countries - this graph shows the number of international patents per capita, from a report on ‘national innovation’ from the Harvard Business School. Throughout the report, we’re told about ‘advanced countries’ and ‘less advanced’ countries - advanced countries being European, North America - and less advanced countries - developing countries - don’t get much of a mention here. We could carry on with examples of how common narratives that we hear here around 'technology' and 'innovation' tend to ignore non-european forms of both. Even though technology is such a discussed subject - its influence in culture, society, its problems - these discussions are still very much made by and for a western/northern perspective. But technology wasn’t invented in the west, nor is it an exclusivity of wealthier countries.
4. LUIZA: Even though so many important technological advancements came from places other than Europe or the West, their origin is usually ignored or overlooked. As a designer, personally, I was quite flabbergasted to realize that Gutenberg hadn’t been the first to invent movable type. He might have been the first to do it in Europe, but he definitely wasn’t the first in history: since the 8th century books have been printed with wooden blocks in China, and about 400 years before Gutenberg a chinese printed named Pi Sheng developed an almost identical printing process. And the exact same process used by Gutenberg - metal movable type - had already been independently developed in Korea in the 14th century, a century or so before Gutenberg. But still, Gutenberg takes the credit; or rather, we give him the credit.
5. ZARA: Of course, there is a distinct reason for this - colonialism. The history of technology and power is woven into the history of colonialism: from the firearms used by Spanish conquistadores to dominate indigenous populations in the Americas, to the erasure of the contributions that others have made to technology, from the appropriation of indigenous knowledges by biopirates, to the establishment of a hierarchy that invariably considers european technological developments as more valid, better, or more civilized than those of other populations. So; give the theme of this conference, “Finding Europe” - maybe it’s helpful to look at where technology played a part in making Europe, and how we remember that today.
6. ZARA: So to start: How has technology helped european colonialists in the past? This is a quote from the recently deceased Eduardo Galeano, in his book "Open Veins of Latin America", where he talks about the exploitation of Latin America's resources.
7. LUIZA: quinine was the first known cure for malaria, an illness that had plagued humanity for centuries. This chemical compound occurs naturally in the bark of the cinchona tree, which is native to South America. The bark of the tree was first used by the Quechua people to cure malaria; spanish invaders noticed this and soon the bark became very lucrative. Eventually, getting a hold of cinchona trees allowed british, french and other europeans to invade West Africa, a region that had been impossible for them to seize up until that point precisely because of the high incidence of malaria.
8. ZARA: It’s easy to think of railway systems as a huge progression in transport technology -- but it’ perhaps also interesting to think about why they were established in different places, and whose needs they were serving. Taking the example of India which, by the beginning of the 1900s, had the world’s fourth biggest railway system. Why was this? During the middle of the 19th century, the importance of railways came to be realised - it suited lots of the needs of the British Empire, who were ruling India at the time; exploitation of India’s natural resources, and consolidation of the British Empire. For example, needing to export natural resources in India like salt and sugar, which couldn’t be carried otherwise very easily during wet season. It seems as though military needs took precedence - British troops needed to move easily throughout the country, to “maintain internal order” - so, before any railway bridge was constructed, teh wishes of the military were considered carefully. Regardless The establishment of the railway system ultimately made it much easier for the British to export goods, and for troops to move around. It’s true that there were many other benefits - like creating employment, for example - but even here, Europeans occupied most of the upper management and highly skilled positions that were created.
9. ZARA:how current 'european' innovation relies on exploitation of other people (garment factories, iphone making) 5 mins
10. LUIZA: One thing I could do in this part is to shortly talk about how even things like the contraceptive pill have been developed through the exploitation of the global south - specifically, in the case of the pill, by performing a series of unethical tests on Puerto Rican men and women. I think it is also worth mentioning that the pharmaceutical industry has a long history of performing unethical tests on people in Southern countries, in order to develop medications to be used in the North. This is really a situation where the relationship between tech and power boils down to one issue: whose lives is this technology focused on saving, whose lives does it consider more valuable? This, i think, is a recurring theme in what we’re talking about.
11. ZARA: Electronics. We’re all, I think, at least a little bit aware of the problems in the way that our electronics are made - -so just to reiterate, in fact, the extractives sector is one of the worst nowadays for modern slavery. Minerals that are present in our iphones, in our laptops - have been mined either by large mining companies, or by a combination of large mining companies and small independent producers, otherwise known as Artisanal and Small-scale Miners, aka ASM. Though it’s hard to know exactly how many people work in ASM, because it’s largely informal, something between 13-20 million people worldwide work in the sector, and it is known to be highly vulnerable to the presence of child and forced labour. After minerals are extracted from the ground, they are traded, smelted and refined - and in these last two steps, many minerals are brought together from different sources, making it hard to track. This means that basically no electronics companies can comprehensively lay out exactly where the minerals in their electronic goods came from - meaning that we have no idea whether child labour was used in their creation, or not. What’s clear from this map, though, is that if child labour is a problem, it’s not happening in Europe, or North America - it’s happening in African countries, in Asia, and in Latin America. Former colonial powers enjoy the electronics that are produced, while former colonies, work under terrible conditions to make this possible.
12. LUIZA: (trends of the future)
13. ZARA: Internet.org - a project from Facebook, that I’m sure many of you have heard of.In brief: their stated goals sound rather noble - a chariable initiative, aiming at ‘connecting the unconnected’ and providing a way for those living in poor countries to access the internet, with even more noble goals, like poverty eradication. But, it seems, people in poor countries can make do with a lesser version of the internet -iin the framework that is provided by internet.org, people face either severe limits on the amount of data they can use, or they get unlimited access but only to part of the internet. As with the historical examples above - the double standards here are stark - the rest of the world gets free internet, whereas - as Cory Doctorow put it - internet.org delivers poor internet, to poor people.
14. LUIZA: conclusion - as we can see, many of the power disparities that were present through 'colonialism' as we think of it historically, are sadly still present today. Unless we make some drastic changes, we risk continuing the same inequality that has been present in societies across the world - we have to try and break through those power structures.
15. ZARA