Digital Earth - Break the Digital Monoculture: Interview with spideralex

Spide­ra­lex holds a master degree in soci­o­logy and a PhD in econo­mics. She has foun­ded the  collec­tive Dones­tech that explo­res the rela­tion between gender and tech­no­lo­gies deve­lo­ping acti­vist rese­arch, docu­men­ta­ries and trai­ning. She is also the editor of two volu­mes about the pano­rama of tech­no­lo­gi­cal sove­reignty initi­a­ti­ves. She enjoys doing holis­tic secu­rity and specu­la­tive fiction works­hops. She is part of Anar­cha­Ser­ver, a femi­nist server.

How did you come to work combi­ning acade­mia and acti­vism that’s focu­sed on femi­nism and tech­no­logy for social and poli­ti­cal trans­for­ma­tion?

My acade­mic trai­ning is in soci­o­logy, social economy, and urban soci­o­logy. I have been studying how urban social move­ments strug­gle against gentri­fi­ca­tion, parti­cu­larly in Barce­lona. Barce­lona has been a labo­ra­tory for gentri­fi­ca­tion in Europe since the 90s and attrac­ted people that were passi­o­nate about urban soci­o­logy. This was in the early 2000, when the inter­net also came around, and I chan­ged from soci­o­logy and urba­nism to do my PhD on how social move­ments use and build infor­ma­tion and commu­ni­ca­tion tech­no­lo­gies (ICT) to fight and orga­nise resis­tance. I was lucky to be in Barce­lona which, at the time, had many hack­labs in squat­ted social centres where people could come and learn about free tech­no­lo­gies and free soft­ware.

Currently I do rese­arch about the contri­bu­tion of women and non-binary iden­ti­ties to the deve­lop­ment of tech­no­lo­gies and hacker culture. I am also invol­ved in setting up works­hops and trai­nings about femi­nist self-defense in the digi­tal spaces. Right now, we are working on setting up a femi­nist helpline to provide support to people that are facing gender based violence in digi­tal spaces, or gender based violence is enabled or ampli­fied by ICT. I’m also a part of a femi­nist server called Anar­cha­Ser­ver where we learn to sysad­min and set up online servi­ces for other femi­nist collec­ti­ves. And besi­des that, I’m also part of a commu­nity where we have a social lodging coope­ra­tive and diffe­rent projects. During the last 10 years, we have been buying an old textile factory space which we are reha­bi­li­ta­ting on our own doing a lot of physi­cal and mate­rial work, but at the same time orga­ni­zing events that relate to free tech­no­lo­gies, poli­ti­cal appro­pri­a­tion of tech­no­lo­gies, and poli­ti­cal criti­cal citi­zens­hip.

What is your main rese­arch ques­tion that moti­va­tes you in your prac­tice?

It’s diffi­cult to summa­rise in one ques­tion, but I think it would be “how can we break the cycle of hope­less­ness?” In the begin­ning there was a lot of hope for the empo­we­ring poten­tial of these tech­no­lo­gies. In the last 15 years, the model has comple­tely chan­ged with the commer­ci­a­li­za­tion and centra­li­za­tion of the inter­net, inter­na­ti­o­nal survei­llance, and the pola­ri­za­tion of the users. This has been a big disap­point­ment for acti­vists that really thought that they were now going to have a medium that would support the agenda of social move­ments and enable poli­ti­cal and social trans­for­ma­tion; an inter­net that is going to be chan­ging things.

Now I centre on how to create metho­do­lo­gies to help people to reclaim the power of non-dysto­pian narra­ti­ves. So, to train our brains to envi­sion the possi­bi­lity of imagi­ning and desi­ring the tech­no­lo­gies that we deserve and how to envi­sion and reclaim better futu­res. The dysto­pian narra­ti­ves really took up all the space. With the pande­mic – where I have not been able to do this work – my brain was frozen. So my ques­tion is how we can break the cycle of hope­less­ness?

Staying with the state of hope­less­ness, how would you charac­te­rize that?

This is a philo­sop­hi­cal ques­tion. We are one of the first gene­ra­ti­ons that feels that we might be the last gene­ra­tion walking on earth. That’s somet­hing very new in the evolu­tion of human­kind. It’s heavy and it’s somet­hing that we don’t talk much about.

And you’ll see that big tech is amplifying that state of hope­less­ness and culti­va­ting it. I’m so mad at big tech. A new dishe­ar­te­ning, emer­ging narra­tive is that big tech is gonna save us from climate change. That is totally bulls­hit. It cannot work. Even if they weren’t gonna scale all those big tech­no­lo­gies, they would not be able to get the mine­rals they need cause we are not only facing a peak oil situ­a­tion but a peak everyt­hing situ­a­tion. The circu­lar and recy­cling economy is broken. So it is clear this green­was­hing propa­ganda is delaying a collec­tive thought process on how we can tran­si­tion to other types of soci­e­ties. For me it is a very straight­for­ward ques­tion; if you want to break the digi­tal mono­cul­ture you need to break big tech. And as Cory Docto­row has explai­ned brea­king big mono­po­lies is a slow, legal, boring process  

I think that the NGO world and the social trans­for­ma­tion of civil soci­ety should be at the fore­front of reap­pro­pri­a­ting the poli­ti­cal dimen­si­ons of tech­no­lo­gies. They should ques­tion who those tech­no­lo­gies are hurting and exploi­ting from a poli­ti­cal and ethi­cal pers­pec­tive. And by “who” I am refer­ring to humans but also animals and natu­ral ecosys­tems. These orga­ni­sa­ti­ons should not assert them­sel­ves as passive. We need to do two main things, break down mono­po­lies by law and propel those spaces to have a poli­ti­cal and crea­tive appro­pri­a­tion of tech­no­lo­gies.

Social justice orga­ni­za­ti­ons are strug­gling to get out of big tech’s web. What would you tell those orga­ni­sa­ti­ons or even people facing the issue of ‘de-googling’ them­sel­ves?

It’s a work of pati­ence and a labour of love. If you don’t have mental space or time, you’re not gonna be able to take some distance and reflect on a diffe­rent appro­ach. It is always better to have a collec­tive appro­ach to those ques­ti­ons, because it crea­tes social cohe­sion.

I think that the food sove­reignty move­ment has been really success­ful in their crea­tive appro­ach to express the need for ecolo­gi­cal, slow, and fairly produ­ced food. They made people focus on the posi­tive values of food consump­tion and think criti­cally around them. We really need to bring these elements to tech­no­logy and start asking what kind of tech­no­lo­gies we are consu­ming.

This is also impor­tant when looking at how tech­no­logy is produ­ced. Who are the labou­rers, where are the mine­rals extrac­ted? This chain of produc­tion is prope­lling so much violence, gene­rally against women, kids and natu­ral ecosys­tems. It is incre­di­ble how we care­fully label whet­her or not our food is fair trade, and not apply this to the chain of tech­no­lo­gies we are using. I don’t neces­sa­rily have a solu­tion, I don’t have a compu­ter that is gonna last fore­ver and that doesn’t conta­mi­nate like its trade. But I want a compu­ter that is produ­ced in good condi­ti­ons, can be repai­red and recy­cled fore­ver.

The problem right now is that there are less people invol­ved and enga­ged with the theo­ri­sa­tion and acti­vism of the problems of big tech in compa­ri­son to the food sove­reignty move­ment.

You have also been looking into online violence against women and cyber­fe­mi­nism. How can we work with femi­nist prin­ci­ples to oppose big tech. What prin­ci­ples are you working with and how do you imple­ment them?

There are a lot of diffe­rent kinds of femi­nisms. For me, femi­nism is everyone having the same rights and oppor­tu­ni­ties. We should never forget that women have been the most oppres­sed poli­ti­cal subject throug­hout history. Not just here in Europe, but everyw­here. Femi­nism should be anti-colo­nial and anti-capi­ta­list and it is a strug­gle for all women. It also inclu­des the right to opt for any gender iden­tity and sexual orien­ta­tion.

In rela­tion to tech­no­logy, inves­ti­ga­ting its HerS­tory is impor­tant. Women and non-cis people have been apart of it since its begin­ning, yet they have not been writ­ten into the “history” of its deve­lop­ment. This is really impor­tant because the current narra­tive gives the impres­sion that tech is a white, male, mili­tary enter­prise and that women have not parti­ci­pa­ted in the deve­lop­ment of tech­no­lo­gies. If we don’t make this HerS­tory visi­ble, we won’t create the possi­bi­lity for all people to unders­tand that they are part of it and that this also matters to them.

Also, since 2010, there’s been a rise in gender based online violence and harass­ment. These condi­ti­ons force many women and femi­nists collec­ti­ves to orga­nize and to unders­tand how these new forms of violence and harass­ment are silen­cing them and limi­ting their possi­bi­li­ties to use certain tech­no­lo­gies as a medium for their own agenda. And most impor­tantly, how do they push back and resist the detri­men­tal effects of this. Now there’s a femi­nist self-defense in digi­tal spaces. There are lectu­res, trai­ning, works­hops, and inter­net stan­dards and proto­cols from a femi­nist pers­pec­tive. The resis­tance has crea­ted femi­nist circles and femi­nist infras­truc­tu­res.

But there’s still a big divide between the femi­nist move­ments in gene­ral. More femi­nist move­ments are coming on board in working with the impor­tance to reclaim the digi­tal space. There’s a norma­li­za­tion of hate speech and violence on the inter­net. That’s crazy, because this is not the case for street violence. The stre­ets might be violent, but they should not be, and we need to reclaim the street. This is exac­tly the thought we need on the inter­net; the possi­bi­lity of it being a safe space.

Tech­no­logy enables femi­nist move­ments to inform, commu­ni­cate, create rela­ti­ons­hips, to docu­ment and create memory. The current comer­cial social media plat­forms where this work is done are very often crea­ted or desig­ned by misogy­nists. You cannot rely on these to have a human and women’s rights agenda. Many femi­nist collec­ti­ves and move­ments are not seeing the possi­bi­lity of buil­ding and using their own infras­truc­tu­res in order to do their work in safe spaces. I mean, femi­nists are alre­ady working with so many impor­tant and urgent issues, so this work demands some mental space. Howe­ver, buil­ding femi­nists digi­tal infras­truc­tu­res is far from a trivial quest, it is crucial to the work we do.

You have worked in depth with specu­la­tive fiction. Why is it so impor­tant to imagine radi­cally diffe­rent tech­no­lo­gi­cal futu­res and what can we learn from specu­la­tive fiction?

Femi­nist techno-specu­la­tive story­te­lling is fiction and design gestu­res towards a set of geograp­hies of the imagi­nary and of their mate­ri­a­lity deeply inspi­red by social justice and poli­ti­cal trans­for­ma­tion. Wali­dah Imarisha illus­tra­tes this point when she suggests that “whene­ver we try to envi­sion a world without war, without violence, without prisons, without capi­ta­lism, we are enga­ging in specu­la­tive fiction.” Doing specu­la­ti­vely is poli­ti­cal as it invol­ves one of the multi­ple ways to re-imagine tech­no­lo­gi­cal and infras­truc­tu­ral entan­gle­ments that shape our world. It also serves to expose tech­no­lo­gies and infras­truc­tu­res that have furthe­red (neo)colo­nial proces­ses such as the stea­ling and erasing of indi­ge­nous scien­ti­fic know­ledge and tech­ni­ques, and the shat­te­ring of libe­ra­tion strug­gles. By shed­ding light on these contra­dic­ti­ons, doing specu­la­ti­vely also attempts to de-privi­lege and de-glorify science and tech­no­logy. De-privi­le­ging the assem­blage of humans and tech­no­logy (non-human) echoes the act of making visi­ble and valuing other types of assem­blage with the non-human, such as with land, animals and plants. Doing specu­la­ti­vely is infras­truc­tu­ral as it allows for the circu­la­tion of ideas, fabu­la­ti­ons and dreams among others. It is also about healing and affect. It requi­res people to care enough about femi­nist tech­no­lo­gies to dream about them in order to better build them. For stories to act as poten­tial agents for trans­for­ma­tion, they need caring, appro­pri­ate and affec­tive infras­truc­tu­res to shel­ter them.

If you would pick one exam­ple of a work that you find of parti­cu­lar impor­tance in imagi­ning a radi­cally diffe­rent future beyond the impe­ra­tive of the digi­tal mono­cul­ture, what would it be?

I would not talk about one artist but the artis­tic produc­tion of cyber­fe­mi­nist groups and collec­ti­ves. I try to map those and include it in our repo­si­tory of collec­tive memo­ries in Anar­cha­Ser­ver, you can visit for instance the cyber­fe­mi­nist folder in the repo­si­tory to see what kind of artis­tic produc­tion I am refer­ring to. Anot­her very impor­tant source of inspi­ra­tion is femi­nist science fiction and afro­fu­tu­rism, I would invite anybody inter­es­ted in explor­ting other non dysto­pian path­ways about other possi­ble reali­ties, tech­no­lo­gies, futu­res, to start there. Enjoy the jour­ney!