Learning from activists: Lessions for designers

Interactions

Volumn 16, Issue 3, 2009, Pages 31-33

  Hirsch, Tad ^a  

^a INTEL CORPORATION   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY; COMPUTER HUMAN INTERACTION; DESIGN PROJECTS; INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS; TECHNICAL COMMUNITY; TECHNICAL INFRASTRUCTURE; TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT;

HUMAN COMPUTER INTERACTION; TECHNOLOGICAL FORECASTING;

DESIGN;

EID: 67650327630     PISSN: 10725520     EISSN: 15583449     Source Type: Trade Journal    
DOI: 10.1145/1516016.1516024     Document Type: Article

References (5)

1. Several early activist communications projects are described in Chandler, A. and Neumark, N. (eds), At a Distance: Precursors to Art and Activism on the Internet Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005.
2. Thompson N. and G- Sholette, eds., The interventionists: User's Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life. Cambridge: MIT Press. 2004; offers a recent but by no means exhaustive catalog of artist-activist projects.
3. I refer here to exploiting excess capacity - whether squatting abandoned buildings or utilizing privately owned bandwidth - rather than, say, vandalism or violence.
4. Indeed, failure can sometimes enhance an activist's reputation; especially if it presents an opportunity to demonstrate commitment to the movement by, say. getting arrested.
5. It may also speak to some contestational designers' ability to leverage skills honed by working on activist projects into influential positions in mainstream R&D organizations.