Resumen de Peer production of open hardware: unfinished artefacts and architectures in the hackerspaces
The dissertation adopts the theoretical framework of peer production to investigate the phenomena of open collaboration in hacker clubs through two case studies of small scale electronic artefacts. A critique of current theories of peer production is developed from a Science and Technology Studies point of view, arguing for the primacy of social constructivism over technological determinists narratives about the role of ICTs in late capitalism in general and hacker culture in particular. Properties of disruptive novelty and spontaneous emergence routinely attributed to ICTs – and by extension to the peer production practices of hackers – are approach sceptically with a historically informed ethnographic method that concentrates on continuities and contexts.
The first empirical part constructs the research sites. Hackerspaces are shown to be a result of the historical formation of a specific social group that established a relative autonomy vis-a-vis the state and capital. The alternative engineering culture of hackers have been shaped by the evolving contradictions of modernity, from the precarisation of labour through gender inequality to neoliberal urbanisation and military funding of technology research and development. Hackerspaces rearticulate prevailing social conflicts in the spirit of reflexive modernisation, questioning the compartmentalisation of education, research and manufacturing into separate sections of the institutional grid.
The second empirical part investigates the internal content of hacker culture through looking at the techno-social differences between its products and mainstream commodity electronics. Hackers include functional parts in their peer produced artefacts, which in turn forestall stabilisation and closure, resist stabilisation and preserve their interpretative flexibility. Hackers cultivate an idiosyncratic relation to technology. On the one hand, engineering expertise is exercised as an end in itself, reminiscent of unalienated labour. On the other hand, the expression of technological creativity appears to be but a byproduct of the specific sociality between hackerspace members. Hackers explicitly and intentionally work through material artefacts to shape technology and their social relations at the same time. The inscription of shared values into material infrastructures plays a significant part in the social reproduction of the scene.
The unfinished artefacts and unfinished architectures in the title are reconceptualisations of *open source hardware* and *peer production*, respectively. Arguing for *unfinished artefacts* is arguing that technological artefacts cannot be understood independently of social relations. Arguing for *unfinished architectures* is arguing that peer production practices cannot be understood independently of material infrastructures. In the final analysis hackers contribute to the democratisation of technology, but expertise is articulated as a limit to participation.
