Hacking difference in Indonesia: The ambivalences of designing for alternative futures

Cindy Lin Kaiying, Silvia Lindtner, Stefanie Wuschitz

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

14 Scopus citations

Abstract

The paper offers an ethnographic account of racial and cultural difference as sites to contest dominant practices of computing and technology. Specifically, we focus on how a collective of Indonesian biohackers position the care labor of a generation of women (referred to as Nenek-nenek in Bahasa Indonesia) to retrace the origins and boundaries of their making, hacking, and citizen science practices. The paper's contribution is to bring the study of the political economy of hacking and making into conversation with themes of racial and cultural difference in postcolonial computing across HCI, STS, and design. More specifically, the paper examines how Indonesian biohackers position situated histories and expertise as properly technological. Further, we show how their articulation of Indonesian difference was in turn appropriated by foreign hackers and commentators to envision tech futures against the status quo.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationDIS 2019 - Proceedings of the 2019 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery, Inc
Pages1571-1582
Number of pages12
ISBN (Electronic)9781450358507
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 18 2019
Event2019 ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems, DIS 2019 - San Diego, United States
Duration: Jun 23 2019Jun 28 2019

Publication series

NameDIS 2019 - Proceedings of the 2019 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference

Conference

Conference2019 ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems, DIS 2019
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CitySan Diego
Period6/23/196/28/19

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Computer Networks and Communications
  • Human-Computer Interaction

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