Saturday 6 October 2012

What is Sukey?

People that study technology often fail to remember to study people. Folks get so wrapped up and enamoured with the data, and so alienated from the people doing the work that human practice often gets ignored. Re-inscribing the "human" into technology is extremely important...lest we fall into the trap of "there is no alternative."
The Sukey project speaks to a number of theoretical problems with which we grapple when thinking about technology: the agency of software, the production of space, the possibility of reconfiguring existing capitalist technologies for purposes of resistance, and community organizing through emerging media channels. Sukey is also inherently geographic and does work to expose the often largely invisible tactics of the state to dominate spaces of protest.
So it appears that the Sukey app and our team are sort of a unique case.
When we bemoan and lament technology's role in oppression and governmental regimes, the question we often ask ourselves is, "How could this be done 'differently'?"  Some may ask the same question regarding geoweb technology: "What could be done to make geoweb applications more egalitarian?  You make it sound as though capital domination is a foregone conclusion." The first step toward changing that is imagining a different possibility.
I was recently told by a friend that Sukey is regarded by some as a counter-example to "the corporate-state nexus owns and manipulates social media and other technology" in the geoweb field. Thanks guys!
Source: Adapted from an Email from Josef Eckert

1 comment:

  1. Re-inscribing the "human" into technology is extremely important...lest we fall into the trap of "there is no alternative." buzz phone

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