Editorial Collective:
Ravi Vasudevan, Ravi Sundaram,
Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula, Shuddhabrata Sengupta [Sarai]
Geert Lovink, Marleen Stikker [Waag]
Design: Renu Iyer & Pradip Saha @ Sarai Media Lab

382 pages, 14.5cm X 21cm
Paperback: Rs.295, US$15, €15
ISBN 81-901429-3-3

Introduction

Sarai Reader 03: Shaping Technologies sets out to ratchet our engagement with the contemporary moment a notch higher, in directions that are sober, exhilarating and discomfiting, all at once.
Technology, which figures as an important strand in both previous Readers – Sarai Reader 01: The Public Domain and Sarai Reader 02: The Cities of Everyday Life – has here taken centre-stage as a multi-faceted constellation of ideas, images, reflections, debates, histories and provocations. The first Reader held an encounter with the discourse around free software with which we viewed the possibility of the formation of a new public domain, and the second raised issues such as biotechnology, surveillance, and the politics of information technology. This third volume in the series presents a drawing together of many threads that echo and carry forward earlier themes and discussions to offer an array of considerations that locate themselves squarely within the present, while facing the future, and with an eye towards history. This collection seeks to bring to the fore a series of situations and predicaments that mark the encounter between people and machines, between nature and culture, and between knowledge and power.
These encounters, to our thinking, embody the taking on of a particular stance
towards the contemporary moment, which, notwithstanding contradictions and beset by metastasizing, proliferating, accelerating energies that pull in different directions, even while marked in equal measure by confidence and scepticism, nevertheless represents a qualified assertion of commitment to living and working in the world today, as active, transforming agents, creating new truths and meanings through praxis.
This results in a wealth of questions and issues, that span a wide range – from the cognitive and ethical dilemmas that beset the engineer, to the legal and cultural implications of copying in a digital realm; from software as art to the history of science fiction; from wireless manifestoes to the domestication of photography; from kitchen utensils to airplanes; from mobile phones to kerosene lamps; from body nets to biotech; from reproductive technologies to technologies of reproduction; from computers to radios; from coal mines to call centres. Shaping Technologies brings together a host of original writing and images on these and other themes by a collection of writers, theorists, critics, photographers, philosophers, engineers, activists, artists, media practitioners and programmers from all over the world. It also excavates and connects little known histories with our present reality, finding, for instance, in Rabindranath Tagore’s account of being airborne in 1934, an oblique way of reflecting on the consequences of aerial bombardment, the dehumanising mindset that implodes when the pious do battle, and the prospects of a war that threatens to break over Iraq, even as this book goes to press.
Today, technology is second nature to us. If the landscape of earlier times could be ideally represented by images of naturally occurring objects, then the landscape of the contemporary is one that can only be imagined as being peopled by machines. The ‘nature’ of our times is technological. We are embodied, articulated, located and governed by the machines we make to extend our lives, bodies and faculties. We shape the technologies that surround us and the technologies that surround us shape the contours of our lives. This is what we mean by the term ‘shaping technologies’, which suggests both a subjective, social appropriation of technological creativity, as well as the impact of technologies on society and life in general.
One may even say that technological ubiquity has gone so far as to make it nearly
impossible for us to reflect upon technologies as phenomena separate from the general conditions of global urban life. We are what we work, play and think with, and today, we work, play and think with our machines. We are users, inventors, practitioners, artists, hackers and artisans who work with technologies. We are technology’s consumers and users; we are hobbyists, enthusiasts and addicts just as we are critics, prophets, and analysts. We are masters, slaves, victims and rebels of technology. No one remains untouched by the machine.
And yet, we do not have an adequate language with which to understand and articulate the presence of technology in culture, society and politics. We are accustomed to construct utopian and dystopic technological imaginaries, even as we neglect the task of a sober and considered reflection of the ethical and cognitive dilemmas that the presence of technologies in everyday life confronts us with. And even as technology becomes increasingly ubiquitous, even as it touches wider populations, even as an immersion in technoculture becomes the condition of the contemporary moment, it becomes simultaneously the discursive monopoly of experts and specialists or of geeks and hobbyists, far removed from the concerns that animate scholars, public intellectuals, and the common curious person. Technology is the underpinning, yet the shadow of the public domain. Technology is ubiquitous, yet discursively obscure.

contd...

saraiREADER03
Shaping Technologies

introduction - vii

LEVERAGES
The Possible Futures of Technology in China - Andrew Feenberg - 2
Lowtech: Escape from the Tyranny of the Leading Edge - Simon Griffiths - 7
E-Waste: Computers and Toxicity in India - Gopal Krishna - 12
Governing Technology: The City in the Age of Environmental Crisis - Awadhendra Sharan - 16
The Engineer in the Information Age - Arun Mehta - 22
Resisting Technology: Regaining a Personal Ecology - Ravi Agarwal - 30
Subterranean Labour - Srinivas Kuruganti - 35

EXCAVATIONS
New Visual Technologies in the Bazaar: Reterritorialisation of the Sacred in Popular Print Culture - Kajri Jain - 44
Taking Pictures: The Early Days of Photography in Bengal - Siddharth Ghosh
(Translation by Debjani Sengupta) - 58
The Home and Beyond: Domestic and Amateur Photography by Women in India (1930-1960) - Sabeena Gadihoke - 61
Panchlight - Phanishwarnath Renu (Translation by Ravikant) - 70
Airborne: (from “In Persia”) - Rabindranath Tagore (Translation by Debjani Sengupta) - 74
Sadhanbabu’s Friends: Science Fiction in Bengal from 1882-1961 - Debjani Sengupta - 76
Acoustic Excavations: Soundings in the Ranigumpha Caves - Uma Shankar - 83
Old Scar - (photographs) Shahid Datawala, (text) Parvati Sharma - 90

SCANS
Technologies of Self: Poverty and Health in an Urban Setting - Veena Das - 95
Intensive Care - Sumit Ray - 103
Stolen Rhetoric: The Appropriation of Choice by ART Industries - subRosa - 110
Reproductive Technologies in India: Confronting Differences - Rupsa Mallik - 120
Uncanny Bodies - 124
Shaping Technology / Building Body(Nets) - Ana Viseu - 128
Black Magic, Biotech & Dark Markets - Eugene Thacker - 134

REGISTRATIONS
McLuhan’s Pendulum: Reading Dialectics of Technological Distance - Mike Hunter - 144
Becoming Mobile: SMS and Portable Text - Suzy Small - 157
Gadgetry and Subjectivity: The Making of the Tamil Brahmin Self - Uma Maheshwari Kalpagam - 160
Excelsior 3000: Bowel Technology Project - Ian Haig - 168
Disruptive IT in South India - Nimmi Rangaswamy - 170
Call Centre Calling: Technology, Network and Location - Raqs Media Collective - 176
DEVICES: CYBERMOHALLA DIARIES - 183
Transformer, Clock, Telephone, Cable, Generator, Tubelight
Naseem Bano, Babli Rai, Mehrunnissa, Dhirender P. Singh, Yashoda Singh (Translations by Shveta)

Metro Nights - Monica Narula - 197

IMAGINATIONS + AESTHETICS
Dreams of an (Un)Certain Future - Steve Dietz - 201
Reading Technology: Curling up with a Good Information Appliance - Linda Carroli - 205
On Software as Art - Andreas Broekmann - 215
Waste Net, Want Not: Art and New Media in 90s Britain - Pauline van Mourik Broekman - 219
Creative Encounters: The Art/Science of Collaboration - Amanda McDonald Crowley - 227
Beyond the Apocalypse: An Unfinished Meditation on Ethics - Rana Dasgupta - 236
The Typewriter of the Illiterate: Interview with János Sugár - Geert Lovink - 243
The Way Home: Kattas as Navigation Aids - Bharti Kher - 247
Pet Architecture: And how to Use it - Yoshiharu Tsukamoto - 249
Colliding Soundscapes: Conversation with Hildegard Westerkamp - Lex Bhagat - 255

ENCODE + DECODE
Beyond the Computer - Gabriel Pickard - 264
App.lying Software: A Reader-List Discussion - edit + design Are Flågan - 273
“No Other Hand will Scratch My Back”: Interview with Arash Zeini - Ravikant - 282
Indic, Especially Hindi, Computing: An Index of Choices - Ravikant - 290
Jal Chitra: Water Map – Software for Rural Water Management - Vikram Vyas - 292
The (copylefted) Source Code for the Ethical Production of Information Freedom
- Biella Coleman - 297
The Ghost in the Machine: The Legal Capture of Technology - Lawrence Liang - 303

PRACTICES + POLITICS
Technology, Trust and Terror - Langdon Winner - 313
Social Sorting in the Early 21st Century: Video Surveillance and Governance - Volker Eick - 321
Resistance is Futile: Peer-to-Peer File Sharing and Big Media - Robert X. Cringely - 332
The ‘Darknet’ & ‘Trusted Computing’ - Rana Dasgupta - 335
Free as in Air: An Interview with Vortex - Saul Albert - 337
The Language of Tactical Media - Joanne Richardson - 346
Alternative Radio: A Personal Testimony - David Barsamian - 352

ALT + OPTION
The Concise Lexicon: Of / For the Digital Commons - Raqs Media Collective - 357
The Wireless Commons Manifesto - 366
A Hacker Manifesto: Version 5.7 - McKenzie Wark - 368