This document discusses the transition from private to public spheres online and proposes building a "cognitive commons" through sharing and crowdsourcing knowledge. It argues that technologies should be designed to empower users and meet community needs through open models like hackerspaces, Fab Labs, and distributed networks. The goal is for people to work together, learn new skills, and produce technologies to solve real problems through an ongoing process of "sharing, hacking and improving designs." This collaborative approach could help crowd-produce a more equitable digital public sphere.

1. Hacking
the public sphere
from Sharing to Cognitive Commons
Clément Renaud
@clemsos
www.sharismlab.com

2. About Sharism Lab
#
Sharism Lab is an sharing, learning,
independent research center social networks,
hack, china, urban...
based in China
experimental methodology
& community to empower
society by sharing
founded by Isaac Mao

3. Digital social sphere
From public to individual sphere

4. Private

5. Private

6. Public
Private

7. Public
Private

8. Public
Social
Private WEB

9. Public sphere & social spaces (cafès,
salons...)
Lecture de la tragédie de l'orphelin de la Chine de Voltaire dans le salon de madame Geoffrin. - by Lemmoneit (1812)

10. Millions of services blooming!

11. Wikipedia actualises Aufklärung :
better knowledge, better society
Diderot & d'Alembert Wikipedia
1751-1772 2001- 2012+

12. Public sphere = production of elite?
Habermas
coined the term
public sphere ...
... as "bourgeois" :
projection of
private interests as
a public sphere

13. Technology as a
reflect of social production

14. Digital public sphere structure
(accumulation)

15. Who is producing the tools
to build this digital public sphere ?

16. 404 : Page not found

17. Great Firewall in China
Fang Binxing, Chief
engineer of the Great
Firewall

18. Appropriation of technology
How is produced technology? Who owns knowledge?

19. Build a common memory
:
crowd produce
Sharing to build our public sphere

20. Crowd are not masses

21. New way to produce : the crowd-
Quora
We-report is a crowdfunding website crowdsource
for news in Chinese answers

22. Crowdfunding support
Jue.so

23. How to make
technologies differently?
Changes in cultural
industries
Produce less,
but more specific
ex. Harvard Book Store
print-on-demand

24. Fab Lab : just what you need
Small-scale
workshop
offering
(personal)
digital
fabrication
(from Wikipedia)
Fab Lab in Amsterdam

25. 3d printer for USD 1800
created in NYC Resistor
print objects
solve problems locally
share YOUR solution
aaM akerbot

26. From DIY to DIO
+ produce in small
quantity
+ design products that
fit our needs = identify
our needs !
+ create objects we
need / love with others
Arduino provides open-
source hardware to create
objects.

27. Answer requests from the market
● local production “made in my city”
● very high personalization “made only for
me”
● direct customer relation “made by my old
friend in Canada”
● valorization of customer experience “I found
exactly what I needed”
● etc.

28. What about knowledge?
Not everyone is an
engineer !
How to use those
machine?
How to design an
object?

29. Learn at low cost : hack !
China counterfeit
products
Shanzhai 山寨
subverting industry
copy = create ?

30. Open courses : lifetime learning
Many
universities are
now opening
their courses
online to public
audience
(MOOC)

31. From DIY to DIO :
Collective individuation
Xinchejian, a hackerspace in Shanghai

32. Hack to learn,
share your skills with society
"Quit your stupid job !"
Mitch Altman,
father of hackerspaces

33. Get the meaning back into social
Identify problems
around you
Involve friends and
strangers to solve
real-life design
problems
Create small-scale
sustainable business

34. How to grow plants in 1m²?
From
Xinchejian,
Shanghai
hackerspace

35. Technology as individuation
an ongoing process to become human

36. Technologies are memories
Technology is an
externalization of our
memories to face the
impossibility of
transmission to others
Leroi-Gourhan

37. 3 types / scales of memories
Genetic Sensitive External
memory memory memory

38. How to
crowd produce our public sphere ?
How to do it?
Should we
destroy the
machines?
Are they friends or
foes?
Luddites destroying their work tool

39. Towards cognitive
commons
Haps and mishaps of the social brain

40. Semantic Web and the machine
● Linked Data
● Internet of Things
● Smart cities
● Ontologies...
Semantic Web aims
at explaining our
human world to the
machines
(so they can help us...)

41. Why are we building machines?
What should we do with the human?
Are we updating Will robots save the
Skynet? earth?

42. Technology is not a free gift
We should face issues before the crash
Threat AND Salvation

43. Privacy : Get your data back !
build a personal data space
Keep your things in
your pocket !
Maketing company
asked :
Control access to your
data through different Do you want to
share your
requests (family, browsing history
for $10 per
friends, boss, month?
marketing company,
etc.)

44. Social computing
Public data space
Share computing power
using existing devices
Create public data
spaces

45. New data geography
creating public space around technology
Photos du projet
Dakar Dead Drop
Fiction

46. Social clustering
distributed structure
A structure reflecting
dynamics of group and
communities

47. Digital public space
should empower the society
What you need is
needed by others.
Take the space to
make it
Solar powered traffic lights presented
in Maker Faire Africa 2010

48. Describe new models
based on common approach
Sharing is an act
Sharing is rewarded
Sharing is (co-)creating
Sharism

49. Describe society
Identify needs
Solve problems
Challenge yourself Hack
Define ideas
Find your space and
Learn in doing share
Design things
Make stuff
!!
Watch other improve it
.... then start again !

50. Thanks !
@sharimlab
Questions?