OpenDoTT (Open Design of Trusted Things) was "a PhD programme to explore how to build a more open, secure, and trustworthy Internet of Things". I have moved in 2019 to Dundee to work at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, and relocated later to Berlin to work at the Mozilla Foundation. The academic side of the project has migrated from the University of Dundee to Northumbria University in June 2020.
The title of my thesis is Generous cities – weaving commons-oriented systems for the reuse of excess materials in urban contexts.
I am gradually moving relevant documentation to a public wiki. I maintain a list of links with the tag opendott in my infinite bookmark collection.
I have used this blog to document what I read, learnt and discovered as I went deeper into my research. Earlier outputs can be seen in this set of concept ideas(2020) and this repository with second year deliverables (2021).
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 813508.
After more than four years of work amid challenging conditions, I have recently achieved the most important milestone of my PhD research. I have successfully defended my thesis before an examination board composed of an internal examiner (Professor Joyce Yee, Northumbria School of Design) and an e...
Over the course of the last two decades, I had the occasional opportunity to engage with policy-making on different capacities: as a social activist, a formulator, a campaigner and an advisor. The stories below summarise those that I see most relevant and some of the lessons learned. Most of these h...
Let me start by acknowledging my ignorance, and perhaps a years-long negligence. I can’t tell for sure when and how the topic of coloniality appeared explicitly on my radar. I do recall my friend (and MA supervisor at Unicamp) Rafael Evangelista talking in class about (British) cultural studies an...
One recurring question I face as my research progresses is if – and how – digital technologies can be used for the common good. I realise this formulation sounds rather naive, but it runs deep in my work. I will use this post to unearth it as much as possible and address my current understanding of...
By the end of November 2021 I finished up my second year deliverables for the OpenDoTT project. They are:
Some weeks ago I had my second Annual Progression panel meeting at Northumbria. Differently from the first one, this time I did not need to present my research. The panel was based on the documents I had submitted describing my progress during the second year. A public version of the documents is av...
The overall structure of OpenDoTT was designed around an expected sequence of events: each of us fellows would spend the first year in Dundee using design research to explore and scope our research focus and questions. Then we would move to Berlin to spend 18 months working as a group at the Mozil...
From this lab documentation log. I summarise: planning for a data commons that welcomes contributions from humans as well as non-human (more-than-human?) systems.
(...) in at least one occasion during the reuse city workshop in April, we have discussed ways to balance the diverse interests inv...
As you can see elsewhere in this blog, I’m used to start my texts from a very personal, individual perspective. There’s always a lot of “me” and “I” and “mine”. And often quite a bit of “you”. I was trying to find a way to describe in English how I feel about that in present times. In my mother tong...
Some weeks ago I had the opportunity to present my PhD research for the first time in Portuguese. I was invited by André Lemos, coordinator of Lab404 at the Federal University of Bahia, to one of their online meetings:
"Encontros do Lab404 debate sobre práticas sociais de reuso de matéria nos pr...
As OpenDoTT moves steadily towards the end of its second year, I feel my research changing into a different mode. Whilst in the first phase I have decided on a particular topic and explored ways to approach it, I am currently expanding my activities in two directions: prototyping with open hardw...
Smart cities, superficially understood as "using information technologies to make urban management more informed, efficient and easy", are a trend already being implemented in many parts of the world. Trying to persuade municipalities to use more IT is not something I feel my research would contribu...
Repair tech at MozFest
In one week I will conduct the first public activity of my research project in 2021. It will be an open discussion during the Mozilla Festival, called "Universal Registry of Things - promoting the reuse of materials and objects in smart cities". This year the Festival will...
Public Abundance is the Secret to the Green New Deal
The same principle need not be limited to food. “Repair cafés” could be places to meet and relax in every neighbourhood, and where you can also learn how to fix appliances and gadgets, mend clothes, or maintain bicycles. Community tool librari...
Soon after we moved to Berlin last September I had the chance to host a workshop called "Hacking waste management for the smart city" (originally "Reusing things in the smart city", but apparently that title did not attract many participants) at the Data Cities Conference organized by Disruption N...
As I worked further on concept ideas, I had the chance to get back to the people I have engaged with in my research studies and share with them the concepts. Participants were broadly supportive of the path my research was taking. Furthermore, through ongoing conversations with practitioners both...
As briefly mentioned in another post, last month I went through a process of research evaluation at the University. Northumbria calls it an "annual progression", which should take place, obviously, every year during the research period. In my case, it was delayed by about six months, due to the wh...
This is a slightly edited version of an email I sent some weeks ago to my supervisors (all four of them) and project management.
Update: the plans below may be outdated. Please refer to documentation in this GitHub repository.
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In February, we're having the IoT tech training with Officine...
I start typing these words as the sunlight reaches my window for the first time since I arrived back in Berlin, six days ago. I am isolating with my children at our place until the coming weekend, when our mandatory quarantine will be over. If you are reading this so far in the future that our curre...
