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.
In September 2019 we had the first general meeting of the OpenDOTT consortium, with the five fellows, supervisors and members of all partner organisations. The meeting took place in Dundee, and as well as being the perfect way to get acquainted with that many people in a short period (there were alm...
During the OpenDOTT Consortium Meeting last month, I figured I did not know how to call those objects that people did not want anymore, but were not yet to be destined to recycling nor landfills. The sort of material that either remains sitting in lockers or garages, or in some contexts have prope...
Short description to circulate during MozFest 2019
Cities, things and people are inseparable. From primitive settlements around natural resources, through guilds of skilled artisans along castle walls in the middle ages, then on to becoming the very site and battleground of the industrial revolut...
I said a couple times: there are (at least) two books called 'Makers'. People usually read the wrong one, one trying to promote a 'new industrial revolution' even before we solved the many problems generated by the previous ones.
Makers, a novel - available here:
Perry and Lester invent thin...
Excerpts from Evgeny Morozov's review of Shoshana Zuboff's book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism offers a thorough examination of how advertising-supported firms have incentives to extract ever...
Just spent some days visiting friends in Madrid. In the neighbourhood we were, waste collections happens during late night. Garbage trucks coming and emptying the containers, making a lot of noise. It is inconvenient for light sleepers (as I am), but a way to avoid the traffic disruption brought abo...
Doch Chkae, the metal band born on a rubbish dump
"I just stood in front of the stage and was like what [...] is this music?" Vichey says. "I didn't understand what they were singing. The drums and guitars, I really didn't understand. "But after the show we got interested in this kind of music,...
After attending the Beyond Smart Cities Today conference in Rotterdam, I boarded a train to Berlin. I would be participating in the Reparatur Festival, German edition of Fixfest - the festival originated around the Restart Project originally from London. Coincidentally, the first day of the ev...
Industrial production unaccounted for its externalities is akin to populism, in the worst meaning. Immediate results in detriment of future conditions.
This post collects notes taken during my first research trip in Rotterdam. It is followed by another post with my notes from Berlin.
On my way
It's interesting to see the Netherlands from the sky, at night. Smart cities? Cities? From here, the whole country is a conurbation. Yesterday Nick...
I believe it was on one of my first supervisory meetings with Nick Taylor and Mel Woods somewhere in August that Mel mentioned a conference being organised in Rotterdam. The title was promising: Beyond Smart Cities Today, which to me echoed of this 2011 blog post by Adam Greenfield. Adam's crit...
A researcher wasting time?
-- A researcher timing waste?
It's not only because this film was made in my hometown, Porto Alegre. Or because I enjoyed attending one of its makers' classes at the University. But Ilha das Flores has impacted me from the first time I've seen it. I have used it in a couple workshops and courses, and like to think of it as a bra...
What happens to things after they are made, sold and used? Should we talk of an afterlife of things? Or are they eternal (while they are 'things')?
My reading notes are below.
Chapter 4, Digital Fabrication: Towards a new political economy of matter
p. 92
And, above all, what they are imagining is a material production that is ultra low-cost. The unstated premise behind all of these visions of the future isn't merely an economy in w...
Collecting references about electronic waste.
David Li - E-waste: an open source solution
In Focus: Congo's Bloody Coltan
E WASTELAND - Full film in HD (20mins/2012)
More
I found this book by chance in the DJCAD Library. Seems to be made for young design students. Just copying a couple paragraphs here in deference for the cyberpunk pioneer. Comment added on 04/10/2019.
pp. 56-57
What we know about prehistorical humans comes mostly from their things. Prehistori...
Sennett's The Craftsman was first recommended to me during the times of TransforMatéria, by at least three different people. I read parts of it then, and eventually got back to it with different lenses trying to define the research questions for my PhD. I found Building and Dwelling while immersin...
McDonough and Braungarten are the authors of Cradle to Cradle, a book widely regarded as a recipe for more sustainable product industrial processes, which would later be used a one of the main references for the discussions about a Circular Economy. The Upcycle is the sequel, written by the same aut...
Internet of Things + Smart City + Open Design + Trust = commons of material resources.
