Open-source cyborgs and DIY data: Chances and challenges for a democratisation of gender

Abstract

This article draws a picture of the ontological politics that is currently at play in the relationship between people and things from the perspective of “what we design designs us back”. Drawing on an array of phenomena, we illustrate how the current discourse on the design of technologies produces objects-as-subjects and subjects-as-objects, and we explore the implicit production of gendered dualisms within this process. The article goes on to discuss whether and how the DIY disruption of mundane technological systems can interrupt this active production of tacit gendering. Illustrated by design experiments involving “hacking culture” as technically intelligible social disruptions of everyday systems, the article then discusses the option of “confusing the apparatus”. It is argued that the sharing and analysis of data should not be seen as something objective and automated, but rather as something subjective and manipulable. Finally, we argue the potential of our evolution into open-source cyborgs – and hence, the prospective of taking an active part in the designing of one’s own body and mind through a constant DIY reshuffling and reinterpretation of the material-social.