Political+Implications+EF


 * MEMO: Political Implications**


 * According to the Interlocutors....**

Depending on my different sites, there may be different elucidations as to what my interlocutors imagine as likely and necessary change. It may be hard to garner from them directly what they think technology and science should do within the public sphere or how skill-sharing sites and makerspaces might be better utilized for the community in which they are situated. Then again, I may be completely surprised to see what they think should/can be done politically with these sites of public technological engagement. Certainly from the PLOTS group, I will find individuals who see 'making' and participatory design as a way to engage concerned citizens and individuals in civic science interventions with environmental and political implications. Particularly that it gives the public their own personally gathered data which will in turn help give them a voice


 * Broadly speaking..**

I see this study as demonstrating that makerspaces and skill-sharing centers have great potential for critical-making practices which in-and-of themselves have great political possibilities. It will show how civic science can use situated knowledges and lay expertise in order to instigate community-focused production for the high-lighting of obscured issues.


 * Extraction of Labor to the Global Economy: Situating labor and production within communities**

This study has the potential to demonstrate that there is an issue with innovation/incubator programming in skill-sharing centers in that it extracts labor and production practices out of local/situated resources toward US competitiveness in the global economy. Through intervention or already established practice, I hope it can more positively elucidate how these spaces can also create relevant workshops and critical-making practices which bring relevant community concerns to the forefront. In turn, that these critical-making practices can help to solve or make visible these problems that were once obscured or lying unanswered. Skill-sharing communities can be a place of gathering, or organizing resources and instigating change and empowerment within a community, particularly through open source practices (so that said intervention or critical-making action may be transformed for specific use by other communities with similar issues).