Chapter+Summaries+db

Beginning with an anecdote from the basement of the sanctuary wherein Branda is prepping to go on a walking tour of the neighborhood with the owners of a new Jamaican restaurant but has to hurry because a band from Zimbabwe is coming unexpectedly. Discuss the block through describing the walking tour and then back to RPI for a meeting about condom vending machines. I live in a rented flat that, at one time, faced the opposite direction (the front was considered the back) which is a great way to explain the topsy-turvy relationship Troy (and the rest of the Rust Belt) has with late capitalism. The touch points, and the access points of capital and labor have shifted dramatically, resulting in poverty and divestment. Social sciences are developing new methods and theories to deal with problems that exist in both global and extremely local environs. Global supply chains lead to extremely specific and idiosyncratic changes in local dynamics. Compounding this problem is the lack of physical technologies and infrastructure designed to facilitate public civil-society organization.
 * Introduction**

Chapter begins with adiscussion of sociology and anthropology’s problematic state-centered roots and their current convergence within STS. Necessary to studying the Western context is studying up and other “hard cases” that have typically avoided the theoretical gaze. In the post-modern turn we begin to see not only new theory, but new method. These praxis-based methods focus on reflexivity, learning through doing, and collaborating with interlocutors.
 * Learning Through Doing: An Introduction to Praxis**


 * The Case Studies**
 * **Case Study 1: Found Art in North Central Troy** This story actually starts several years prior to my even moving to Troy when the sanctuary was closed by a conservative city government because they did not like one of the artists. The restitution for that illegal act paid for part of the project. Follow the entire planning and construction phase. Analysis through description of events. Interviews with planning group, community members, and sanctuary volunteers.
 * **Case Study 2: Community Wi-Fi** Starts with a description of CUWiN and its morphing into the Commotion Wireless project administered by the Open Technology Institute. Catalogue a lot of my early problems with the software and then describe the Critical technical practice methods that I employed to design and setup the system. Interviews with members of OTI and local community.
 * **Case Study 3: Condom Vending Machine** Section begins with the original text message finding system. We realize that the problem isn’t finding the condoms, it is the social spaces that condoms are found. Pharmacies are intimidating so a vending machine provides a judgment-free method of condom purchasing. The machines are not public space, rather they are an anti-public space. The condom vending machine defines public technologies in the relief.

This begins with a study of urban design and architecture and slowly moves to a discussion of digital technologies and social networks. If we think about public spaces only in terms of the opposite of private space, then we set up a false dichotomy similar to the one that Habermas sets up and Nancy Frasier calls into question and critiques.
 * What Makes a Space Public?**

This chapter is a prerequisite for, but doesn’t quite fit with, the remainder of the dissertation. Here I make the case for why the distinction between the online and the offline matters to social scientists. The metaphors we use to talk about the Internet, whether they are spatial (e.g. cyberspace), structural (e.g. webs, highways, backbones, tubes), or abstract (e.g. mirror or virtual) do certain kinds of work. They scaffold intangibles, influence our assumptions, and drive theory. As a conclusion I will insist that treating the online and offline as distinct or separate leads to poor theoretical conclusions and even worse ethnographic observations. Talking about affordances of technologies is still important, but conceptualizing the digital as somehow distinct or separate fails to account for many social facts.
 * Brief Manifesto Interlude: Metaphors We Augment By**

Public technology produces public space, but also opportunities for individuals to “be in public.” This is a crucial modifier because digital technologies can let you “be in public” without being in a public “space.” Public technologies afford opportunities for being in public or forming a public. That is, public technologies afford coming together. This might be in the creation of the technology (e.g. barn raising) or the technology itself (e.g Facebook).
 * What Makes a Technology Public?**

A discussion of how the case studies produce opportunities for individuals to be in public and create new organizational forms. It is important to consider how people learn about the technology, use the technology, and see other people in relation to it. Are other individuals on “the other side” of the technology (e.g. telephones)? “In” the technology with you (e.g. a public square)? Who has access to the technology and how are technologies and people configured when the technology is in widespread use. What assemblages form or wither away once a public technology comes online?
 * Producing The Public: Who, What, How and Why?**

This chapter is a coda of sorts, providing prescriptive, almost speculative conclusions regarding the use of public technologies. Given the continuing trends of austerity, divestment, and governmental mal/dysfunction, it is important to consider and develop public technologies that are cheap, resilient, and both afford and constitute self-organizing systems.
 * Devolution of the Public and Self-Organization**