Although the term “citizen science” is increasingly used in the mainstream media around the world, has entered national and regional science policy discourses (particularly in the Global North), and has been fixed in the English language (entered the Oxford dictionary in 2014), there is no consensus about its definition. Citizen science, as Irwin (2015) has…
Anvils are heavy tools usually made of iron or steel. Heavy metal in literal sense. Today, we rarely see them or hear their percussive sound in our cities and towns. They seem to be objects from another era. Humans have been using anvils since ancient times, making all kind of things with them. From coins…
Participatory design (PD) is a powerful methodology that can be applied to re-imagining digitalization process, bringing ethical considerations to the foreground, and fostering the inclusion of multiple stakeholders and diverse people in all the phases of the process. Since its origins in the 1970s and the context of the workplace, PD aimed to democratize power…
In this post I share my experience with a warped record I accidentally damaged by directly exposing it to sunlight, and that I was able to fix (unwarp) using a combination of repair methods.
In Bogota, the city where I live, the vaccination process has progressed the past months, and the restrictions to circulation have finally ended (they lasted for more than a year!). As businesses, restaurants, schools and public transportation reopen, the city is waking up after a long sleep. To provide a record of some of the…
For several years I was unaware of “educomunicacion” (in Spanish), a rich tradition and diverse movement of media literacy education that originated in Latin America in the 20th century and that continues to resonate today through the projects of many grassroots communities, social organizations, and the work of researchers and media educators (“educomunicadores“) in countries…
Blogging is one of the media practices and socio-technical systems that has made the world wide web what it is today. As a practice it has democratized writing, editing, and publishing at a scale that can be compared to the printed press. As a system, it has created a powerful infrastructure for creating, consuming, and…