Minor technologies

Last updated: Saturday, 7 December 2024

Extrapolating from Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s essay “Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature” (1975).

Minor literature involves using a major language in strange, intensive ways, making the language “stutter” and “take flight”? It uncovers the revolutionary potential within major literatures; the “becoming-minor” of great works.

A relative position to major/big technology; equally a question of scale and of power. Minor feelings, and rearguard yin tactics? Not just critical/oppositional; seeking a more slippery, oplique positioning.

  • Deterritorialisation: Using major technological systems in unconventional ways
  • Political immediacy: Inherent political implications
  • Collective value: Emphasis on community and shared experiences
  • Intensive utilisation: Exploiting inner tensions within existing technologies

The struggle for autonomy of expression. Minor technologies can serve as sites of resistance or alternatives to major technologies, offering different visions of how technology can be developed and used.

While “minor” doesn’t necessarily mean small in scale, it often implies operating at a more human-centric or community level. Minor technologies frequently involve peer-to-peer interactions rather than client-server models.

the quality of being minor … does not only involve using master frameworks to express alternative views, but can also include exploring other formats of engagement that are distributed and non-linear. — Teodora Sinziana Fartan, “Rendering Post-Anthropocentric Visions” (2023)

Minor tech … becomes cumulative through this sense of the collectivity forming at the core of its production, which generates active solidarities across communities, practitioners and artifacts – a solidarity that cements itself as a collective utterance. — Teodora Sinziana Fartan, “Rendering Post-Anthropocentric Visions” (2023)

Repurposing existing systems and platforms as ‘technologies of possibility’; counterpoints to the ‘universal ideals embedded in technologies’ (Fartan 2023).

At the same time, the concept of minor technologies encourages us to look beyond stable, categorical definitions of “technology,” considering a wider, more diverse range of practices and tools that shape our relationship with the world. Zines, community/pirate radio, bicycles, the Fediverse, samizdat, demoscene, mesh networks, circuit bending, analogue synths, Melanesian cargo cults, esolangs, and certain open-source software projects.

  • [⎈] How can we distinguish “minor” technologies from “major” ones? Consider how this distinction plays out in practical scenarios. Can you identify contemporary “minor technologies” in everyday life or specific fields (e.g., education, healthcare, communication)?
  • [?] Are minor technologies always intentionally created as alternatives, or can they emerge organically, from unintended uses of major technologies?
  • [?] How do minor techs reveal latent potentials in major systems?
  • [?] Are there historical precedents of minor technologies effecting political change?
  • [&] Compare with: appropriate technology, grassroots innovation?

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