Radical Cannibals

As we sort through appropriation practices, a key distinction is the degree to which users come into conflict with suppliers when they re-make technology. At the harmonious end of that spectrum we find baroquization, where users re-make artifacts along a supplier-provided personalization script. By contrast, cannibalization occupies the other extreme. Tech cannibals intentionally confront suppliers by re-making technology into something that goes against the interests of those suppliers. Just as with antropofagia, creation then emerges from destruction – literal or symbolic. This week’s news brings two examples of phone destruction, each creative in its own way.

The first story brings a welcome tale of technological failure: This week’s “attempted London car bombings were meant to be detonated by calls to mobile phones in the two vehicles, but failed for technical reasons.” Re-making mobile phones into bomb detonators is nothing new, and constitutes perhaps the most radical illustration of technology cannibalism. The practice is antagonistic at every level – artifact, practice, and politics. The objective is -literally- to destroy the phone, the practice is hostile to the intentions and business plans of providers, and, most importantly, the resulting explosion appropriates technology toward aggressive political goals.

The second news item reports on several iPhone dissections, some more meticulous than others. Here, the stated purpose is to discover what is inside and understand what makes this new device tick. The next cannibalistic challenge will be to crack the software. As the Reuters story points out: “Opening the iPhone was the easy part. For many, the real prize is hacking the phone to get it to do things Apple never intended, such as run on networks other than that of AT&T Inc., the exclusive U.S. service provider. Some programmers also want to find a way to run their own programs directly on the phone’s operating system rather than being limited to programs run through the Web browser.”

(click on pictures for credits and additional information)

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