Understanding, Promoting, and Designing for Sustainable Appropriation of Technologies by Grassroots Communities. Towards a New Wave of Technological Activism: Sustainable Appropriation of Technologies by Grassroots Communities.

Technological development and adoption are characterized by historical waves, reflecting both technical advancements and social transformations in mutually constitutive relation. Today, we are in the middle of another of these waves characterized, for instance, by the widespread focus on AI and other emerging technologies. In this context, activists and designers are constructively appropriating these emerging technologies, thus showing how socio-technical aspects of technological design, development, and implementation, contribute to ongoing transformations of power relations, life conditions, and our collective future. This workshop aims at bringing together C&T researchers and practitioners interested in understanding, promoting, and designing forms of sustainable appropriation of contemporary technologies by grassroots communities. With sustainable appropriation, we refer to a wider concept of sustainability including ecological and social aspects, as presented for example in the UN Sustainable Development Goals.