From Fab Cities to Fab Citizens: remaking organising — with Tomas Diez

Podcast Notes

In this episode, we have a boundaryless conversation with Tomas Diez, a Venezuelan Urbanist specialized in digital fabrication and its implications on the future of cities and society. He is the co-founder and director of Fab Lab Barcelona at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) and is a founding partner of the Fab City Global Initiative.

In our conversation with Tomas, we explore the democratization of the production of goods, mainly through technological progress and open knowledge sharing, and how this might affect the evolution of platform-enabled ecosystem driven production. We ask Tomas — through the lens of this transformation — what new subjectivities and constituents are empowered to organize in ways that are different, whether synergistic or integrated, with current globalization and digitalization trends. Of course, we cannot avoid touching on the changing landscape of risk and policy-making, as we connect with Tomas in the midst of the global pandemic. We also talk about the future of education and the need to reconsider Western-centric values and ways of knowing.

Here are some important links from the conversation:

• Fab City: Locally Productive, Globally Connected, https://fab.city/
• Bill Gates’ Ted talk from 2015: “The next Outbreak? We’re not ready”, https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_the_next_outbreak_we_re_not_ready?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare
• Wendell Berry (1977): The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/146191.The_Unsettling_of_America
• Peter Noak (2010): Sex, Bombs and Burgers, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7829730-sex-bombs-and-burgers
• Raj Patel, Jason W. Moore (2017): A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34525475-a-history-of-the-world-in-seven-cheap-things

Dr. Zachary Stein on education in a changing technology landscape, http://www.zakstein.org/

Key Insights

1. This is not the time to play fortune teller and start making predictions of what the world will be like post Covid-19. Instead, Tomas invites us to look back on historical points of convergence and realise that we might be witnessing a new convergence around the access to knowledge, which started already before the coronavirus outbreak. This convergence drives the ability to become “fab citizen” empowered to produce what we need when we need it, rather than resorting to consumerism of industrially produced goods. Because of the availability of digital fabrication, production can become democratized and localised anywhere at any time.

2. While globalisation brings positive aspects like widespread access to knowledge and connection to people, knowledge and culture “beyond the village”, the need to go into the hyperlocal is a parallel force driven by the need to stop mindless consumption and pollution.

3. When it comes to technology and platforms, these need to be reconceived and seen as a full stack that goes beyond software and is able to incorporate wisdom, sense-making and more.

? Boundaryless Conversations Podcast is about exploring the future of large scale organising by leveraging on technology, network effects and shaping narratives. We explore how platforms can help us play with a world in turmoil, change, and transformation: a world that is at the same time more interconnected and interdependent than ever but also more conflictual and rivalrous.