Since the mid-1990s, a trend has solidified, revealing the convergence of several factors: organizations are increasingly reliant on the intelligent use of information and information technologies to remain competitive, becoming information-intensive; individuals are using information technologies in multiple aspects of daily life and consuming vast amounts of information; and an information sector is emerging with strong potential in the economy. Driven by sustained innovation processes, among other factors, companies producing hardware, software, and telecommunications devices and services are gradually creating conditions for expanding the consumption of their products in global markets. A prime example is the formation of a conglomerate of technology companies that lead innovations and capture the resulting economic benefits, such as Alphabet (Google), Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft (GAFAM), now joined by Uber, Airbnb, and other providers of essential services. According to Forbes magazine, in 2018, among the 20 largest companies in the world, Apple ranked 6th, AT&T 12th, Samsung Electronics 13th, Microsoft 16th, and Alphabet, owner of Google, 17th.

This movement—intensive in production and expansive in the penetration of technological developments—which generated and continues to generate consequences in cultural practices, modes of communication, work processes and other aspects of daily life, nevertheless involves great differences at the social and economic level.

The World Summits on the Information Society (2003 and 2005) fostered the development of public policies and partnerships between the private sector, governments, and certain civil society organizations. In this context, the digital divide/digital inclusion dichotomy became the driving force behind global action, primarily by the state, to create infrastructure and provide equipment to various sectors and socioeconomically disadvantaged population groups in developing countries, such as those in Latin America. Initially, this investment involved the creation of what in some Latin American countries were called Community Technology Centers and the provision of computer labs in schools. From the late 2000s onward, programs such as "One Laptop per Child" were implemented, aiming to provide vulnerable groups with technological devices. These devices then gradually led to their adoption in various ways and to varying degrees. It is worth noting that in the case of Latin America, some policy lines on the matter were already outlined from the late eighties onwards within the framework of the Major Project of Education in Latin America and the Caribbean.

In our region, the implementation of policies and actions led to the development of a field of reflection and planning; it impacted the organizational structures and interconnections of different areas and levels of government; it established partnership mechanisms with businesses; and it imposed evaluation requirements. The political dimension transcended national boundaries, since in most cases international agencies paved the way for countries' entry into what they termed the "Information Society."

Gradually, a field of social and cultural studies also emerged, seeking to generate resources for understanding the changes and forms of participation of different sectors, identifying the conditioning factors, and proposing lines of intervention and projects that contribute to eliminating inequalities and the exercise of rights. Within this framework, the research and theoretical-methodological productions that developed allowed for a shift from positions centered on the idea of ​​“access” to technologies (which was initially the basis of policy formulation) toward a complex conceptualization supported by the non-univocal notion of “appropriation,” while simultaneously challenging Eurocentric, ethnocentric, and heteropatriarchal perspectives.

Thus, market imperatives regarding the expansion of the acquisition and use of digital technologies encountered significant resistance from counter-hegemonic groups. These groups, while denouncing the consequences of these massive incorporations, also generate alternative forms of technological production, such as building network infrastructures or free software, or even obtaining and circulating information not always publicly available. This latter practice could potentially jeopardize democratic systems or user privacy through the use of mass surveillance devices (as seen in the cases of Snowden and Julian Assange and the hacker movement). Some of these resistance practices have been, and continue to be, subjected to political and judicial persecution and discrediting campaigns by major power governments, with the acquiescence of the region's more dependent governments. 

In Latin America and the Caribbean, the debate on the colonization of the internet is gaining momentum. The socio-technical framework, reinforced through a strong alliance between technologies, hegemonic masculinity, and whiteness, is made explicit in the growing body of research that problematizes the role of technoscience in the production of heteromasculinities, racism, and marginalization. Technologies like the internet are marked by their military, masculine, white, North American, and European origins. The digital divides of gender, class, race, and generation—among others—in the production, circulation, and use of ICTs; gender-based violence in and through digital media; digital crimes; invasions of privacy; the surveillance, monitoring, and control of bodies; and debates on legal consent, to name a few, are all central themes when analyzing appropriation through the lens of gender, race, and territory—that is, through what has been termed, not without debate, intersectionality (Crenshaw). 

Therefore, faced with this situation, both academia and activist groups have begun to discuss concepts such as technological autonomy and sovereignty, alternative infrastructures, and free networks throughout the region. While the internet is becoming a space intensely monitored by governments and private monopolies that control most online traffic, and where misogynistic and racist violence flourishes, some groups in Latin America are experimenting with new forms of technological appropriation, setting up their own servers, writing their own applications, creating free networks, and installing autonomous antennas and servers in a clear attempt to circumvent internet giants like Google and Facebook. Mexico, for example, is a leading country in the development of free and autonomous cellular networks in indigenous territories, and in the development of a rebellious and feminist “hackerism” that is having an impact on many neighboring countries. In Guatemala and Honduras, extreme political violence has led to a proliferation of original and underground forms of technological appropriation to defend the human rights of indigenous women and activists. Recent events in Puerto Rico and Brazil, where private conversations on commercial applications that have been made public have shifted the political landscape more than any of the three branches of government, have generated a crisis of trust and credibility in everyday technologies and have become a cutting-edge source of research in the field of technopolitics. If the algorithmization of life is a reality, then calls for algorithmic justice resonate throughout the region. In fact, many of these phenomena are being discussed at RIAT network meetings.

In this vein, the design of a global architecture for the production, circulation, and use of infrastructure and information has become a geopolitical issue, particularly for the Global South. Currently, it is playing out as a battleground for trade wars, such as the one being waged between the US and China over the strategic alliance between the Chinese company Huawei and other European companies to develop 5G technology for that continent, thereby becoming a primary supplier and displacing US hegemony. Of course, the development and provision of network infrastructure not only offers economic benefits but also political ones, and its impact extends beyond that sector to the next wave of innovations related to the Internet of Things, for example. Both of these issues are intertwined with data mining and artificial intelligence, of which the Cambridge Analytica scandal is just a premature example. Perhaps the widespread publicity surrounding this company's case is the first symptom of a crisis in the social rationality that legitimizes corporations as the most suitable entities for data extraction, and as the only ones with the power and capacity to process and appropriate data. In the wake of this crisis, studies on the appropriation of technologies acquire theoretical relevance and political significance.

The field of social studies has been particularly challenged by the extent and complexity of socio-technological environments, which demand a profound renewal of theoretical perspectives and methodological devices to account for processes and objects that are characterized as complex, dynamic, and opaque.

Since 2012, researchers from various countries who make up the Network of Researchers on Appropriation of Digital Technologies (RIAT), have undertaken a collective reflection effort around the conceptualization of the appropriation of technologies and the promotion of experiences oriented towards it.

The RIAT is established to share the research work of its members and with the aim of collaborative work, through various meetings:

2012 Organization: Observatory of Interactive Media Uses (OUMI- National University of General Sarmiento UNGS- Buenos Aires) participants from Argentina and Spain.

2014 and 2015 Organization: Technomedia Appropriation Program (ECI-National University of Córdoba UNC- Córdoba), participants from Argentina, Colombia, Mexico and Brazil. 

2016 Organization Working Group on Internet, Technology and Culture (Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of the National University of Patagonia San Juan Bosco-UNPSJB- Comodoro Rivadavia), participants from Argentina.

2016 Organization: OUMI-UNGS, Buenos Aires. Participants from Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay, and France. Formal establishment of the Network. 

2017 Organization: Gino Germani Research Institute -UBA- Buenos Aires), participants from Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Uruguay.

2018 Organization: ObservaTic (University of the Republic, Montevideo). Participants from Argentina, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Brazil, Chile, Mexico.

2019 Organization: University of Los Lagos (Osorno), October 9-11. 

Over the years, we have developed a website for the dissemination of the Network's activities, and published three books (available on the Network's website apropiaciondetecnologias.com) that compile articles whose authors belong to the Network.

As researchers, we conduct studies on the manner, nature, and context in which individuals and social groups engage with digital technologies, as well as the conditions of their appropriation. We adopt diverse approaches to technology appropriation: the analysis and evaluation of the digital divide, the technological skills and competencies of users, the impact of unequal cultural, social, and economic contexts on this appropriation, public policies for digital inclusion and the evaluation of their results in terms of reducing the divide, as well as the role of the market in appropriation practices and emerging innovations in this field. Furthermore, we analyze appropriation processes by social groups and movements and the impacts of technologies on societies and cities.

These multi- and interdisciplinary approaches are based on different approaches: technology use theory, software studies, political economy of communication, media literacy, educational technology, technopolitics, geopolitics and biopolitics, cyberfeminism, among others.

We understand that the appropriation of technologies expresses, in various ways, a potential for autonomy for collective or individual subjects in relation to the expectations of markets or governments. This does not mean that appropriation possesses different “degrees” that progressively move toward an “ideal” model of appropriation, whether for companies, governments, social movements, or researchers. Obviously, we recognize that digital platforms constitute interfaces of interaction whose “grammars” do contain implicit models of use and users, while states oscillate between the will to control and submission to the interests of the former. We also recognize the resistance and resilience inherent in projects of subservient and rebellious technologies.

Both the most widespread ICT usage practices and the most commonly used devices and applications are heavily influenced by the trends of an increasingly concentrated market. Understanding the links between the market, public policy, and appropriation practices is also a key aspect of our attention, as these are articulated and fraught relationships in which commercial innovations act as conditioning factors.

Conceptually, we assume that the production of technologies is the result of a human process embedded in and shaped by the power relations and dynamics—cultural, social, economic, political, and ideological—of our societies. Activity in, on, with, and against technology is a central element of this understanding of appropriation. Involving physical and psychological structures, it allows us to reproduce historically formed human skills and functions, to produce relationships with objects, and to construct new meanings. From this perspective, the appropriation of technologies expresses complex, dynamic, meaningful, and comprehensive processes, and its conceptualization refers to individual and/or collective empowerment, but also to the modes of operation of capitalism itself.

In social movements and organizations, the relationship built with digital technologies is based on experimentation and creativity in the processes of transfer and appropriation, the disruptive use of proprietary technologies, and the creation of original technological innovation projects. At the same time, the possibilities for redesign, cultural adaptation, or critical transfer and innovation of digital technologies are linked to organizational and dissemination patterns, repertoires of protest, the composition of the movement or organization (gender, social class, rural-urban status, etc.), and the historical, social, political, and cultural contexts that shape them.

In times of growing feminist and anti-racist mobilization, it is important to observe the controversies involved in demanding transformations through the appropriation of non-neutral artifacts, whose codes of conduct, action, and regulation are inscribed within a new epistemological paradigm and a logic of accumulation that has been consolidating itself through the manipulation of data. We intend to analyze these phenomena from an intersectional perspective, that is, from the intersections between gender, race, territory, social class, etc., which challenge the liberal concept of citizenship and strain the development of a new productive logic that some authors call surveillance capitalism (Shuboff) and others, datafication (Van Dijck). We understand that, in the medium term, social arrangements will be radically altered through a global algorithmic mediation project that must be widely debated by citizens. This project gives the automatic and mass processing of data (datafication), also known as big data, the interpretive capacity about the world and social relations, allowing real-time monitoring and predictive analysis, which is now one of the central themes in appropriation studies insofar as it is a new type of appropriation.

Regarding the material and subjective conditions under which the appropriation of technologies occurs, and which are the subject of investigative interest, we point out

a- the technical developments of devices for the production, storage, circulation and reproduction of information

b- regulations and public policies

c- Business strategies for product placement, expanding the adoption of devices and services, and participation in the respective markets

d- the impacts of capitalist accumulation via digital technologies, in the field of economic, political and social organization

e- the senses and subjective experiences in which both the influence exerted by the environment on the subject, as well as intellectual, affective/emotional and motivational aspects intervene

With a focus on implementing innovative methodologies, our research aims to produce relevant information for the design of public policies and the actions of social movements concerned with increasing the autonomy of individuals and groups in relation to the use, circulation, and development of technologies. The proposed Working Group will enhance the work we have been doing, as well as that of CLACSO, a leading organization in the production of critical analysis.